The worst one I ever received was from a coworker (senior to me, but not my manager) many years ago. I’ll paraphrase it as my memory isn’t great:
The holiday season is traditionally dedicated to sending joyful greetings to your loved ones. Whether you've written a humorous Christmas saying or sent your glad tidings with a Christmas bible verse on your angel Christmas cards, you'll have to choose a personalized signature. Deciding what to write in a Christmas card is significant all the way up until the very …
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“Hi, Thank you for contacting me. I’m currently out of the office for a conference and will not be available until [date]. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
I’ll be on maternity leave from [DATE] until [DATE]. For general inquiries about [DEPARTMENT/ROLE], please email [CONTACT NAME]. If this isn’t time sensitive, feel free to resend this email in [MONTH] once I’m regularly checking emails again. All the best.
I worked at a public agency and would have different out-of-office messages for internal and external. I was chastised for having a “too informal” message- because the idiot talking to me didn’t realize me saying “I’ll be back next Tuesday for the big staff meeting” (or whatever) was just for co-workers and not the public. I told them but of course it didn’t matter. So from then on I always made sure to start my internal OOOs- “Hello Company X comrade…. blah.” So it was clear which was which. I am not able to respond to your email promptly because my husband died. I will not be accepting zoom invitations. Please do not respond by suggesting future alternative dates. I don’t know when I will be able to speak without crying.
If you have a corporate email account at work, the chances are you'll also have some kind of setting that enables you to tell people when you're on holiday or out on the office on business. But what if you don't? Or just want to set up an email auto reply on your Mac at home?
But this is where it becomes a power thing. The OOO person says that everyone else wants stuff from them that the sender can’t get elsewhere and you need to grovel to get it from them.
My boss requires us to put a nightly OOO message up, and I HATE it. I pushed back on it for months at first, because people know and understand that the reason no one is responding at 8pm is because the business is closed (or at least, they should understand that…). It wasn’t worth the fight, my boss thinks it’s so important, so I caved and just turn on the message every night. I think it makes us look immature and like we don’t understand business norms, but it’s not the hill I’m willing to die on.
In the digital age, most of us follow brands on social media. When a client follows a company on social media, it keeps them fresh in their mind and makes them more likely to do business with them. You can set an out-of-office to make it easy for a customer to connect, stay current, and maintain the brand loyalty that social media provides.
It’s funny, because when I turn off driving mode on my work iphone and look at the test messages coming in from my personal Samsung, it shows that the iPhone is sending the auto-replies, but I am not getting them on the Samsung??
I'm probably in the middle of a tree farm right now, getting covered in tree sap, so my hands would stick to my keyboard if I tried to respond to your email. I'll respond to your email once I am back at work on [date].
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.
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As your email will not be forwarded, please contact in the meantime my colleague, Mary, 0912345678, [email protected].
1. 1 The Scrooge. Hellooooo . . . You’ve reached the Ghost of Holidays Future. Whose future? Yours, of course! Let me show you what it looks like. Step this way.
You can also schedule your auto replies ahead to send at a specific time for a set it and forget it solution.
I used to work at a place that required me to update my voicemail EVERY SINGLE DAY with my schedule for the day as in Hi, today is xyz and I will me in a meeting from 11-12 and at lunch from 12-1 and be in the office all other times.