Wondering if colleague did this on purpose

OP, is it possible that your colleagues are fed up with you for failing to organise your time properly or learn from experience what does and doesn't work, and for refusing to take any responsibility for it?

Text to participants “Hi all, looking forward to our meeting today in room xxx ego wing!

But yes strange that they didn’t try to contact the OP. The only explanation for that is again if they thought it was her day off

She tried to contact them and they said they’d speak to her on Monday (which does seem to imply they thought she wasn’t in the office?)

So you emailed or something BEFORE Friday and didn't think to go and say hello ON Friday to confirm you were in fact in on your non working day and which room you would be in? Terrible communication.

All you needed to do was find her in the morning and say hello, remind her of the meeting and ask her nicely to pop down and grab you.

So, what did happen then?

You should have been ready at 12, regardless of whether they had arrived or not. You should have given them the details of the meeting room in case they had arrived early and you were unavailable. Reception should have contacted you directly when they arrived, and if there is no receptionist you should have been at the door at 11.55. Sadly you cannot rely on others to look after your guests unless it's their actual job to do so. Yes she probably did it on purpose to make a point but there are many things you could have done to avoid this.

This. To leave after 10 minutes without contacting you is strange.
Something didn't add up here.

OMG, Op, so sorry you're having to deal with such nuisance replies! Clearly, you're not at fault. Anyone would expect to be fetched for a meeting in your situation and that's why you felt safe in utilising every minute you had to do your job rather than sitting in reception. It's damaging to the business to not do everything you can to facilitate visitors in your place of work. Even the toilets should have been investigated. This person has notions about her status in the company and definitely needs talking to unless it was a case of her assuming you weren't in the building as it was a Friday.

That's not what happened.

So, your boss thinks it's ok that this 'very important' meeting didn't go ahead and may result in the loss of work because you placed your trust in a person who is known to be unreliable and didn't think/bother to check what was going on?

Okaaaaaay 👍🏼

Anyway I’m going to stop replying to this thread unless there is a significant update. Thanks.

Its your thread, who do you think would be bringing a significant update if not you?

Ok, I think she forgot you were in. Or she deliberately tried to sabotage your meeting as she knew she’d get away with it (by saying she thought you weren’t in that day).

I do think it could have been prevented if you’d have told her that you were expecting guests and which meeting room you’d be in. As she’d have no comeback then.

Will you let us know what the clients say on Monday? Then it will shed more light on her involvement in all this.

Then this was his fault, if he prevented you from ending your meeting with him to go and check.

Embarrassing thread for you OP, I'm not surprised you are now backing off from it.

You came her to get validation and ideas of how to blame your colleague for your own mistake. A colleague that probably gets paid a quarter of your salary. Your disdain for her and her role is pretty clear and you have her lined up as a scapegoat.

You think that perhaps, maybe, you said hello to her. Even that isn't clear. You know that wasn't enough on your part.

Unless you explicitly said 'Fred's team are due here at 12pm, please take them to Meeting room B', none of this is her fault. And we all know you didn't.

There is only one entrance in and out it would have been impossible not to see her to at least say hello.

So you never spoke to her that morning to say that you had a particularly important meeting and to go find you in the senior consultant office when the guests arrive. You just walked past on the way in and assumed she saw you.

So prior to that day, did your junior colleague get specifically told by you that you will be in on that Friday, and that the meeting will be held on that day at that time? Did you specifically tell her?

I agree otherwise the whole story doesn’t make sense. They only left after 10 mins if they are told the OP isn’t at work that day.

If I had a meeting arranged for 4 months with a team notoriously hard to get booked in you can guarantee I’d be at the reception as soon as I got in telling them who was coming and what to do when they got there. It seems the OP has dreadful communication skills 🤷‍♀️

There's no way you spoke to her.

OK, I give in. It was all Sandra's fault, you are completely blameless. There is absolutely no way you could or should have thought 'that's odd, it's 11:55 and they've not arrived yet, perhaps I should check what's going on'. Good luck explaining that to your boss 👍🏼

Nailed it!!!!!

OP can’t keep track of her own story.

"my suspicion is she didn’t even look because she thought they were wrong - she knows I don’t work on a Friday and I suspect she turned them away because of this."

You spoke to her, yet she thought you weren't in? Come on, you didn't speak to her before the visitors came.