Out of Office Auto-Reply - no return date

[NameChangedJuly]

Has this become a thing? I’ve noticed people in my company now have an OOO message that simply says ‘I’m currently on holiday, for anything urgent please contact x or text me on xxxx”

in the past - it is always ‘I’m on leave, returning on x date…” Which I have continued to do but others don’t, which is not very helpful for something important but not urgent enough to contact someone else or disturb their leave.

YANBU - it’s weird not to state return date
YABU - people don’t put return dates on internal OOO responses

Was the code the word FUCK somewhere in the email written in white?

I have two. I'm never off long enough for it to matter that much, and I'm not important enough either so I do put an end date on and sometimes a deputy. Anyone that expects a response on my immediate return can get in the sea, but thankfully they're mostly ok at my work.

External just says I'm OOO and will respond on my return.

This is interesting though as there was a post on Linked In about OOO messages - clearly from an American perspective, as it was saying instead of taking your laptop to the beach (!) put an OOO saying you're away enjoying <experience> and will be giving it your full attention etc.

To me thank is incredibly wanky so I won't be doing it, but I guess it's another way of thinking about it!

I think having read all this I might try not putting an end date in future!

Not having one presumably encourages people to take their query elsewhere, so it’s one less thing you have waiting for you to do.

Imagine taking your laptop to the beach! Blow that.

Glad I’m not American sometimes.

We aren’t allowed to take our laptops out of the country at all luckily, and discouraged from taking it on UK holidays

Vom 😂

I used to work at a very wanky company and OOO messages were regularly about how someone was 'taking time out to reconnect with their family and the environment' or some such shit.

You mean you're taking the kids to Butlins, Steve, and will be drinking every night to numb the pain.

If I put a return date, people
who claim their issue is urgent persist on emailing just me despite my escalation contact. If they don’t know I’m back they’re more inclined to actually raise this with my cover.

Having just passed our cyber security audit today, I can confirm that it's best practise not to put a return date on OOOs, for all the reasons above.

I still put an end date on my OOO.

To those who put YABU, I write on mine - "I'll be back on such and such date. Please send your urgent / non urgent work related queries to our department's generic email or call this number and one of my colleagues will respond. I will delete any emails received during my leave on my return."

It stops most of the emails coming in but there is always one who isn't capable of reading a 3-line paragraph.

Oh no we are far too stodgy of an organization for that, but you get the idea.