Editor's Note: This was originally posted in July 2018 and updated and republished on the date posted in the article. Enjoy!
Over Twitter DMs, one woman sent me her OOO messages from when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The messages — composed while she was undergoing chemotherapy treatments and recovering from surgery — were detailed and unique. They offered touches of humor, honesty, details about her treatment schedules and set expectations for others trying to reach her. She offered alternative contact options for potential emailers to make sure urgent requests didn’t fall through the cracks but offered a dose or reality as well. I particularly appreciated this line:
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But really, I think people who know you WFH will get your meaning and people who don’t know you WFH won’t care or feel misled if they find out you really work from home.
I love this and want to start using it. I am assuming it’s pronounced “hood-a-lay” and that said hodilay has already begun when the OOO message was written!
Holiday / Vacation Message Examples, Script Ideas - Business: It is often used for Christmas/New Year and Easter. But it can also be used for normal holidays or vacation periods. 1.) Welcome to John Doe. Our telephone hotline is not occupied over the holidays.
Thanks for getting in touch. I am currently out of the office from [date] to [date] and will have limited access to my email during this time. You may be able to get ahold of me on my cell phone at [phone number]. If you can’t get through to me and have an urgent inquiry, you can contact a member of the team at [phone number], or my assistant [Name] at [email] or [phone number].
Out Of Office Message For Labor Day Holiday. I'm out of the office until date. Examples of out of office messages for holidays. You've been busy planning out your tasks, tying up loose ends, and working ahead to ensure you can actually disconnect, recharge, and relax over your holiday break. If you have any pressing questions, please include the word urgent in your subject line so i can make your email my top priority during. I am out of the office for the holiday weekend, however, i am responding to emails that need immediate action.
That is kind of glorious. And it does make sense when the person you’re emailing is gone for months. I did something similar my last mat leave except I didn’t explicitly state it, and lo and behold, people figured out that I wasn’t going to catch their email from a month or so earlier unless they brought it up again.
Every time the grocery store clerk asks, “Would you like to donate to breast cancer?” I have to bite my tongue.
closed Monday, September 7, 2015. We wish you and your families a happy holiday! Thank you for your continued business! Your friends at: American Access Casualty Company Questions? Please contact your Underwriter, Underwriting Department …
Thank you for your email. I’m away from my desk until [return date] trying to corral my kids between family visits and holiday sugar highs.
“Many people reveal details about their personal lives in an OOO — like where and when they’re traveling,” Tim Sadler, CEO of Tessian, explains in an email interview. “Whether done on social media or in an auto-reply message on email, this arms hackers with the information they need to either craft a convincing email targeted at the OOO employee or impersonate the person who is on vacation and target one of their colleagues.”
Thankfully, setting this up in Gmail is easy to do and only takes a few minutes. Here are step-by-step instructions for setting your out-of-office message, plus some helpful examples you can steal for your own use:
Explain why you're out. No need to go into great detail that you're traveling to seven different European countries. Simply state whether you're on vacation, at a conference, or on a business trip.
I still hate that lady. She made one of my coworkers cry until she had to leave work because it turned into an unstoppable panic attack. I later had one too.
My grandboss used to put in his OOO: ‘I’m out of the office. If you need x or y, contact Andy or Jane. They know stuff.
“some things are MORE important than work” definitely comes off as aggressive to me. “How DARE you email me when I’m doing something MORE IMPORTANT, and for that matter why aren’t YOU spending time with YOUR family?!”