To be annoyed at my colleague?

[PandaAndLionRoar]

I was in an all day meeting with the board/C suite in work today. My colleague/friend was in work but not in the meeting with me. It was her last day before MAT leave and it was coming up to 5pm and I was still in my meeting with the board so she came to the meeting room and interrupted my meeting by knocking on the door and then asking for me and saying “I’m sorry to interrupt but can I have a quick world please, it’s urgent”. It turns out she didn’t have anything urgent that she needed me for but she just wanted to say bye to me before she goes on MAT leave and knew that I wouldn’t be out of my meeting before 5pm when she left the building so she decide to interrupt my meeting to say bye instead. I feel a bit annoyed that she interrupted the whole meeting just to say bye to me whilst I was in a meeting with the board, fair enough if it was something urgent but it wasn’t. She could have just phoned me later to say bye if she wanted. AIBU to be a little annoyed with my colleague for interrupting my meeting just to say bye? She took me out the meeting room and just said that she just wanted to say bye to me before she goes on MAT leave and then we chatted for 2 minutes and that was it, nothing urgent at all!

In that kind of meeting, comfort breaks and lunch would be planned into the agenda.

If you needed to leave the room outside the planned breaks, you'd do it discreetly with a murmured 'excuse me'.

You wouldn't want someone knocking on the door about an 'urgent' matter unless it genuinely was urgent.

Sorry, but this made me laugh! I've never read such a repetitive OP. No wonder the meeting took all day if it went round and round like this!

When she first took me out of the meeting and said that it was just to say goodbye I honestly did think that was sweet and I was more than happy to say goodbye and I didn’t have a problem with it at that point. It was when I went back in to the meeting and everyone was asking me what the “urgent” thing was that she needed me for, that was the point when I started to feel awkward about it and a bit annoyed that she had took me out of the meeting to say bye.

There's taking work seriously and there's sounding like a bit of an idiot.

Why did you not just tell the truth!! Totally bizarre behaviour.

C Suite is a totally normal shorthand for the board level leadership in big businesses.

Meetings at that level are tightly focussed and intense because everyone is short on time, and has risen to that position by being able to focus and get things done fast and decisively.

Anyone interrupting a meeting (whatever level) with a bullshit excuse of fake urgency knows they shouldn’t be interrupting it but is choosing to do it anyway, putting their own wants above the people working in the meeting.

OP you’re totally reasonable to be irritated - and I’d be way past that into properly pissed off and distancing myself from them in the work environment.

C Suite are not there to mess about for 10 mins while random team member wants to say lovely in person bye byes to someone she can easily reach some other time. Anyone who did this to me would be on my shit list, and I’d be having a word (nicely) to explain why to never do that again.

Seriously for an executive your writing skills are less than I would expect. Your sentence construction and punctuation require work.

Because then the OP would have looked like a total pillock to the board, who would likely conclude she had in some way given this person to think it was fine to waste all their time with this, and that their farewell had priority over the meeting.

OP was right to cover it as best they could.

To be clear, I’m not part of the Board/C-Suite myself. It was an all day meeting with the Board/C-Suite that I had been asked to attend because I’m the project lead for the project that the meeting was about.

I totally disagree. I was at a meeting last week with very senior people in the NHS- no one would have batted an eyelid at this reason- in fact they would have thought it showed kindness and just normal decency.

That’s a ridiculous criticism - writing for a social forum thread is not anything like the way you’d write for board level materials.

OP, if you know, you know. Trust yourself here - you know that your colleague was out of line and you handled it as best you could.

Because she had told them that it was “urgent” when she had asked to take me out of the meeting and they were specifically asking me what the “urgent” thing was. It was very awkward when I went back in to that meeting because they were all insisting to know what was urgent that she needed me for.

Did you not consider saying goodbye to her or marking her last day in some way before she was leaving that day?C-suite is awful and embarrassing. Leaders of a company should set the tone for how to treat people.

It’s sad, isn’t it? It’s bad enough for women trying to succeed without other women trying to bring them down.

Yes- but you should have just told the truth- it was urgent to her as she was finishing up. I assume they carried on their discussions when you weren’t there and by not telling the truth it looks like there is something going on within your project that could be a problem.

I work in the c suite and most meetings appear to be a load of high level woffle with the main thing attained the date of the next meeting. Two minutes is not a long time to be out of the meeting.

I had planned to say a proper goodbye to her first thing in the morning before my meeting but she was running late (the traffic was bad for her on the way in to work in the morning) and so she didn’t get to the office before I had to go in to my meeting. I did leave her cake, wine and card in the office though for her. I wanted to give it to her myself first thing in the morning before my meeting but like I say I didn’t get chance because she was running late in the morning due to traffic unfortunately.

😂 nice try. That’s not what it means.

Hilarious comeback considering you have a "shit list"

Fair enough and that was thoughtful of you. In that case I think you have a point- her goodbye could have waited. Still don’t like ‘c-suite’!

I have worked with plenty of executives whose spelling and grammar is far from perfect. Isn’t Richard Branson famously dyslexic?

Is this some kind of AI-generated post? Lots of weird repetition.

The thought did cross my mind that perhaps the meeting lasted an entire day because the OP repeated herself over and over and over and over.

Maybe OP's 'friend' had been told to cut in if Groundhog Meeting showed no sign of ending by 5pm.

Why don’t you like it? It is a word (phrase?) that means something. It has a factual meaning. What is not to like about that? I don’t understand why some people seem to have taken a dislike to it.

It’s not a gender based criticism! OP could be a man using the term c-suite.