Readers, what do you like and hate in out-of-offices replies? Any stories of particularly off-key ones?
4.) Bem-vindo a John Doe Soluções. Por causa de um evento interno nosso secretariado não está disponível hoje. Você pode nos deixar uma mensagem. Nós estaremos ao seu serviço novamente na segunda-feira. Obrigado por sua compreensão.
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With an out of office email, you provide the following information, preferably in a unique way: At the moment, you are not available;The exact time (date) of your return;Contact information (phone number) for urgent cases;Contact information of colleagues to be contacted in your absence;
We have all been there, hitting your head against the wall, trying to come up with something professional yet with a personal touch so you don’t sound like a robot. The faster you are done with it, the faster you can run away from work. Think think think!
It is regretted to announce to all of you that Mr. Neil Johnson who was the pioneer of our office due to cardiac arrest could not survive and met his creator. So, in condolence with his family, our office will remain closed for three days from 2-01-20XX to 04-01-20XX. During this time, all our office-related works will be postponed and you all will start working from 05-01-2020. If you have any problem and queries related to work you can contact Mr. Lewis Harris, he will answer all of your queries.
I worked in a call center for Big-Evil-Bank for five years, and every new manager would have a different OOO policy/pet peeve that they would require phone-miners to follow. In particular, the memory of the six month period where we were forced to put an OOO up if we left our desk for so much as ONE HOUR smacked me in the face when I saw question. That was by far the worst/strangest/most tedious OOO policy I have ever been forced to follow.
Website: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/temporary-voicemail-greeting-examples-2533547
Not an out of office reply but a voicemail greeting: at a previous job I called someone and her voicemail greeting said that she would be out of the office from Day – Day and that her voicemail wasn’t accepting messages during that time, click! The time in question was six months prior. Plenty of people she worked with and for could have called her on it and apparently had not, so she just … didn’t get voicemails. Like, that was not a way you could communicate with her.
“For the Symantec office, I send holiday wishes for the employees’ holiday out of office. I wish all the employees have lots of fun and adventure during the recreational holiday period. Have a happy holiday.”
It definitely sounds like something my boss would write and I laughed at it. In our work, everyone thinks that they’re a special emergency all the time. Stopping to think “if I don’t have this in the next two days what will the actual consequences be” is a thing that should happen more but doesn’t.
I’ve seen similar things with OOO messages where people would update them practically daily. “I’ll be away from my desk from 9-2 with intermittent emails and then on a call from 3:-3:45” and ….dude. We don’t need that much detail every day.
When I’m back in the office and going through emails, I’ll sometimes send a note of “I’m catching up on my emails and saw you had XX question – did you still need help with that?” before doing any in-depth research.
Here’s one example out in the world, which jumpstarted me thinking about this topic:
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In the early 2000s I received an OOO which said “[very senior person] never reads his email, please resend your message to [his PA]”. Post navigation ← coworker loves to abuse robocallers, boss uses Facebook photos without permission, and more Ask a Manager in the media →
Depends on the system. Our Outlook is set up so that if you’ve got someone with an OOO in the “To” field, a note shows up saying that they are sending automated messages, and you can see the message. Convenient, since then I can add the person covering their stuff to the email without sending a second email.
Q. Will Supply Chain, Purchasing, Receiving, Mail Services and other such departments be open during winter break?