Whiny baby department heads or department heads with a Napoleon complex.Last month, a meeting was scheduled. My department was not invited. The person holding the meeting called my supervisor to ask why our department was not attending. He replied that we had not been invited to the meeting, he had no e-mails, no calendar events scheduled.
When the meeting was held, it was poorly attended, obviously due to the dept. head not being very organized in scheduling people to attend.
She e-mails the Chief Operating Officer to complain and he e-mails my supervisor asking why we didn't attend. My boss grinds his teeth because in order to defend us, he has to contradict what this other department head said. But he agreed we would attend the next meeting.
Trouble is, the next meeting was scheduled a month in the future.
Things happen.
The meeting was today. Of the people in my department slated to attend, one was on vacation (my boss), another was on emergency personal leave, the other quit, the other was out that day, etc., etc. until basically there was only two people in my dept who
could attend. Me and another woman.
Trouble is, we both forgot about the meeting and there was no one to remind us. Yes, our electronic system will notify us of meetings but only 15 minutes ahead of time. However, if you - as in my case - didn't remember there
was a meeting at all and left for lunch
20 minutes before the meeting, you had no clue. My counterpart's reminder system failed and she didn't even get noticed about the meeting. The dept. head holding the meeting physically came to escort her to the meeting, wondering where everyone else was.
Needless to say, the dept. head complained again - not to my absent boss, not to her immediate boss - but to the head guy. I found myself having to explain to the Chief Operating Officer of my company why I wasn't at this meeting.
And it wasn't like this meeting was very important. It was a review of a client's telephone etiquette.
I kid you not.
I don't know why this woman is so insistent on mandatory 100% attendance at her meetings. Few people have 100% attendance at
any meeting. The information was simple and could have easily been passed out to those who missed the meeting with instructions to review it with the people who
did attend the meeting. That's SOP normally.
So if the COO didn't like my response - I was honest - I may be out of a job soon. The reason will be interesting.
There's always alligator wrestling for a living...
