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!

Well if someone ignored me for 3 days I would assume they where dead so I would absolutely be going round to check on them

No

If a work colleague ignored another work colleague for 3 days over a bank holiday I’d assume they were on holiday with their family.

you need to be careful you don’t get arrested for stalking.

Take a look around the comments at how many people are championing abuse of an on call system, championing illicit interference with work systems when they aren't officially meant to be working, championing harassing colleagues inappropriately! And you don't get why the OP may have been a bit freaked out by erratic and weird behaviour from someone who shouldn't be touching anything to do with work!

You've never been stalked have you and had dealings with the police over it. Do you have any idea what level of stalking it has to get to for the police to give a shit.

unfortunately i'm not so lucky. I have several close friends who live in Canada & USA who message me at weird times of night.. and two BFFs who do as well, one is a paramedic who sends me crap at all hours of night when he's on shift, and the other is a fellow chronic pain/disabled person who like me doesn't always sleep well, so we have been known to chat at 4am when neither of us can sleep.

So.. i had to learn the DND and 'call twice' bypass out of necessity.

you know nothing.

If you worked for us acting like you say you would you wouldn’t get past your probation.

I have a feeling that a man's boundaries wouldn't similarly be called cold or unkind.
And this is despite the poor bloody OP spending 45 minutes on the meltdown.

well, depending what mobile phone you have, if you look in depth in the DND settings, there is usually an option you can turn on that allows you to set it so that if someone phones you twice within 5 minutes, it will bypass the DND and ring out.

There is also usually a setting that allows you to add people to a list that will ALWAYS bypass the DND and the phone will ring out if they call.

I have both on.
The immediate bypass list includes my mom, my brother, his wife, my daughter, and my three closest friends (and one of their spouses)

Thankyou I will make sure to pass this on to family members

youalright
People i work with know not to ignore me. When I said I've turned up at peoples doors who ignored me im talking about friends, family, partners. But I would absolutely do this to a colleague if I was feeling that distressed and they ignored me. Its such a horrible thing to do to a person. What people need to realise is this felt like an emergency to this employee

Not too sure if this is arrogance, that you know everything about your colleagues to know that they haven’t anything better to be doing or thinking about apart from you

Or selfishness to expect your colleagues to drop their own lives and immediately be there for your latest storm in a tea cup.

What if you didn’t answer a call from a colleague and then they come knocking on your door crying because they broke a nail and expected to sot there being anxious and panicking all night.

Honestly it sounds like all of this should be going through their manager. The fact that their manager also thought it was appropriate to go to you means they are not guiding their team on the right processes in the business and the fact that this person was in a massive flap over the weekend means their workload or expectations are not being properly managed and either they are being overworked or overworking themselves and not getting support.

Don't make excuses! Most of us don't log on our work computers at weekends and bank holidays, that is not an excuse to stalk people! You aren't entitled to receive an email during those times and you know you won't receive one so you don't need to go to anyone's house. Do you want to get sectioned because behaving like that will get you there! How do you intend to get people's addresses? Anybody giving someone like you an address so you could stalk a colleague at their home would get the sack as well.

I never used to check work emails when I was on call over a weekend. Why would I? I wasn't working and I wasn't being paid any extra, I was just on call in case there was an emergency. Everyone who might need to escalate an issue was aware of the protocol to call in an emergency, and not email. Consequently, there was no need to check emails and no expectation that we should do so.

I really can't understand what is so difficult for people to comprehend about the fact that checking emails is simply not part of the duties for some on call rotas. And no, I still don't check my work emails every day at the weekend - I might look at them if I have a specific reason for doing so, but not routinely, and I certainly don't expect my staff to check emails outside of office hours. They're not paid to work over the weekend and neither am I.

Sectioned for that 🤣🤣🤣 how many mh beds do you think we have in this country

I never miss a call

So what you are saying is that you are a devious person that knows how much you can ruin a persons life without falling foul of the law? Jesus can you get any lower!

I know from first hand experience that the police will take action if a mentally unstable person makes an unwelcome appearance on someone's doorstep. A lot depends on the specific circumstances.

Where do you think you would end up if you keep harassing somebody at their home! If they had to keep calling the police to you because you won't stay away and you beg for attention at weekends! You'd put away somewhere I promise you! You don't give a shit about anyone but yourself, don't give a shit how you would impact anyone! typical bpd! Cold and unhinged!

Who said anything about keep harassing someone

Yeah and I don't think them circumstances would include going to check on someone who hasn't responded in 3 days

I sometimes like to jump from the first pages of a thread, when it was reasonable, then go to the one in the twenties because by then, the thread has normally become derailed to hell.

This one has not disappointed. We have accusations of stalking and cautions about being consigned to Bedlam 😂😂

But they didn't need help (or at least work-related help), that was the whole point.
There was no emergency, not even close. Crying!colleague wasn't even supposed to be working herself. Nothing would have happened if the "issue" (which wasn't an issue) wasn't even picked up, let alone dealt with, until Monday.

I'm sure if there had been an actual issue OP would have been okay with crying!colleague bypassing the normal procedure and contacting her directly (albeit would probably have preferred a professional phone call "Hello it's X from Y team, sorry to go against protocol but I've got an urgent issue that might impact the business..." rather than incoherent wailing).

She might need psychological help for what is clearly a fairly extreme mental health issue but that's really not OP's role - she isn't HR, or employee assistance, a colleague in her team, her mentor, her line manager or even her manager's manager. She isn't her partner, friend, or family member. She isn't her GP or therapist or 999 or 111, all of whom would have been better to help in a MH emergency than someone who just happens to work with her.

So there was no reason whatsoever for OP to be the person they contacted, and, therefore, completely reasonable, in fact recommended in almost every workplace with any sort of hierarchical structure for OP to go to their line manager, who SHOULD be the first point of call for both work related AND personal issues.

Hi @shortbreadconsumer . I think there are lots of people here reading you wrong. I understand why you would be upset and frustrated- a call at 10.30pm at night from an hysterical person would shake anyone.

It sounds like the person has lost all perspective, for what reason we can only (unhelpfully) speculate or had some kind of mental health issue. Hopefully they can be dealt with by HR and I agree you’re best of out of it. May be worth reviewing the protocols too as in my view she shouldn’t have been able to “get” to you in this way.