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Elisabeth
from Munich asks:
I work for an international company and we have offices throughout the world. Much of our
correspondence is done in English. I am going on vacation for three weeks and my colleague is going to fill in for me while
I am away. Would you please help me to write an out-of-office reply in English for the emails that I will receive while I
am out?
A general reply that is direct and polite is:
Thank you for your email. I am currently
out of the office and will be returning on February 11th. Please note that I will not have access to my emails during this
time. Should you need any assistance, please feel free to contact my colleague Alexandra Backes at telephone number +49 8151
9981187 or via email at backes@ajbcommunications.com. Thank you for your understanding.
Kind regards, Elisabeth
Explanation:
With this response, the recipient (der Empfänger)
of your message will feel that you have made an effort to assist them even though you are away. In the U.S., employees usually
only receive 10 vacation days for the entire year. Therefore, it is not necessary for you to mention in your mail that you
are on a three week vacation. It may sound silly (lächerlich), but a three week vacation from a U.S. perspective seems
like a small eternity (die Ewigkeit), and could potentially lead to some of your colleagues being a touch jealous of (neidisch
auf) your situation. Feel free to be truthful and open with U.S. counterparts that you deal with on a daily basis (täglich)
about your absence (die Abwesenheit). However, you do not need to bring the fact that you are going on vacation to everyone’s
attention (die Aufmerksamkeit) by providing details in your out-of-office reply. Furthermore, please note that while listing
the telephone number of your colleague, I included the country code +49 for Germany instead of only writing (0) 8151 9981187. This will prevent international colleagues from misdialing since the (0) often leads to a bit of
confusion.
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