Snidey colleague!

[atmywitsend13]

This morning I received an email on behalf of a colleague - I look after her diary - on the day she received the invite she had marked herself out of the office on leave. So I accepted the invite as 'tentative' thinking she would either accept or decline as necessary considering she was on holiday.

She then sent me an email with quite an offish tone asking me to check directly with her with all future invites and she now looks quite silly to the client -

I have access to other staff members inbox and was monitoring for meetings/calls and I noticed she has blind copied in that member of staff...??? - Making ME now look stupid to other staff members - no idea who else she blind copied in - they have all now gone to lunch.

Grrr!

Erm, personally if I was responding directly to a customer, I probably would have let her know that the customer was hoping for a meeting whilst she was on leave, and would she like to put together a suitable response or find someone else to go along.

Who did she bcc though? That I find a tad strange.

What other member of staff did she bcc?

I would email her back and say that you accepted tentatively given her planned leave that day.

Thats all you need to say.
Don't worry about who else she may have blind copied. At least now you know what sort of person you're dealing with. ..

Keep an audit trail as these kind of people will always try to put the blame on other people. Especially if she thinks it's made her look stupid though it sounds as if she can do that perfectly well without any help .

I have to say I would expect someone to check with me first rather than accepting tentatively something for when I was on leave, as I'd then feel obliged to consider cancelling the leave to avoid mucking the client about, depending on how important it was.

So I can understand her irritation. Whether it was reasonable to bcc another employee in depends who it was.

I wouldn't be happy if my secretary did that - if I've marked the day as leave / unavailable in my diary she shouldn't be accepting meetings (tentatively or not!) for me.

It would make her look stupid/unhelpful when she then has to go back to the client saying she can't make that meeting, and she's justifiably a bit pissed off.

Not sure why she would have bcc'd people, that sounds a bit off, but t be honest you are in the wrong here.

I'd just reply all saying thanks, I accepted it as a tentative so you can follow up with the client, but note your preference for the future.

There was no point in accepting it (tenatively or otherwise) if her calendar says she was on leave. So sorry, I'd say you were in the wrong.

Do you do this normally? Maybe she bcc'd another colleague because this sort of thing is happening too often.

You may have been in the wrong, but she should have spoken to you directly if she had problems with your work and not blind copied in various members of staff with the email. If I were you I would be very careful and wary of future dealings with her, and also keep records of other emails etc that she sends you in case this happens again.