I was recently on the receiving end of a very perplexing out of office message. It simply said, “I am currently out of the office.” No indication of when they would be back or who to contact in the meantime. Fortunately in my case this was someone I cc’ed on an email as an FYI and did not need any response from, but still–who does that? IMO a good out of office message says how long you’re out and who to contact in the interim if things can’t wait, no more and no less.
My European colleagues get an extended summer holiday all at the same time, which means we get OOO notes like this:
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Business Success Marketing Finance Employees Technology Start-up Productivity Communication
After all, most of us long to fully detach while we’re away and we know it’s the healthier and more restorative thing to do. Yet we’re concerned that actually doing so might appear reckless or irresponsible to our clients and colleagues.
As a result, our text-based work communication has morphed into a series of strange, stilted, passive aggressive, and performatively upbeat exchanges. Much of the actual text of work email exchanges is ornamental filler language filled with exclamation points and phrases like “just looping back on this” that mask burnout, frustrated obligation, and sometimes outright contempt (the absolute best example of this is a wonderful 2015 post titled, “Just Checking In,” where writers Virginia Heffernan and Paul Ford write fake emails in this vein to see who can cause the other the most panic).
Yeah, it’s very strange. I understood changing voicemails to explain that the line can’t actually be answered, but someone is checking the messages and will respond (though that was also only an issue for the first few months), but they had no reason to even mention it for email. I started my job 3 months into lockdown, and by that point, procedures were in place to pretty much allow us to operate normally, albeit with a lot more done electronically than before.
I don’t have access to email because I don’t have a work cell & I don’t open my work laptop on my days off.
Dear Customer, Please note that on [day], [date], is [holiday name]. The store will be closed all day and will open again at [time] on [Day]. Enjoy the holiday. Regards [Company name]
This makes a lot of sense to me, since surely in the 3-4 months people tend take as leave in the US, your issue would have been resolved. Also for parental leave, most people delegate ongoing projects to some specific person, so anything that’s still going to be going on months from now when you return is getting handled by someone else.
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The recipient may have filtering turned on that would reject the automatic reply;
does this work when you turn your phone off entirely? like if i set up an auto-reply to texts and then turn my phone off, will people get that response? i am about to travel internationally & would love to have this set up for when i’m off the grid & my phone is off.
I just say that I’m out of the office. Practically, it makes no difference where this office is located.
My project is entirely phone based and we don’t have voicemail, either for the project line or individual staff lines. We used to, but we found we spent so much time returning voicemails and getting people’s voicemails that it led to us missing calls and going in an infinite loop.
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I think this makes a lot of sense for a 2-3 month absence, when there wouldn’t be much point in reading and responding to things when you get back. Questions will have been answered and issues resolved by different means.