Out of Office

I've just received an email from the person I emailed half an hour ago which elicited an out-of-office-automatic response message. So they were in the office after all. I've already emailed the person they said to contact in their absence if it was an urgent enquiry. So that's 2 arms of the message into the organisation. The first arm (to the on-holiday-but-actually-in-the-office person) has now been actioned and moved on. It could lead to muchos time wasting on the part of the 2nd party. Never heard of this phenomenon before reading this at Dr Oddverse's. I'd have never thought to use out of office just to avoid answering communications!