For immediate assistance, please contact me on my cell phone at (your cell phone number).
I worked at an office where we used OOO messages on voicemail pretty regularly and if we forgot to change the message, our callers were quick to tell us the outgoing message was outdated. That end date feature would have been a big help for us! A local council in Wales needed to get a road sign translated into Welsh. (All official signs in Wales have to be in both English and Welsh.) They got an out of office message in Welsh from the translator they contacted, assumed that was the translation and printed the out of office message on the sign. They didn’t realise their mistake till a Welsh speaker pointed it out…
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Although out of office emails are usually used when a person’s on holiday, they can also be used in a number of other circumstances.
I say “as soon as possible,” which to me means “as soon as possible after I get back to the office, make myself a coffee, throw out the milk I forgot in the fridge, chat with my colleagues a bit, check in with my boss, and triage all the new emails and VMs that came in while I was away.”
People really just need to know that I’m either definitely not going to reply (annual leave) or might but delayed (all day meetings) plus when I’m back and who to contact if it is urgent.
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I wish I could block my voicemail. I would so get fired if I had a message like this and was caught, though.
That doesn’t sound odd to me at all, depending on the company. I used to send a staff-wide note because they needed to know I would be out and they could plan accordingly if they needed anything. At my current company I wouldn’t do this, but that’s because it’s massive and I only directly work with a small team.
Note: You can also set different automatic out of office replies for different people. Just click the Rules… button in the bottom-left corner and add a rule for each person or email subject.
Here’s my OOO nightmare: when I was a graduate intern a few years ago, there was a volunteer with severe, marginally treated mental health concerns. Her behavior toward me was inappropriate to the point that my school assisted me with a safety plan. I obviously blocked her on everything I could think of. Unfortunately while I was on winter break she emailed my agency address from an account no one knew about, got my OOO message, assumed it meant I was open to communicating again, and proceeded to have a monthlong meltdown in my inbox when I didn’t respond. To this day I am grateful for my city’s utter lack of public transit, which prevented her from trying to find my home and family.
Setting up an out of office message is quite simple. It can be set using the auto-reply function of your mail provider or program – just don’t forget to turn it off when you return!
Vacation/Out-of-Office Auto-Reply Messages: It’s important to create an email message out of office autoresponder when you are taking a vacation or going to be out of office for a few days. It’s a perfect way to communicate anticipated delays to your clients and customers and it serves a practical function and if you’re doing it right it could contribute to your company expanding.
I’ll reply to your message promptly, after I delete the dozen email newsletters about losing weight. If your question or request is not time sensitive, wonderful! If you require immediate assistance, please send contact to [insert name] at [contact email].
That message was definitely too long, and while I see it was meant to be funny/snarky, I can see where it would be grating / easy to misinterpret.
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“It wasn’t a vacation, but I didn’t want to deal with normal business stuff,” he says. “Humor is sticky. People laughed … and they left me alone.”