How do you get past messing up at work?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, I took a project transfer a couple months ago, when the project I was working on ran low on work. Before this, I did reasonably well at work, had good reviews, and felt pretty competent. Things went sour pretty quickly on the new project. I had tools issues, which never were really resolved. I had a hard time figuring out what I was supposed to do with my first few tasks. I really couldn’t make sense of the code that was already there.

Mainly though, I didn’t ask for enough clarification and help.

My supervisor was extremely busy, so I didn’t want to disturb him. At the same time, he was waiting for me to come talk with him. He thought I seemed uncomfortable when he came to my desk to look at my work and sort through problems, but the discomfort was the thought that someone was doing my work for me. I tried to figure everything out on my own, but I really should have made more noise about what wasn’t clear to me, and the tools issues I was having. :smack:

My supervisor’s boss talked to me about my results, and I tried to ask for more discussion, and more feedback, for the next couple weeks, just to see if I’d managed to fix things. When I went looking for my next task, once again, I managed to send a message opposite that I wanted to, as I had to leave soon when I went. My supervisor thought I should have come sooner, when I didn’t have to go, and didn’t know what to do with me. Eventually I got a mini-admin task. I was just about ready to give up, and left a few messages for my busy supervisor. He was waiting for me to come talk to him, but I thought I should not put him on the spot. I read my supervisor badly, as I had for the past two months.

I also let non-work problems start to distract me once work was going poorly.

So, eventually I finally went to talk to him about this, the whole mess was out in the open, and for the first time in my working life, I cried at work. I screwed up, and I had no clue how to make it better. As time went on, I had started to think it was too late, and didn’t even know where to start. My supervisor thinks I never became really interested in this project, and I think that’s right, but partly because of my perceived inability.

I curse the open-plan office, I might have been more willing to talk to a boss about my perceived failings in a closed office (the two conversations about this took place in meeting rooms, as does anything which has the possibility of being disciplinary, but they’re often booked, and aren’t convenient)

Things should get better. My bosses are looking to transfer me to another position, where I thrived before (a couple years ago, and my supervisor said he knows I did well there, one of the few things that makes me feel less bad about this mess), and where would have stayed if my specific knowlege wasn’t needed elsewhere. If that doesn’t work, I may go back to the project I left, which should have more work now, and where my old supervisor would like me back if he has budget for me. This isn’t going to haunt me if I can sort things out and do a better job elsewhere, and may not even show up on my review (other than a couple comments, I’m sure those will be there, as I’ll write them if nobody else does). It’s not personal. I’ve been assured I shouldn’t be upset, and that I shouldn’t be made to work in a position I hate (which I don’t, but it does frustrate me).

I still know I screwed up big time, and to me, that negates the last few years I’ve worked here and done at least reasonably well. I’m afraid I’ll keep being useless. I’m ashamed of myself, particularly given how understanding people have been, and at the same time, I know that feeling bad about my weaknesses is part of what got me in trouble in the first place.

At this point, I really need the perspective of someone who’s screwed up work-wise, and got over it. Both the screwing up and the feeling guilty about it, preferably. I don’t need a kick in the butt, though that probably couldn’t hurt my cause. I just want to know it’s possible to continue and somehow make right.

2

You could always be like my co-workers and just blame other people. And make sure you convince yourself of your own lies too. That seems to work.

Seriously, good luck with that. It sounds like you really try hard. I couldn’t figure out what it is that you do though.

3

I would say you did much better than Rooves’ cow-orkers. You have been honest with your bosses, and you have learn’t from what you did. Feeling guilty about what happened is natural, but you must rely on the fact that your Bosses don’t think what you did is a reason to dissmiss you as an employee but want to move you to a position where you will be happier and more productive. You now know that the way to deal with any problem is to try to deal with it as early as possible. An employee that works reasonably hard, and keeps their bosses informed of any problems, is more valuable than an employee who works him/her self half to death and keeps his/her difficulties with a project to themself.

4

That made me laugh, though I’m sure it’s true. I’ve read that the least competent people don’t know they’re incompetent. Must be nice.

I work on various aspects of control systems, and until this last mess, I’ve been pretty good at it. Primarily, I’ve been working on low-level programming. I may be moving back to being a safety analyst, which I loved, despite its morbid nature.

Right now I’m just going nuts, since I have to come to work, but I don’t know what to do while I’m here. Hopefully a decision will be made before I finish learning UML.

5

At some point, we all screw up.

My biggie was approving a letter which had the wrong phone number. The phone number was supposed to be one routed to our general group of service associates. The phone number on the letter I approved went to a small group of specially trained associates. For a solid week this small group was inundated with more calls than they could handle.

I could have blamed the others who reviewed the letter (including the proofreaders), but in the end it was my signature on the final, approved copy. There was nothing I could do but come clean and admit that I had called the number to ensure it went to our company, but hadn’t checked the routing.

My name was mud for a while, but my reputation recovered. Like you, I wasn’t new to the company and I had proven myself before. I also did what I could to fix the problem, including many late hours working with our ops group to re-route that phone number. I also put in place procedures (including a final checklist of items that need to be initialed before a letter is released–one of them is “check phone routing”) to ensure this problem couldn’t happen again.

Yea, I felt like crap for a while. But I got over it. I made a mistake. It wasn’t intention, and I’m not the only one who ever messed up.

You know, a lot of your reputation is made or destroyed based on how you handle a failure. Work extra hard in the next few weeks or even months to prove yourself again. Do what you can to fix whatever you can with the project at this point. Sit down and determine what you can do to ensure the mess up can’t happen again. Share those plans with your boss. And, above all, accept responsibility for your mistakes.

After some time has passed, your boss and others may share with you some of the mistakes they’ve made. They won’t do it right away, because they may be waiting to see how you react. But they’ve made them. Most everyone has.

6

You know, unless that “project” you are working on is a heart transplant or a space shuttle launch, I wouldn’t beat yourself up too bad over fucking up.

7

My hat is off to you for being clear that you mishandled the project. Mishandling things is part of professional life. Now, if you got caught trying to cheat or abuse somebody else for your gain, you should feel bad about that - but you are expected to mishandle the occasional project.

You have the opportunity to gain a reputation for acknowledging your mistakes, and also for picking yourself up and starting fresh when things go wrong. The fact that you have a strong history at your company before this project makes both easier, too.

Moreover, being sincere through the whole process will endear you to all sorts of people that you didn’t know needed to see you as human and approachable, for their own reasons.

I’ve been privy to the management process dealing with good people who had had a project go sour. Without exception, the leadership types involved wanted to keep the employee and find projects that better fit their skills. Their thinking after these episodes was something like, “Now we know more about what projects or approaches work well for this employee.”

8

PS - I don’t even think people that fuck up a heart transplant or a space shuttle launch should feel bad, if they were appropriately dilligent at the time. Everything humans do has some element of chance and some susceptability to error.

I’ve had surgery, and acknowledged before the fact that it was unlikely I would find a better than average surgeon and he and all the OR team would be having a better than average day. It isn’t reasonable to expect luck, to expect people never to err.

It’s a sad thing that people who fuck up heart transplants and space shuttle launches probably do feel bad. And if they fucked up by being lazy or blowing off something they realized they shouldn’t, well, that’s different. But error is part of work, whether we want to realize it or not!

9

I don’t get to check the message board often, but a late thanks for the responses. I guess I just need to know people do screw up, and they don’t all get fired and need to start building their careers again from scratch. Most of my friends don’t admit to ever having screwed up at a job they care about.

I’ve been temporarily (2 months) sent to another project I have more knowlege about, and the work is similar to things I’ve done. The work is not my favourite, or anyone’s but it’s something that needs to be done and which I know I can do. I can work hard on this, maybe put in a few weekends if necessary (I can always use the extra money anyways) then see where to go from here. I’m just glad this happened at a time when my life outside work is going well.

I don’t do heart surgery or launch the space shuttle, but it is a job that if I screw up and others don’t catch it, people may die or be hurt. It’s part of why I’ve liked working here, that I find it hard to care about moving money around (my last job was at an insurance company) I think worrying about errors sometimes feeds my perfectionism paralysis, and that I haven’t been aware of it.

Well, this is my quota of self-analysis for the year, I think :slight_smile: