Yeah there’s a lot of context missing. Who was calling/texting? Why? Did the employee make clear that they were out of the office?

My job is customer-facing. I always have out-of-office replies up if I’m on vacation, but customers don’t know that unless they actually send me an email. For this reason I’ll usually call/text customers back when I can and let them know I’m out of the office. 99% of the time they completely understand and apologize for bothering. The 1% of the time when something really is super urgent, I put them in touch with someone who can help.

Most internal people check my status on Teams first anyway and see that I’m out. When they do call or text it usually starts with “hey man, sorry to bother you while you’re on vacation but…” and typically there’s a reason they needed to contact me specifically. Probably because I have some critical piece of information the business needs. It doesn’t happen that often. I get it, and that’s generally the only reason I’d call someone on vacation as well.

As for email - as far as I’m concerned, if I have an OOO that says “for immediate assistance contact [person]” I assume anyone who is emailing me is smart enough to realize they need to contact that person if it’s urgent. Otherwise I assume any emails I receive while I’m out can wait until I get back. So I don’t see any reason to get bent out of shape over emails.

I’m just a bit surprised at some of the strong reactions in this thread.. are people really getting blown up with requests to do actual work from people who know they’re on vacation? Because in my career that hasn’t been very common at all and I’m someone who generally expects a lot out of people.