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!

YABVU. A colleague in such distress that they couldn't speak clearly? After you already hadn't answered any of their emails, and you were on call?

I think it's ridiculous that you're expected to field calls/emails at the weekend, but that's by the bye. If you're expected to, then you should. And your poor colleague has now been left hanging by your refusal to help. Try putting yourself in their shoes and see how you would feel if you'd been dealt with like that.

You need to clarify that hysterics isn’t ok
at work and neither is throwing them on a colleague.

Were you being paid?

Surely the entire point of having someone on call out of hours/weekends is that the person is available to take calls/emails. If it wasn't sufficiently serious for them to have phoned you, at best this is a minor training point for them.

As you were on call, did you check your work emails during the weekend at all? A simple response saying that this is not an emergency and could be picked up on Monday would have taken the matter out of the employees hands. They were clearly panicking and out of their depth. Surely being on call means you should have responded in some way after multiple emails which would have avoided you being woken up in the night.

I’m in a couple of minds about this. Does being “on call” mean that you can be contacted if there is an emergency or does it just mean you should be available? If you are very senior and on call, I would check my emails once a day over the weekend - presumably a short email from you to say that you’ll look at this on Tuesday would have avoided the call.

BUT if this really is a non urgent issue then it may be that your workplace culture is at fault. Sharing what is and what isn’t reasonable re contact at the weekend may be needed.

You need to clarify with your job description what 'on call' means. Why did they not know what to do. Is it a training issue? A systems issue? It seems you could have headed off the late phone call by responding to emails earlier.

You were on call, therefore she called you after not receiving a reply to multiple emails.

YABU. If this colleague was so distressed they couldn't even talk coherently, hanging up on them was 100% unwarranted and unhelpful.

Why couldn't you simply say 'I can hear how upset you are, but I can't understand you right now. Go and make yourself a cup of tea to calm down a bit while I read the emails and I'll phone you back in 20 mins?'

That, at least, would've been the polite, kind and supportive thing to do as a manager!

If you were on call surely you would have seen 50 or so emails come in and realise something was not quite right???

YABU.

When I'm on call over the weekend I check my emails. I ignore anything that's not urgent. Your colleague obviously deemed this urgent and was asking for help. What's the point of being on call if you're not going to help someone?

So you’re on call… ignored the emails, the culture is call if urgent… she called in a panic and you are on here mocking her?

lovely

If you’re on call, shouldn’t you be checking your emails?
I don’t know what line of work you do but if I’m on call, I’m expected to keep an eye on my emails and be available 24/7 on the phone. Do you get paid an on call allowance?

Maybe the colleague overreacted, but perhaps they wouldn’t have if you’d have checked your emails?

I think both of you are at fault here. The colleague probably needs to be given some further training re what constitutes “urgent” and you should either check your emails or expect to be called up if you don’t respond?

If you’re senior then surely you can just have a word with them today about appropriate communication.

Were you on call or not? If you are on call then you should be paid appropriately but should also do the actual work eg look at the emails and speak to the colleague on the phone. Is it normal for them to be working all weekend and at 10:30 at night?

YABU. How are you not checking your emails if you know you're on call? You are literally a resource for this colleague to call upon as needed, they needed you, you declined to respond to 50 emails, then declined to speak to them when they got through to you on the phone. If you'd responded to any emails, there wouldn't have been a call so late at night. Sounds like this is on you.

“On call” in my company means that you’re committing to reviewing emails every couple of hours and accepting responsibility to step in if the request requires it. What does it mean at yours? Your colleague, if they had your phone number, should have phoned after the first couple of emails went unanswered - so leaving it until 22:30 and then phoning in an absolute panic wasn’t professional on their part; though that assumes they did have your number.

As the most senior person it might be easier from your more experienced position to take the stance that the issue didn’t need anyone’s attention over the weekend; but you can’t assume the more junior less experienced colleagues saw it similarly - I doubt they wanted to spend their weekends sending dozens of emails and worrying themselves sick, so it’s fair to assume they genuinely did think it needed attention.

If on call surely you check emails periodically through the on call period, perhaps 2 or 3 times a day and fire off a brief email to reassure, advise etc

What kind of thing was it, if it wasn't something that needed weekend working? It's odd that the person's manager said it was 'not unreasonable' for them to have called you then!

50 emails in a weekend is dangerous mental health territory IMO.

I think if you’re on call and a colleague is repeatedly emailing you, you need to answer. Don’t ignore 50 emails. When she called you, you needed to be more reassuring.

You needed to answer if only to say “this is fine, don’t worry about it, we can deal on Tuesday”.

Edit - normally a 22.30 call would be unreasonable but in these circumstances where you were on call but ignored it all weekend I can see why she called

I think you’ve been unfairly dismissive.

Were you by any chance away for the bank holiday weekend?

The op seems to have gone “ on call” in this thread

So why did the colleague think your involvement was so urgent that they sent you 50 emails? And what did they want you do do when they rung you? Tell you something had happened? Why was it so urgent?

It sounds like a flow chart about the types of issues for on call and the ways to contact is needed as you just weren’t on the same page about how it should be used.

On a job role side of things I dont know what your expectations are.
However on a human side, shes clearly extremely distressed for whatever reason, would it have taken that long to reply to an email saying "dont worry about this it should be easy to sort on Tuesday, I will phone you Tuesday morning and see if you need any support from me or your line manager"
Or on the phone give some reassurance.

I think you need to make sure her line manager has a conversation with her about support as shes clearly struggling for some reason, whether that's with the actual work or a MH/anxiety issue that she needs some support with.

Sounds like you could have handled things a lot better tbh. I suspect the junior person was hysterical because you’d ignored all the emails and they didn’t know what to do. Isn’t that why you’re on call? If you’d answered you could have made clear that this wasn’t a big deal and could wait. Instead you let them go all weekend escalating in stress and worry because (even though you were on call) you wouldn’t look at or respond to your emails. I feel for that junior person who seemed to be following protocol and contacting you to help.

Sounds like this employee needs some training on a) what is urgent & needs a senior manager to intervene in non-working time; and b) how & when to male appropriate work calls.

If you judge the matter about which she sent you 50 emails not to need your intervention, you need to feed this back to her, and give her some training on what/when your intervention is needed out of hours.

And she also needs to be told that calling late at night on a weekend day/Bank Holiday in such a state is highly inappropriate. What could yo have done at 10.30 pm anyway?

You're pretty unreasonable here in my view. You were on call - surely you looked at your emails regularly just to check to see if any fires have started (50 emails you should have noticed) and you also should have your phone on and answer it properly and don't brush concerns away. I'd think you've fallen short massively. I say that as a senior director who has regularly done been the senior manager on call for a global company.

Maybe you are right and these are not valid concerns, but you have to be there for for staff as well, not just the issue itself. If a more junior member of staff thinks there is a problem you have to check it and re-assure them with reasons why you don't think it is, but you cannot just not respond.