The out-of-office reply that says ‘stay out of my inbox’

Then I got his automated response.

“I am out of the office having way more fun than communicating with you," his email said. “I will likely forget to email you back."

So much for out-of-office messages with polite promises to respond when the vacation is over. We’re entering the age of the kiss-off OOO message.

Exhausted by the world and desperate to truly disconnect, vacationers and others taking work breaks this summer have begun replacing courtesy with candor in their auto-responses. Some are emphatic that they absolutely won’t be checking emails while they’re away. Others state that replies will be slow, if they come at all. A few keep their out-of-office message turned on long after they return to work, to manage others’ expectations. (Genius!)

Barry Ritholtz, the 62-year-old chairman and chief investment officer of the New York wealth-management firm that bears his name, started his recent out-of-office message by stating that he was “peacefully contemplating the world" from a remote lake in Maine. His note didn’t end there.

“During this time, I will be out of the office, not checking emails, avoiding texts, ignoring Slack, letting calls go to voicemail, off the grid, and generally unreachable. As such, my auto-responder is, well, auto-responding," he wrote.

Ritholtz included the phone number of the firm’s office manager, as well as several others to contact in a true emergency: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the People’s Bank of China.

“There’s this wrong belief that if you email someone you are entitled to an immediate response," he says. “This message says to slow your roll. Why do you need this now?"

Barrage burnout

In his standard out-of-office message, Peter Harrison explains that he is “out on PTO" and won’t be checking email. Then he encourages the recipient to follow his lead. “By doing so, you will help foster a workplace that is people first, respects paid time off, promotes balance, and dismantles always-on culture," his email states.

Previously, the 29-year-old interior designer from Portland, Ore., says he wrote straightforward out-of-office emails. Then he became increasingly burned out by the barrage of messages coming at him.

“We live in a culture where our time and energy is everyone else’s to take from us," he says. “This email says that maybe we can all do better."

Andrew Riesen, 33, a co-founder of a startup in Seattle, has fresh motivation to set firmer boundaries: He and his wife are expecting their first baby any day now.

His out-of-office message states that he likely won’t respond to emails during his six-to-eight-week paternity leave. “There’s nothing so important that it needs to take precedence over our new little one," he writes. He also says he won’t be checking “a pile of emails" right when he gets back.

“I wanted to give others the sense that they can do this as well when they take time off," he says.

‘Fake emergency’

The number of emails sent and received worldwide each day has increased 34% since 2017, research shows. And that isn’t counting the growing number of messages coming at us from other platforms.

Worse, the costs and benefits of email are unbalanced for senders and receivers, says Gloria Mark, professor emeritus in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies how people interact with tech in their everyday lives.

“The sender gets the benefit of the email, because they are asking for something," Mark says. “The receiver, very often, has to do the work."

Yet there is good news: We overestimate how quickly others expect a response from us to nonurgent emails, says Erica Dhawan, a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based strategy consultant and author of a book about digital communication.

“It feels like every email is a fake emergency," she says. “Yet the pressure is internal."

A realistic out-of-office message can help avoid repeated inbox nudges, she says. It should be honest and brief. State why you are away, when you will be back, whether or not you will be replying and whom to contact in your absence.

Leave it on

And don’t make fake promises that you will return emails when you know you won’t, just to be polite. That’s twice as bad as ignoring the person, says Bing Chen, a former YouTube executive who currently runs an investment firm and a nonprofit. “It makes the person feel like they have a chance," he says. “And it makes you feel like a jerk."

Chen’s out-of-office message? “If this is urgent, take a deep breath because few things really are." The email, which went viral on social media a few years ago, is a tribute to his father, who died young. “It’s a reminder to focus on what’s truly important," he says.

In reporting this story, I heard from multiple people who have adopted his wording in their out-of-office messages. And to date, Chen says that only two people have written back to insist that their issue was urgent. (He says neither actually was.)

Katie Gold, 32, an assistant professor who runs a research lab at Cornell, wrote a helpful out-of-office message for her maternity leave earlier this year. She gave contact information for colleagues and said: “Thank you for your patience with my delayed replies."

She didn’t turn it off when she came back.

“I am drowning in emails from people who all want something from me," Gold says.

Gold has since edited her message to say she has “recently" returned from her leave. (Co-workers pointed out that they could actually see her.) She plans to keep it active until her baby turns one.

“The responder at least makes me feel better about ignoring people," she says. “They’ve gotten a response."

Write to Elizabeth Bernstein at Elizabeth.Bernstein@wsj.com