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 definitely out of order, but if the meeting was that vital, and something you had been working on for months, I'd have been standing out in reception at 11:55 waiting for them, not in another meeting that you'd have to be "fetched" from.
She's definitely more to blame, and I probably would escalate it to her manager, but you've also got a role in this.

No. That is called "one of the few people who agree with you". Not actually rfemotely the same thing.

It was unprofessional of you to start the meeting 10 minutes late for no good reason and to not be available to greet people promptly as they arrived.

Surely if you’ve been preparing for the meeting for months, it wasn’t necessary to have a last minute session with the senior consultant right at that moment? Nothing should have stopped you from being there on time.

It’s clear that your unhelpful colleague clearly had no idea that you were expecting this important meeting or that you were even in the office that day. She also behaved unprofessionally, but it was definitely your job to let her know what was happening both by email and in person.

The whole workplace sounds chaotic!

Yabu. You are annoyed at yourself for not being firmer with your senior and making it clear you would be waiting for the guests as this had taken a lot of logistical arrangements.

Ya also bu to have a hierarchical attitude to a member of staff you admit to not even being quite sure what they do, just because they are junior.

Perhaps she may be more helpful if you treated her with more respect as it works both ways.

Where do you normally sit?

Is it in an office? Or an open plan area.

Ie if you were not in this meeting, but sat in your office at 12 waiting, would the junior have come to find out anyway? As it doesn't sound like she went to any office to see even a colleague of yours?

No one in a normal office hangs around reception waiting for guests. Unless it's the king!

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Brilliant 👏

I think we're starting to understand what working with the OP might be like 🙃

I don’t doubt she did do this on purpose. It’s invariably the case though that colleagues are obliging if you are suitably grateful and appreciative in return. You probably haven’t been any where near enough of either. It’s a simple transaction- just basic people management skills. You need to smile, thank and perhaps flatter her a bit. Buy her a box of chocs or a bottle of wine to show it doesn’t go unnoticed. Basically, you must try harder. Sorry Op.

Or, you know, just tell her you're in the office and where to find you if you've arranged an important meeting on a day you're not usually in

I think everyone has been a little unreasonable here.

You, for not making sure you were at the entrance ready to greet them, if they’re that important and you’ve been waiting months for this.

Her, for not delivering them to you properly once they had arrived.

Them, for leaving after 10mins and not being a bit more assertive, asking someone else to locate you.

I don't think the visitors are at fault for not being more assertive - if you arrive for a meeting with Janice and are told that Janice isn't in the office, you'd usually take that at face value, and if the person you need to see isn't there, there's not much point hanging around.

What I find very odd is OP didn't or couldn't apparently contact one of them by phone as soon as she realised and explain it was a misunderstanding - they couldn't have gotten very far away in 10 minutes, and apparently their home office isn't even very far away.

Shed be getting disciplined if I were you

Doesn't sound like OP has any authority over this person to discipline them, which is probably for the best given OP seems determined to blame her for a situation that was at least partially her own fault.

Write up an invoice and bill her the cost of the lost work.

Disciplined for what?

Presumably for accurately saying WilloWhisperer doesn't work Fridays.

This is totally on you op. You knew you had a meeting at 12 and went and hid in a room long enough for your guests to leave.

It’s your own fault. She’s not even a member of your team - so why on earth didn’t you sort out a meet and greet from your own team? Other departments have their own work load ; your meeting was important to you, no one else. Unless the women you are referring to is a receptionist, then it is absolutely not her job . And she has form - so you haven’t taken the hint then? Has the penny dropped now?

I think in that case OP should pay.

In the real world it doesn't work like that, you can't just invoice someone for anything.

I know that but it will get the point across that she is to blame for the lost work and she needs to buck her ideas up.
Also, have a private discussion with her about it but make sure you record it secretly.

Nope, the OP is to blame. The deafening silence makes it plain that she didn't even tell the poor sod she was in the building on her day off, let alone let her know she was expecting a meeting.

Are you trying to get OP in trouble? You can't record someone without their consent in a work environment. Nor can you invoice people for your own mistakes. OP has behaved in a baffling way to be honest, if you are expecting important visitors you need to be present to receive them or delegate to a member of your team who can be, not just vaguely hope someone will point them in the right direction when you haven't even bothered to let the people likely to encounter them know you're in the office.

Wow, I can't believe you are scapegoating the junior colleague, the one who doesn't even work for you, because you couldn't stand up to your senior colleague and say, "Sorry X, I have a hard cut off at 11:50 to meet external clients. Pop some time on my calendar thos afternoon and we will pick up where we've left off."

Whether junior colleague did it deliberately or not is so not the point.

Why did you ask her and not one of the 6/7 other people? Surely if its that easy the could have popped down to collect them at 12? It was either important enough for you or one of your direct reports to do, or for your company to hire a receptionist or it wasn't.

Tell me you don’t know the first thing about working in this sort of environment without saying…

What is the OP going to do with that secret recording? Hand it to HR or a Senior Manager? Hand them evidence of secretly recording a junior member of staff she is trying to dump blame on? Who do you think is going to end up on the wrong end of a disciplinary investigation? Hint: not the junior member of staff.

You could feed this incident back to the powers that be, who decide the systems used in house to ensure the smooth running of the office. It sounds extremely unprofessional how it currently stands - I'm surprised this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often (or does it happen a lot?)

If you are asking "AIBU" to think your colleague did this on purpose... I would say yes, that is BU. To suggest she might have PURPOSELY jeopardised a deal/client to "prove a point" is a very big accusation. What would the point be that she's trying to prove?

You need to take a fair share of responsibility in the breakdown in communication that has led to this mistake occurring. EVERY person who might have greeted the guests, should have been told (and even reminded) by you, exactly which room you would be in, and that the door might be shut. Your junior colleague should have been told precisely how to contact you directly for this extremely important meeting. It's possible she didn't even know you were in, because she's sort of in the team, but also sort of not. Something this important shouldn't be left to chance.

I agree with previous posters. Even if the person you were talking with (prior to your 12:00 appointment), was a senior consultant, and expecting you to continue your meeting with them until you were summoned to your next meeting, you should have told this person that your meeting must end at 11:55 in order to greet your guests/clients. This was not just an everyday type meeting - but a logistically difficult meeting to organise and was far too important a meeting to risk this happening.

I do hope you manage to reschedule the meeting with less difficulty than the original, and that you're able to salvage the deal :0)

No one here will know if she did it on purpose or not.
If you'd put as much effort as your posts on here otoh.....