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!

This OP was never in that position, someone else was RTFT

This thread has officially jumped the shark. Are we now using Google ai to search for the meaning of a phrase that Op herself has clarified has a very clear expectation within her role… to disagree with her?

This is getting more and more bizarre

This!!!!

Like you’re wasting yours ? All I asked was line of work and all of this for that ? Absolutely insane

FWIW op, it must have been a shock when someone phoned you in that state. Sorry if I’ve missed this but did the junior colleague who was monitoring the emails not answer them?

im with you though, you shouldn’t have been called at 10:30pm

Not in this situation, which you would know if you read the OPs posts. Google is not the font of all knowledge, it also hasn’t read the full thread.

You may be better on this occasion and reads even just the OPs post and make your responses relevant to the actual nuances of this “on call”.

No I said the OP should have given relevant information on her situation as it is very different being on call in different job roles . As I said in my line of work from what she said she would be TA however in a different job NTA so it’s hard to make a judgement without that info .

I've worked jobs where I have to be on call. I know exactly what it means. If you actually read what OPs role in being on call, it would be a very rare circumstance that she would be phoned, there is actually another person who deals with ordinary emergencies and OP only deals with something completely out of the ordinary.
I wasn't called direct when I was on call, the person who triages the calls would often say that a particular call wasn't an emergency and I would not be dealing with it.

She did in subsequent posts, which if you’d filtered and read, you’d know!

You thought you needed tone to read 35 pages of posts, you don’t!

the person who should have been the first contact didn't get the emails because they were sent directly to the OP

Absolutely! I don't get why this is so difficult for so many on the thread to understand.

But also, the staff member wasn't supposed to be at work. So they weren't doing work that the first on-call person would want to respond to either. If they had contacted that person, at least they might have got a response, but it likely would have been 'deal with this on Tuesday when your own manager is back in work'.

My workplace has an extensive out of hours response network. It include people such as on-call media/comms or on-call ICT, but they are intended for dealing with on call emergency issues. If you called the ICT duty on call person with your regular ICT problem, you would be told to go away. To me, that's the really unreasonable action of the colleague that OP is highlighting - the expectation that any of the on-call people should help with the colleagues day job, which they happen to be doing at the weekend.

@shortbreadconsumer if you went this to continue. And you may not 😂 then you need to do another thread and link it on here Before gets to 1000

Empathy fail. Hope the poor woman wasn't having a nervous breakdown.

So why did you answer the phone late at night if you knew it wasn’t the junior as you would have her number in your phone Surely ?

next time let go to ansa machine and if they leave a message call back

Good fucking grief!!! After all these pages another one! 🙄

If this person is working weekends, sending 50 emails and getting this distressed, I’d assume they were struggling with stress or other MH issues. They shouldn’t have called you though of course and I can see that it’s annoying that they didn’t follow procedure.

I actually like that the line manager stood up for her and I wonder whether there are issues you’re not aware of. Might be better to approach it from the perspective of what additional support and training might be needed rather than as a complaint.

(Speaking as a lawyer, it would be absolutely fine for a trainee to call the managing partner if they genuinely felt it was warranted. The issue here is that she misjudged the urgency and didn’t follow procedure, not that she is junior and you are senior.)

I'm just going to say, I have a headache. 😕

🤦‍♀️

What is astounding here is the amount you are making up. Self-evidently, if someone dies on the premises of a large organisation, there are decisions to be made which have sod all to do with needing a pathology qualification - liaison with police and health professionals, is there any indication of danger to others, is there any indication of negligence or fault, can the office open the following day, obtaining contact details for their next of kin and letting them know, etc etc.

This employee had worked themselves up in such a state they could not explain themselves coherently. That is not inevitably due to a mental health crisis. Had she followed the correct procedure and emailed the person who actually was on call, she wouldn't have needed to send 50 emails (because she would have received a response to the first one) and presumably wouldn't have got so worked up. Since, as it turned out, what she was calling about was a relatively minor issue, there is absolutely no reason to believe the junior colleague couldn't have dealt with it. Even if this individual was having a mental health crisis, it absolutely would not have been OP's duty to act as her counsellor - if the junior person felt unable to cope, they could and no doubt would have escalated it to her for a simple decision about referring the caller for professional help.

Equally you have made it up that OP failed to empathise - on the contrary, where she could have cut her colleague off after two words, she actually tried to understand what the issue was and what her colleague was saying.

Honestly, it's so tedious the way people on MN make up the facts purely so that they can beat up the OP.

💐

Oh gods no. I can’t face it.

I will end it here with: most people (given they cast their votes before my second post) agree I was not unreasonable. Thanks to those who can read.

All is fine for me now as I am calmer. Colleague will be fine, I hope.

I’m off to bed (for only 7 hours sleep! Booo).

LOL for real? She sent 50 emails and gabbled on for 45 minutes in a confused distressed state- what she should or shouldn’t have done under normal circumstances is irrelevant. She was clearly very unwell. I have worked with someone ‘went off on one’ over nothing in a confused manner. Thankfully because she worked with people who cared, we called an ambulance thinking it was a mental health episode (back when they attended such calls) actually turns out it was hypoglycaemia.

But what support and training can you give for someone who apparently can't understand a simple instruction: if you have an issue over the weekend you contact colleague X?

I would absolutely not be impressed if someone was working when they weren't being paid. I've worked in a corporate environment and smaller companies.
I find it comforting that the leader in this situation wasn't checking her emails at the weekend, as at least that is a sign that it's not on the company culture.
Being able to fulfil your role and leave work on time - so that there is a good balance and time to relax and refresh yourself - is something that should be celebrated.
There is also a difference between slavishly following a procedure for the sake of it, and understanding the process, and following it because of you don't, it negatively impacts others (as demonstrated by the employee not following the out-of-hours process).
You also don't know that the leader in this situation wasn't compassionate and calming, she has not provided that level of detail, so you're making an assumption there. I've said in another comment, she was on the phone for 45 minutes, 40 minutes of that may well have been calming the individual down.

I don't know how the leader didn't "take the initiative", or how deviating from the process would have helped:

• she didn't know the individual had sent 50 emails at the time the individual phoned, because she wasn't checking her emails - something to be applauded, especially as a leader setting examples and expectations.

• she was rightly confused as to why this individual was phoning her as the situation wasn't urgent. Telling the person to leave it to the next day was the correct thing to do, as it was not an urgent situation and dealing with it then and there, on the spot, would have set a precedent for working on non-urgent issues outside of working hours. Also, without the context that the 50 emails provided, she may have not have had all the facts to help with the issue. And she was right to not then feel obliged to trawl through those emails at that time of night during her and her colleagues non-working hours.

This isn't bureaucracy, it's maintaining important boundaries.

Cancel the cheque
Read the thread
Filter the OPs posts

Goodnight!