Wondering if colleague did this on purpose

Nothing that OP did was wrong. I'd definitely be having words with the woman who couldn't find you, but I'd also want to know why the people coming for the meeting left so soon. What was said to make them leave?

Is it in the junior person’s job description to find you for your own meetings OP? I doubt it. Also why on earth were you answering questions from a senior consultant just before your meeting? You put yourself on do not disturb or tell him you have a meeting and to catch up later.

You’ve made yourself seem quite incompetant on this post

The junior person did not have to look hard to usher the people to the meeting. This is a time for management to say to her WTAF were you doing to not summon up an ounce of common sense to at least make a phone call to bring them where they’re supposed to be.

You are not unreasonable in complaining about your useless colleague. However, you should have started looking for your visitors before 12 noon, if that's when the meeting was. Be in reception to greet them. You fell right into this one, I'm afraid.

The whole set up seems a bit odd. In every place I’ve worked.

internal: make you’re own way to the pre-booked meeting room on time. Why didn’t you just have your meeting with the senior consultant in the room booked for your meeting so you didn’t have to worry about when they were arriving?

external: sign in at reception and someone goes to collect them - often more junior if you’re in back to back.

If this woman (you don’t like) has a formal role in greeting guests to the floor it was on you to tell her about your meeting and not just assume she’d find you when you’re not normally in.

If she assumed you weren't here because you don't usually work on this day, that's an error, but it's not something done deliberately to "prove a point" as you insinuated in your earlier post.

It does seem odd to be in a tucked away room with the door closed and hard to find at the start of your important meeting - at the very least, you should have made anyone who might encounter the guests before you aware that you are indeed here and where you could be found.

When I was young I worked reception occasionally for a big, fancy corporation. People would arrive ( meetings would be already listed in a book on my desk) . I would greet them politely and ask them to have a seat. Phone the person they were meeting who would arrive within minutes. And off they went together happily. Your place sounds like chaos ( it's not that you should be waiting in reception). It's if you have a team but no receptionist then one of your team should have been waiting to greet the clients if this was an important meeting.

OP you should have been there to greet your guests- that is part of yo ur role as organiser.
however, even if displeased your colleague should have gone to more effort to find you and seated your guests in the room. It reflects bad on your entire company and will lose you all work. Your colleague then should have spoken to their manager about being allocated hosting/ greeting duties by her colleagues and how that is not their role.

One last thought, OP - if junior colleague feels (rightly or wrongly) that she regularly catches the flak for other people's poor planning - a particular peril of support roles - this may explain her "lean out" mentality and insistence on sticking to the letter of her role. A way of protecting herself from pointed fingers when thinks go wrong.

Blame culture is rarely recognised as such by management but can be pernicious and really undermine morale and proactivity.

This. As the junior was not briefed about how vital the meeting was what was your plan if she took an early lunch, had been in the toilet or away for some other valid reason?

The lady who sent them out was U.
However, I would have said to the colleague who kept asking questions, "hold on while I check if attendees have arrived". I would have done this at 12.

So you clearly didn't tell this person the arrangement, as you say she didn't know you were in as you don't work Fridays. So clearly she told the guests that, so they left. Why would she waste time searching for someone who she believed to be off today?

Sorry OP but this is completely on you.

You've refused to answer the question so I'm going to assume you didn't bother to tell this person who you expected to greet the arrivals what was going on. This was a big miss on your part (I'm guessing you realize this on some level, thus the refusal to acknowledge the question), as was not coming to check until 10 after. Any conversation you have with this colleague or the other meeting attendees should start with you acknowledging your part and apologizing; this meeting was your responsibility and you need to show leadership by stepping up to take ownership of where it went wrong.

Reschedule the meeting after apologizing. Offer to go to the other department's building instead of them coming to you unless that's not possible for a genuine reason. Then work with your team and these floating admin staff to come up with a better procedure for handling visitors and meeting starts, because this setup sounds incredibly inefficient. Start this out by asking the admins what they think could help it flow more smoothly.

You didn't need to be sitting in your office staring into space at quarter 'til or waiting by the front door, but for an important meeting you shouldn't have been waiting in someone else's office at the end of an out of the way hall behind a closed door engrossed in a meeting on a seperate topic until 10 minutes after the scheduled meeting time. Being settled in the meeting room or in your office with the door open ready to jump up (either after telling the admin what to expect and asking her to either show the visitors to the meeting room or stick her head in your office door) was appropriate here.

I'm familiar with people like the Sr. Consultant you describe. If you truly can't find a way to speak up and end a meeting with him on time yourself then arrange for a teammate to come fetch you 5 minutes before the next meeting.

You say other team is busy. I'd be pretty annoyed to arrive for 12 or even 11.50 and not find you in the meeting room, ready to go. I wouldn't have stayed if my team was that busy as I'd view it as very rude

Good grief, your entire organisation sounds completely chaotic. You don't have a proper reception function, you have these two women with you part time in some indeterminate admin/photocopying role but who don't seem to be officially tasked with welcoming or coordination duties. You were in a meeting with a colleague who you didn't feel you could tell that you needed to leave his meeting at noon because you were expecting others to arrive. This meeting with another team, whom you now say are part of your own organisation, has taken since July to set up! How can any company operate like this? They arrived, waited 10 minutes for a meeting which has taken four months to set up, and then left. After you discovered they had gone it took a further 20 minutes before you managed to contact them in some fashion, although it's still not clear why they didn't return as you keep saying that they weren't coming far for the meeting ( your vagueness suggests that they actually work in the building next door rather than coming from several miles away!). The nature of your contact with them is also vague, as you still don't seem to know why they left so quickly or didn't attempt to phone you while there, but apparently they are going to call you on Monday to discuss?

This was a meeting that took 4 months to arrange, surely at 12 you would leave the discussion with the other person and go to start your meeting. On one hand it’s been a difficult meeting to arrange, you’ve changed work days to attend and on the other you got distracted by a colleague and couldn’t/wouldn’t excuse yourself to go and attend to this important, difficult to arrange meeting.

I think you know you made a mistake in not being ready and waiting, and not briefing the junior colleague that you were in the office (when you wouldn’t normally be) and that you were expecting visitors to attend a meeting. Trying to turn that into a deliberate act by your junior colleague isn’t a good look.

The whole situation seems bizarre.
Was it this junior colleagues responsibility to fetch you for the meeting.
Or is there an office manager?
If you've booked two meetings back to back then surely the second meeting politely wait for you, and you make your way to them. If you're not there they either call you or have an office manager call you to find out where you are.

It all seems unfortunate but not really something that should be happening.
Did your colleague deliberately turn your clients away? I certainly hope not.

No, but that's the thing, she didn't ask that junior to find her. She didn't tell that junior these clients were coming. And she didn't even tell the junior that (unusually) she was in on what is usually her non-working day.

For some reason she told her immediate team, who sit out of the way of the main entrance, but not the junior only-sort-of-team-member she anticipated would be the first point of contact with the clients. OP just sort of assumed the junior would locate the OP when these clients arrived, despite the above.

I'm not trying to stick the boot in but the OP hasn't yet reflected on her own part in this, and that's a glaring part that has been confusingly and somewhat conveniently glossed over in her posts!

I find all these posts suggesting you should have been waiting in reception bizarre. In the thousands of meetings I've attended and hosted throughout my career, I don't think I've ever met or been met by the person I'm seeing at the office entrance. It is common in virtually every office environment for visitors to be put in contact with whoever they are meeting, one way or another. And even if that weren't the case in general, OP has been clear that it is how their office works and it's an expectation for the role this colleague has.

I agree with those who say you need to escalate this to her manager, OP.

yeah, you lot really really need to look at your internal processes, teamwork and general uselessness tbh

You told your team where you were, but they are tucked away and didn't see the meeting attendees arrive.

The person who turned them away and another person aren't receptionists but are "expected" to show visitors to your tucked away team. But you hadn't told them that you were expecting these visitors.

The person who turned them away knows that you don't usually work on Fridays.

The senior consultant was also prepping for this key meeting but insisted that you and they spoke about something in a hidden meeting room at the exact time when you both were expecting the visitors to arrive.

This is such a strange set up. I don't see how this is the fault of the person who hadn't been told to expect them, didn't know you were in that day and doesn't have it in their job description to greet visitors and show them to their meetings.

I would assume their time was sacred too and they felt like it was being wasted.

Everyone knew these clients would be there at 12 so you could have been there. You asked the most unreliable person to find you and let you know when they did arrive since phones are apparently not available. Easy to blame the junior but think some of it must lie with you.

The whole episode has something of a Fawlty Towers feel to it, and at the very least, I think the company's processes need to be examined. Which probably won't happen, as the OP, the person most to blame in the whole debacle, is trying to shift all the blame onto a more junior member of staff.