I’m in trouble for leaving for a business trip without a late coworker

I was told to stay off screens for a few days last week due to a possible concussion (I’m fine), so this was originally published in 2020.

A reader writes:

Recently, a coworker and I were assigned to go on a business trip for a work conference. It was held at a convention center in a different part of the state about two and a half hours away. We’d be taking a company car, and the drive there during rush hour can be horrendous. My manager and I agreed it would be best to leave early in the morning to beat most of the traffic.

My coworker and I were supposed to meet at our office and leave at 5:30 am. 5:45 rolled around and my coworker still wasn’t at the office. I tried calling her three times during that 15-minute period and she didn’t answer. I decided to leave without her because I didn’t want to be late for the conference.

It turns out she didn’t arrive at the office until 6:05 am, which is well past the time we were told to leave. She had no emergency situation so there was justification for her to be so late. She ended up driving her own car to the conference instead of going in a company car.

When I arrived back at work at the end of the day, my manager was furious at me for going without my coworker. I feel her anger is very misplaced because I was not the one who was late and I attended the conference on time as I was supposed to. It is the late coworker who should be disciplined because she was late to the conference and did not come when we agreed to. Who do you think is wrong here?

Well … I don’t love how anyone involved handled things.

Most obviously, your coworker should have been on time. When someone has gotten up early to meet you at 5:30 am, basic respect dictates that you need to be on time. Being 35 minutes late isn’t cool, and neither was not contacting you to let you know what was going on.

But on your side, deciding to leave after only 15 minutes strikes me as premature. I wouldn’t blame you at all for deciding to leave after half an hour, but 15 minutes isn’t enough of a grace period in this situation. It wasn’t essential that you leave exactly on time; you were just hoping to beat the worst of morning traffic and you could have given her a little more time. If she’d hit bad traffic, for example, or had a child care emergency or so forth and shown up 16 minutes late, it would be unreasonable for you to have already left. (This is especially since you were driving a company car and your coworker driving herself separately increased the travel costs.)

That said, even if you had given her a full half hour, it sounds like she still wouldn’t have been there — so ultimately the outcome (you leaving without her) would have been the same.

If I were your manager, I’d be annoyed with you for taking off so quickly, and it would make me question your judgment. But I’d be far more annoyed with your coworker for being 35 minutes late.

Hopefully your manager has talked to your coworker about the lateness (and keep in mind you wouldn’t necessarily know about it if she had). But you’ve got to take responsibility for your actions too — you did jump the gun and leave too quickly, and you should own that and make it clear you’d handle it differently in the future. For example, you could say, “I should have waited longer. When I couldn’t reach Jane at all, I got concerned that she’d overslept or otherwise wasn’t going to be here anytime soon. But in retrospect, I should have given her more time, and if something like this ever comes up again, I will.”

If your manager is really “furious” (which is an overreaction), I’d leave it there. But if she’s just annoyed, you could also say, “How long should I have waited in that situation? Half an hour sounds more reasonable to me in retrospect, but in this case that still wouldn’t have been enough. If something like this ever happens again, what’s the best way for me to handle it?”

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