Having a particularly bad day with emails at work, I was reminded of a
friend’s remark on “conquering the Inbox”.  The poor soul goes to
work early just so that he spend a few hours trying to clear up the
backlog of emails in his Inbox, and is still struggling to emerge
victorious.

For such people, like for many of us, the situation only gets worse if
you ever find yourself returning from a vacation and being swamped with
mails that were received in your absence.

A forwarded email from a friend – Farhan – may offer a respite. 
Here’s a sample of some ‘Out of Office’ responses you can employ to
lighten the load 🙂

You are receiving this automatic notification because I am
out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received
anything at all.

I will be unable to delete
all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from
vacation on 4/18. Please be patient and your mail will be deleted in
the order it was received.

Thank you for your
email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first ten words
and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.

The
e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable
to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try sending
again.

Thank you for your message, which has
been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and
can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.

Please reply to this e-mail so I will know that you got this message. I am on holiday. Your e-mail has been deleted.

Hi. I’m thinking about what you’ve just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.

Hi! I’m busy negotiating the salary for my new job. Don’t bother to leave me any messages.

I’ve run away to join a different circus.

AND, FINALLY, THIS ONE TAKES THE CAKE :
I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons.
When I return, please refer to me as ‘Lalita’ instead of ‘Sameer’.

How I wish I could put some of these to use…