Inspiring Workplaces: Please Enjoy Your Break From Me: The Joy of a Fun Out of Office Message

Published: Wed, 04/16/25

Updated: Thu, 04/17/25

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Inspiring Workplaces
The Way Work Ought to Be!

#1,069 - April 16, 2025

The Joy of a Fun Out of Office Message: Please Enjoy Your Break From Me!

Why not add a little LOL to your OOO?

The company Oilshore publicly shared some of their employees' cheeky and funny Out of Office messages, such as:

“Do not contact me while I’m on leave or I’ll report you to HR.”

"The bad news is I'm out of the office, the good news is I'm out of the office!"

"Error 404, employee not found."

"Please enjoy your break from me!"

"On vacation. Hoping to win the lottery and never return."

"I'm not sure why you're emailing me given that I put this on my calendar months ago."

Some of these messages reflect Oilshore's culture, which is known for its blunt honesty, especially from their younger employees. Now you may not want to be that cheeky with your message, but why not look for opportunities to add a little humanity, heart, and humor to your voicemail message, out of office email replies, and email signature? It's a simple and fun way to stand out from the herd, build connections, and add some levity to people's workday.

Mike's Fun at Work Tip

Tomorrow, April 17 is official High Five Day so create a contest to see who can amass the most high fives in an hour or the entire work day.

Quote of the Week

“The most important lesson I've learned as a journalist is that everybody is interesting if you ask the right questions.” Kate Murphy

Funny Business

I always like to share the winners of the Ig Nobels - these are fun awards recognizing research projects that make people laugh, then think. So, here are some of the research honored at the 2024 Ig Nobels:

Hemispheric hair swirls, clockwise or anti-clockwise?
Heads or tails, evidence after 350,757 coin flips
Chromatographic separation of drunk and sober worms
How dead trout swim upstream

And by far for me the weirdest and wildest entry: A study involving repeatedly exploding paper bags next to a cat that was standing on the back of a cow and finding that it caused the cow to produce less milk! And no, I don't know why.

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