Work - would you be annoyed about this?

[inanerror]

I have a work phone. I thought I lost my work phone, so reported it as lost immediately as per policy which includes making my manager’s manager aware. As soon as I made him aware, I found my phone. So I sent the senior manager an email making him aware I found my phone and to disregard my initial email. These events happened within the same minute.

anyway ever since, he’s been acting a bit off with me, seems to be ignoring me and is quite standoffish. Am I overthinking this? Do you think the not-lost phone incident would have annoyed him? It has never happened before and my immediate priority was making the device secure.

Yeah I think you're overthinking it. Try and just ignore if hes being weird. You've done nothing wrong

Would possibly irritate me if one of my team lost and found a phone within minutes clogging up my inbox but wouldn't give me reason to make that known or be off with them. Maybe he's just having an off day?!

If he's annoyed by that he sounds like a prick who shouldn't be a people manager.

Yes it might've been slightly annoying/inconvenient but he works in a job where he manages people. People make mistakes. It's par for the course in his job

He probably just thinks you're a bit ditsy. The fact you looked for the phone, reported it lost and then found it suggests you could have looked more thoroughly in the first place!

Clogging up your inbox 🙄

This (and OPs) boss just sounds like someone with too high an opinion of themselves and their own importance. Seems to happen at a certain level of management.....

Then the genuinely senior ones tend to be a bit better with the people skills

I wouldn’t say I clogged his inbox - it was 2 emails

it isn’t an ideal situation but ultimately I followed protocol, by reporting it (and by actually keeping it secure).

the backstory behind this is I feel like I can do no right by him, my actual manager gives me good feedback/bonuses etc but I can never please the boss! Just think this is another rod for him to beat me with, although this hasn’t happened before. I just get the impression he doesn’t like me.

Were you contacting him about this when he wasn't on duty?

Maybe he's about to fire you for something unrelated

Why didn't you recall the message instead of it happened so quickly?

There are many reasons he may not like you - I wouldn't worry about the phone stuff.

He sounds like a twat.

@Bubbleohseven No

@duckpancakes @JustTalkToThem haha I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a list of things he doesn’t like about me from his frosty demeanour. But with that in mind, if he has a problem he should just say? I haven’t done anything egregious, and it’s awkward when my own manager is nothing but positive towards me. How can I improve if he’s silently seething but never feeding back?

I thought it was best to be as clear as possible in this situation in case he already saw my email. eg if he was intending to start the process of cancelling my phone or sorting a replacement. That would have been unnecessary.

Maybe he realises it's a him thing not a you thing so is keeping quiet while seething. You haven't done things how he would do it but that doesn't mean it's wrong?

Yeah, this.

It sounds like you panicked and e-mailed him unnecessarily and he thinks it's all a bit too much drama over nothing.

I think you’re overthinking

As a one-off, is this enough to be considered “drama” though? Like on a scale of 1-10, how serious/dramatic is this?

For sure, it was silly. I travelled for work today, was on a packed train initially so couldn’t easily root through absolutely everything in my heaving bag and find my work phone - though I did try. In the moment I was just thinking I’d get in worse trouble by not reporting it immediately. It’s only once the person next to me left and I had more room, that I found it. My phone is securely password protected but also contains sensitive information, so there’s an established protocol to report lost devices, that’s been drilled in

I mean, it's obviously not a big deal but it is all a bit silly.

You sound like quite a panicky, overthinky sort of person. It sounds like you sent the email about your 'lost' phone way too quickly (if you found it within a minute, you can't have looked have very hard for it before you reported it lost) and now you're fretting about whether your boss's boss hates you for it. Honestly, I think you just need to relax and take your responses to everything down a couple of notches. It all sounds quite exhausting.