I’ll respond when I return (and other lies I tell in my out-of-office email)

Everyone knows that taking leave from work means a frantic tying up of loose ends and a sprint to the finish that is so stressful you begin to wonder why you booked time off in the first place. It is a fitful period of cramming and planning, occasionally interrupted by office small talk about where you’re off to: “Somewhere fun, I hope?”

In that final week you stay late and work ahead, preparing for every possible situation that might arise in your absence until, mercifully, all bases are covered. Having worked yourself into a frenzy, you are free to leave; all that remains is switching on an out-of-office automatic reply. Simple, right? Wrong.

Our always-on culture is out of control, but with the proper out-of-office response it’s possible to claw back some of your sanity.Credit: Dionne Gain

In the age of constant connectivity, getting the tone right on your out-of-office has never been more critical. Too casual and you risk opening yourself up to unwanted attention; too firm and colleagues will speculate you’ve been forced to take stress leave due to behavioural issues at work.

For the most part, people stick to the basics: Hello, I am away. I will be back on this date. Expect a response when I return. Until then, please annoy this person listed below. But increasingly I have found the out-of-office transforming into a forum where people flex or have fun, sharing the sort of detail that should be reserved for the family WhatsApp thread.

Scrolling through my inbox, much of the out-of-office correspondence goes well beyond need-to-know information.

“Hello, I am off for two weeks of sun and fun in Thailand,” wrote a man named Simon, whom I barely know but had recently been CC’d on to a group email with. “Heading to Koh Samui first (my third time here!), then Phuket before finishing in Bangkok. Will catch up with you upon my return … if I decide to come back! Haha!”

Pretending you’re not coming back to work is a classic out-of-office gag, a way of reminding people you are a funny and normal person who obviously has a life outside the corporate prison we all inhabit.

Personally, I quite like those who lean the other way: no pleasantries, no apologies, no need to pretend anyone feels anything about your absence beyond mild indifference.

Take this internet-famous auto-response by the American author and writer Daniel Mallory Ortberg: “I am currently on vacation and not accepting any emails about anything; I’m not planning on reading any old emails when I get back, either, because that feels antithetical to the vacation experience.”

Both options are still preferable to those who use the out-of-office as a platform for grandstanding. I once emailed an important professor requesting time for an interview, and his out-of-office pinged back like a slap to the face: “I am taking a well-earned break.”

The italics felt accusatory, as if I’d suggested this man didn’t deserve to go on holiday, and things only got worse the longer it went on. “As many of you know, this year has been incredibly stressful. Please respect my need to recharge.”

On holiday but never really out of office.Credit: Andrew Dyson

Everyone deserves to recharge, and perhaps the professor was right; unflinching honesty is the only way to achieve this. When I took two months of parental leave I stupidly wrote this: “I have taken primary carer leave until January 29, so I am probably at the zoo or something. During this time I will be sporadically checking my emails.”

Does checking every hour count as sporadic? Probably not. Though I hoped it might deter anyone from bothering me, the reverse happened: people continually followed up on emails in the hope their message might cut through during one of my sporadic check-ins.

Over the recent Christmas break I went one step further, boldly declaring: “I have taken annual leave and will return January 13. In that time I will have limited access to email.”

My access to email has never been limited but I enjoyed the idea that people might suspect I was travelling somewhere exotic, dangerous even. Limited access, you say? How mysterious.

Despite this, the correspondence could not be stopped. I received endless requests to check in and circle back, paying no mind to the fact that I was (or at least could’ve been) in the depths of the jungle with limited access to email.

Sadly, for all the upsides of living in an internet-based society (memes, Uber Eats, the YouTube comments section), we can no longer be convincingly unreachable. We may be out of the office but somewhere in the background the office is waiting for us, a bunch of pointless emails that hope to find you well, or simply to find you at all.

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [e-mail] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.

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