Hand hold about meeting tomorrow please

[freakinthespreadsheets]

On Friday morning my manager's manager (head of department) put a meeting in for first thing tomorrow morning with me, her and my immediate manager, labelled only as "Catchup". No other context, this sort of random catchup NEVER happens in the team "just because" (not with that specific line of people anyway, it would either be a general whole-team wellbeing catchup with all 6 of us or just me and line manager). the fact it is first thing in the morning after a BH weekend makes it seem urgent - after I've been on AL all week, has had me worrying ALL weekend that something terrible is going to happen. Ive convinced myself im being sacked, seconded somewhere else, someone has died and everything in between! That'll teach me to check my emails when I'm off!!!
Please can someone handhold as I'm too nervous to sleep now and am physically shaking with worry 😫

NB. I was on AL last week but tend to check emails periodically, and just mark irrelevant stuff as "read" or accept meeting invites, if I'm not actually on holiday to stop things piling up. Please dont have a go at me for this i know its not ideal! I suspect I have ADHD and it makes me feel a lot less anxious and overwhelmed about going back after AL so it's my choice to do this and actually helps me with "switching off" the rest of the time. A few others in the team do the same. Just this time it's really backfired!

Good luck OP, hope you find it’s all nothing much.

Good luck OP

Good luck OP! Hope you managed to get some sleep.

Just for the future, one of my reasonable adjustments in work is that if a catch up or conversation is needed, I'm given some context so I don't catastrophise. Saves me no end of stress and anxiety.

God, I think some posters are catastrophising on your behalf OP! Some of these replies are bonkers!

It's not bad management to put 'catch up' in a diary. And to suggest you bring in union representation .. can you even imagine?! talk about overkill

They aren't to know you're all in a panic at the words 'catch up' but please do ask them to add a little more context to their diary entry next time this happens

A member of my team asked me not to put "catch up" with no context in her diary as it made her anxious. I was happy to comply.

Good luck OP

It is absolutely overkill.. until it's not.

That's exactly how employers (not good ones, mind you) tend to spring not so good scenario's on employee's, if they're going to. Even larger employers who you wouldn't even dream, would. They shouldn't, but they do. & Bringing along union reps to such occasions is exactly how you push back against this type of behaviour. It's not bonkers to exercise your rights in a scenario that's just plain odd.

It's overkill if it turns out to be something positive like a promotion. It's not overkill if it turns out it's a disciplinary or something similar, as if so, it's unfair process. That's kind of the problem - OP has no idea it seems, and that's the entire fault of the employer, here.

No reasonable employer would schedule a sudden meeting with an employee whilst they're on annual leave with no prior warning and absolutely zero context other than 'catch up' when she's never had this type of meeting before in her employment with them. Even if it turns out to be a positive meeting - it's still really bad form on the employers part.

If you have generally supportive managers, it may be to tell you to stop logging on when you're on leave!
Or it may be that managers manager has told them they should be having regular 1:1s with staff.

By the way OP. I'm hoping for the absolute best for you, and that's it's absolutely amazing news. Good luck!

secret side projects

Oooh are you a spy OP? Maybe you're gonna be smuggled over the Russian Chinese border. Dropped in from a helicopter SAS style. If we don't hear from you again we know that's what's happened. 😁

All joking aside, hope you're okay this morning and your catch up goes well. You sound like an excellent employee so I'm sure you have nothing to worry about ❤️

Good luck this morning OP.

I hope it is something positive for you OP. I and the same with things like this. My manager is terrible for it, and I have always said if I become a manager I will not do this to staff.

For a positive one, my managers manager put in a call like this with me once and it was a promotion.

I hope its good news OP, but in future, don't check emails when you're on AL, its supposed to be a relaxing time off for you.

Good luck this morning.

Thanks all for your support! I've been to the meeting and it was not, as many of you predicted, a promotion. I'm being asked to cover another role (laterally) for a short period, we're just scoping out what that means for my current workload as there will be no backfill for me.
At least I'm not being seconded and I'm staying with my immediate team, which after being sacked was my next biggest worry! (Other teams are very closely micromanaged and we are not)

Thanks everyone for your hand hold last night!

I'm so glad it was nothing to worry about.

Awww so you're not been parachuted into deepest, darkest Mongolia?

How disappointing... 😉😂

Glad all is okay.

Imagine if you'd have take your union rep in 😜

well hopefully you can get a decent nights sleep tonight .

Pleased it was nothing awful :)