Here’s a question from a frequent reader about Christmas & stuff.
Punk Rock HR Girl,
With the holidays fast approaching and many people
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I’ve always kept my out of office as brief as possible, first and foremost, letting someone know whom to contact in my absence. I’ve strugggled over the years of including something more comforting, as I’m sure the tremendous dissapointment of not being able to reach me, has thrown more than one person into emotional ruin.
Overall, keep is short, keep it simple, and you can never go wrong.
I believe in keeping things simple. Dates I
I like to include my home address, cell number of my mailman, preferred pitch to retrieve my carrier pigeon and my GPS locator ID.
Seriously though people, two items:
1) Use your out of office when you’re actually out, and feel free to wish whomever a happy whatever without concerns for uproar or retribution.
2) Unplug from the world for a few days and really be out of reach. Somehow the world will survive without you.
Out of Office? what’s that? You guys get vacation?! What?!?!?!?!
I get offended when people say they are offended by people who say Merry Christmas. Then I get over it and get on with my life.
Go Jenn. I
Jason Seiden has an excellent statement about out of office messages. I’ll have him make a statement on this. Hold on.
I’m only offended by being wished a Merry Christmas if it is clear from conversational context that the person saying it to me is deliberately attempting to be “in your face” in response to imagined PC “oppression.” I’m looking at you, neighbor guy.
I would probably put “Happy Holidays” in my OOO auto-reply. I think I’ve done so before. I may or may not be checking email when on vacation, but I’m generally not gonna take the time to actually answer it. I’m on vacation.
You guys, I get offended when Jenn Barnes gets offended. Otherwise, can we all act like adults and focus on more important shit other than work? Let’s get offended by family members and politicians — and let’s stay happy at the office, yo.
Do everyone a favor: make like a burger, and get IN and OUT.
Forget the debate, drop the internal monologue, stop being nice. I don’t care, and that’s the point: this isn’t about being offensive, it’s about being useless.
When is the last time you ever
@Everyone Please read Jason’s comment. Be clear, be brief, be gone. What else is there in life?
Since I really only care about my opinion, I wanted to share it with you.
Who the heck puts an out of office message up for half a day? I get a message from someone on my blog’s mailing list that they’ll be out from 3pm today until tomorrow.
DON’T DO THIS!!!
I don’t care if you say Merry Christmas, Happy (C)Hanukkah, Blessed Kwanzaa or whatever…
DO NOT PUT YOUR AUTO-RESPONDER ON FOR ONE DAY OUT OR LESS.
Sorry–the neighbor guy example was off-topic. I don’t work with him. Although plenty of people at work have said things that have annoyed or offended me. I figure it comes with the territory. People at work are capable of acting as offensively and inappropriately as anyone else, so I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that I will never be offended. It is realistic to expect that I will continue to work productively and pleasantly with those people unless they are doing something that is actually unethical, racist or sexist, detrimental to the project, against my employer’s policies, or whatever.
Jason, to be fair, you probably shouldn’t be SOL when I’m out of the office, because if I am at all good at my job, I’ve taken care of loose ends before I went on vacation and notified people who will be affected that I’m going to be gone, and addressed any concerns they have about it. I am fine with other people taking vacations, and I don’t feel guilty when I take one.
I suppose I put Happy Holidays not because I think it will actually affect anyone’s life, but just because it seems abrupt to end the OOO without some kind of closing. It’s two words more… I guess I don’t think it’s a big deal one way or the other. Plus, stupid or not, and I fully realize this is just me because I love this time of year, I do actually want whoever is reading the OOO to have a happy holiday season/new year/whatever. My hope is that they too are getting some time off at some point, or if not, that they are at least enjoying the season. I don’t consider it important to include or anything, but I don’t see anything wrong with it either. If I included the entire text of “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” or something, then maybe that would be different.
Why can’t people just be happy that we have the day off and not struggle to label it as a religious or secular holiday.
This is why I’m a converted believer in PTO and/or ROWE.
@spacedcowgirl You’re right, I shouldn’t be SOL, but I often am.
@everyone: Living in the world that is, rather than the one that should be, solves a lot of problems.
I totally agree with Jason: Be clear, be brief, be gone.
Also, people like to give names to holidays to feel important, although Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy (C)Hanukkah, Blessed Kwanzaa is getting a little tired. So…
Happy Anne Murray Holidays!
As always, Tracy brings it home with Anne Murray.
Thank you.
Jason, I know, and I’m not sure exactly what my point was there… certainly not that I am perfect and never leave a loose end untied.
Laurie, I hate to be a pain in the ass and drag out a conversation that may be over with, but I guess I truly don’t understand what the big deal is. It’s not a struggle for me to say Happy Holidays… it’s more generic and covers New Year’s too, it’s an appropriate label for a greeting that is aimed more at “glad you get the day off” than “Happy Jesus’s Birthday,” etc. I mean, more “holidays” than usual are going on in the second half of December and early January, precipitating days off and people taking vacation if they are lucky, and it seems to me that it would be weird to pretend that we are getting the time off for no reason.
I’m in favor of PTO but only if one actually gets enough of it. I bet if holidays were rolled into PTO, the total number of days would miraculously shrink in most cases.