Seeing Red.

I waltzed into work this morning with a smile on my face and flaunting my new mod-look. I was happily telling everyone good morning when I finally reached my desk. My cube-mate looks at me and says, "We need to talk. You booked Greg's cars wrong, no one was there to pick him up and take him to the airport. You need to pay more attention to detail."

Back story.

I covered for Eileen last week while she was on vacation in Arizona. Eileen supports the biggest partner in the firm, Greg. It was crazy busy with another girl out sick and already being short staffed and I just didn't double-check everything like I should have.

A few minutes passed by and Eileen comes back up to me and says, "Sorry I lashed out at you, you just need to...

She couldn't even finish her sentence before the waterworks were turned on. I couldn't stop crying. I never cry. What had come over me. I sobbed and went on to tell her how busy things were, how I was covering two desks, couldn't find her password...

She stopped and just stared. She had no clue all these other elements were in the picture but none of that mattered. What mattered was that I messed up, it was in the past, there was nothing I could do to fix what had happened, I could only fix the future. I immediately went to the bathroom to finish crying. I couldn't believe how red my eyes were. The best lesson I learned however was how awesome my eye-liner was! (I had been searching for one that wouldn't wear off throughout the day and man, this didn't even smudge with the waterworks)

All joking aside, I was very upset. Upset that I now looked incompetent. My friend made a joke that sometimes she wishes there was a ctrl+z (which corrects the last thing you did on a computer) that you could do on life.

I know we are human and everyone makes mistakes but I sure did a good one. I decided to come back to my desk and write Greg an email. I knew he wouldn't want excuses, or even a reason as to why.

Greg,

My deepest apologies for the mess-up on your car service yesterday. I know that there is nothing that can take back the mistake that I have made however I still wanted to express my acknowledgement for making the mistake and let you know it will never happen again. I know it’s hard not to let that reflect on my performance as an assistant, and I can only make sure there is better attention to detail in the future.

It was as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I had done all I could do and hopefully that was enough. It wouldn't fix the situation but would hopefully show my viewpoint on how I treat my job and how I understand my mistake.

Within minutes he came out of his office, thanked me for the email and said, "No worries."

I find in life that people always want to make up an excuse for why something happened. We never want to just accept responsibility. The fact is, we ARE human, we DO make mistakes, that isn't an excuse to constantly make them, but it does mean that when they happen we shouldn't run from them or defend why we messed up. The fact is, you mess up and you do your best to make sure it never happens again.