This is too much. If someone said something like “I’m at the beach until Jan 5!” instead of “I’m out of the office until Jan 5,” I’d appreciate the slight personal touch. But don’t share too much. We just need to know that you’re not gonna answer our email for a while.
It also doesn’t help that gmail has no ability to create an OOO schedule… like why can’t I have gmail turn on the message every day at 5pm, and turn it off every morning at 8am? We have the technology!
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If they think you’ll be checking in, they might still attempt to get in touch with you. In the event that you take vacation time or personal time, they’ll try to contact you less often.
If you’re anything like I am, you probably fall into team two. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to get creative. But if you plan ahead, you might be able to craft some hilarity.
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If there's a year to take a break for the holidays, it's 2020! Since replying to email can make it hard to disconnect, set your vacation responder before you log off for the season.
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!
Thanks for your email! I’ll be OOO from [date] to [date] and will not be accessing email during that time.
I’ve never had a funny / pithy OOO. Clearly I’m missing out! It’s literally, “Hi, I’m OOO from x to x, and will be returning x. Please contact Fergus if you need immediate assistance.” Maybe I should live a little!
I, for one, tend to forget to set my automated out-of-office (OOO) email responder and scramble to do it before the plane takes off 🙈 It’s important to inform your customers and business associates (and remind your colleagues!) that you’re away, especially if they’re expecting a prompt response.
I once had a coworker who would put up OOOs for absolutely everything, and it irked me to an unreasonable level. Spending the afternoon working with a colleague on a project? OOO. Just returned from vacation and trying to catch up? OOO. A lot of meetings that day? OOO.
See, in my head, “as soon as possible” reads simply as a more formal way of saying “I will respond at my earliest convenience.” Like, either way, this person is getting back to you as soon as they can, whatever that actually means.
When I’m back in the office and going through emails, I’ll sometimes send a note of “I’m catching up on my emails and saw you had XX question – did you still need help with that?” before doing any in-depth research.
[Company name] office is closed today for the [holiday name] and will reopenam [date]. [Company name] Online and our website is available throughout.
Hello, I’m away for the weekend. Back on Wednesday. I’m in [COUNTRY] drinking coffee. Eating lots of food. Should have internet on the evenings to answer the important emails. Please send photos of penguins to Twitter @[HANDLE] to alert me that you’ve sent an email. This is most important.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year [or any variation on these salutations].
I think the OOO you wrote in about is hysterically funny. I also think it would be out of place in a lot of offices (the board of directors that oversee my org would emphatically not think the message was funny).