There’s nothing worse than dreading a return from being away from the desk. After all, you’re likely to have an overflowing email inbox left untended while you were on vacation. Sending out this one email before you go anywhere for an extended period of time will help lessen that feeling.
I am out of the office from [date range]. If you need immediate assistance, please contact [name, title and contact information].
.
I wrote the above comment off the top of my head. I wish I had time to rewrite and edit it. I would have changed “their goldfish” to “a spider they accidentally stepped on”, and would have added more detail to the story of the sister’s death (e.g. “her Pomeranian yapping” rather than the less descriptive “her dog barking”). Unfortunately, I could not do the thorough writing job required for that comment because someone close to me recently … – The person whose out of office advertised his gig on the weekend, for anyone in travelling to [city] – The people in a certain department who have taken to saying things like “if you really need to contact me, call 000-YYY-XXXX where Y is the square root of [insert numbers] and X is the year plutonium was discovered.” – The ones where people have an auto response saying they only check their emails once a day between 1-2pm – “I’m on research leave and I may be slow to reply.” (Whereby it is guaranteed they will reply immediately, because academics do not *really* take breaks).
I think my personal VM still says, “Ahoy, ahoy!” In my best Mr. Burns voice. I’m a woman.
Others like to take the opportunity to inject a little personality and make the reader smile, like our very own Rachael’s summertime out-of-office:
I had a coworker whose former employer required them to update their voicemail message every day. “Hello, you’ve reached MaryMary. Today is Thursday, June 3rd. I am in the office all day but may be away from my desk for meetings. Please leave a message and I will return your call as soon as possible.” She got in the habit and still updated her VM everyday. Occasionally I run into someone elsewhere in our industry with a daily VM message and know they used to work at the same place.
Website: https://smith.ai/blog/28-business-voicemail-greetings-for-main-office-and-personal-numbers-formal-informal-modern-and-just-hilarious
10) I am on vacation from mm/dd to mm/dd. I will allow each sender one email. If you send me multiple emails, I will randomly delete your emails until it is pared down to one. Choose wisely. Please note that you already sent me one email.
Our Public Service Announcement: Each year, Americans leave 700 million DAYS of paid time off on the table. Stop and think about how many great out of office reply opportunities are missed because of this!
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'The very fact you were content to type out your query long hand and settle back to wait for a reply suggests you can wait' (Credit: Getty Images)
LOL if I got the math/physics one I’d do the small amount of work to just to call them.
You can manually turn on DND mode to auto text, see the video with steps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0jJwjpE87o.
I still hate that lady. She made one of my coworkers cry until she had to leave work because it turned into an unstoppable panic attack. I later had one too.
Option 1: Wait it out. Ask yourself, “Is this urgent and important?” If it isn’t, take a beat and give me a chance to respond after I dig myself out of my inbox later this week. You and I will be better off with this expectation set now.
Yes, this, and when people use OOO message as a “do not disturb” but then email you back right away. That’s not how OOO or email works!
Proof that some people just Don’t Get It: in response to my out of office voicemail message directing callers to contact my co-worker for anything urgent, a woman left the following message on MY voicemail: “Co-worker, I am having this issue, blah, blah, blah. Please call me at X.” Yeah, I–not co-worker–got the message a week later when I returned.