I Am Currently Out Of The Office

I had to work a little late today, and at about quarter to six I had to send an email out to a whole bunch of people. Being quarter to six I pretty much assumed that they would all have gone home and, to my surprise, this was confirmed by a whole bunch of out of office messages informing me politely that the people I had emailed were now out of the office until the following day.

This seems to be a slightly strange new fad as I've seen it a few times recently from people that have been in right up until 5pm, and then set an out of office for no apparent reason.

In addition to this I have a workmate (lets call him/her Colleague X) who does slightly... er... exotic hours. There's a weird pattern of 6am to 10am then then three hours off and then 1pm to 3pm and then 4pm to 7pm and so-on. Colleague X does plenty of hours - too many if you ask me - but they're pretty random. This odd pattern probably wouldn't even be noticed by the causal observer, if X didn't detail the entire week's timetable in a curiously precise out of office message.

In honour of these weird and wonderful out of office messages, I present my own:

To whom it may concern.

Thank you for your email.

I'm afraid I am not at my desk at this precise moment in time.

My official working hours are 7.30h to 16.15h from Monday to Thursday, although I usually start work at 7.00, unless the traffic is really bad, and often leave around 17.00h unless it's really busy, in which case it may even be as late as 18.00h. That said, sometimes I slope off at 16.00h to buy comics or generally lark about, so you never can tell.

Also, I take every other Friday off as a non working day (although I call these Freaky Fridays).

If you have received this message outside of these hours then it's tough luck really.

On the other hand if it is within the normal range of my working hours, then I may have popped out for a sandwich, gone for a walk or nipped to the loo to relieve myself. I often have a poo mid afternoon, so if you get this at about 14.45h, you're out of luck for about 20 minutes. I never rush poos as my mum said that if I strain I might get haemorrhoids.

I enjoy receiving messages from you and look forward to reading this one as soon as I am able.

Thanks,

Dazza.