How to respond to a colleague who ghosted me out for a chat?

Question

Its been a month that I have joined this new office. I have met quite a few male colleagues in the office; it is more of wishing each other whenever we come across.

There is this one guy with whom I share that kind of rapport. I recently came to know about his work profile and wanted to know more about it.

When I met him today, I asked him if he is free sometime during the day, to which he responded yes, and I fixed a time. I told him it a small chat.

It was an hour past that fixed time; but I didn't hear from him. When we bumped into each other, he told me that he totally forgot about it. I asked him if he is free now to which he replied that he had to attend a meeting.

We didn't meet after that.

I am interested in talking to him; especially about his work profile. I have no idea if he deliberately avoided me or if genuinely forgot.

How can I approach him, again, to talk about his work profile?

Also, I do not want him to think that I am making any kind of advances towards him, and I don't want to sound rude or pushy.

If it matters, I am one of the few well dressed females in the office and 50% of the male colleagues try to talk to me, even if it is for a mere 30 seconds. It has always been professional though.

Answer 1

In my experience at work, people often forget meetings, especially with subordinates or colleagues as opposed to with their managers. It probably was not a brush-off but it could have been. If you really want to meet, you should let some time pass - perhaps a week or two - and then ask again. Maybe something like:

Hey! Just wondering if you're still interested in talking with me about x..y..z (try to be specific so it will pique his interest and he will know you're serious about the topics)

If he seems hesitant or disinterested try adding:

I totally understand that you may not have time. Is there anyone else here with a similar profile you could point me to? I'm really interested in learning more about what you do.

This way you make it clear you really are looking for help. In addition, if your company uses meeting software, like Outlook, offer to set up a meeting and even use a conference room if you can. The more formal, the better, to avoid it appearing like you want it to be social (this may help with your request that it not look like an advance).

Finally, you don't mention WHY you are interested in his profile, but if it is because it is something you are wanting to do in your career, consider including that. Knowing a reason for a conversation does sometimes help me decide to make time for it in a busy day.

Answer 2

People miss meetings all the time. It stinks, but if he's a busy guy with a lot of stuff on his plate then just sitting down with the new hire to talk about the kinds of stuff he does is very low priority for him. Don't take it as an insult, or a sign that he doesn't want to talk, just that there was something more pressing.

I was actually in this situation earlier this week: my boss missed a short meeting where I was supposed to catch him up on a project. He had been called into something else at the last second so I was alone in a conference room for 10 minutes before I went back to my desk and shot him an email along the lines of:

Hey Bob, sorry we couldn't meet. When do you want to catch up about the widget production thing?

You're in a slightly different situation because you're the one reaching out about something that's not necessarily directly related to his work, so maybe tweak the above to something like:

Hey Bob, sorry we couldn't meet the other day. I'd still like to sit down for a bit to talk about what you're doing. Does next Tuesday work?

The key thing to take away is that this was probably an accident and isn't a slight against you or anything like that.