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Going back to how some people can’t ever switch off, this person went above and beyond for their auto-email with a humorous graph that very accurately shows the highs and lows of stress levels before, during and after time away.
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I’m extremely busy watching Home Alone, Die Hard, and the 1994 Ninja Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Christmas Special on repeat until the new year.
“We will get in touch with you very soon”.“Thank you for reaching out to us”.“Our representative we contact you ASAP”.
You Need A Better Out Of Office MessageWe don't need professional politeness. We need honesty.
I start work at 9.30am but always leave the OOO on until at least then and schedule it until 10am – that way if the backlog is terrifying, people who email me that morning will know why I’m not replying straightaway. Similar to how some people mark their first day back from a few weeks off as out of office so they don’t have meetings (which is a great idea although I rarely do it).
Otherwise, a referral to your company’s general contact email or a simple ‘I’ll respond when I get back, stop bugging me’ should do the trick.
Merry Christmas and thanks for your email! I’m taking a few days off to spend time with my family and friends, so I won’t be answering emails as quickly as usual. You can expect to hear back from me by (insert date). Hope you have a Merry Christmas!
I’ve heard “please respond at *your* earliest convenience,” but never the other way around.
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.
Education Details: Sending one of this autoresponder out of office email message examples before you go on a vacation will help lessen the burden of responding to angry client emails. FORMAL TEMPLATE #1 : Out of Office Message Example. Hi, Thank you for your email. I’m out of the office, with no email access, until [Date of Return]. on vacation out of office
On the other hand, you can get more interesting or playful with subject lines such as:
A literary agent I follow told the story of a long argument her autoreply had with a would-be author. She’d set up the outbound email while out of town and apparently an author who queried her with his book took offense to it. He replied back in frustration that he didn’t get a personal response. Her autoreply sent back another automated message, which he then in increasing anger kept responding to.
Yes – it’s become a stock phrase that people think sounds polite but they’re not grasping the nuance of it.
Over time, I began to suspect that those who might be telling the truth (of which I suspected there were very few), would mention their relationship to the person and possibly the cause, for example “My grandmother just passed away after surgery.” The ones who left it wide open (“someone close has recently died”) led me to imagine that it could be a random person in their city that they read about in the news, their goldfish, or perhaps a distant relative who had passed away in the previous few years.
Most awkward/painful one I ever saw was a former co-worker. ~10 years ago when he left on paternity leave, he said as much in his out of office. The baby was stillborn. It stayed up for the month or so until he returned. Those of us in the same office of course knew the situation, but we regularly communicated directly with multiple offices in different states and countries. The very first time I saw it I was overcome with dread about how many congratulations he would receive and have to tell the story to. I was much younger and afraid to rock the boat then, but I think now I would push his manager and IT to use their ability to access his account and change it.
Such emails can range from strictly professional and formal to funny, depending on the occasion. You can use those messages in a way that would drive traffic to your website or serve as an instrument to form a stronger bond with your customers.