19. "Hello, you've reached [your name]. I'm currently [exploring Asia, hiking through the jungle in Costa Rica, hanging out on the beach in Bermuda] — or more likely, [recovering from extreme jet lag, googling ‘Are red spiders poisonous,' or looking for SPF 150 sunscreen] and won't be back in the office until [date]. Leave your contact info and reason for calling and I'll get in touch then."
See, if it’s a long period of leave and there’s an alternate contact provided, this is just… the sensible thing that should happen?
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Welcome to Galaxy Brain — a newsletter from Charlie Warzel about technology and culture. You can read what this is all about here. If you like what you see, consider forwarding it to a friend or two. You can also click the button below to subscribe. And if you’ve been reading, consider going to the paid version.
I think humor is fine (the hard-to-misunderstand kind), but definitely less than 100 words of it. “I’m out of the office returning Thursday June 10th. Please contact (shared mailbox email address) for support or call (person name) if the matter is urgent.”
When you’ve finally powered your way through that seemingly endless to-do list and are ready to check out of work mode once and for all, there’s one final thing you need to take care of: setting your out-of-office response.
Hi, I’m Troy McClure. You might remember me from such out-of-office messages as Avenge My Death if I Don’t Return from DMEXCO and Bye Now, I’m on an Absurdly Long Cycling Trip.
“Hi, Thank you for contacting me. I’m currently out of the office for a conference and will not be available until [date]. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
Brief Out of Office Message. While it’s vital that you get the main points across in any vacation email, brevity is important. If you’re looking for something a little more to-the-point, try this one
If you can, include the sender's original message in the automatic reply, to help them 'unsubscribe' you of any list or to remind them about their enquiry, which can be forwarded to someone more suitable.
Same. There are a few people that are regularly in charge of things I need from them, but are part time. The vast majority of our office is full time. I have no idea when they’ll get back to me, or if I should email someone else. If I saw an OOO message every time they were gonna be gone Th-Fri, I would learn their schedule faster, and hopefully have the most up to date info about “oh, they changed their schedule due to Memorial Day, I can email them and get a response quicker this week” or whatever the issue is.
Those of us who are back in the office haven’t bothered plugging most of the phones back in. We aren’t in roles where we get phone calls, those people are still mostly WFH. There is one persistant caller who does not seem to comprehend ‘X is working from home – please email them’, but that’s the only call we ever get.
Generally, people will indicate that they will reply to the email when they return.
Yupp! At this particular place we had a client who could not get a hold of someone. They made a huge stink about it and this became company policy. We also had to change our VM every night. We also had to reply to any emails we received within 4 hours. Even if we didn’t have an answer.
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I would be SUPER annoyed to get this! I agree it seems condescending and it’s just too long.
We are having a temporary office move soon, and our head of facilities was delighted he didn’t need to find data ports for the phones as well as the PCs ;)