I got promoted at work last year, in a heavily male dominated industry.
There was a lot of resentment from the guys but I got promoted because I’m the hardest working one on the team.
The promotion includes running a client facing conference type event every other week, as that’s quite a prestigious thing at my company and very sought after.
Just before the last conference, I had a call to say my son had been sick at school. I hurriedly arranged my mum to pick him up and then went to host the conference. It was a stressful 30 mins getting it sorted before the event.
Needless to say, my head wasn’t quite in the game and it wasn’t my best presenting. It was nothing terrible and the clients probably wouldn’t have noticed, but I know it wasn’t my best work.
I’ve just had a paragraphs long email from a guy on the team (disliked by many) about how badly I did, and giving me advice on doing it better next time. This guy is more junior than me but has been around years.
I politely responded and said I knew it hadn’t gone well, my son had been sick and I was distracted, and thanks for the feedback.
He then sent THREE MORE Teams
messages about how that can happen to anyone and it’s no excuse and continued to criticise my presenting and give more unsolicited advice. He used the words “very poor etiquette” in two of the emails because I’d forgotten to introduce another speaker in a particular way. Again, this was really just a product of how stressed I was about my son being sick.
He isn’t wrong, it wasn’t a great event and I already felt shit about it, but the stream of criticism is really weighing on me.
How do I respond now? My manager also thoroughly dislikes this guy and I know will sort it out if I ask him, but that seems petty and immature. Plus I’m not sure I want to highlight to my manager (who wasn’t there) that I wasn’t on good form in the meeting!