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!

If you'd bothered to read you'd see that the OP took time, late at night to try to calm and help the distressed employee even though it was beyond professional remit and not within her work remit

No, OP expressly set out in her first post that she was not on call for the sort of issue this person raised. Why did you think you might know more about it than OP?

@k1233 Ohhhh what a beautiful little overlord! 😍Look at those pearly white teeth and that fantastic side eye that screams 'do my bidding, peasant.'

I don't understand why you are getting a pile on. Of course it's unreasonable that she called and it's not like you ignored her if it was 50 minutes. I would be really worried about her mental health.
If you have sent say 2 or 3 emails and not got a response it's not normal to continue and send 50....

She was obviously panicked, I think you are being unreasonable- just because it isn't what you deem urgent. You're in a senior role and therefore experienced enough to know it isn't urgent, it clearly felt urgent. What is going on with the culture in your workplace that your response to someone in distress is "you shouldn't have called me"
Either the pressure on people is sending everyone nuts OR she is having a crisis. If her line manager also felt you should have responded, it suggest to me you've left a junior colleague feeling incredibly unsupported when you were supposed to be in a "senior" aka "duty of care" role. Being senior isn't just about operational issues, it's about cultural and human leadership. You clearly lack empathy, eq and ability in this area.

NOBA the Incoherent Person should not even have been working.

If she goes into work when she should not be, cannot read and understand a simple two stage OOH procedure and becomes uncontrollably incoherent on the phone then do you think that maybe this is not the job for her?

Because people can’t or won’t read the OPs posts, then when they do they won’t acknowledge they’ve got it wrong!

And even ….. 22.30 is not late or OP shouldn’t have answered the phone as it was a number she didn’t know!

You're following the time-honoured MN practice of making things up in order to attack OP. Where does it say that OP responded by telling the person calling that they shouldn't have called her?

It this person was having a crisis, she had a perfectly clear procedure of which she had been reminded only last Friday for sorting it out. Yet she chose to ignore it and instead to work herself up trying to email someone who had no reason or need to look at her emails over the weekend. The fact that her line manager is incompetent in no way means OP is wrong, if anything it suggests that the line manager should have sorted out the issue themselves before buggering off for the weekend.

I think the employee is not suited to the employment. I think she should move to a different role.

It would be a poor quality approach to wait for multiple things to go wrong before deciding to look at the process meanwhile just blaming individuals. .

But you’ve literally said they gave relevant details after their post . You are going off on me for giving an opinion the OP asked for. And I never even said the OP was in the wrong so what’s your problem ?

Well it seems that OP has reported as she should, so it's in the hands of whoever else now to decide if anyone is to 'blame'

Because there is really no way an OP can anticipate each and every fact that every person responding to the thread might find relevant. If they tried, the OP would be endless, no-one would bother to read it and she'd get a load of arsey posts along the line of TL:DR.

It's a discussion. MN , in their wisdom, facilitate the process by makingit exceptionally easy to isolate and read all the OP's posts so you can ensure you are fully informed before you jump in with an answer that is irrelevant or based on a mistaken premise. Why not just use that function so that you don't waste your time?

An employee having a mental breakdown and reaching out for help (even if that wasn’t their intention) is very much a senior employee thing. So you’re not a mental health professional ….. but you’re not a pathologist either yet you were okay dealing with a death? She was on the phone in distress for 45 minutes and you brushed her away with “we’ll talk tomorrow it’s not that important” like the work thing was still the main problem at that moment?

Your whole thread sounds so very entitled- you are basically annoyed because you are too important to be bothered by such lowly subordinates and their mental health crisis. You seem to think that the junior staff below you should have dealt with the 50 emails and hysterical employee all by themselves without bothering you?

I’m really hoping this is just made up click bait because the lack of empathy or common sense on display is absolutely astounding.

I did read but found her approach rather dismissive.

Yes I understand that . But in my original post I never said OP was wrong . All I suggested was relevant details be included in original post . It’s hard to judge when things like thy didnt include are left out so I suggested that they be included .

It depends on what the company is and whether the renegade staff are doing useful stuff or creating mega cock ups. I used to work in the NHS and had to threaten a staff member with a disciplinary because they were coming into work out of their hours and giving unsanctioned treatments to community patients. This drove a truck through our staff safety policies (excet we'd still have been responsible if anything had gone wrong) as well as causing trouble when other patients asked why THEY couldn't get evening visits and the same interventions as Mrs X down the road. Oddly enough procedures are there for reasons and people can't just change things because its a good idea without considering and understanding the outcomes of that change. The OP DID try to calm the person down, but perhaps that person wouldn't have been distressed if A she hadn't gone to work when she shouldn't and B managed to correctly use a simple 2 stage OOH procedure.

For gods sake I don’t think that and I never suggested I did . All I did was ask what line of work they were in .

So how long would you have spent with the person that should not really have contacted you? Serious question?

When your 'on call' it means you are meant to be available 24hrs a day ... regardless of the time ... isnt that what on call is? She has already said she was "on call"

the Incoherent person A should not have been in work and B should have followed the OOH procedure. If she had done EITHER of those things, she wouldn't have ended up incoherent on the phone to the wrong person.

I was answering your post saying you didn’t have time to read 35 pages of replies, I gave the appropriate information saying, you don’t need to.

You then argued that anyway the OP should’ve covered every single base on her first post!

Again, just filter and the then 10 posts would’ve shown all the information for you to make an informed decision.

Im not sure what else you want me to say?

nope, you can be "second line on call" Its often the case when senior staff don't need to deal with every OOH issue but need to be contactable for the huge stuff. The fact that "someone somwhere" have that answer does not make ir correct. A better answer would have been "it means what your job description says it means"

I agree.