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What was weirder is that it took a couple weeks after covid hit for her to turn the message off – which meant that when the entire company was wfh, we would still get an fyi message from her that she was also working from home.
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When one of my colleagues went on vacation, he sent an out-of-office message that was both clever and smart. First, he sent the recipient on an imaginary scavenger hunt to "the highest peak of the tallest mountain." He used humorous absurdity to make it clear that he would not be checking email while he was away.
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If it’s anything less than a business day, it just becomes this extra beacon of our completely toxic and out of whack work culture that insists we be reachable every second.
Except since we usually have a strict 2 GB inbox limit, that usually lasts about 2-3 months at best and then nobody can send you anything at all so it works out. (In-organization they’ll still see the OOO when they put you into the address bar, so it works out that it’s not TOO much to delete when you return.
Click the cog and select ‘Automatic replies’Select ‘Send automatic replies’Specify a time periodWrite your out of office emailConfirm other details and press ‘OK’
It was just this colleague – it (thankfully) wasn’t the culture of the office, and I never saw anyone else abuse the OOO like this.
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I came across a woman’s Maternity Leave OOO message which said “All emails will be deleted upon my return. If it still urgent after (return date), send another message.”
Working from home? Try these OOO messages to let people know you’re taking a break. 16. “I’ll get back to you once I’m back from my long-awaited trip to the fridge.”
Thank you for getting in touch! I’ll be out-of-office from [date] to [date] and will not be checking email during that time.
Former coworker: “I am out of the country from X until Y. Please do not email me during this time as last time I came back to about 250, and reading them all takes up a lot of the time I have left before I retire.” Some people thought that was funny. The director who received that in response to an all staff communication? Not so much. Coworker got a talking to by his manager when he got back to the UK.
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).
The tone of your out-of-office auto-reply may vary depending on the intended recipient of your email.
Including even a passing reference stating that your customer’s email is important to you shows your appreciation for the message that you are currently unable to respond to.