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That is kind of glorious. And it does make sense when the person you’re emailing is gone for months. I did something similar my last mat leave except I didn’t explicitly state it, and lo and behold, people figured out that I wasn’t going to catch their email from a month or so earlier unless they brought it up again.
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Exactly! This may be the type of person who hears a phrase that sounds polite when referring to another, but mangles it and uses it to refer to themself so it becomes the opposite of polite.
Our office will be closed on [date] for the public holiday and will reopen again as normal on [date]. Contact details for emergency can be found on our website.
Having someone who can fill in for you while you’re away is critical, says Misner. “If you don’t have an assistant, have a coworker back you up,” he says. “It’s an effective technique if you support one another.”
Our office VM sends an audio file to our email. I love it, because I can apply all the filing and prioritization functions of my email inbox to the voice messages. It’s the only way I ever check my VM. I don’t even remember how to listen to messages on my phone.
Yeah, that bugs me because a) now I don’t know when you actually will be back, and b) leaves me unsure what other information in the message may also out of date
Of course I’ll still be glad to hear from you – try me at this email: [insert email].
Now that you know what you should and shouldn’t include, how do you go about crafting the perfect out-of-office vacation message?
Hi, I’m out of the office until [MM/DD] with limited access to email. But don’t worry! I’ve left you with some helpful article to read and share in the meantime. I look forward to connecting with you when I return.
Given free rein, I’d absolutely love to tell people that needing me to show them how to do X in Excel is actually not a vacation-interrupting emergency and there are tons of free videos that would explain that, if they did not want to contact the actual departments who handle tech support and training. Or that this project they’ve known about for a month but decided to keep under their hat until it became an emergency is something they’ll need to resolve themselves. But that would not fly at all.
I’m new to tech but have watched my friends in tech with envy up until now. Worth the wait. I may be in the minority but my company actually assumes we’re all adults and treats us like human beings. So different than working in the myriad corporate dronehouses I’ve been in up until now. Finally, a place I can have my pink hair!
At the top of your calendar, click the first date you’ll be out of the office. Click Out of office. Select the dates that you’ll be out of the office. Optional: Update the time range and edit your decline message. Click Save.
Yeah I think it’s fine if someone is out for a long period of time. It’s simply too much of an endeavor to find the few relevant emails out of thousands. But for a week or two, I’m sorry but you have to manage your inbox. I know, it sucks. We all get too many dumb emails.
I have a coworker who has an “always-on” autoreply stating that she “is busy with client meetings during the day” and therefore only checks emails at 9am and 3pm. I understand wanting to set the expectation that people won’t get an immediate response, but it really baffles me. If you are still able to respond within 24 hours, why does anyone need this information? To me it feels like some weird self-help tip or power move that they read somewhere that serves no actual function.
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