best out of office message youve seen

[SirQuintusAureliusMaximus]

this is quality and I'm in awe of the bravery.

I am out of the office until Wednesday 3rd January 2024 and will have little / no interest in work during that time. In my absence please contact my colleague [name].

I missed where you said this was an instruction from the CEO.

to be honest if my CEO gave this instruction (which would never happen, he would never get involved in such low level admin) I would assume he had had the benefit of a PA for so long that he had forgotten how emails work! I would explain there would be anarchy if people simply deleted all their emails without reading and i would suggest he retract the instruction.

if you delete everything what happens to diary invites? What happens to new procedures and guidance? Do you rely on others to keep you right on every development? That’s a lot to expect if your team, colleagues, supervisors when you could just scan your own emails. I do ofcourse get an update on return - but my team won’t be involved in everything I work on. And I take personal responsibility for my own knowledge.

would absolutely not work in my work and anyone who did this would be seen as unprofessional.

Oof if his intention was to ensure that nobody would ever contact him ever again then this is very effective!

@Bellyblueboy fair point about diary invites. I'll search for those first and accept / decline.

Im not concerned about missing any new policies of procedures. I work in corporate comms, nothing life or death and most of them are bollocks anyway. Anything vital will be handed over on my return.

Love this!

I’ve had to do this because students email me late at night or over the weekend and then send follow-ups within a couple of hours because they haven’t had an immediate answer.

@Bellyblueboy You not only missed the CEO but I have also never said that I don't have a glance. I have only said what is on my ooo because I was answering the question.

What I did said is that a hand over is given and anything that's important our manager will catch us up so if we do happen to miss something we can resend if needed (happily with no judgement on said person).

All you have jumped on what my employers do to decrease staff stress when returning from A/L.

I obviously work in a different industry from you. I work in a team with 2 other people who do the same job as me but service different business areas for our client. We know each others jobs inside out and trust each other implicitly. It's in our best interests that all KPIs are met or no one gets their bonus.

I am also not unprofessional nor bad at my job. I'm actually very good at what I do as are my team mates.

Okay!! We will agree to differ.

merry Christmas!

I don't like "funny" messages, nor those that neglect to give a return date and alternative contact. Similarly, giving detail about childcare is inappropriate; just say "Email will be checked once per day for anything urgent only.". There is an issue that people only get an OOO once and might forget; for holidays it's best to pre-warn clients that you won't be available instead of moaning that they didn't guess from you continuing to actually work that you didn't want to do that.

Deleting messages would not be appropriate in my line of work, I'd be very annoyed if a team member did that. Their email is the advice, I'm not going to repeat just because someone else is lazy. Many activities go on that take months, and I'll still have things flagged from say October that I'll get onto when there's time or when I do the specific task. I'm expecting several reports over the break, I'll just schedule time to respond to them when I'm back, same as if I was busy any other way. The things that might have been forwarded to someone else can be checked in their next 1-1. Junk largely files itself in the bin anyway from rules. It isn't challenging.

I put one on in September (agreed with my manager) that said:

I am on leave for the next month. All urgent emails that require actioning should be resent to XYZ.

Any emails received whilst I am on leave will be deleted upon my return.

Last time I went on leave for a month I came back to 3K unread emails. Took a week to sift them all. Easier to delete it.

Edit to say: The team I manage sent me a hand-back email with attachments of anything important. Took ten mins to read it all

How ironic. 😁

I laughed heartily at a colleague's last year. She said she would be out of the office until 3rd January 2043. Later she told me she was thinking about the first Christmas she'd be retired and ''accidentally'' typed 43 instead of 23.

It also assumes someone is picking up your work while you're not there. That's not always the case.... nobody is doing my job when I'm on leave.

Not humorous but I got on once that said 'I don't work here anymore' straight and to the point.

I worked with a woman who used to put that she was on holiday and would delete all messages received whilst on holiday so please email her again after x date 🤣

I had a colleague seriously suggest that everyone put on an ooo at the end of the working day saying 'I am presently ooo, please resend your email in working hours'.

He was west coast USA, I was London. That would give us precisely 1 hour a day to send emails to each other if we both adopted that policy.

Thankfully everyone ignored his idea and carried on emailing 24/7 like we've always done (on this basis no-one expects anything to be read / actioned if not in the recipient's working hours).

I was once surprised to get one saying:

"I have now retired"

The person had kept it completely quiet. It was a shame as I'd have liked to wish them the best before they went!

I worked with a woman like that. Quite a big company, but on Monday morning people were wondering where she was. Her mug was gone, that was the only clue. Obviously by Tuesday afternoon, we all knew she'd retired but it was awful to think she feared we wouldn't even have given her a quiet send off!

I saved this one because it was so good...

"I will be away from the office in Hyde Park surrounded by other musos hoping to see some Guns and some Roses. I won’t have my phone on me because I don’t want to lose it in a mosh pit and even if I did it would be hard to hear it over Axl Rose’s wails, Slash’s riffs and Duff McKaggen’s Low End Vibes! If the matter cannot wait for my return please contact [name] or [name]. Back in the office on Monday 3 July 2023. This is an internal facing OOO only.”

Brilliant 🤩

Maybe she just wanted to avoid any type of send-off!

Yes. I work for myself. If I don’t do it no one else will.

I dream of putting something like:

"I will be away from my desk between 22nd December and 4th January. This means I will have only limited access to email during this time.

If your enquiry is urgent, dinnae come greetin' tae me."

I am self-employed so technically I COULD use that. But I dasn't.

@Possimpible I never bother with an alternative contact over Xmas. Everyone is off they would just get another ooo response 🤷🏻‍♀️

Okay? Presumably nobody is really emailing you then, and certainly nothing urgent. My organisation is the NHS and work never stops (unfortunately), so it's not appropriate for people not to put an alternative contact

But emails might be informing you of something, or have timeliness beyond your return. Not all are appropriate to be dealt with by someone else or need immediate attention. So deleting all emails without looking at them is not the way to deal with them on return from leave.

Me too, plus it's very unprofessional. Also as bad are the ones that say your email will be deleted so send it in January.