Wondering if colleague did this on purpose

Your processes sound very disorganised. We would be expected to inform reception the previous day, provide the names of the clients together with their organisations, the name and phone number of the person charged with meeting and greeting (who would have agreed to do this) and the name and mobile number of the organiser together with details of the room booked, so if the meet and greet person is unavailable a receptionist can come to the room to check. You would be expected to be in the room ready to start the meeting on time.

I am so surprised by the number of people who think you are at fault, OP. It is not at all normal to be waiting in reception for people to arrive. It is not at all overstepping to hope that a junior member of staff will make more than a cursory effort to find you.

This whole “it’s not in her job description thing” is bonkers. I am pretty senior. But if someone comes in to see someone else and I happen to be in reception, I absolutely do take them to the meeting. I also do admin tasks when they need to be done, including for more junior staff members if it needs to happen. No it’s not in my job description. So what? We’re a team, we all pitch in. I thought that was normal until the responses to this post!

We're not going to agree on this one, but OP's behaviour would have been entirely normal in the offices I've worked at, and presumably in keeping with the customs of her own.

The inexplicable reason being that they work in a different building, which OP has stated more than once.

I'm sure she did follow them to their own office.

Actually from reading the OP's posts........ I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't do that either!

Not clients. Internal people from a different department in the same building. They just went back to their own floor (one I guess OP couldn’t figure out how to follow them to for some inexplicable reason?)

No she really wasn't.

She spent four months preparing for a meeting. She didn't excuse herself on time from her internal meeting. She didn't delegate the responsibility of greeting the clients to anyone in particular. She is now attempting to blame this fiasco on a junior who works part-time in the office which is making her look even worse.

I think you are trying to pass off your mistake on to someone else.
You should have stood up at 11.50 and said I'm sorry we will have to continue this another time .
And got to the room for the meeting . In a busy hectic office situation you cannot just hope someone passes on a message or finds you.

Nah.... something is off here.

You should have been ready to get them yourself.

She should have asked other people (this is standard)
They should have waited for more than 10 mins.

No office can be this incompetent.

Very strange that these very important clients who have been waiting months to see you didn't even try to call you on the phone before they left after only ten minutes.

The senior consultant knew she was available until the guests arrived, so he wasn't going to tell her to leave at 11:45 just because Outlook had her marked as busy.

Likewise OP could hardly say "I'm going to leave our meeting now even though we haven't finished talking and the guests aren't here yet. I just want to sit at my desk watching the door".

She was in the building, prepared, had told her team where she was and was going to come as soon as called.

OP was fine.

It all sounds like a communication fail. Personally I would have told the internal meeting that I needed to be there to greet my next appointment as it was so crucial.

I wonder if this receptionist just didn’t realise you were in that day. Ultimately if you don’t have a secretary you really should have checked at midday.

This.

You didn't turn up for your meeting. That is rude and I would have walked too. Are you incapable of knowing what time it is?

How is the most junior person catching all the flak for this fuck up?

The big boss is pissed off with her but he's the reason you were stuck until 12.10. You and Big boss are at fault here.

You said you don't fully know what she does. Do you set all of her work on the days she comes to your team? If not, how do you know what her workload is? I've been an admin supporting multiple teams, it might be "easy" but it can be extremely time consuming when multiple depts are setting tasks to you. And if you do, why wasn't she briefed about the expectation of getting the guest to you?
I'm not saying she was right in her approach in this instance, but you have made mistakes that led to this situation and as a senior member of staff, you need to look at your responsibility in this instead of shifting the blame

When I’ve gone to meet lawyers it’s not unheard of that you’re taken to a room and wait for them there so I don’t think that it’s strange for meetings to resolve around the person’s schedule and for them to be “fetched”

Taken by whom? The receptionist or the solicitor's PA surely?

The OP doesn't have a receptionist and she didn't speak directly to the person most likely to see the clients arrive.

I'd guess she likes working with the other people she works with, but not with your team for whatever reason. I've had this with administrators: some concentrate on working with the teams they like (their office friend is in the team, the space is nicer, they prefer the type of work they get to do, nobody minds if they're slack, whatever) and eventually you haven't got an admin person at all. I'd be speaking to her line manager about this.

Understand, but lots of people don’t like to do things that aren’t in their job description. Might be worth looking into (or your HR dept).

OP.

Did you bother to tell this person who you knew would likely be the one who received these visitors that you were (very unusually) in today, that you were expecting people to arrive at noon for an important meeting, and where she could find you?

I do understand this because I think you were focusing on your meeting with manager knowing she was going to get you, rather than on the time.

If you were focused on time, it probably would have been about 12.09 pm when you started to wonder where they were, and by this time they’d left.

If you went down at 11:55 that would defeat the purpose of your arrangement. You can waste a lot of time waiting around and the whole point was so you could chat to your manager and save time.

When I’ve gone to meet lawyers it’s not unheard of that you’re taken to a room and wait for them there so I don’t think that it’s strange for meetings to revolve around the person’s schedule and for them to be “fetched”.

I think you can answer your own question though - she has a bad attitude and is lazy & maybe passive aggressive.

I sit at reception and had this occurred at my office the person expecting Important Visitors would have stopped by my desk first thing to let me know-

a-that they were in office today (bc you're not normally in)
b-that Important Visitors were expected at noon and exactly who they are
c-where to direct them to
d-where I would be so I could be informed immediately upon their arrival after they've been escorted to conf room

It does sound like there's an attitude problem BUT you also were delinquent imho.

I think I can understand why you're annoyed with your colleague's general attitude, and that needs addressing. But a few things strike me:

1. She is not a receptionist. You don't say what her job actually is but you say you think it's not technically part of her job. If she and another woman are regularly asked to perform this duty it sounds like it needs to be a formal part of the role or that your company needs a receptionist. It certainly needs a proper process!
2. And look, you have taken no real accountability that I can see for what sounds to me like your reasonably significant part in this cock-up:

On reflection and when the immediate dismay had worn off, it might prompt better processes for the company and/ or for you.

I do wonder if some part of you is actually uncomfortably aware of your part in this but because the ramifications seem so large, it's easier and more comfortable to focus on where your junior sort-of colleague went wrong than where you did. You say your team are good at owning up to mistakes - I hope that goes for you too! We've all cocked things up, sometimes with outsized consequences (and these don't sound dire in the scheme of things).

Good luck, I hope you get the meeting rearranged quickly!