When you send out an important email and feel like you’ve accomplished something … it feels good right? You feel like you can check something off your to-do list. But what happens when you get an immediate ‘out of office’ reply from the recipient of your email? Your happiness turns to anger, jealousy, and outrage. No? Maybe it’s just me. In any case, you’re not as happy as you once were.
I can’t believe it’s taken this long for someone to break down ‘out of office’ replies into what they really mean. The folks over at PhDComics (always good for an education-oriented laugh) have tackled these replies and I think they’re spot on.
When you get an automatic reply like this, what do you do? Do you just put your request on hold until the recipient comes back or do you press on and find someone else to email? Or, better still, do you look up where the recipient of your email went on vacation … book a ticket to their location … track them down in person … and confront them directly? No? Probably just me again. I’m a hands-on kinda guy I guess.
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Not sure I totally agree and think it is quite genaralised.
Most people I work with these days put their out of office (OOO) on, but will 9 times out of 10 be checking (or expected to be checking) emails as we are living in a world which has an expectation from employees to work 24/7. Therefore, I think people put their OOO on in hope to be left to enjoy their break but know within them that they will be checking and responding to emails whilst on leave. Sad but true!
I recall seeing an out of office reply that stated the person was on an overdue (and well deserved vacation), and if you really needed to reach him to send a note to “interruptmyvacation@____.com. I thought it was clever, but would be hard pressed to try it myself.
Not for nothing, but I don’t think this is a fair assessment of the OOO message.
Yes, I do “occasionally” read emails sent to me on my phone, but if I don’t respond to you during my vacation, so what?! I take vacations 15 days out of the year, whereas many of my colleagues take 20-25 or much more. In my case, I take one week at a time (a week this month, a week another month later and then a week before the forced four days in between Christmas and New Years so that I can feel like I have two weeks.) I don’t think it is too much to ask that I focus on myself while I’m not in the office, since I’ll focus on my work the other days I’m not on vacation.
My colleagues are generally considerate, and likewise. If I am called when I am out, it is usually for something important (and vice versa.) Information is given, and then we go on our merry ways.
The only people that need to be made aware of my intended vacation is my immediate supervisor. I keep the Student Information System in my HE institution running and I do have a backup to me, so I’m not going to email people to give them a “heads-up” to let them know I’m going on vacation. That’s what an OOO is for. (So I am one of those people who is as important as a VP/Director; just without a secretary.)
That’s me… oh yes… in fact, my OoO would say something like:
I am having an Out-Of-Office-Experience….
And no, I won’t check my emails, not even if Apocalypse… I really appreciate my OoO, whether is by holiday or sickness… I used to do that, even if I was on the most paradisaical location, until my stressful life got me into ER … Then i realized that nothing is more important than my peace of mind, free time and health…
Seriously! When you are OoO you are OoO. The world will not come to an end if you enjoy your free time and never reply… (nor the company will go into bankrupt and they won’t certainly compensate or pay you the time you invested from your holidays into working, or say thanks)…
Life is for living, not for working it !!! I LOVE LIFE!
And now i will take into account the photo example, i loved it!
ps. when you are not doing something that you are suppose to be doing, life will catapult you into doing it!
If the person who would be available to respond to email and if this someone is that important, probably he/she could set up auto-forwarding to forward incoming emails to his/her secretary… I would think that’s a more productive approach.
In my world, you can be important without having a Vice President title, but you don’t get a secretary without one. As someone who has had her out of office auto response on for the last two weeks, this hit close to home (although, yes, I am still checking and responding to urgent emails, at least the OOO sets an expectation that they might not get a response within 24 hours as they are accustomed to from me). Several days before going on leave, I also sent a personal email to all of my key contacts letting them know of my upcoming leave so that the OOO auto response would be more of a reminder than anything else. This also gave them a few days to place any requests before I left.
I find this blog post silly, but I guess that’s what you were going for? People are entitled to take time off and be unavailable. As long as sufficient notice has been given to colleagues or clients, and IF a proxy has been provided for urgent matters (truth be told most entrepreneurs do check email even while on vacation, but that doesn’t mean their time away shouldn’t be respected) then what is your point?
you have given me another sensible view! great !
Totally agree. People are entitled to take time off.
Amen
I suppose it’s better to have no out of office message and let the sender believe that the recipient is just ignoring them, or thinks their message is unimportant. I suppose you don’t update your voice mail message if you are in an all day meeting or out of the office.
There are times people are not available.
Perhaps this message is more appropriate. “I am having coronary arteries bypass graft surgeries and will be unavailable while under anesthesia. Please contact my surgeon and as soon as I am out of the intensive care unit, I will respond.”
Let’s face it, there are very few email messages that require an immediate response. Very few.
Hahah I agree with Aimee, bit silly but like the intended humor. Work / Life balance is a noble concept but it becomes blurred as we often feel guilty if not “checking” in on our techno gadgets to view our emails. I personally use OOO as a common courtey as my work entails field vsits in often remote areas without phone coverage. OOO is a little like an answering machine on your phone, you let callers know your not home at present (courtesy) but you’ll be in touch later.
Now this is funny
I think I would rather get an “out of office” reply, which at least signals that the email is in fact functional, than the feeling that maybe you are invisible as a result of no response whatsoever, EVER! The sad truth is, the more we utilize electronic communications the more inept, or invisible we seem to become. Case in point, on-line application systems. No wonder why we are living in an age of “paranoia!”
I find it sad that posts like these can contribute to cynicism and suspicion from those who read. I and my colleagues genuinely use out of office replies regularly to advise those e-mailing that their correspondence will not be responded to immediately in a polite and sincere manner. We can be out of the office for major assignments for some days, and we reserve the right to concentrate on important matters only when away from the desk. While I have no control over how people will react to my e-mail responses, or to my own work behaviours, it disturbs me greatly that a post like this can question and implicity criticise what works for me.
Couple of good comments in the comments’ section. It’s a great idea to have a NB about vacation coming up in one’s signature prior to the vacation so that people can contact you prior to departure. Feeling guilty not to answer during one’s vacation does mainly come from the individual themselves as we are soooo important that without us being available 24/7 the whole company would break down.:)
Last but not least, if something is really important, is an e-mail the right communication channel to use?
I do agree with this article, and wish that more people would read this. Right on the money.
This post is weak and smacks of immaturity and the characteristics of a desperate cold calling salesperson. Its not on the level of valuable contribution to LinkedIn members I would expect.
Now the real truth about out-of-office replies.
They are a bad guy’s dream come true. The way they are normally written they broadcast a lot of sensitive information to ANYONE who happens to ping your email inbox. The bad guys get your return email and say, “Thank you!” Then they use their newly acquired information as the basis to get more and better information in order to rip you off/hack you/steal your identity/threaten your family. They start by calling your (your poor assistant) using the name and phone number/email address you’ve just provided, “Hi, (your poor assistant), I’m Ted from IT in San Francisco. I just got a call from Smith. Yeah, I know, he’s out-of-the-office. He sounded really stressed out, said he couldn’t access one of his computer files and couldn’t wait until (mysterious dates) to get it. He called me for help. I asked him for some information in order to access his account and fix whatever problems he may have and he said to get it from you. I need to get this done real quick so I can go home. Can you tell me his employee ID number? Ok, thanks, how about his birthdate? You wouldn’t have his social security number lying around handy would you, it would really help? Ok, never mind. His home phone number is all I need then. I’ll talk to his wife. Thanks (your poor assistant), you’ve been really helpful. Smith is lucky to have you! Where’s he at by the way? (Location)? That lucky dog.”
“Hi, Wife, (your poor assistant) said I should call you and gave me this number. It’s about your husband’s computer situation in (location). No, it’s nothing serious, I’m just going to need some information to help fix his computer….”
And what will you do when you leave for vacation? OOO is great tool, and honestly I don’t see why you are so angry…
Because of the “e-mail protection scheme applied here, the e-mail used in the out-of-the-office reply was:
interruptyourvacation (at) yourdomain (dot) com.
What a paranoid viewpoint re OOO replies, and paranoid person who’s written the article to analyse each word to the ninth end. Come on LinkedIn, i expect better than such tripe.
Why won’t you post my comment? So much for integrity. I guess I can write this vacuous WordPress blog off.
on Working from Home…”the Houyhnhnms have no word in their language for expressing anything that is evil except what they borrow from the deformities or ill qualities of the Yahoos. Thus they denote the folly of a servant, an omission of a child, a stone that cuts their feet, a continuance of foul or unseasonable weather, by adding the epithet of Yahoo.” For instance, Hhrump Workholm Yahoo, Hrhmn Ynthmmarirsamndwihlmayer Yahoo! (J. Swift, 1735, p. 313).
Yahoo operates within a rare belt of quantum leadership where far away events influence each other simultaneously in localized space-time…Yahoo execs embrace hi-tech’s version of pseudo-telepathy where two workers who cannot communicate accomplish tasks that seemingly require direct contact. Either way, Yahoo has friendly supporters. As for everyone else, they will have to settle for access to higher numbers of online friends and network connections ; ) hmmm…People working together face to face, it is such a novel concept…how can we know such an innovation will yield productive effects?… what if it is demanding or dangerous?…I don’t think men will go for it.
In my case, I still check my emails while on vacations and even try to answer the most important ones. The reason I turn on OOO emails is that sometimes I am in places where there is no internet and days go by without me being able to check my emails, so its a way to have them know I might not be answering because of that.
LOL i like the phone area which is quite true in most cases unless the person whom the email was addressed didn’t connect the email to the phone
Why do we have to be so cynical about a simple email saying: I’m not in the office now, sorry, will get back to you. I usually don’t even open Out of Office emails, just press Delete. Why think the person is mocking you, why drama, jealousy, anger and trying to read so much into a simple sentence?
The out-of-office should not be activated at first place, Instead its far more better that you divert your all work emails to a colleague or associate of yours who will be looking after your matters.
These out-of-office reps are really annoying, considering if you are sales person and all of your customer queries are being treated with automated out-of-office replies.
In my opinion, and after dealing with countless incidents that require (the so-called “immediate action” / response”), I realized that nothing is ever THAT important/ urgent (once an email leaves your inbox, it most cases it will sit in the recipients inbox for days before he/she even checks it. Only then will you realize that whatever you spent all night working on is not that critical after all!). Everything can wait for a couple more days (unless you are facing a life/death situation and need a surgeon). And if someone is on vacation, good for them, follow up on the issue once they have returned to work – no point of disrupting their peace of mind.
Exactly… in this era you cannot escape from your work or (social???) media anymore. An Out-of-Office-message shows that this person can indeed separate work from private life and have a normal life.
Anybody who responds on the message as commented above is indeed a slave to the electronic world… good luck with your Real Life!
This is one of the least informative articles I have seen linked-to from LinkedIn. I hope LinkedIn thinks twice before recommending other comedic/humor pieces in the future. This one was pretty bad. Please, LinkedIn, keep the quality high & don’t recommend we spend time reading content from hacks like this!! Thanks.
You sound like a complete @$$ to me, but I guess that’s just the kinda a guy you are.
I mean how self absorbed can one be to be pissed over someone else’s OOO auto reply, just because you want to feel that you have “accomplished something” – wow, writing an email, what an achievement!
I hope you won’t get even a single peaceful day off during your entire employment career.
I hope you are a 10 year old and not a real grownup person, otherwise that would be very very sad.
And no, I am not going to give you my email address.
Silly and a waste of time, really.
I really think your PhDComics was wasting some company owners money instead of doing the work they get paid to do. .
We have build a task management system used by many of our clients. This system gets notified by every OOO reply. The receiver of the email can redirect, prioritize or select from a number of options how to deal with an incoming email. The sender still gets an OOO reply purely for information purposes but that does not mean the email is not attended to. Mails can be categorized and bundled etc and managed from the email receiver’s computer, tablet or mobile phone. An OOO is exactly what it says – but we are still dealing with the senders email.
In our system senders receiving OOO replies that only get attended to on the return of the receiver or for at that matter ignored altogether, are most likely spammers or sending unimportant email. So, should you you have many unattended OOO’s, get back to the drawing board and rethink the content of emails you send wasting other peoples time.
People go on vacation. Get over it.
agree with Bill V. above!!
Email etiquette went out with spam. Once answered every email with at least an acknowledgment, now I filter out much of it. Besides, email is so 1990′s. It doesn’t merit evidence of contact, as do physical letters. The whole idea of email was to contact you at your convenience, which politely expects you to be elsewhere or immediately unobtainable, as does voicemail, but for transmitting more complex messages. Everyone now texts by cell, and so is rendered ever available. Next will be electronic implants that read and transmit GPS location, even thoughts, sold on the notion you might somehow benefit or profit, which seldom happens.
Do we really want to absorb and enslave everyone into a Borg collective? Or is it all about finding someone else to blame? You never know what Congress persons think or where they are. Why do you have to be targeted? The urge to control betrays how much the power brokers have to lose.
From some of the angry, almost nasty comments I read on this board, I think some folks here really do NEED a vacation!! The article was cute and funny, that’s all it was intended to be! People have no sense of humor anymore!
Chill folks!! And take a vacation–sounds like many of you need one!!
Hahaha! So awesome – especially the “I will be unable to answer your emails…” which translates into the “I will see your emails on my phone but ignore the H out of them!” Dead On!
Absolutely truth..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What a useless post! The only thing that does make sense in it is the feeling of discomfort you get after not being to obtain the information you need (and only when you have no one else to ask). On the other hand, every person would like to be able to leave for a well-deserved vacation without having to be bothered while s/he is away. I guess if I had messages on my phone, I would still help people, but in my organization, it is not the case.
…and this summer, we can expect a follow-up article: “I Got 500 Urgent Emails While I was Away on Vacation! Doesn’t Anyone Understand My Down Time? What Jerks!”
The comic is silly, and is intended as such. But taking OOO messages personally is silly, too. I know it’s annoying to get an OOO message if you need a quick response, but hey. It’s life.