That really does feel excessive. I think most people are savvy enough to think, ‘Huh, it’s late in the day for pretzelgirl, I might not get a response until tomorrow. Business as usual.’ Being out of communication for a day – travel, meetings, days off – doesn’t require an out of the office alert, either, just a response as soon as possible.
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Yes, with all the holiday planning of feasts and gifts and decorations, there is also the important task of drafting your holiday auto-responder text. You need to let your colleagues and clients know that you’ll be away from your desk celebrating the spirit of the season (and not reading their emails!).
Please note I am currently out of the office, please reach out to [email protected] for any kind of assistance.
Eh, my team’s instruction to put them up if they’re going to be away from email/voicemail for more than an hour (standard lunch break). I have a ton of staff, and we’re in a business where a high degree of responsiveness, especially during the business day, is expected and few of my staff have mobile email. We’re also a larger organization with mixed project teams, and not everyone knows who’s PT/FT or on nonstandard hours.
It doesn’t say you have to grovel to get what you need. It says you have to ask again when they are in the office to get what you need, which is perfectly reasonable.
In this post, I’ll go over what an OOO message is and share some of the best examples I’ve found on Google, as well as a few from my coworkers).
That’s also annoying because if it’s not someone I interact with regularly I will wonder if it’s been left on by accident.
My boss does not understand OOO and thinks I saw his email and sent the reply personally and does not understand why I didn’t answer the actual question.
A thing my employer does is when someone leaves, they just shutoff the email. So someone goes to the trouble of writing an out of office explaining that they have retired or accepted a job somewhere else and where someone can go for help and IT just nukes the email address 24 hours after the person leaves. Then whomever was contacting them has no idea where to turn next. It is a terrible policy.
When I worked at Nightmare Small Business(tm), a coworker went on maternity leave with (privately shared among the staff, but not with the owner) the intent to give her notice at the end rather than return. She left a very professional, concise and informative out of office message. The owner proceeded to log in to her email and change the message to include saccharine references to both the pregnancy/baby and how much she “missed” being away from clients and how excited she was to return soon.
On the other hand, you can get more interesting or playful with subject lines such as:
I once worked somewhere that required an all-office email if you were going to be late, if you had an appointment, etc. I hated that. No one needed to know I was going to the dentist, but it was policy so I did it.
Sorry I missed you. I’ll be out of the office and slow to respond until after the break.
Thank you for your message. I am currently out of the office, with no email access. I will be returning on (Date of Return).
A. Facilities and maintenance operations will be very limited on Main Campus during winter break. Therefore, if there is a reason why your work area must remain heated, maintain a certain level of humidity, etc., be sure your department leadership has made arrangements with Facilities ([email protected]) well in advance of winter break so these needs can be met.
TEMPLATE #1. (Office closed for holiday notice: Memo to all employees) Dear All, Please note that our office will be closed on (day), (date) because of the (mention reason). The office will then open as usual on the next working day. This is for your kind information. Do spread this info among other colleagues.