Dear Customer, Our office is closed and you can expect to hear back from me by [date]. Have a great holiday! Regards [Name/signature]
The worst Out if Office I’ve seen wasn’t about the wording, it was how it looked. For some reason, some lawyer decided to write their OOO in lime green font against a deep blue background. SO GARISH. I could not read anything. Highlighting the text didn’t help either. Had to copy & paste it somewhere.
.
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.
Hey, why are you being so sneaky about where you've disappeared to? If you're not on vacation and your out of office is for a work trip, well darn it, work that! [Editor's note: Pun totally intended.]
Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first ten words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message. This message is automated because until [DATE] because I’m moving to [LOCATION]. That’s right. A cross country road trip from [CITY] to [CITY]. I’ll get back to you when we pull into the driveway.
So that we can all spend valuable time with our families, this Thanksgiving and the following Friday will be paid holidays for all employees. Enjoy the long weekend!
I’m so glad not to have to work at [insert company] any more that I am literally high on life.
Thank you for your email. I’m currently out of the office, returning on [return date].
Our Public Service Announcement: Each year, Americans leave 700 million DAYS of paid time off on the table. Stop and think about how many great out of office reply opportunities are missed because of this!
I personally like it. Of course, the emails that I’ve seen still say what to do if the matter is urgent and needs to be handled now — but as a person who gets 100+ emails a day, whether I tell you I’m deleting all of them when I get back or not — if it is in the thousands of emails that might accumulate in the time I am off, I’m not going to see it or respond. Better that I tell you now that you are going to have to resend the email after I return (or get my backup to handle it now) than you sit around waiting for a response that is never going to come. It is actually pretty common in my industry for any absence two weeks or more.
8. Standard Out of the Office Email Template. [Greeting] I will be out of the office beginning on (Date of Leave) through (Return Date). For all time-sensitive matters, please contact (Contact Person) at (Contact Email Address).
Hi stranger, Sorry I'm unable to reply to your email. I'm off frolicking in the meadows. Please do not contact me until I'm back.
Or, announcing a trip on social media could result in email or social media offers too good to be true. It could open the door to spoofed travel details from an airline or hotel from thieves looking for credentials. Because so many employees use the same credentials for business and pleasure, this can put the organization at risk of an attack.
I ran a nonprofit organization staffed entirely be volunteers (I was one). After one too many people incensed that we did not follow up to their emails within two hours, we had to include an OOO message that said we were a volunteer organization, and any request may take up to two weeks to process. Please email again if you have not heard from us by then.
Thank you for your email. I’ll be offline through mid-January without access to email. In the interim, please contact Maya Schwartz, a sales and marketing manager here, at [email protected].
But of course, you have to take care of a lot of year-end reports — planning out tasks, tying up loose ends, and perhaps, preparing for the coming new year. And then of course, when you are finally done and ready to take a break, there’s one final thing you must take care of while you take your break with your loved ones: Your out-of-office response.
I will be away from (Date) until (Return Date). For urgent matters, you can contact (Contact Person).