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.

Sorry OP. I'm in a senior role in a large company and if I'd been trying to get a meeting since July and someone pulled me into a meeting I'd say at the start 'I need to be finished af 11.50'. Expecting your visitors to wait until you've finished (even though you said you didn't know they had arrived) is disrespectful. I'd also say that if the team they are from is so busy it has taken months to meet, I'd be going to their part of the office/site. I'd also say that your meeting with them is a low priority for them so anything you do needs to be on their terms not yours....

I suspect the junior colleague is fed up with everyone expecting her to play reception for visitors and you shouldn't have expected her to help you.

The chair of the meeting didn’t appear until 10 mins after the scheduled start time. No one hides away in a room with door closed when they are expecting site visitors

My goodness, she’s not a dog that you say needs reigning in. The OP definitely needs to have a word with her, but in reality it’s the OP who messed up by not being ready to meet and greet her client. If I was the office junior I probably would to just as annoyed for having to do all the running around the building, whilst probably having other more important work to do.

In which case the junior is being made a scap goat. It seems that because of where she sits she is expected to meet random guests and try and find out where they should be despite no information being provided.

Yes the junior may be making a point which is either communicate with her at the very least or if too squeamish to communicate at that level make sure a member of the team, who has been told, waits in reception for the meeting,

I don’t understand why she didn’t call you, why they didn’t call you, and why you couldn’t get hold of them for half an hour. Absolutely bizarre.

Really odd they left so quickly.

In future, I'd brief colleagues - all of them - that you have a meeting and should you for any chance not be visible they this is where you'll be.

And I hope you get to the bottom of it.

What other damaging behaviour has this colleague done?

I agree, I don't know why people on this thread are so adamant to say the OP is to blame when she's clearly stated how her office works, there's no reason she would do it any other way than how it normally is done

You should have met them yourself if the meeting was so important.
if your previous meeting with the senior consultant was in danger of over running you should have explained the situation to them, and asked to continue another time.

Your meeting, your responsibility. You should have been aware that it was midday and gone to greet them. Either that or leave specific instructions that reception advise you as soon as they arrived. This is your fault, stop blaming the junior.

She perhaps should've got you but it was your meeting and in senior roles you need to be more assertive irrespective of whether others are set in their ways. You have to be able to be firm. And how he can be unhappy with her for you I don't know, given he was monopolising your time.

Ultimately she could've been more helpful but it's on you.

I don't know what everyone here is banging on about. You're working in a team, you have team mates. Yanbu to expect them to find you, and yes I'd pursue this.

You should have been in the agreed place at the agreed time.

The meeting is at 12.00 and will be in room 2.05 in the MN Towers building.

Simple.

Not every department or organisation has a reception. It's really not that uncommon.

For example you could work in a large public building with multiple smaller departments/stakeholders, with no reception.

It sounds as if they didn’t properly look for you but it also sounds as if you didn’t communicate with them properly.

did you tell them that you were going into the office on your non work day and were expecting a meeting at 12:00?

if you haven’t properly communicated with them their are learns that you can take from this too

This was not a casual catch up between teams, according to the OP meeting was important and had taken months to set up, you don’t leave anything to chance or assume people know what to do.

As for not being able to leave the previous meeting - that is poor practice. I am senior and I am managing a very high priority project reporting regularly to the CEO and Board. If one of my team told me they had a hard stop at 12 for a key meeting I would stop talking at 11:55 to let them go not keep on going and make them late. It is completely usual for people to state they have a hard stop.

It feels like the OP is upset that the meeting didn’t happen and instead of trying to learn from what went wrong she is trying to dump the blame on someone junior.

It sounds like a communication problem.

We use a shared calendar for this - shows who our attendees are, who the guests are and which meeting room at which time.

Anyoe of us from the senior partners down will show an expected visitor to the room and offer a drink. Then (send someone to) find the organisor.

Unexpected visitors are asked who they want to see, ushered into an used meeting room and offered a drink while the person is found.

It really isn't rocket science.

How her office works is that she isn't in on a Friday. And it appears she didn't bother to let junior person know she WAS in this particular Friday and where to find her when her meeting attendees show up.

If it is part of your colleagues role to direct visitors, to meeting rooms / offices, she should be made aware of what meetings have been arranged, the participants and the locations.

The entiire way of working seems bizarre and disrespectful on many levels.. take a step back and think about why you were not able to be ready at the time the meeting was due to start, why your visitors left, why the consultant insists on exerting their power over you and taking up more than their alloted time, why you expect a junior member of staff to do tasks for you without providing them with the information required to complete that task.

Model respectful behaviour, insist that meeting times are adhered to... and show other people the curtesy of contacting them if you are going to be late.. does no one have a phone or access to a messaging service??

Dear X... I am expecting visitors from Green building today for a meeting in the square room at 12. If for some reason, they are unable to find the room, or me, please direct them to the square room and message me.

Lack of organisation, direct and clear communication and respecting the start and finish times of meetings would infuriate me.

This sounds odd as our office works like yours and someone would come and find you

Even if junior thought you were not in, she knows that the rest of your department is there so can get them who may or may not be able to run the meeting or know where you are.

If anyone turned up got the finance head, I as finance middle person would greet them in my bosses absence and at least sit them down, offer drinks /wifi and see if either I can help or they can take a break if there has been a screw up before heading back out.

No one would just say x is not in office, go away. We'd get their colleagues /team to assist and try and sort out the mistake.

You said she knows you don’t work Fridays. Did she know you were working this particular Friday?
It sounds likely she told them you weren’t in because she didn’t know you were.

Did she see you in the office that morning? I think that is crucial information.

Because if she didn’t and you haven’t told her that you were in and having this meeting then it looks like she’s said ‘OP doesn’t work Fridays,’sorry’. They’ve thought it was a mix up, hence not looking for you and leaving quickly.

Wasn’t there anyone else in your team who saw what happened? It does sound like they didn’t even make it past reception (or whatever you have at the entrance).

It’s a fair point but I think the reason people have picked up on this is that the colleague doesn’t seem
to have been informed that OP was in on her usual day off so it feels like blaming a junior for her own poor communication.

Also as someone who has worked in senior management the buck stops with me. If I arrange an important meeting it is up to me to ensure it happens and there is no way I would have left it ten minutes before investigating. I am perfectly comfortable excusing myself from meetings with the CEO as I have someone else booked in. The OP should have taken more ownership if this meeting was so important.

The one thing that could come out of this is a better process for meetings in the company as it sounds disorganised.

Seeing as OP is refusing to answer I'm guessing that she didn't tell junior colleague that she was in that day.

OP massively fucked up and is trying to weasel out of it by blaming the junior colleague.

Do you not have a reception area with a receptionist who would call you? Sounds like visitors are just left to wander around aimlessly?

This is very odd, I can't decide if she doesn't like you, or if you're being a bit up your arse and putting her in her place by making yourself a bit of a madam and she wasn't playing ball