Why do people get so upset over such trivial things?

I work in Local Government and this sort of shite is rife. I hate the pass ag imperative to "update my contacts" after they've told me they're not the right person anymore - the assumption being I'm too dumb and rude enough to do so without their instruction (scolding!).

Mind you, at least it's a response...so many important emails are just ignored until you've chased 7 times and then copied in a manager. I recently had a back and forth with an external person (but still civil service) who wrote an email 30ish lines long explaining that it wasn't their job to answer my queries and explaining how disruptive it is (I was asking for a yes or a no on 5-10 cases a year). Had to get a manager involved who thankfully was sensible and got the solicitor to respond that it was very much their job! Delicious.

So many people who are lazy, prickly or unhelpful and when it's brought up everyone says 'that's just how they are'. So the majority have to walk on eggshells while the minority slack off, cause frustration and directly negatively impact on people's lives 😡

Sometimes it's hard to face/be angry about/deal with the big things, so people take out the 'big thing' feelings on trivial things.

What's trivial to one is not trivial to another. Easy answer.

YES!! I am this petty 😂

Dear band 6, I have updated my records, however your public dressing down of me has caused me alarm and distress. I have copied my line manager in and I will be going home sick. I will also be raising a grievance when I feel stronger...

😅

But it puts into perspective the reaction she experienced over a non issue. I've moved rolls internally and a quick reply of, sorry that's not me anymore speak to Sue and it's done. Instead we have shitty messages from managers, so getting them worried that they may face a bullying complaint (which is what it actually is) may actually get them to sort themselves out

You’re right and it creates a toxic working environment. Leadership should stamp out this kind of preciousness, and when they tolerate it it is damaging. You could call it out but it might be risky in such a sh*t environment. You could highlight it as an issue in the employee survey?

I joined a French company and I was astounded at some of the responses to perfectly reasonable questions that I got. In my previous company (a highly successful one - vs the debt-ridden French one propped up by government) you never had a bad experience reaching out to someone.

Other people and their egos, eh?

Did you figure out why this person is now ‘too important’ to be receiving emails from you?

No this isn't normal, I guess there's a history you're not aware of. It's not your mistake either unless the role change had been communicated to you or you're only expected to use the generic email address.

Your NHS address is just your name @nhs...... so you take it with you when you move roles - if you didn't know someone had moved you would prob just use their address and it would still work in their new role.

So even more reason to just do a quick reply to say "ooh sorry I don't work in that team anymore!" as it's almost impossible to tell if you don't know!

People's lives are made up of dozens of trivial annoyances and they layer up and cause the overreaction.

Stroppy emails reflect on the sender of them rather than anything else

“Distress” 😂

The original recipient was pathetic but the management entertaining the tantrum is the real issue.

I’ve worked with people like this in the past. Usually people that place too much importance on their role, and don’t have much going on in their personal lives. So they compensate for this with power play in the workplace.

I know. I'm not saying the person was reasonable

This is an insane reaction.

Its because of people who behave like this at work that I buy lottery tickets. 😁

This is not about assigning blame. This is about having a disproportionate reaction to a complete non-event.
Unless the OP and this person have some turbulent history, I really don't see what the big deal is and why the recipient couldn't simply say that they moved teams and so-and-so is now covering this particular piece of work. I do it all the time and copy in the relevant so-and-so.

Some people might wonder why you are irritated about something so trivial that happened weeks ago too.

Some people are arseholes. You did nothing wrong.

True, there's only one example given by the OP; but it's hardly an isolated experience that nobody else will ever have had.

There are loads of people, in all areas of life, who have such low self-esteem, low confidence in their skills and/or far too much time on their hands that they are just permanently on the look-out for somebody to offend them by making a trifling mistake, so they can berate them and 'prove' to everybody how much better a person they believe that they are.

Honestly, 'distress' at somebody contacting you about a professional job that you did until recently... that is not a normal way to react whatsoever.

But they haven't left the hospital/organisation - they've just moved to a different part of it. It's not reasonable to expect certain people in the same trust to know that they must never ever contact you. It can't be that much of a grievance if they've stayed in the trust; and even if there was a grievance, it wasn't with OP, was it?

Good for you. It's a ridiculous overreaction on their part.

And that sort of behaviour trivialises genuine workplace stress.

How unprofessional. This would be sorted in 2 seconds outside of the NHS.

Yes, maybe. I've no idea how big NHS trusts can be or how likely you are to come across particular people if you change jobs.

I don't see why not, if they had a grievance with a particular member of staff for instance?