I’m a little annoyed - I think my colleague is lazy - I feel as if my colleague uses my children or me as an excuse to get out of doing stuff.
We work for a small start up and the team is small. We both have senior roles within the company. The team is pretty much us 2 and occasionally we work with temps that assist. We report directly to the CEO - my colleague is a family friend of the CEO so they have a different type of relationship - I get on with the CEO too but I guess they have more in common.
So …
I have just come back from maternity leave. I’m getting back into things. I found out that whilst I was away my colleague blew a lot of the campaign budget and so we have major budget cuts - her excuse was that I’m (ME) the one that is better at budgeting and because I was on leave and she had to budget alone, it’s not her fault as it’s not her expertise. The CEO is frustrated but is being “nice” about the situation - and keeps hinting at us (but directed to me) that there is a lot of work to be done.
A lot of our work involves client meetings. She has a client, I occasionally come in when my expertise is needed. She scheduled a call with the client. Then cancelled 2 hours before the call and her excuse was that I (as in ME) have a cold! (I had a cold but we had been on calls with other clients all morning - so I was working with a nasally voice).
I told her that the baby is in nursery and so I’m available throughout the day and can take meetings whenever. We had a meeting scheduled at 2pm in person with a client. I can make it - but I have a doctors appointment booked prior. She wanted to move the meeting forward, I said I can’t. She wants to move the meeting because she has a meeting at 10, and doesn’t want to wait around in the area and doesn’t want to leave her dog for a long period of time - so she’s cancelled the meeting and said that it’s because of my childcare duties!
Our boss knows her for not doing meetings past 2pm and using her dog as an excuse. She prefers early mornings. But AIBU for thinking that it looks bad on me when meetings are cancelled “because of me” or my childcare arrangements? (Especially when they are not the real reason - it’s mostly because she can’t be bothered to - whilst I’m pretty flexible as have good childcare in place!).