Would this be acceptable in your workplace?

[olderbutwiser]

I’ve started to receive out of office emails saying “I am out of office until xxx. Please resend your email after that date”.

I may be a dinosaur, but to me it’s unacceptable to put the onus on the sender to resend their email on some random future date. Clearing piled-up emails when I get back to the office is just one of those things you have to factor into your working life.

Votes please:

Perfectly acceptable nowadays, you’re a dinosaur —> You Are Being Unreasonable
It’s completely unacceptable, time for a Meeting Without Coffee —> You Are Not Being Unreasonable

I know i sometimes get OOO messages. I never read them. I just assume the person will get it once they're back because I didn't send a self deleting email.

My managers internal one used to be “I’m not interested until x date unless the place is on fire”
he had to change it after the place actually set on fire (it wasn’t him!)

Mine states if urgent email xx otherwise I will deal with it on my return.

That’s ((office working) life!

Haha!! I like your style!!!😅

It's normal for internal emails on my organisation, but we also provide an alternate contract for urgent things. Realistically most emails aren't important. Anything that's really important will be remembered

Or, in the case of some companies, the email is never delivered, just deleted, if the member of staff is on holiday :)

Perfectly acceptable except mine says if the email is still urgent after that date resend, with names of who to speak to in the interim

This was my thought.

I work in consultancy. Absolutely no way could we treat emails like that. I can't expect people to chase me multiple times to give me work. 😱

I've only seen this once, from a professor on a graduate course on which I was a student. Certainly established the pecking order!

I'd flipping love to be able to do it with certain care providers who send emails to personal clinicians for everything a notch up from a paper cut and flag EVERYTHING as high priority - but it would not go down well.

We just put an expected return date, and signpost people to our single point of access (which the damned care providers should be using anyway) or our shared service inbox which whoever is in work should be monitoring at least once a day.

Mind you I quite like the leisurely coffee and trudge through the emails gentle return to work anyway to get over the trauma of being back from holidays.

What if the sender is on leave when the recipient returns, then the sender has to ask someone to resend during a handover which is ridiculous. No I don't agree with this. Having a build up of emails after leave is the employers problem and responsibility to come up with a system for cover.

However a good idea would be an immediate automated response bouncing back the email and providing details of an alternative email during leave, then asking the sender if they want to proceed with the email to hit a particular instruction, send anyway etc. That would naturally filter any unnecessary stuff away and prevent duplications. It can't be that hard to organise, again entirely the employers responsibility.