How patient should you be when the person who asked for a
meeting with you is late?
L.L. works as a professional in a field that requires her
to have specific degrees, continuing education, and other credentials to ensure
that her license is up to date. Her employer periodically requires a review of
her credentials and work product to make sure everything is up to date.
"I got an email a few weeks ago from the
credentialing person asking me if I could set aside time for a meeting when we
could go over her review of my files," L.L. writes. They agreed upon a
time and L.L. made note of it on her calendar.
The credentialing person had access to all of L.L.'s
files, so the plan was for her to review those files and come to the meeting
with any questions she might have about them. At the meeting, she would either
sign off on L.L.'s files being up to date, or she'd leave her with a list of
tasks needed to ensure they were complete.
The meeting was to take place mid-morning in L.L.'s
office, so she knew that as long as she did not schedule anything else for that
time period, she would be on time for the meeting. She set aside one hour,
knowing that she would have to move on to meet with clients and other
colleagues once that meeting was complete.
Ten minutes after the meeting was to begin, there was no
word from or sign of the credentialing person in L.L.'s office. Finally, after
20 minutes had passed, L.L. emailed her and asked if they had indeed been
scheduled for when she thought they were scheduled.
A response came five minutes later. They had indeed been
scheduled, but, the credentialing person wrote, she had become "very
busy" and would be right over to meet with L.L., whose office was one
floor up.
When the credentialing person arrived -- now, 30 minutes
late -- she sat down and began to discuss L.L.'s files.
"No apology, no nothing to indicate that she had
kept me waiting for so long," writes L.L. "Shouldn't she at least
have apologized? Should I have said something about how unprofessional it was
for her to not let me know she'd be late?" L.L. needed the person to sign
off on her files and wasn't inclined to anger her by calling her on her
tardiness. Now, she wonders if she should have if, for nothing else, than to
try to raise her awareness so she might not do it again, or at least to let her
know next time if she was going to be late.
The right thing would have been for the credentialing
person to let L.L. know she was running late. She had no obligation to
apologize, but it would have been courteous to do so. L.L. was not wrong to
refrain from making more of an issue of her tardiness. But she would have been fine
to say something. The person's obligation was to show up and do her job. L.L.
held up her end of the bargain. The credentialing person should have done her
best to hold up hers, or to let L.L. know beforehand if she wouldn't be able
to.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
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(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
1 comment:
Jeffrey,
The credentialing person is providing YOU a service - one which you need completed in order to meet your requirements. You set aside an hour for the task and it sounds as though the task was completed within the allotted time. You ask if they should have apologized for being late. Perhaps they should have but it would definitely have been quite rude for you to call them own it while you still needed their service. Let me ask, did you thank them for certifying your credentials? Perhaps you should remove the log from your own eye before you complain about the splinter in your brother's.
William Jacobson
Anaheim, CA
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