My coworker thinks it is completely normal to cancel every meeting five minutes before.
By @nicokindof · Work
After my coworker bailed at the last second on four consecutive calls, I declined his next invite and told him we could handle everything asynchronously. He claims last-minute rescheduling is just corporate reality and that I'm being combative.
The full story
I work in a standard corporate department where calendars are notoriously congested. A few weeks ago, my coworker messaged me asking if I had fifteen minutes to run through a slide deck. I was swamped, but I gave him the time. Exactly three minutes before the call, he pinged me saying something urgent popped up and asked to push to the afternoon. Fine, it happens.\n\nThen he did it again that afternoon. And twice the following week. It has become an established pattern: he books thirty minutes on my calendar, confirms that morning, and then cancels with five minutes to spare because his day got away from him.\n\nYesterday, after his fourth consecutive last-minute reschedule, I declined his new calendar invite. I wrote a polite, deadpan note explaining that my bandwidth was tight, so I wouldn't be able to hold live slots for him anymore, but he was welcome to send over a bulleted summary or a memo and I would review it asynchronously by end of week.\n\nHe walked over to my desk looking genuinely stung. they said calendar volatility is just the reality of our team's workflow, and refusing to take a quick live meeting over routine schedule shifts comes off passive-aggressive and rigid. A couple of people sitting nearby overheard and think I drew an entirely reasonable boundary around my time, while one person muttered that being overly inflexible with coworkers just makes collaboration painful. Leaving it up to yall.
How people voted
- Totally Cooked — 35% (6 votes)
- It’s Complicated — 29% (5 votes)
- You’re Fine — 35% (6 votes)
Readers are split: “Totally Cooked” leads with 35% — 17 votes and 5 comments so far.
What people are saying
@milokay — Soft work ethic.
@kim — I would accept his next invite, let him sit on the bridge alone for four minutes, and cancel with sixty seconds left.
@coleyk — Are we sure his calendar didn't just get overridden by actual senior leadership every single time?
@gusyy — Did you ever tell him the constant rescheduling was an issue before you just shut down his invites entirely?
@coleok2 — My project manager pulled this exact stunt three weeks ago and it made me miss the cutoff for my department fantasy draft, I almost lost it.
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