Out of office auto reply when you are working: is this a new thing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've never seen these.

Me either. I can’t imagine sending or receiving such a thing. That’s embarrassing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never put an out of office message on. If i am away I take 5 minutes each day and delegate the emails. to my staff and come back to an empty email box vs 500.

If my staff can't handle the things I send them then I clearly hired the wrong people.

Our out of office messages also populate in MS Teams, so turning it on when I'm away for even a few hours lets people know that I'm not available for calls and won't be answering their emails right away. You can also see the out of office message before even sending your email, so if I name delegates for certain activities, the sender will just go straight to that person and avoid contacting me altogether. Much better all around.

Turning it on when you are "busy" or otherwise working? That's just poor form. I would not tolerate that from my staff.

[Anonymous]

This is stupid. Answer your damn email. They are called "vacation messages" for a reason.

I've never seen this, thankfully.

[Anonymous]

Haven't really seen and agree people may have lost their minds, but... not unjustifiably. Email truly is out of control, and there is just too much of it. The flip side of the people trying to be overly honest in these messages are the ones that just can't/don't read email and don't reply. I have a boss like this. Particularly people who made it big in their careers by the mid 2000s before email started to ramp up (and can remember when you'd just get a few emails a day!) My boss gets thousands of emails a day and scans their inbox and I suspect a large portion go unread.

There's a book on this. email ruined the workplace.

[Anonymous]

Is it the Cal Newport book? He writes about workplaces that got rid of e-mail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have the time and energy to keep track of what others are doing in regards to their own emails and workload, AND to come gossip about it on DCUM at 11:03 on a Friday, you’re not exactly in a position to whine about productivity.

That’s all.

Aren't you adorable!


Yeah we get a fair amount of this nonsense. Our inside sales people consider themselves So Important that they tend to leave auto-replies on all the time. That's fine, I just remove their names in the reply field before sending any reply. Clearly they're too busy for dealing with emails.

[Anonymous]

People read OOO replies?

[Anonymous]

Very unprofessional.

[Anonymous]

If someone pulled this cr*p at my workplace they would be promptly shown the door.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've never seen these.

On the other hand I’ve noticed people don’t put their out of office replies on much when they’re on leave. I guess they figure no one notices anyway while office attendance isn’t mandatory

[Anonymous]

So for all these messages you’ve encountered, do you ever get a reply from the person you emailed? Or is the message truly an excuse to do no work?

[Anonymous]

OP do you work in the progressive nonprofit sector? That's the only place I can even imagine this not getting a very negative reaction.

[Anonymous]

I have never seen such a thing. Not in the DC area though so maybe that has something to do with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP do you work in the progressive nonprofit sector? That's the only place I can even imagine this not getting a very negative reaction.

+2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have the time and energy to keep track of what others are doing in regards to their own emails and workload, AND to come gossip about it on DCUM at 11:03 on a Friday, you’re not exactly in a position to whine about productivity.

That’s all.

Aren't you adorable!


Yeah we get a fair amount of this nonsense. Our inside sales people consider themselves So Important that they tend to leave auto-replies on all the time. That's fine, I just remove their names in the reply field before sending any reply. Clearly they're too busy for dealing with emails.

I love it.