Argh - missed a work email from v senior person!

[C0rBlimey]

Argh I'm panicking. I emailed a very senior person (3 positions higher than me) with with email a week or so ago for them to clear something. There's been a bit of back and forth but they've sat on it for a while.

Yesterday they emailed me asking for some final clarifications and if I could return it to them by close of play, they'd get it cleared. I didn't see that email until this afternoon!They were on leave today so I've emailed apologising and noting they're on leave so it'll be with them first thing in the morning (my manager needs to see revised draft first) but am i screwed?!

I don't know. Whats your company expectation for dealing with queries like this ot SLA for customer?

Why would you be screwed? You dealt with it perfectly sensibly and professionally. It sounds like they only suggested getting it back by end of yesterday as they felt they'd sat on it for too long already and were on leave today. Also sounds like there is no great urgency for the clearance so delaying a day or 2 more shouldn't be a problem.

It’s fine. If it were that important they’d have chased you up.

I think this is just one of those things, people are human. Obviously impossible to really say without knowing your line of work, what the thing is or how important it is, but unless a delay of two days in clearing it causes a real problem (like missing a genuine deadline) then this is a non issue. And even if it did, this senior person sat on it for a week, then wanted you to turn it around in a day (again, don’t know your job but in mine that would be an unreasonable assumption), so they caused most of the delay.

There's no official SLA, but my manager and his manager were also copied in so its more them I'm worried about. I've just been so snowed under with other work I missed it, but I'm stressed about what they'll say tomorrow now when they see!

Are you a civil servant?

it sounds like normal human error. Don’t worry about it.

This would be fine in my organisation, however senior. Humans are human.
I would try to assume it'll be fine unless you hear otherwise.

I am a very senior person in a very large and quite formal/hierarchical organisation. I would have no problem at all with what you describe. It sounds like you have handled it very well.