Alice, Betsy and I are in charge of an April event. Alice and I have just started to become friends. We meet in January and divvy up the work. I do my job and let them know. Six weeks pass and I realize I haven’t heard from either of them.
I send an email, Betsy responds but not Alice. I send a second email to Alice, she apologizes for being busy and says she’ll do her part ASAP. Her job — write a name and a 2-3 sentence description.
A few more days go by, and nothing from Alice. I email again, hear nothing, so I do her job, very quickly and not that well.
3 weeks go by with no word from Alice until Monday, when she emails, “I’m just checking in. I apologize for not reaching out sooner, but just noticed it on my calendar. I can be there to help.”
I had Betsy contact her. So Alice is going to be there.
I’m not good in situations like this. Alice totally dropped the ball, leaving me to do the work, and that bothers me. She might have a really good reason, but she could have conveyed it to us.
Do I pretend nothing happened and act happy to see her?
Do I confront her?
Do I act passive aggressive and grumpily ignore her and say nothing?
Something else?
I know this sounds so middle school, but I’m curious what people think is the best approach. I realize it’s probably the first, but I find that so hard!
I would not bother to confront her. I’d have her help on the day of the event and keep everything light. I also would probably not choose to pursue a friendship with her or work with her on another event.
You act pleasant but not thrilled. You ignore the elephant in the room, which is now water under the bridge so to speak because its in the past. But, if it does come up, you just act matter of fact about it, like you would if she was an employee reporting to you. She dropped the ball. She’s not a close friend. Don’t involve her with any projects or deadlines in the future. I think the fact you aren’t close friends makes it much easier to deal with as there is less history and, therefore, expectations.
I agree, I would do the event, but also going forward I would not ever do something with her where you need to depend on her for something. Some might argue that circumstances got in the way, but if that were the case, she could have sent an e-mail or called and said “I thought I could help with that, but I got too busy”, but the fact that she blew it off like that as if she didn’t have anything to do, tells what kind of person she is. As they say, it would be madness going forward to rely on her, and for me if anything a friend is someone I can rely on, or at least trust to let me know where and where I can’t rely on them.
Thanks for the responses. I promise to reread them all just before I head out. Hardest part for me is adjusting my face to neutral. My features sometimes do things I don’t want them to!
And yes, our budding friendship is over and I clearly won’t work with her again. And the head of the organization knows that she didn’t do her job.
I’d be gracious about it. It sounds annoying, but it doesn’t sound like it was too onerous for you to jump in and do her job. If you feel like you have to say something to avoid the elephant in the room, you could say, “I hope I didn’t step on any toes by writing the description myself, but there was a deadline and it really had to be done.” Or, less passive aggressively, “By the way, I just ended writing that description myself because we had a deadline and it had to get done.” In fact, I would probably just email that to her, if you haven’t told her already. But then I would DEFINITELY let it drop with no simmering resentment.
I think a lot of it depends on how easy it is for you to confront people, and how you do it. I don’t like confrontation so I let things slide if it’s a one time deal, which it sounds like this is. She’s not a friend, and I also wouldn’t pursue it. I think you have to weigh the gratification of putting someone in their place to any future consequences. That always tempers my response.
What would happen if you told her off? She’s not a friend, so no loss there. But will you be running into her again? How awkward. Does she run in the same circle as you and has potential to meet new people that you would too?
Now you’ve made an enemy that will gossip about you…and to people who don’t know you.
I’d tread lightly over these things. You need to be proactive from now on with these types. If there is no response, then you just have to let them know that since you haven’t heard from them, you are assumimg they aren’t interested in participating any longer…then move on without them.
This is where I would reply, copying Betty, and say, “No worries I went ahead and took care of your part for you. See you there!”
Then you can consider it settled but now you know never to rely on Alice for anything ever again. This happens to me every once in a while at work. The job’s gotta get done and you want to keep it professional so I just take care of it and let them know and move on. It’s a little different in a social context but the principle is the same.
Just a question. If her job was just writing a simple thing 2-3 sentences that didn’t amount to much and you could easily handle yourself why did you even assign that as a task? Did she have anything else to do? Sounds a bit condescending to me. I’d probably “forget it” too if it’s like you described. Maybe she is the one who is annoyed.
“Gee, we have a big event! Lots of work! Two of us will do all the heavy stuff and you be a dear and write a sentence or two!”
Next question might be, when the three of you are acknowledged for your efforts…
You owe Alice nothing. Unless you learn what in her life stopped her from making her small contribution and it’s something serious. I’d say, don’t let others see you’re annoyed, that would reflect on you. Smile at Alice and turn away, be on your way to speak with someone else.
gouf78: That was not the issue. This was not an event that needed major planning, and the tasks that I and the other person had to do were of equal work. In fact, her job was the most important and the most creative, because it was how this event was to be publicized and sold to our audience. (Because I only spent 10 minutes on it, I didn’t do a great job and I think that shows by our attendance figures.)
lookingforward: The people in charge of our organization are aware of what she didn’t do, so I don’t think she’ll get any undeserved credit.
Bit of advice. Don’t blame your attendance numbers on her. True that publicity is important but it seems if it was that important you would have been up on this weeks before. Good event planning includes deadlines. You already had doubts since you didn’t get e-mails from her.
You started in Jan. for an April event. If it was important for this task you would have had an absolute deadline that she would have known about and then if the task wasn’t completed it would be turned over to someone else.
This is not a new scenario and while I ALWAYS hope that people do their jobs in a timely fashion it is important to have the plan B in place.in case someone gets sick/ isn’t able to complete the task/ doesn’t perform to standard… That’s why deadlines are made in advance of a “drop dead” date.
I wouldn’t get her heavily involved in the future, but as posted above her assigned task seemed really small. You are acting like she really dropped the ball, but she wasn’t holding much of ball to begin with. The situation doesn’t seem that sticky to me, but I work on group projects were it wouldn’t be uncommon for someone else to perform a small task assigned to someone else. Why was she assigned such a small role to begin with? Seems inefficient to assign tiny jobs to various people and then monitor the work effort of those assigned to do the tiny jobs.