22:30 work call - completely unacceptable?

[shortbreadconsumer]

I received a work call from someone in my organisation at 22:30 last night. I answered, thinking it was an emergency. The colleague was completely hysterical and impossible to understand. In the end I had no choice but to end the call with 'we can discuss this in the morning.'

This morning I spoke to the persons line manager about it, who said that it was 'unfortunate, but not unreasonable' for this individual to have called me as I had not answered any emails from said colleague over the weekend. They had sent me over 50 emails this weekend. I did not see the emails as seniors within the organisation take an 'if it's urgent, they have my number' approach.

I am more senior than both of of these colleagues and I was 'on call' all weekend as the most senior point of contact in the organisation. However, this was not an issue that required weekend working and, more importantly, it was not an issue that I needed to be consulted on. It was very simple and should have easily been resolved in working hours by this individual alone - her direct line manager would not have needed to input either.

AIBU to think that this was unprofessional and unacceptable from both of them?After no sleep, I've reached that 'was it really that bad' point where I am so sleep deprived that I am not sure whether I am overreacting in my annoyance or not!

Some one sending you 50 emails over the weekend is unhinged behaviour and harassment.

To then phone you hysterical is further unhinged behaviour.

Unless it was a bomb threat 'evacuate the building' type urgency.
Which it eveidntly wasn't.

They are obviously mentally unwell and unable to judge reasonable behaviours, approprite risk level, or follow protocol. The fact their line manager isn't concerned about their ability to function at work is the highly concerning.

Are you claiming to be SCS3 OP? If you really are I would be more concerned why you didn’t find out why the person was calling you then contact their manager and/or an HR business partner to raise some well being concerns. It would be extraordinary for an HO to call a DG at all, let alone out of office hours. If this really happened at the grades you have mentioned then I would be very concerned for the colleague and what else is going on in your department that caused this to happen.

(for non civil servants SCS3 is generally one below permanent secretary so very senior).

Absolutely. It's the line manager I'd be wanting HR to take a good, hard look at.

I find this hard to believe. If you are as senior as you say, you would have handled this far more professionally and I can’t imagine writing about it on mumsnet and not being able to sleep. It was a non issue really. The other person clearly needs reminding of procedure or some support, and their line manager is best placed to address that. You have completely overreacted. Are you new to having some seniority? Are you struggling to cope in your own position? Are you prone to overreacting? Something else?

Wrong wrong wrong. The OP was not the first line on call contact and the system was not to email but to phone.

It was a bank holiday weekend. It is completely normal not to check work e-mails over a bank holiday. It was unreasonable of her to send them and to ring you late at night unless there was a prior arrangement equivalent to being on call or wanting to know if something occurred. In France its actually illegal for her to do this.

Absolutely this.

I don’t get any empathy from this:
I tried to explain that on-call procedures meant she should not have contacted me, as she knew I would not be monitoring emails, and that we could discuss tomorrow. She would not listen. In the end I had no choice but to cut across her and make it clear we would discuss in the morning. I'm not sure what else I could have done. I followed procedures perfectly and the colleague in question did not.

You have someone in hysterics on the phone and rather than trying to calm her down, you quote procedures at her?!

ETA: I know it’s unreasonable to send 50 emails and ring at 2230, but that’s just further indication that someone needs support and not being told they’re not following a procedure.

this is brilliant 😂😂😂

And the perfect demonstration of why many of us are sick of the workplace and leaving if we possibly can

So did the incoherent caller call the person they should have called?

They shouldn't have needed to call anyone because they weren't supposed to be working over the weekend.

I'm not on call to Mumsnet. The op is. She had tried emailing many times. Finally she called her 'in an emergency " nothing wrong

So a much more junior person, who’s clearly not coping well with her role and was struggling with a problem (unnecessarily by the sound of it, but struggling nonetheless), did not follow proper protocol but saw you were the ‘on call’ manager and woke you up? And you put the phone down on her, decided it was a non-issue and have since referred back to her line manager and HR, so it’s sorted?

I really don’t understand the point of this thread unless by ‘completely unacceptable’ you want everyone to be so outraged at the disturbed evening of such a terribly, impressively senior person that we all suggest she should be fired - or maybe publically flogged?

People make mistakes, as I’m sure you have on the way to being so high up you must get nosebleeds.

It wouldn’t hurt to reflect a bit on how you came to be so pompous and self-important that a minor incident can make you feel so personally disrespected you start an online thread about it.

No one should be expected to 'support' or emptahsie with unhinged hysterical employees calling for non urgent reasons at 10.30 at night.

Your employer is not a mental health hot line.

If your erratic behaviour reveals that you have mental health issues your line manger should deal with this within work hours following HR procedure for support and risk.

It's not up to senior mamagers to offer empathy to unhinged emploees out of work hours.

And it's ridiculous that so many people think it is.

You are in the wrong Op

over 45 minutes?

Did you spend the whole time berating her for calling you as I can't understand her ringing you, and after being on the phone with her for 45 minutes, you were still none the wiser about what she was ringing about??

I don’t think the OP is actually in the civil service, she was just using HEO and SCS3 as examples of the disparity in seniority. But as SCS3 has much more responsibility than the CEO of most businesses she just sounds ridiculous. No SCS3 would ever be posting about their work on MN, or posting at all during the working day.

Your explanation doesn't really help with your attitude. You really shouldn't be plastering this all over sm. The way you have spoken about colleague is shocking. Also it's a company matter you should be discrete.

I would hope that someone so het up that they think their only option is to ring me at 1030 is such a vanishingly rare event that, even though I’m not ‘expected’ to try and help, I would do. It’s not a normal level of stress; it’s a crisis. I hope my work would check that I was ok if I’d had to deal with this.

My feeling on this is that a bit more humanity could have been shown. You say HR is dealing with the person, so you just wash your hands of the whole situation?

Also it's a company matter you should be discrete.

As opposed to concrete?

so you just wash your hands of the whole situation?

This person isn't in op's department or known to her. It would be inappropriate for op to seek to be involved in what may be confidential issues relating to the person's health and wellbeing.

I do not think you are being unreasonable. It appears from your posts that on call in your organisation does not mean monitoring emails. In my company on call means that someone can phone you in an emergency.

In any case anything urgent should be a phone call or text, not an email. Emails are checked sporadically during the working day. Phone calls are immediate. Texts you get a notification. Emails may not be seen for hours.

Hi OP

My partner is an IT network engineer for a hospital trust and he is on call a fortnight every 8 weeks and he isn't expected to monitor emails either. There is a system in place where somebody fields the calls and then contacts the relevant person by phone depending on what the problem is. My partner would only get a phone call of a network has gone down etc. No contact is made via email.

It is important that systems are adhered to otherwise they get abused! Back in the day the on call system was much nessier and they was no person fielding calls and people used to treat it as an everything and anything phone line and we'd get phonecalls waking us up at 3am for things like forgotten password resets!

But the employee should not have made been working.
But if she had to make contact she should have phoned the, if you like, triage person, who would have quite likely told her so and she should leave it till after the weekend /bank holiday.
The OP is only to be contacted if something happens that's completely out of the ordinary.
This wasn't.

How is not being expected to read the emails the same as ignoring them?

She didn't read them as the procedure is not to read them

How is it so hard for posters to understand?

I swear there must be some MN posters who go out of their way to misunderstand, or take advantage of missing information, so they can vent their spleen at the OP. Emotionally satisfying for them, I'm sure, but not conducive to a useful debate.

The employee:

shouldn't have been working

emailed the wrong person, fifty times

phoned the wrong person, in a state, and then couldn't be talked down even after nearly an hour

about something that turned out to be trivial.

The fault is not with the OP, or with the employee (who is now getting help), but with the line manager, who brushed off the whole thing. WTF is up with him??

This is what baffles me - I just can't imagine very senior people in my organisation posting like this, about a colleague, on a public forum.

Hope for the OP's sake that the other person is not on Mumsnet and recognises herself.