Pretentious out of office reply

[beebreath]

My out of office is usually

I'm on annual leave please contact ...

Or

I'm out of office until date. If urgent please contact (name )

There is someone in another department to me who really annoys me with

I am attending ' names very important meeting or convention ' please contact ...

Why say which 'important ' meeting you are ? I just see this is pretentious bullshit or is it me ?

HarrysOwl

We had a guy wgo was an absolute knob who once had a long phone call with a speacialist at the hospital.

He retrospectively put in his online diary “telephone appointment with Dr so and so”

Still makes me laugh now.

I have a delete message / please call after x date - I get over 100 per day (after the auto delete if I am only cced in or it is a junk mail or a subscription that is useful but not essential / need a response). Currently I have 1798 unread emails all needing a response- realistically I am never going to take a look. If people know I will have no opportunity to respond then I rather be up front about it. I feel sorry for people who wait months for a moment when I can wade through the archaeological dig that is my mail box.

If people have a problem with it - they can contact my line manger, or hers or his or his, or our CEO.

OP - your colleague would give me the rage too. I get the rage from people who list their letters...… we all have letters. Most of us have enough confidence to not need to tell everyone.

Yet another liked to mention it was school holidays so she was "at home with the kiddies"

🤮

@Unescorted To be fair it would only take you an hour to go through those, surely? Even if you only actioned the absolute priority items? I used to get 500+ emails a day that all required action and if I was off for a few days I was absolutely expected to catch up. It's not impossible. I'd far rather someone had an out of office that said "I'm going to delete all these when I get back so resend after x date if important" than just wilfully ignored their inbox...

Unescorted I am totally curious- what sort of work means you deal with that volume of emails? Am curious as to how you get anything done!

@Peachgreen - no each one takes a good hour or so. Some several hours. Others can take weeks I purge anything with "Snack" in the title, or FYI in the first line.

@YetAnotherThing - civil service. And it is difficult. If it is really really urgent call me on my mobile once they have sent me the email. Really really really urgent text me and then call me. For when I need info to get through to me I give people another email address so they can ask me to call. When I am up against a deadline I turn my email off.

There are only so many hours in a day - so if people don't like it they can ask someone else.

Poor op
I reckon she imagined a chorus of agreement

Wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.

Not at all.

Don't pity me.

I on the other hand will take all the pity I can get

“I will be out of the office from X date to Y date. On my return all email sent during this period will be deleted unread. If your email is important, please resend it after Y date.”

That is what my retired ex-MIL puts.

Currently I have 1798 unread emails all needing a response

Do you handle RyanAir complaints?

Oh god I am in the nhs (hr) and I debate SOOOO much about this... mine currently reads “Thank you for your email, please note I will be unable to access this inbox until X date- if your message is urgent please contact X colleague, otherwise I will endeavour to reply promptly”

I’m a cunt aren’t I!?

That's a normal OOO

It's not wanky

I do agree about the deleting of emails. Was mentioned on a time management course I went on once

I just put I am out of the office until x I will reply on my return - if it’s urgent please contact x.

My line manager is such a micro manager she replies to anything she is cc’d into anyway

Do people really need to know that you're at a very important meeting which is actually pretty irrelevant to them ?

But is it always irrelevant? I’ve just done a big trade show. If someone from one of our global offices gets an OOTO reply saying ‘I’m at said show’, they know I might check my emails over lunch or at the end of the day. If it says ‘I’m on holiday’, they know to try someone else.

I do get what you’re saying. My boss thinks the world will stop turning if he’s out for the day (and gives us a running commentary on how many emails he’s had while OOTO). But I think it’s actually pretty useful to know if you’re dealing with ‘I might be able to reply later’ or ‘no chance for two weeks’.

I wish it was Ryan Air - then I could ignore them all. Despite my OOO I do try to get to the bottom of the box. I just don't want people thinking that the most important thing to them is being dealt with when it isn't.

Alan Partridge's recent out of office is a masterpiece.

The wankiest out of office I have seen read:

“I will be out of the office from X date to Y date. On my return all email sent during this period will be deleted unread. If your email is important, please resend it after Y date.”

Inspirational!

I put one of two things depending on my mood at the time:

1. I'm away - if it's good news sorry I missed it, if it's bad news glad I'm away!

2. I'm away and I will delete all my emails on my return so if it's urgent send it again after x date.

What was the Alan Partridge one, Gherkin?

We had a guy wgo was an absolute knob who once had a long phone call with a speacialist at the hospital.

He retrospectively put in his online diary “telephone appointment with Dr so and so”

Still makes me laugh now.

. I might well do that so Inhad a record of the telephone consultation

Aridane

We write case notes.

He did it to look important

Best one I've ever seen read something along the lines of:

I'm on annual leave until [such and such a date] all emails received before my return will be deleted. Please resend after [such and such a date]