“Out of office” emails

The DotNetNuke Newsletter goes out to over 150,000 email addresses each month. For any given edition, we get a few thousand “out of office” responses, a few hundred spam traps and a few “unknown addresses.” (The last category is small because we pro-actively eliminate bad addresses before sending out the newsletter.)

Now, about those “out of office” responses. Most of them are pretty standard — I’m out from X date to Y date and call Debbie or Stephen or Bob at this number. I don’t sit and read all of these, but I will occasionally click on a few.

It’s fun to see these written in different languages —

– Ich bin vom 21. Dezember 2005 bis 2. Januar 2006  nicht im Büro.
– Grazie per il vostro messaggio. Sarò fuori ufficio per ferie fino al 1 Gennaio 2006 incluso e non avrò accesso alla posta.
– Onze kantoren zijn gesloten van 24 december tot 1 januari. U kan ons terug bereiken op maandag 2 januari.
– Je serai absent(e) du  12-23-2005 au 01-03-2006. Je répondrai à votre message dès mon retour le 3 janvier 2006.
– Tack för ditt mail. Jag är åter på kontoret 2005-12-27 och läser ditt mail då.

Most of the time the reason given is “vacation,” but there’s always people sharing just a wee bit more information. Here are a few or the more interesting reasons:

– I’m going to be a new dad. (congrats!)
– I have been fired. (oops)
– I will be going for therapy. (wonder what it was for and how it turned out)
– I will be sun-bathing on a cruise ship. (hope you had a good time)
– I have a sudden and severe back problem. (hope it’s better now)
– I am handling a crisis in the Middle East. (hmmmm…)  
– I am getting married. (congrats!)
– I am absent due to commitments in the Swiss Military. (ah..good old conscription)
– Our company is going out of business. (wonder why the mail server is still up?)