Reasonably petty office situation. How to handle it?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So… I work in an office.

Each Wednesday, my team has a weekly team meeting. We rotate who chairs the meeting each week between all team members.

On a Monday, whoever is chairing the coming Wednesday’s meeting will usually send an email to the team, containing the agenda for the upcoming meeting. The purpose of this email is to allow all team members to review the agenda, and request (via an email response) any additions/changes to it before Wednesday.

It’s a convenient way of doing it, because when it comes times to compile the final agenda, you have all the changes/additions conveniently stored in one place (your inbox!).

So, I am hosting this Wednesday. On Friday of last week, I get an “instant message” on my screen from an office colleague (Melanie*), asking me to add agenda item XYZ to the upcoming Wednesday meeting agenda.

My instant message response: “Hey Melanie! Yeah no worries. I’ll be sending the usual email out to the team on Monday asking for any changes/additions to the agenda, so please send me a reminder email then”.

Melanie’s response: “This IS the reminder!, smiley face”.

Now, I know Melanie well enough to know that the point of that last message was to make it clear to me that the job of ensuring that XYZ gets added to the meeting agenda was now 100% my responsibility.

I think it’s fair and reasonable that I ask for all changes to the agenda to be submitted to me in the one place, in order to ensure I don’t miss any.

I now have to remember to not only send the Monday email, but to also add Melanie’s changes before I send it, assuming I can remember the details of Melanie’s agenda item, which I will have to store somewhere (instant messaging does not store history at my place of work).

Not fair, I say.

For those who agree that Melanie’s expectations of me are unfair, what would be the appropriate response to Melanie here?

I don’t mean how can I tell her off… I basically mean, what is the nice way of saying “You’re free to not send me a reminder Melanie, but I of course give no guarantees your XYZ item will be added to the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting, because you are knowingly breaking the usual process of submitting agenda items, even when I’ve specifically requested that you follow the usual process”.

Tips? Advice?

(In real life, I caved in, and said sure… I’ll make sure XYZ gets added to the agenda when I get around to compiling it).

2

Real Life solution – Cut and Paste Melanie’s XYZ from her IM, send a mail to yourself with a subject line that will tell you it’s team-meeting related, and proceed as usual.

You’re probably right but this is too tiny an issue to get very worked up about, IMHO.

After sending the agenda out, including XYZ, you can send Melanie a polite private mail asking her to send her suggestions via mail in the future and it makes it easier to process.

… Or just hand her an Etch-A-Sketch with your agenda requests (T, U, V and W) “written” on it, on the Monday before it’s her turn to chair the meeting… :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley:

3

I get this a bit, we’ve recently got Microsoft Lync installed and people haven’t really sussed out the differences between an IM and an email. I usually say ‘send me an email, otherwise I’ll forget as soon as I close this instant message window.’

Sometimes, if I know that won’t go down well, I’ll just copy/paste the IM text into an email and send it to myself. Not ideal, but you’ve got to pick your battles.

4

The “send it to myself in an email” idea still isn’t fail-safe, because I’ll be hard-wired to look for email responses date stamped after I send the email asking for my colleagues to review the agenda.

5

Just state your needs.

“Melanie, I will do my best to make sure that it gets on the agenda, but I can’t guarantee that without an e-mail on Monday. That’s the best way for me to ensure that it gets done.”

6

I tackle that by sending myself an e-mail with delayed deliverance. Or by putting it in my Outlook Calendar, grouped in with the task of "sending out e-mail for team-meeting). Any background info I paste in the body of that calendar-event.

We don’t use IM in my office.

7

Assuming you’re one of the 99% of people using Outlook/Exchange in an office setting, flag the mail to yourself as a task with a due date of Monday or Tuesday.

8

What’s wrong with saying, politely, “Oh, can you send me an e-mail? Otherwise I’ll forget! You know I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on.”

I mean, I do it, and I am the low man on the totem pole at work. But if you say it politely they don’t usually get mad.

9

The answer is different depending on why this is bothering you.

Is it simply, “I’m worried that I might forget about this and it will reflect poorly on me?” In that case, do it yourself with any of the above suggestions (I like the delayed email or Outlook task options).

If the worry is, “I want to make sure people are conforming to the expectations for team meetings so that this doesn’t snowball into me being further put upon,” then send out an email on Monday that says something like, "I know a few of you have already sent me agenda requests, but please send me another one today per our normal schedule to ensure that I don’t miss anything " or whatever.

10

I concur with this.

I have to deal with a similar annoyance: One person repeatedly sending me summaries in a format that deviates from the format the final report uses. For some reason, everyone else has caught on to the fact that it saves me a lot of work and headache if everything is formatted the same way. But not this person.

It used to be worst, though. They used to send me stuff at the very last minute, which would often make me risk missing my deadline. Rather than exploding, I politely told them if they don’t send me their stuff before COB the previous day, I can’t ensure it gets put in the final report. Now at least I get the stuff on time, even though it’s formatted wackily.

11

If this is the first time such a thing has happened (IM instead of email), I think just suck it up and make the change to the agenda before you distribute the draft agenda. On the scale of work annoyances, a one-time thing like this should be minimal and quickly forgotten.

If it has happened a couple times, I agree with pressing the case that you want an email, not an IM, in order to keep everyone’s comments organized. I think in this particular case the window for that response has closed, because it seems really odd if you are working on the draft agenda on a Monday, to send an email to someone about an IM sent on Friday, asking them to resend an email on Monday because you might have forgot about what they IM’ed you on Friday.

If IM’ing comments instead of emailing them becomes a frequent occurrence, you may want to confer with your colleagues and add an item to the next agenda about the need to email, not IM, agenda items.

12

Can’t you leave her item off the email agenda and when she calls you on it later be all “Oops, I forgot, sorry - that’s why I need that stuff in email!”

13

[aside] This makes me sooooo glad I don’t work in an office anymore. In that microscopic/microcosmic world this kind of admittedly petty stuff used to bug the holy shit out of me. Also, weekly meetings are the work of Satan, pure and simple. Oh, how I hated them. My condolences to the OP for even having to give this one second’s thought. [/aside]

I might write myself a post-it note (paper or digital) with Melanie’s info on it and keep it stuck in a prominent place JUST THIS ONE TIME, and tell her so. It’s only a few days. It’s not like she’s asking you to remember something for a year.

Or, what I would probably do is have a system set up where I create a blank document for the agenda and put it in a folder where I keep the agendas every time it’s my turn. Then paste her info into that document along with any other stuff that comes up between now and the time you need to do the agenda. When it comes time to do the agenda, you open your dummy document, which already has some notes, etc. in it.

For example, I do newsletters 4 X per year for one client. I create a folder for the upcoming newsletter and in it I create a document called “November Newsletter.” Any time I have the thought “Oh, that needs to go in the newsletter,” I open the document (I have a shortcut on my desktop) and make a note.

I would not ask her to re-send, even though she was being a PITA. Office cooperation is important to maintain and you don’t want to get the reputation of being a hard-ass. Someday you may really need Melanie to pull you out of quicksand.

14

That was what I was gonna say!

15

I like this solution. Covers all the bases and does so in a reasonable manner.

16

Perfect.

17

You use Lync and Outlook? If so you should have a ‘Conversation History’ folder in Outlook that you can look back at.

18

Maybe if you don’t need to IM this coworker, you could remove them from your IM contacts.

19

Outlook reminder.

20

I think the OP is being unreasonable. You’ve been asked to add the change. It’s now your job to remember to do it. It’s not rocket surgery. Melanie has given you the information you need. I don’t think it’s reasonable for you to ask for it in a different format at a different time.