Mike Vardy is a writer, speaker, productivity strategist, and founder of Productivityist. He is the author of The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want, The Productivityist Playbook, and TimeCrafting: A Better Way to Get the Right Things Done, coming soon from Mango Publishing.
I’m at Growth Marketing Conference – Are You? Bonjour from France! 🇫🇷Happy Holidays! I’m at home with my family.
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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.
We do OOO messages, but also send an email to the department and other relevant people, so that part doesn’t sound odd to me. I want to know if someone is going to be away next week, because then I can plan accordingly instead of sending them an email about something important Monday morning and find out I’m SOL until the following week.
So there you have it! While having fun with your auto-responder, try not to get carried away and end up upsetting anyone or get in trouble with HR! 😉
If this matter isn’t time-sensitive, rest assured that I’ll respond when I’m back from this break. But you can resend any messages that require my immediate attention with a subject line of “URGENT: [Original Subject].” Out of Office Template #6 For the Person Who Likes to Live on the Edge (of HR Protocol)
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Whether it’s a fully-blown holiday, or just a few days away that’s at the forefront of your mind – tying up loose ends at work should never be overlooked. Aside from delegating your workload while you’re away, this also means setting up an out of office email.
With all these changes, the simplest tasks come saddled with a lot of extra questions. Take the out-of-office message. Do you really need an out-of-office autoresponse if you haven’t seen an office since March? The simple answer is yes.
Have you sent a proper farewell email to the whole office, thanking everyone and wishing them well?
I think there must have been a discussion about this here in December, because when I recently came to set my OoO recently there was some previous wording along the lines of “I will be spending time with my family during the festive season and will not be checking my email until (date)”. I’m annoyed with myself for deleting it without saving it somewhere, because it was much better worded than that and I’d like to be able to use it again!
Welcome to the first blog in our new miniseries, ‘Big Little Things,’ where we highlight some of the smaller features and enhancements in Vtiger CRM ...
I’ll be back on [DAY OF WEEK], [DATE]. No explanations, no apologies, no promises to respond, no redirects to other colleagues. It works.
I’ve done this a couple times: on the 3rd sick day when it’s all I can do to just set an OOO, and I’m tired of updating the dates and feel like I’m never going to get better.
Will this work if the phone is in airplane mode? I am hiking in the Sierras with no cell service.
Before read your article i didn’t know about that but now after reading your article i will follow this definately. This article is very useful to us. Thanks and keep sharing.
Each time McClure makes an appearance in these out-of-office messages, he “speaks” on behalf of my colleague and alludes to the previous auto-responses in which he starred. It’s a mild form of self-deprecating humor — as if to say, “I know, I’m out of the office again” — made only funnier by the made-up teaser title included in the last line.