Big Tudor, my pleasure:
OED:
Oaf , a stupid or loutish person, from Old English, Elf.
The time honoured fashion of pp (no full stops by convention) is as you say, time honoured. However, it's use under these circumstances is inappropriate. Such news should be from the person ultimately responsible. It's called effective man management and as you may perhaps see from the other posts, it has been effective in upsetting a lot of people.
If the Ms Marrow was away, the way to do it is to get a minion to sign the letter and signature block it as "Fred Bloggs for Ms Marrow" That way we can all see that Ms Marrow is not abbrogating her responsibility for the action. It's called delegating.
As for leaving Ms Marrow's name up, a fair point but moot.
Mr Horgy's business if Ms Marrow didn't sign the letter? On the basis that he has just been binned I would say Yes but then I'm old fashioned. (Stupid)
Your use of the
Smilie: I assume that in your posts words of an inoffensive nature fail you so you leave it to the readers' imagination to insert the relevant anatomical description. (Loutish)
If this troubles you as an explanation, I'll make it easy.
P.S. I am uncertain as to your feelings on sitting on toadstools or hanging around at the bottom of the garden so the Old English, like considerate management and people who commiserate with those who have just lost what was probably a dream job, is now dead.