Background and bear with it does go on a bit, sorry.
I work for an organisation that has offices across the UK, with someone in the same job role as me in every office. About 6 months ago at a meeting with everyone in my job role at the end of the day 3 of us stayed behind for a ‘catch up’ the person whose office it was joined us and basically had a real good moan about their manager. I took it as a colleague letting off steam, to colleagues who probably ‘understood’ empathised a bit, let them rant in out went back to my office and promptly forgot the whole thing. After all haven’t we all at one time or another moaned to another colleague about a manager?
A week later I got a phone call from said colleague’s Manager asking me to confirm the contents of the ‘rant’. I said I felt uncomfortable repeating a conversation that wasn’t meant to be repeated and certainly not when the person involved wasn’t there to ‘defend’ themselves (it was obvious the manager wasn’t happy’) their reply was it’s okay [name] (one of the other colleagues that were there) has already told me everything. The manager then proceeded to repeat verbatim the rant and asked me just to confirm yes or no. I refused until I have a guarantee my reservation would be noted along with my opinion that it was just merely someone letting off a bit of steam.
It turns out the third colleague did the same as me and when the statements came out in did quite clearly note my reluctance and comments. Nevertheless what I can only terms as a witch hunt began and the rantee was dismissed and treated incredibly poorly in the process. The jungle drums beat and every colleague in the same job role found out that whole story (I suspect again the rantee didn’t hold back) the rantee called me thanked me for voicing my objection to the whole thing and was devastated to lose their job over what was as I suspected a rant after an arduous couple of weeks. The original teller of tales was richly vilified by the others and I was asked for my side of the story to which I replied I didn’t want to discuss it but the other colleague did and backed up the rantee.
Still with me? Good.... this December on a completely different subject, a notice came round from our dept director to everyone in our job role, giving us a robustly written document from which all departments had to follow with immediate effect and thanked the original teller for there time and effort in writing it. Imagine my shock in opening it it find it was my work, word for word, that I had emailed them when they were struggling with a particular problem back in June!
I took a second to breath, and watched whilst three or four emails came in to me from other offices querying this as my work (I’d sent it to others at the same time as I’d sent it to teller). Some even asked publicly (the teller remained extremely quiet) I politely emailed said director to explain it was my work, and backed up my claims with the emails showing I’d originally sent it out, and the dates on my pc when I’d written it. Director stepped up to the plate and announced to every office that they had in fact ‘got it wrong’ and I had written it. Again all resolved all sorted! Yay! Move on I didn’t write it for kudos I wrote it to help anyone struggling.
Only on Monday (we’re at the final bit, promise) I emailed everybody in the group (same job role) a question I was struggling with. Well I thought I’d emailed everyone, turns out I’d missed a couple, one newbie and one...yes you’ve guessed it.....the teller. It was a complete accident I thought I got everybody but I’d done it in a rush at the end of a hectic day and just didn’t double check. Today into my inbox pinged a really shitty email from teller saying, ‘you sent an email and I wasn’t included! What other important information have I missed out on? I’ll be asking the director!’ But also included the managing director, the senior regional director, our director and their manager!
I’m like WTF!? It wasn’t an important info thing really, just a “hey can you tell me what you do if you get this situation” type thing?
Why go all the bloody way up to MD level! AIBU or not? Genuinely don’t know how to deal with this? Do I reply all saying I’m really sorry it was a genuine lapse on my part and you haven’t missed out on anything important but feel free to talk to our director, do I ignore it. Do I tackle them? (Not my strong point) help me out here.