Short notice meetings

[Bridgertonned]

I don't think IABU, but I'm running out of ideas how to handle this politely!

My manager is responsible for arranging team meetings. As we're a team that work across different sites and have jobs that include lots of meetings with the public, diaries need to be coordinated in advance, as do room bookings. Most managers book monthly meetings for the year for this reason. Manager was very as hoc with meetings, so I volunteered to set them up. All in the diary to 2024.

For the third time in a row, manager has sent an invite for a team meeting meeting last thing for the next working day. Last time they did this and I turned up for the meeting and said I could only attend the first half, they were really arsey with me for not prioritising it, and made me late for my appointment. The clash that I had, had been in my diary for three months.

I know I'm going to get it in the neck on Monday now, but IABU to not turn up to a team meeting at 9am Monday? Who would expect a whole team of staff to all be available at that time anyway?

I feel like I'm losing my mind.

(Yes they have access to all our diaries. Yes I am looking for another job!)

If you are available on Monday you should log in and join. If you have prior meetings then don't, but I can't see why you wouldn't turn up to the meeting just because its 9am on Monday morning?? Isn't that normal start time?

On the whole though I do agree with you, if you set up a meeting last minute then you have to accept that not everyone will be able to attend.

Wait is this face to face meetings or Teams meetings?

If that meeting was visible in your calendar then they are unreasonable to double book you regardless of the notice.

As for the 9am call on a Monday it depends on your office policy. At my work out core hours are 10-4 and you make up your hours either side of that. It's frowned up to set up meetings outside of 10-4 aside from if all parties are in agreement so if both people are early birds it's fine to have a 9am meeting but if some usually works 10-6 you ask before putting a 9 or 9.30 meeting in their calendar. A lot of people need to leave at 4 for trains so meetings are rarely after 4 or fully remote. We are also discouraged from booking meetings that means a person doesn't have any time between 12-2 for a 30 minutes lunch break.

In a previous job my boss asked me at 9pm on a Sunday to present some results to a group meeting at 9am on a Monday morning and have a group meeting every Monday so I do know how lucky I am now.

IABU to not turn up to a team meeting at 9am Monday? Who would expect a whole team of staff to all be available at that time anyway?

It depends on the culture of your team, if you’re all based in the office then a meeting at 9am is reasonable and you should all be available- standard working hours isn’t it?

I know with the WFH culture, people get a bit fussy about commute. But surely commuting to the office is a reasonable part of the role and you should apply for jobs at an office that you can reasonably commute to on a daily basis. However if you have a meeting booked in at an office that isn’t your usual place of work and involves extra travel then fair enough to be annoyed. In that case, I’d push for a later start to the meeting to give you time to travel in the morning and avoid peak time etc

The point about it being normal working time is that our team will have work booked in in normal working time! We usually have multiple meetings a day with members of the public, across multiple sites. Our manager is based in one building and doesn't travel.

Our jobs are face to face, as is the meeting.

I don't think everyone in our team is even due at that site on Monday.

@Thorntone our job is face to face with the public, there is no WFH. It's not about being available in the office, it's about the assumption that we won't already be doing something at 9am on a Monday. Most of us are in for 8am.

Monday morning I have three meetings with members of the public. The only gap is travel between two of them. These are in my diary. Two staff don't work Fridays and won't see the invite until they arrive on Monday, and they're not necessarily due to be at the same site as the manager

Dunno, I just feel that should really prioritise meetings with your manager so the business as usual stuff can wait after the meeting. They’re not unreasonable to book meetings in with their team.

Meetings shouldn’t booked if you’re to be with the public at the same time, but equally can anyone cover you for the meeting with the public? Can anyone cover you with meetings with your manager? What can you delegate?

it just seems like you need to speak to your manager about how to prioritise your workload when these meetings drop in, and how to organise your calendar so they realise clearly that you need to allow time for travel to your next meeting or that you’re not available. or even just offer to book the meetings in again for the year if that suits.

it sounds like they don’t understand your workload and you’re feeling resentment

I know you say your calendar is blocked out and clear but there’s obviously some lapse in communication so best to have a discussion and iron it out. They might not intentionally be disrespectful of your time and might chance once you tell them the impact

@Thorntone I'm going to assume you work in a slower paced/better resourced role. There is no one we can delegate to. I'm in healthcare, my appointment schedule is my appointment schedule. Appointments are given 3-6 months in advance. Not sure if you missed that it's a team meeting, so that's 8 team members for us - if one of us is off sick, someone else in the team would try and cover, but if the whole team is required, there's no one we can go to to cover us outside of our team.

The manager has a monthly team meeting slot. There is no reason for them not to use those - there's nothing exceptional or urgent they want to discuss.

Theres nothing wrong with how my diary is organised - it shows my appointments and my travel. The manager doesn't look at diaries when sending these requests.

I don’t really understand the dilemma. You have patients to see at the time of the meeting so you can’t attend the meeting. Surely your manager would not be expecting the members of the public to have their appointments cancelled?

Are you saying that if you don’t attend the meeting your manager will complain?

your appointments with the public should have priority over a short-notice meeting with the manager. can you email the manager now to make it clear that you won't be there on Monday and why. what would they say?

@Heather37231 yes, that's what they did last time.

When I said to them I'd sent my apologies within an hour of them sending the request they said 'i get far too many emails' as though I was being unreasonable to expect them to see id declined it.

'but this is important '
'yes so is my patient'
'but why when you knew you had a team meeting'
'because you sent the invite yesterday afternoon. These appointments are booked months in advance'
'well this is more important.

As I said, brick wall.

I think because we have some say over the appointments, manager thinks that we can just move things. But two issues with that - it's not right for us to mess people about, and we generally have too many appointments to actually have space to move things, unless we've got cancellations.

I'm annoyed that it's all unnecessary stress - no one else has problems with sticking to regular, planned, monthly team meetings. There is no emergency that requires an urgent meeting. It usually happens when our manager has had supervision with the top boss and then gets in a flap.

@parietal I already have, but I can guarantee they won't have seen it and will have a go at me on Monday!

Ah, what a nice start to the weekend!

Well yes, she says that in the OP! The last time she explained she had a clash, manager was arsey about her not prioritising the team meeting.

Yanbu- your manager sounds like an actual jobsworth who doesn't understand the nature of your face to face role. I mainly WFH and my manager still puts team meetings weeks in advance even if it's not face to face as people have meetings, diaries, work to do. If it doesn't suit then always email the response and save them in a folder along with the meeting request. If they get arsey then you can show hr or higher ups where it's unreasonable requests.

This would really wind me up, why don’t they use the regular meeting schedule you’ve set up? Surely as well as being irritating and clashing with other appointments this is duplicating the number of team meetings?

But how can that make any sense if the manager is responsible for delivery of the service to the public?

I’d be questioning whether your manager is really even understanding how their team work if they don’t even acknowledge that your patient appointments are booked months in advance and obviously have to take priority.

@Changingplace exactly!
When the scheduled meetings come round, she tends to cancel them on the day because 'we've already had the team meeting...'

@Gcsunnyside23 yes, I really don't understand why, when you manage a team, you'd expect people to drop everything just because you've decided you're free. Surely part of being a manager is being aware and managing conflicting diaries, workloads etc. Most jobs involve planned work, even if you're not booked in with someone the likelihood is you've planned that time to write up notes, prepare for the next session, make calls etc. I'd never expect to come in on a Monday morning with nothing to do! If I was managing a team who were all free I'd be a bit worried!

There is clearly something weird going on here. How can the manager and you OP have such completely opposing views of the basic rules of dealing with the public? ( i.e. it is fine to cancel appointments at short notice/no it isn’t).

If she is senior and has set a clear policy which says move all public appointments for all meetings then I guess you are expected to do that. If you don’t agree with that policy you make representations about that to your manager and her managers.

It does seem like an utterly insane policy though.

Your manager is being totally UR. Patients or their carers (depending on what field you work in) have potentially booked time off work/arranged childcare/moved other commitments to accommodate the appointment with you. Is your manager a HCP or is he/she another of these managers who have been appointed in a healthcare setting without any experience in healthcare?

@Heather37231 there's no policy. Just conflicting agendas/priorities.

I think my manager gets anxious, then very tunnel visioned when something is on their mind. They are genuinely, very very busy - but it feels like because of that, they expect everyone else to fit around them. Eg that I should just push my diary back/magic up space/shorten appointments or some other wizardy - but that's not usually possible, we run close to capacity, as I'm sure most services do these days. No one is sat around twiddling their thumbs.

Why are you taking this so personally?

It seems like an overreaction to the situation.

Have you said to the person in terms:

I cannot attend the meeting as Mrs Kumar will be expecting me to change her dressing at that time?

Are they going to say “tough luck Mrs Kumar”?

YANBU.
I manage a large team and I will always check calendars / availability before booking in an ad hoc meeting outside of our standard monthly team call.

Their anxiety doesn't constitute an emergency on your part, they need to get better at checking availability and not getting arsy when people can't make last minute invites.