Best Vacation Email Ever

This story comes from Yahoo, it is a story about the best out of office email, or what is commonly known as the "automated vacation response." In this story an office worker and his family are going on a vacation and he has to write an auto response to let people know that he is out of town and may not reply as quick as he normally would. Now instead of putting something to the effect of " I am out of town and will get back to you as soon as I can," he writes an entire story and throws some physiology in there for good measure. In essence he makes sure you will not email him unless it is an emergency by making you feel guilty, but does give you the proper information on how to get hold of him or find the information you need.

This may work for people who work in office jobs in the big city's but if I where to try something like this at my office, I would at least get a reminder that we are supposed to be polite with the public and other agencies. To me this email response is not professional in the least way. If I where a prospective client of this person, (the story did not say what field of work he was in) and he was in the service industry. I would think that the auto response was rude and uncalled for. If you use something like this auto response make sure it applies to all people that you may recieve emails from. I would not like my future client to get this message and think "Why am I going to set up a partnership with a person who makes me feel guilty just for emailing him."

At the same time it does get the point across that if you need him, and it accounts for an emergency you can always get in touch with him through a special email that he had set up.  I see why he did it, but I think that he could have toned it down a little bit. To see what he wrote click here to go to this story on yahoo.com