Out of Office AutoReply

I have had one of my email addresses for quite some time, so naturally it receives plenty of spam. It is often used as the apparent sender of spam too, so I often get replies from virus and spam protection systems that report that the mail was blocked. Today I have, for some unknown reason, got lots of Out of Office AutoReplies from poor spam targets. This looked so odd in my inbox, so I took a look at the message to see if they had something in common. I couldn't figure out why I got all of those today, but it was a bit fun to see the different out of office replies that people have. At least a little interesting. So as a service to anyone else that might be interested too (anyone?), here is a selection.

Grace seems to have been away for quite some time:

Hello, today is Friday, Oct 6th and I will be out of the office until further notice. Please refer to Twyla Xxxxxx for immediate assistance. Thanks:)

Karolina is late back to work too:

I will be out of the office the week of Aug.20th, returning Aug.27th. Please email yyyxxx@yyyyyyyyy.com & xxxyyy@yyyyyyyyy.com for further assistance.

Ludovic's leave from a Canadian university became longer than expected:

I will be on study/research leave from Sept 1, 2006 to Aug 31, 2007 and be away from the Ontario Veterinary College during this period of time. I will check my e-mails on a regular basis and reply to your message as soon as I can.

I thought Rosh Hashanah was over for this year. (OK, I admit it, I looked it up.) Glenn knows better:

I will be out of the office this afternoon after 3:00PM for the Jewish New Year. I will be here tomorrow, but again leaving early for the Holiday. If you need me for any reason I will be available on my cell phone, xxx-xxx-xxxx.

I guess it's a good idea to set an automatic end date to the autoreplies. At least mention the dates you are talking about. "This afternoon" is a bit unclear. Actually, most of the autoreplies that I've received are out of date.

Freddy at a Belgian university has got it right. This is as clear as it gets. If you read Dutch that is:

Freddy Xxxxxx is afwezig tot en met maandag 17 september Voor dringende interventies kan je een online interventieaanvraag invoeren (defectmelding Technische Diensten)

Noreen's message is short and to the point. Disregarding the odd way of writing the dates, it is perhaps even true:

I will be out of the office from MONDAY SEPT10th until MONDAYSEPT17th

That was fun wasn't it? Now let's hope I won't get more of these...

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