That message was definitely too long, and while I see it was meant to be funny/snarky, I can see where it would be grating / easy to misinterpret.
When one of my colleagues is out of the office, he doesn't mess around. In fact, he's turned his auto-responses into a running series of commentary from fictional cartoon character Troy McClure.
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Set your out of office messages and determine who monitors division and department messages.
Student emails at 3am Saturday morning, then is sends an email Sunday night, miffed you didn’t reply.
I don’t do them for meetings. I do have one that I turn on every Tuesday afternoon since I don’t work Wednesdays. In our culture it’s not uncommon for people to check EMail when they’re off. I don’t do that so I need to let people know. I also put a status message up on Teams. I work with a team of 40 people and I can’t expect them all to remember when I’m there and when I’m not!
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Respected Customers. It is to inform you all that our head office which is situated in New Hampshire, street 345 will be closed due to the upcoming holiday season. During this period, I will not be able to respond to all your emails as I will be in the area where an internet facility would be unavailable as well as I am not taking my laptop with me. So, your queries will remain unanswered during this period. Moreover, there would be seven days off from 1-01-2020 to 07-01-2020. Hope to see you all in the office on 08-01-2020. Wish you the best holidays!
Oh you see, I do that on purpose. That way I can use the same OOO message internally and externally. Anyone within our company can find us in the global address book. Anyone outside our company who has done business with my department has my email address & my manager’s.
If you see the Automatic Replies button, follow the steps to set up an automatic reply.
For those of you arguing that entrepreneurs and salespeople must always be available, I present to you Exhibit A. While this is specific to Yesware (and you should check out their other OOO examples), it's easy enough to tweak to fit your industry.
1.) Bem-vindo a John Doe. Nosso atendimento direto não funciona durante o feriado. Nosso horário de funcionamento pode ser encontrado no nosso site www.joendoe.de - Obrigado por sua confiança. Desejamos a você e seus entes queridos boas festas e um feliz ano novo.
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.
I also think you should give this email tactic a try – especially when you return from an extended break or vacation.
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We hereby inform you that due to the prevailing hazardous situation of [X], it is decided that all our offices in the city [X] will remain closed. At this time, it would be very difficult for all of you to come out of your homes for office as there is unrest everywhere and one never knows when his turn will come. So, by caring for the safety of all of you people it is the mutual decision from all of us that our office will remain closed during this period. As to open it in this prevailing situation is not less than a risk. So, it will remain closed for a long period of time.
Additionally, you can reference a person in charge of your business while you are way:
In Outlook Mail, you can set an auto-reply or "vacation message" on your account. This will automatically send a message back to anyone who emails you to let them know that you are on vacation, out of the office, or otherwise unable to respond.