Like so many morsels of office drudgery, the out-of-office message that one leaves behind while on vacation has acquired its own internal set of stylistic rules. As the New York Times noted last summer, “some cannot resist the opportunity to inject a bit of their personality into their correspondents’ inboxes in absentia.”
In February, John Patrick Pullen offered some utilitarian tips on Motto on how to leave an appropriately polite auto-response—one of which was “don’t be too funny.” With all due deference to our colleagues, what follows is an interactive to generate a less-than-conventional OOO message by answering just three questions. (You can change your answers at any time as you go.)
Sources for poetic responses
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Write to Chris Wilson at chris.wilson@time.com