Wondering if colleague did this on purpose

Yes, but you looked for your clients ten minutes after they were supposed to arrive. You should have been ready to meet them and have briefed floating staff to bring them to you, if you were not going down to meet them. Your fault, I think. Not very good at time management?

Perhaps she doesn't like you tone and attitude (especially if it's anything like what is evident in your posts).

I wouldn't go out if my way to help you, I suspect she didn't either.

Less blame. More self reflection needed.

Glad i don't work with you OP (especially glad i am not even peripherally related to your team)

You have zero capability of self reflection, and your deflection of blame is unattractive in what i presume is a relatively senior role.

What are you going to put in place to ensure you don't waste people's time again (since July! I'd have been on to your boss to rip you a new one at 12.05)

Also - it is a good idea to schedule all meetings to end 5 minutes to the hour or 5 minutes before the half hour.

no. The idea bucking in the first instance needs to be done by OP.

But in General her company/team need to have a good long look at their processes. They are... being charitable here... innefective.

If you have been organizing this since July surely they had your mobile number.

1. Why did you not text them before they came to say let me know when you are near so I can meet you
2. why did they not call you

hmm, I think there’s more to this- the red flags to me are/-

”sort of being part of your team”
“ has form for doing things to prove a point”.

I think ultimately it was your responsibility to go and look for your visitors at the time of the meeting especially as you basically admitted she had previous form.

She doesn’t sound particularly helpful but it also sounds like there’s a clash and she feels she’s being bossed around by people that she doesn’t directly report to? There’s nothing more annoying than people that think they are senior treating you like the tea girl when in fact they are nothing to do with you. Although this may not be the case at all, it may be that’s how she perceives it. If it is actually her job it needs to be discussed with her line manager.

I don't for a second think you should have been waiting in reception. I'd find it very odd if I were meeting someone and they were on patrol in reception.

However, I'd be less than impressed by what you did. It seems you informed everyone of this meeting, except the person who actually needed to know. Its quite understandable that she would assume there to be a miscommunication somewhere given you don't work Fridays and hadn't told her you were working that particular Friday. You need to learn to communicate properly rather than just assume someone will know what you'd like them to know, and to behave in line with expectations that only exist in your head.

Frankly I think you're bang out of order. The onus is also on you to manage your own time and that means checking if your guests have arrived. The consultant you were speaking with was not your priority from 12pm.

Even OP, despite originally saying she did it on purpose, has now conceded she might genuinely have not been aware OP was in the office since it wasn't one of OP's normal office days and OP never actually deigned to tell her

No one here will know if she did it on purpose or not.
If you'd put as much effort as your posts on here otoh.....

You could feed this incident back to the powers that be, who decide the systems used in house to ensure the smooth running of the office. It sounds extremely unprofessional how it currently stands - I'm surprised this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often (or does it happen a lot?)

If you are asking "AIBU" to think your colleague did this on purpose... I would say yes, that is BU. To suggest she might have PURPOSELY jeopardised a deal/client to "prove a point" is a very big accusation. What would the point be that she's trying to prove?

You need to take a fair share of responsibility in the breakdown in communication that has led to this mistake occurring. EVERY person who might have greeted the guests, should have been told (and even reminded) by you, exactly which room you would be in, and that the door might be shut. Your junior colleague should have been told precisely how to contact you directly for this extremely important meeting. It's possible she didn't even know you were in, because she's sort of in the team, but also sort of not. Something this important shouldn't be left to chance.

I agree with previous posters. Even if the person you were talking with (prior to your 12:00 appointment), was a senior consultant, and expecting you to continue your meeting with them until you were summoned to your next meeting, you should have told this person that your meeting must end at 11:55 in order to greet your guests/clients. This was not just an everyday type meeting - but a logistically difficult meeting to organise and was far too important a meeting to risk this happening.

I do hope you manage to reschedule the meeting with less difficulty than the original, and that you're able to salvage the deal :0)

Tell me you don’t know the first thing about working in this sort of environment without saying…

What is the OP going to do with that secret recording? Hand it to HR or a Senior Manager? Hand them evidence of secretly recording a junior member of staff she is trying to dump blame on? Who do you think is going to end up on the wrong end of a disciplinary investigation? Hint: not the junior member of staff.

Wow, I can't believe you are scapegoating the junior colleague, the one who doesn't even work for you, because you couldn't stand up to your senior colleague and say, "Sorry X, I have a hard cut off at 11:50 to meet external clients. Pop some time on my calendar thos afternoon and we will pick up where we've left off."

Whether junior colleague did it deliberately or not is so not the point.

Why did you ask her and not one of the 6/7 other people? Surely if its that easy the could have popped down to collect them at 12? It was either important enough for you or one of your direct reports to do, or for your company to hire a receptionist or it wasn't.

Are you trying to get OP in trouble? You can't record someone without their consent in a work environment. Nor can you invoice people for your own mistakes. OP has behaved in a baffling way to be honest, if you are expecting important visitors you need to be present to receive them or delegate to a member of your team who can be, not just vaguely hope someone will point them in the right direction when you haven't even bothered to let the people likely to encounter them know you're in the office.

Nope, the OP is to blame. The deafening silence makes it plain that she didn't even tell the poor sod she was in the building on her day off, let alone let her know she was expecting a meeting.

I know that but it will get the point across that she is to blame for the lost work and she needs to buck her ideas up.
Also, have a private discussion with her about it but make sure you record it secretly.

I think in that case OP should pay.

In the real world it doesn't work like that, you can't just invoice someone for anything.

It’s your own fault. She’s not even a member of your team - so why on earth didn’t you sort out a meet and greet from your own team? Other departments have their own work load ; your meeting was important to you, no one else. Unless the women you are referring to is a receptionist, then it is absolutely not her job . And she has form - so you haven’t taken the hint then? Has the penny dropped now?

This is totally on you op. You knew you had a meeting at 12 and went and hid in a room long enough for your guests to leave.

Presumably for accurately saying WilloWhisperer doesn't work Fridays.

Disciplined for what?

Write up an invoice and bill her the cost of the lost work.

Doesn't sound like OP has any authority over this person to discipline them, which is probably for the best given OP seems determined to blame her for a situation that was at least partially her own fault.

Shed be getting disciplined if I were you

I don't think the visitors are at fault for not being more assertive - if you arrive for a meeting with Janice and are told that Janice isn't in the office, you'd usually take that at face value, and if the person you need to see isn't there, there's not much point hanging around.

What I find very odd is OP didn't or couldn't apparently contact one of them by phone as soon as she realised and explain it was a misunderstanding - they couldn't have gotten very far away in 10 minutes, and apparently their home office isn't even very far away.