Polite workers dismiss OOO messages for curt replies – and even keep them when they return

There’s no better feeling than sending an out-of-office message before you leave for vacation.

That is until you keep getting endless “urgent” emails that aren’t actually urgent.

Workers are burned out and exhausted and want to enjoy their vacations when they have them. To get the message across, more and more people are ditching the polite OOO emails and leaving more automated replies.

Peter Harrison, a 29-year-old interior designer from Portland, Oregon, explains in his automated reply that he’s “out on PTO” and won’t be checking email — and encourages the sender to do the same, Wall Street Journal reported. .

“By doing so, you’ll help foster a workplace that puts people first, respects paid time, promotes balance, and dismantles the lingering culture,” the email candidly states.

Harrison told the newspaper that he used to leave standard replies outside the office, but became increasingly overwhelmed by the flood of messages he still received.

“We live in a culture where our time and energy are for everyone else to take from us,” he said. “This email says that maybe we can all do better.â€

Barry Ritholtz, the 62-year-old chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, is equally blunt in his automated reply: “I’m out of the office having more fun than communicating with you,” says his reply. . , according to the Gazette. “I might forget to email you back.â€

“During this time, I will be out of the office, not checking email, avoiding messages, ignoring Slack, letting calls go to voicemail, offline and generally unreachable. As such, my auto-response is, well, auto-responder,” he later wrote in the email, adding that if it’s truly an emergency, they can contact Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and The People’s Bank of China.

“There’s this mistaken belief that if you email someone you’re entitled to an immediate response,” he explained. “This message says to slow down your rotation. Why do you need this now?â€

A 2023 article from the Harvard Business Review echoed that an OOO response should set boundaries, noting that “if someone’s message is really that meaningful, they will follow through.”

Daniel Sieberg, author of The Digital Diet, has also encouraged people to write in their email that they won’t read or reply to anything while they’re gone, and to follow up when they get back if it’s important.

Bing Chen, a former YouTube executive who now runs an investment firm and a nonprofit organization, warns that you shouldn’t promise any kind of response in your message, especially when you know you won’t have time to respond. , he said. WSJ.

Chen’s message outside the office — “If this is urgent, take a deep breath because few things really are” — has previously gone viral on social media. It acts as a tribute to his late father, who died young.

“It’s a reminder to focus on what’s really important,” he added.

In addition to being direct with OOO messages, people are also leaving them after they return to give them time to catch up without the added stress.

When Katie Gold, 32, an assistant professor who runs a research lab at Cornell University, returned from her maternity leave, she edited her automated reply to say she “recently” came back and “has gotten a significant load,” then thanked senders for their patience with delayed responses.

She is planning to withhold this answer until her child is 1 year old.

“I’m getting inundated with emails from people who all want something from me,” Gold told the Journal. “The answer at least makes me feel better about ignoring people. They have received an answer

Research shows that the number of emails sent and received worldwide every day has increased 34% since 2017 – and that’s not even including messages coming from other platforms, like Slack or Teams.

According to Nadya Movchan, a personal branding expert and founder of communications and growth firm Movchan Agency, 86% of people continue to receive unsolicited emails during the holidays.

And the recipient of the email always faces more of a burden than the sender, making the cost-benefit relationship extremely unbalanced, Gloria Mark, professor emeritus in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, told the WSJ.

“The sender gets the benefit of the email because they’re looking for something,” said Mark, who studies how people interact with technology in their daily lives. “The receiver, very often, has to do the work.â€

Fortunately, email recipients tend to overestimate how quickly senders expect a response, according to some research, so there’s no need to worry if it takes a while to get back to an email.

“It feels like every email is a fake emergency,” Erica Dhawan, a St. Petersburg, a Florida-based strategic consultant and author of a book about digital communication, told the WSJ. “But the pressure is internal.”

Meanwhile, Gen Z has taken OOO’s open road to a new level – coming off as weird and gross.

In a clip posted on July 16, Joshua Kessel, who goes by @joshfrommarketing on TikTok, shared footage of an email video attachment he sent to colleagues with his out-of-office message.

When people message Kessel, they are met with a reply telling them to ‘refer to the attached video’ for any questions or concerns while he is away.

“If you’re watching this, I’m probably on a plane to Europe right now. Here are some answers to some frequently asked questions,” he says in the clip.

While some considered the video with animations, sound effects, graphics and visual changes to be “so frivolous”, others admired the creativity and humor of Gen Z.

Even companies such as Spotify, Burga, the Los Angeles Chargers, Kiehl’s From 1851 and MCM have all applauded the viral video, calling Kessel a “genius” or saying he has “main character” energy.

“To add a little creativity and humor here and there is no harm; emails, which leave many workers stressed, are a perfect platform for this,” Movchan said in a press release.

However, management consultant Alison Green advises that too much creativity can end up being a bad thing, depending on who is trying to reach you.

“You never know who might email you when you’re away, so proceed with caution if you use humor,” she told The Cut last year.

Similarly, if you’re going to frame your answer to mention drinking on the beach, be aware that it might not sit well with someone you don’t know.

Out-of-office messages should be kept simple, she says, and not provide too much personal information, be too complicated, or “radiate such an obvious enjoyment of being away from work that recipients end up wondering if the sender will ever come back.”

Your automated response should mention that you’re out of the office, when you’ll be back, and how accessible you are, if you are. But there is no need to share why you are far away

If being quick and simple sounds too boring for you, Harvard Business Review suggests setting up two different OOO messages: one for internal emails where you can have a little more fun, and one for external senders and customers that is more professional.