The Meeting That Never Happened

At first, Anika thought the new contractor would be easy to work with.

She had spent months in a remote role that was almost embarrassingly simple: do the work, send the updates by email, answer the occasional question from her manager, and keep moving. Then Selene joined the team.

Selene was only three hours behind Anika, also a contractor, also juggling other obligations, and yet she insisted on speaking by video call for everything. Tiny clarifications. Quick check-ins. One-line updates that could have been written in a sentence. Anika didn’t mind talking, exactly, but coordinating a call across time zones was enough of a chore without their schedules pulling in different directions.

Even worse, Selene kept requesting meetings she never seemed to attend.

Anika would join on time, wait ten minutes, then twenty. Sometimes Selene arrived half an hour late with a brief apology. Sometimes she never came at all. When Anika followed up, Selene would answer hours later, or the next day, with a vague "sorry" and a request to reschedule.

The pattern became so ridiculous that one "quick five-minute call" stretched across nearly a month.

Anika eventually gave in and asked for the information in writing.

Selene refused.

The only time they ever resolved anything cleanly was during a monthly check-in with their manager, Gideon. Selene asked, "Can you see this on your end?"

Anika answered, "No."

"Oh, okay," Selene said.

That was it. All that delay, all that inconvenience, for a question that could have lived and died in a single message.

Anika tried to put it behind her until the next project landed in her lap.

This time, she needed context from Selene before she could begin. She missed the group check-in once, then asked Selene to summarize what had been discussed and what work she was supposed to take on. Selene scheduled a meeting to explain it.

Then didn’t show.

A week later, Gideon asked both of them for progress updates. Anika reached out again, more directly this time, saying she needed the information immediately so she could start.

Selene replied a week later: a call would suffice.

By then, Anika was beyond frustrated. She sent her availability and told Selene to choose any time that worked.

Nothing.

For two full days, she waited while the deadline crept closer. It stopped looking like incompetence and started looking like something worse: a deliberate wall, built out of missed meetings and silence.

Anika thought about complaining to Gideon, but the role was only a contract position. She was already looking for something else, and she hated the idea of sounding difficult when she had no solid proof beyond a trail of no-shows.

Then, finally, Gideon asked for an update.

Anika sent a private message explaining that she still hadn’t been able to reach Selene. Gideon replied by addressing Selene directly and asking for clarification.

Only then did Selene surface.

At 9 p.m., Anika received a text from her that read: "Hey, this is Selene. Feel free to call me if you have time today or tomorrow."

Anika stared at the message in disbelief.

She answered that she was not available for another call and that Selene needed to send a written summary.

Again, nothing.

The next meeting was with Gideon present, after he requested that both women join. Selene arrived seven minutes late with her camera off and claimed technical trouble. She disappeared again to restart her computer. When she came back, the camera was still dark.

Gideon asked, carefully, why she had been unresponsive.

Selene paused, then said, "Oh, sorry, you’re breaking up. Could you repeat that?"

The timing was too neat to be accidental.

When she finally answered, she repeated the same story: Anika and she could never find a time to connect.

Anika had already sent screenshots, timestamps, and follow-ups. There was no point arguing. She sat there in silence while Gideon moved on without pressing the issue.

The project still had to be done.

When Anika asked Selene for the actual structure, she got almost nothing back. One vague suggestion. One enhancement idea. It took Anika sending her own draft before Selene finally replied with a table of contents that at least hinted at what the work was supposed to become.

By then, Anika was racing the clock.

Gideon asked her to copy him on all future messages, as if visibility alone could fix the mess.

It didn’t matter. The damage was done. Anika finished the project under pressure and started applying for anything that would take her away from that team.

Months later, she found a new role. The difference was immediate: clear instructions, actual answers, no vanishing acts in the middle of the workday. It felt like stepping out of a room with no windows and into clean daylight.

Only after she left did she look Selene up again.

Selene had been advertising professional services on a networking profile, the kind that suggested she was handling several clients at once.

That explained some of the silence.

It didn’t explain the evasiveness, or the endless insistence on calls that never happened, or why she had seemed so determined to keep every simple exchange trapped in a meeting that went nowhere.

But by then, Anika no longer needed the answer.

She had one job that taught her how to wait for someone who would never arrive, and another that taught her what it felt like when people simply showed up and did the work.