At the company I'd been working for, we were all regularly asked to volunteer to go to networking events out of hours and would be paid overtime for doing so. One day, a colleague sent an email round to the team asking if anyone could cover her event as she couldn't make it anymore. I agreed to do it, but accidentally hit 'reply' instead of 'reply all' so only the original poster received my message. A week later when I was on my way there, I got a text from my boss asking if I was going to that event, saying that another colleague was also going to show up and asking if we could split up so that we each networked with different people there. I agreed and both of us came back with info and leads that were used by the company.
When I applied for my overtime however, my boss refused to pay it, saying that she'd already asked the other colleague to go to the event in place of the one who couldn't make it and hadn't known I would be there at all, because I didn't hit "reply all" on my email.
I pointed out that she must have known I was going, because I referenced going to an event when we were at work together on the day (and she'd even messaged when I was on my way there to check), but she said she didn't know which particular event I was going to as I hadn't told her beforehand.
The thing is, both me and my colleague networked individually there and both of us came back with different results (all of which were useful to the company), so it wasn't even a waste of time for two people to have gone.
I know I should have pressed "reply all", but I spent hours of my time at this event only to be told I would get nothing back for it and I feel penalising me for an oversight is disrespectful of the effort I made and the results I got. Also, shouldn't she have told me she wasn't going to pay me at the moment when she found out two people would be at the same event (while texting me when I was heading there on the train?) That would have given me the opportunity to turn back and do something else with my time that evening. I have family commitments so it wasn't a small effort to manage this overtime in the first place.
Was my boss being unreasonable or is it me who was the problem?