In an instant, you feel a weight lifted from your shoulders, and a choir of angels sing Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy around you as you skip out of the office. You gaze upon the masses of workers on the tram, smugly wondering if their out-of-office responses are on yet.
Hoo boy, have I got some PTSD from Old Job about out of office autoreplies. Exboss was such a stickler for them and actually enforced her expectations as official policy. Meaning if you didn’t do it to her exact specs, she’d call you back to the office to do it (which no one did) and read you the riot act afterwards while threatening to write you up for insubordination. She demanded them any time that we were away from our desk for longer than 30 minutes and for anything other than a meeting. So training in the conference room down the hall, a work lunch with teammates, leaving an hour early for an appointment, arriving late for an appointment, even working from home, all required OOO alerts.
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Unfortunately, I can’t answer your email (even though my office is three feet away). I’ll get back to you once I’m back from my long-awaited trip to the fridge. Bought tickets on TripAdvisor and everything.
When you’re away from the office, it’s important that people know where they can reach you. This is especially true for those who work with you on a regular basis. If you have an email address or phone number listed as “out of office,” then everyone knows how and when to contact you. But what should go into this note?
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The response on Twitter has also been overwhelmingly positive. "I love Daimler's approach to holiday email," says the entrepreneur Nuno Almeida, while the FT's Hanna Kuchler tweets: "Now this is email management."
10. "Hello, you've reached [X company]. We can't take your call right now, but please leave your name, contact information, and reason for reaching out, and one of our team members will be in touch within 24 hours."
But really, I think people who know you WFH will get your meaning and people who don’t know you WFH won’t care or feel misled if they find out you really work from home.
10 Best “Office Closed For Holiday” Message Templates. 1. Simple Autoreply Message #1. If you’re looking for a simple autoreply message sample for your business, you can use this template. Keep in mind that you’ll have to change the field id and the date before you save it. Hi (specify the Name field id),
It’s kind of a ridiculous OOO anyway since by the time I get it from you, I have already sent my email.
I don’t think it’s condescending, but I do find it annoying. I have a coworker who sometimes writes emails in this tone of voice, and it’s honestly way too much.
Does your business operate outside typical working hours? Let people know with a message. Thanks for your message! Craig’s is an Australian-based company, therefore you can reach us during our business hours 6 pm – 2 am EST.
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.
One of my reports ***NEVER*** sets their out of office. I have gotten pushback with, “Oh I just check my email while I’m out and forward if it’s important,” (NOT THEIR PLACE, PLUS THEY ARE HOURLY AND LEGALLY SHOULD NOT DO THAT). I have tried to remind which, I think ONCE over the last 6-7 years has worked. I should NOT have to remind someone of this. The one time they actually did it was a NIGHTMARE. Instead of Googling how to do it, they expected me to tell them how.
One thing that really bothers me in out of office messages is “contact my supervisor” without listing the supervisor’s name. I work in a company with 4 large service departments, and each department is broken into multiple smaller teams. I don’t have a great grasp on who is on or who leads which smaller team, and we don’t have an org chart with that much detail readily available. If you’re saying to contact someone, I think you should always include the person’s name and contact information, not just “my supervisor”, “one of my team members”, etc. !
It got bad enough that others began begging someone to cull the list. Reply all, of course (thankfully it didn’t turn into an explosion of replies all). Someone finally did remove the email from the list.
I think that’s part of the problem! Tone in text is hard – and while sure you could read it is as fairly benign and jovial, if not a little obnoxious, you could also read it the way it was read in the video.