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.
Many professional out of office messages are aimed towards providing a direct line of communication by notifying your absence and providing an alternative i am currently out of the office, with limited no access to email.

But I also believe there’s meaningful power in the mundane cultural norms we set and practice. Email, for better or worse, makes up a large chunk of how knowledge workers communicate. So much of this communication is muddled by broken email habits and larger anxieties around performing productivity. We’re constantly nervous about asking too much of others or doing too little on behalf of our coworkers. But we’re also stuck in work patterns that force us to communicate constantly and normalize working and demanding things from colleagues at all hours.
“Celebrating [childs name] birthday today with a dinosaur themed party and reminiscing on this sweet baby I brought home from the hospital 8 years ago #momtears”