Wondering if colleague did this on purpose

[WilloWhisperer]

Today I had an important meeting arranged which I have been organising since July. In the end I rearranged my schedule to work today (I work for this company and have my own small business where I usually see clients on a Friday so had a lot of logistics to arrange).

The meeting was at 12 and so our senior consultant wanted me to go through some things in the morning. I told our whole team where I would be, asking them to get me when the people I was expecting had arrived.

The layout is a line of offices which are tucked away. The senior consultant and I had the door shut as we were discussing confidential information, furthest away from the entrance. There is a junior colleague who always huffs that she has to show people where these particular rooms are (she is sort of part of our team but in a different capacity)

I came out of the office at 12.10 to see if the people I had a meeting with were here yet. No one had got me so I thought they might be late. After a bit of investigating, she said “I looked around and couldn’t find you, so they left”. She said she asked around. But none of my team saw her come up the corridor. All she had to do was ask my whereabouts and any of them would have known where I was/ to come and get me. They were all working with their doors open.

She has form for doing things “to prove a point” so I’m wondering if she has done this on purpose? I don’t know when I/they am going to be able to rearrange and we will probably lose work because of this.

"... She was in the building, prepared, had told her team where she was and was going to come as soon as called.

OP was fine"

No she wasn't.

She hadn't told the person most likely to meet the meeting attendees on arrival!

As that person wasn't aware that the OP was actually in on what for the OP is a non-working day, this is mostly down to the OP.

(And down to the "senior consultant" who is so set in his ways and on no account can be inconvenienced in any way...)

Bottom line is that your carefully arranged meeting didn't happen and the company will lose money as a result. You can blame your colleague and (weirdly) defend the senior consultant as much as you like, but this could all have been avoided had you double-checked whether the other attendees had arrived, rather than relying on someone who 'has form for doing things to prove a point'. Why take the risk? Your employer is unlikely to give a shit that Sandra didn't tell you the client had arrived, or that the senior consultant is 'set in his ways' - it all just sounds like excuses. They will give a shit about the cost to them though and it'll be you that they blame.
Not to say that you shouldn't find out if Sandra stitched you up and, if so, deal with her. She sounds like a piece of work....

Bit weird - they're internal clients? Why didn't they just go to the booked meeting room themselves?

But otherwise I would have told the senior consultant who you had a meeting with, that they won't tolerate lateness, and that you're free until 11:55. I'd have left if you didn't turn up by 12:10 too.

No.

She might agree with you but she certainly doesn't "get it".

have not read all your posts but you do have a lot of excuses.

for important meetings for SURE you tell senior consultants that you have to stop now and go and greet the guests. For SURE you position other colleagues to greet the guests too, with you or without you.

You adopt a belt and braces approach, and if it goes tits up you don't blame others.

So lessons learned, reschedule and do it properly next time.

Yeah - you were expecting people to arrive and they didn't, so neither you nor your boss went to find them. Weird.

It was a bit of an expensive mess, and, as others have said, arguably not sensible of you to just assume that your important visitors were late when they didn't appear by 12, rather than going to reception to look for them or phoning their mobiles.
Rather than getting this junior colleague into trouble (whose job it isn't to find you anyway), how about creating a failsafe process to follow when visitors are expected? And sort out who is responsible for bringing together staff and visitors. If this woman didn't bother to find you because she was annoyed at being asked, that is a weak spot in the organisation that needs sorting out.
I can imagine how furious you are (like I was when a medical receptionist told the doctor I had not turned up for an important appointment. I arrived early and then popped out for five minutes, then come back and was sitting a few feet away from her desk, but she didn't look round to check, just told the doc I had 'gone away'.).

So you told your colleague what room to find you in when your guests arrived and they didn’t come and tell you?

I don’t understand the benefit to them for doing that? All sounds a bit odd, do you not have messenger/ emails so your guests could have contacted you to say you’d arrived?
could you not have told your guests what meeting room
you were in?

all sounds a bit shambolic tbh

No, but you could have said 'Excuse me, I'm expecting guests at 12 and need to check if they have arrived'.

The whole episode has something of a Fawlty Towers feel to it, and at the very least, I think the company's processes need to be examined. Which probably won't happen, as the OP, the person most to blame in the whole debacle, is trying to shift all the blame onto a more junior member of staff.

Everyone knew these clients would be there at 12 so you could have been there. You asked the most unreliable person to find you and let you know when they did arrive since phones are apparently not available. Easy to blame the junior but think some of it must lie with you.

I would assume their time was sacred too and they felt like it was being wasted.

You told your team where you were, but they are tucked away and didn't see the meeting attendees arrive.

The person who turned them away and another person aren't receptionists but are "expected" to show visitors to your tucked away team. But you hadn't told them that you were expecting these visitors.

The person who turned them away knows that you don't usually work on Fridays.

The senior consultant was also prepping for this key meeting but insisted that you and they spoke about something in a hidden meeting room at the exact time when you both were expecting the visitors to arrive.

This is such a strange set up. I don't see how this is the fault of the person who hadn't been told to expect them, didn't know you were in that day and doesn't have it in their job description to greet visitors and show them to their meetings.

The senior consultant wasn’t prepping for the meeting, he’s taken me on for a different project.

yeah, you lot really really need to look at your internal processes, teamwork and general uselessness tbh

I find all these posts suggesting you should have been waiting in reception bizarre. In the thousands of meetings I've attended and hosted throughout my career, I don't think I've ever met or been met by the person I'm seeing at the office entrance. It is common in virtually every office environment for visitors to be put in contact with whoever they are meeting, one way or another. And even if that weren't the case in general, OP has been clear that it is how their office works and it's an expectation for the role this colleague has.

I agree with those who say you need to escalate this to her manager, OP.

No, but that's the thing, she didn't ask that junior to find her. She didn't tell that junior these clients were coming. And she didn't even tell the junior that (unusually) she was in on what is usually her non-working day.

For some reason she told her immediate team, who sit out of the way of the main entrance, but not the junior only-sort-of-team-member she anticipated would be the first point of contact with the clients. OP just sort of assumed the junior would locate the OP when these clients arrived, despite the above.

I'm not trying to stick the boot in but the OP hasn't yet reflected on her own part in this, and that's a glaring part that has been confusingly and somewhat conveniently glossed over in her posts!

The whole situation seems bizarre.
Was it this junior colleagues responsibility to fetch you for the meeting.
Or is there an office manager?
If you've booked two meetings back to back then surely the second meeting politely wait for you, and you make your way to them. If you're not there they either call you or have an office manager call you to find out where you are.

It all seems unfortunate but not really something that should be happening.
Did your colleague deliberately turn your clients away? I certainly hope not.

This was a meeting that took 4 months to arrange, surely at 12 you would leave the discussion with the other person and go to start your meeting. On one hand it’s been a difficult meeting to arrange, you’ve changed work days to attend and on the other you got distracted by a colleague and couldn’t/wouldn’t excuse yourself to go and attend to this important, difficult to arrange meeting.

I think you know you made a mistake in not being ready and waiting, and not briefing the junior colleague that you were in the office (when you wouldn’t normally be) and that you were expecting visitors to attend a meeting. Trying to turn that into a deliberate act by your junior colleague isn’t a good look.

Good grief, your entire organisation sounds completely chaotic. You don't have a proper reception function, you have these two women with you part time in some indeterminate admin/photocopying role but who don't seem to be officially tasked with welcoming or coordination duties. You were in a meeting with a colleague who you didn't feel you could tell that you needed to leave his meeting at noon because you were expecting others to arrive. This meeting with another team, whom you now say are part of your own organisation, has taken since July to set up! How can any company operate like this? They arrived, waited 10 minutes for a meeting which has taken four months to set up, and then left. After you discovered they had gone it took a further 20 minutes before you managed to contact them in some fashion, although it's still not clear why they didn't return as you keep saying that they weren't coming far for the meeting ( your vagueness suggests that they actually work in the building next door rather than coming from several miles away!). The nature of your contact with them is also vague, as you still don't seem to know why they left so quickly or didn't attempt to phone you while there, but apparently they are going to call you on Monday to discuss?

You say other team is busy. I'd be pretty annoyed to arrive for 12 or even 11.50 and not find you in the meeting room, ready to go. I wouldn't have stayed if my team was that busy as I'd view it as very rude

You've refused to answer the question so I'm going to assume you didn't bother to tell this person who you expected to greet the arrivals what was going on. This was a big miss on your part (I'm guessing you realize this on some level, thus the refusal to acknowledge the question), as was not coming to check until 10 after. Any conversation you have with this colleague or the other meeting attendees should start with you acknowledging your part and apologizing; this meeting was your responsibility and you need to show leadership by stepping up to take ownership of where it went wrong.

Reschedule the meeting after apologizing. Offer to go to the other department's building instead of them coming to you unless that's not possible for a genuine reason. Then work with your team and these floating admin staff to come up with a better procedure for handling visitors and meeting starts, because this setup sounds incredibly inefficient. Start this out by asking the admins what they think could help it flow more smoothly.

You didn't need to be sitting in your office staring into space at quarter 'til or waiting by the front door, but for an important meeting you shouldn't have been waiting in someone else's office at the end of an out of the way hall behind a closed door engrossed in a meeting on a seperate topic until 10 minutes after the scheduled meeting time. Being settled in the meeting room or in your office with the door open ready to jump up (either after telling the admin what to expect and asking her to either show the visitors to the meeting room or stick her head in your office door) was appropriate here.

I'm familiar with people like the Sr. Consultant you describe. If you truly can't find a way to speak up and end a meeting with him on time yourself then arrange for a teammate to come fetch you 5 minutes before the next meeting.

So you clearly didn't tell this person the arrangement, as you say she didn't know you were in as you don't work Fridays. So clearly she told the guests that, so they left. Why would she waste time searching for someone who she believed to be off today?

Sorry OP but this is completely on you.

The lady who sent them out was U.
However, I would have said to the colleague who kept asking questions, "hold on while I check if attendees have arrived". I would have done this at 12.

This. As the junior was not briefed about how vital the meeting was what was your plan if she took an early lunch, had been in the toilet or away for some other valid reason?