Insight Girl

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes. it takes more gut and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.
~ Jessamyn West

Today would equal one of those days that should be shelved in a dark corner and never reflected upon again. It started really well. Then I checked my banking account and had to run out the door to deposit money because I had once again neglected things and gone red so thanks to the wonderful man in my life I was able to save myself from another fee for today.

Then I went to work. It was a typical day, the rain keeping a good portion of customers at bay. Curses on fair weather riders! Curses I say! This was only moderately bad. I was still kicking myself for the overdraft and not watching carefully. I've been insanely good for the last two years to the point of paranoia when it comes to the check book.

Then the call came in. I had ordered and sent off the wrong part to a customer. I felt so bad and had mucked everything up. Two points to this: one the customer assured me it was okay, he works in public relations and is used to this on a daily basis and he hoped I was not going to get in trouble with my manager and two, my manager basically looks at things as 'we are human, we make mistakes, apologize, fix, move on'.

What does this tell us? Everyone involved is okay with the situation and it has been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. So why do I continue to kick myself? Why does it bother me so much that I goofed and fixed a problem?

Maybe the conversation I had with a parental unit after work sheds some light. After explaining that I made a mistake and how I made said mistake, confusing model years and models, I get a reply of: What's going on? Why aren't you concentrating hard enough?

Really? Does it matter that I had actually fixed my initial mistake of almost ordering for a FLTR instead of a FLHX before the order was processed? No. Does it matter that the particular binder that I was looking at has 3 model years in it separated only by a sheet of orange paper? No. I should have been on top of it from the start.

This brief conversation shed so much light on things. I have always strove to do beyond what is humanly possible because one slip up gets just the slightest comment of criticism and it spirals me downward. I wonder how many people realize how off handed supposedly helpful/probing questions really rock people from their place of security...

3 comments:

@ctors Business May 14, 2010 at 1:24 AM  

Hi Andrea, I totally understand and sympathise with you, but don't beat yourself up about it. You're lucky that you have a sensible boss. But the main thing is that you recognised your mistake when it was pointed out, you apologised and you put it right. So many people don't take ownership of their actions, they off load and transfer blame etc to other people usually subordinates. A sign for me of a good worker is someone who does care who is willing to take responsibility and who gets on with it - whatever the it might be. It helps greatly if you have understanding customers (that usually stems from the fact that the worker encourages this by their past "performance" and good track record). We are only human and mistakes will happen. But it's how you respond when they do which is the most important factor. You obviously rose to the occasion and I suspect you'll never make that same mistake again.

Wilmaryad May 19, 2010 at 9:05 AM  

You and I are alike in that regard, Andie. Mom's 27-year-old knack to criticize every things, good or bad, I did instilled in me a sort of expectation of criticism, which does more harm than good.

I guess we need to forget about outer validation or criticism. I inflict myself with enough of the latter to keep myself on the straight and narrow.

Let's not sweat the small stuff anymore.

Andrea Leigh May 21, 2010 at 11:44 PM  

What was really odd was the other day he basically told me to ignore what everyone says and live my life as I see fit and be happy with it. That's all that matters.


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