Sorry, I'm completely blanking here - Are regular users able to set their status (or whatever it's called) to away, or is that only for staff?
According to PatrickUK: I think it's a staff tool. It's intended to alert members to our absence so they don't contact us for private help/support when we are away for any length of time. On the old version of EC we'd often go away on vacation and return to lots of unanswered messages and if one of those messages was from a member in a state of despair I'm sure you can imagine how it felt to open that up a week or two late.