Would you apologize?

Your boss tells you that you should assume Coworker A will not have the bandwidth to work on your project. So you think you must get resourceful and you immediately line-up people to take over what B's share of work.

Then you get a nasty email from A blaming you for having excluded him in the project and have other underqualified people take over. He is NOT going to help when these lesser people fail. It's a really nasty, brutal, email.

What do you do now? Do you blame it on your boss? Do you fire back at A? Do you apologize?

You know A doens't mind not getting his part of the project, but he minds not being part of the project.

I was in this exact position today. I sent A an email and apologized. I invited him to join the project and sent him 35 documents for his background reading.

He emailed me back to thank me, and said he would let the current team do the job. He would be glad to help though he was confident the team wouldn't really need his help.

The 35 documents really dd the job!

And it was a very, very nice email.

posted by Office Buddies Day at 11:19 PM