Saturday night/Sunday morning, I was training someone who will be taking over my shift when I go out on medical leave for surgery.
For the last couple of months, we have been asked to perform a simple maintenance task just after midnight. This night, I forgot. I remembered several hours later and did it then. And I blamed the guy I was training. Not to his face. To a co-worker who worked the next shift.
I told her, in person and in an e-mail. I told her that there was a miscommunication between him and me. I had asked him to do it, he thought I said something else, he didn’t do it, I didn’t check to ensure he did it, so it was my fault…
I don’t know why exactly I did this. The process was done a couple hours late. There were NO consequences to be faced because of this. At most, a programmer would be mildly irritated. Still, I lied.
It started to eat at me as soon as I got in the car to go home that morning. I got about 40 minutes into my drive and called the co-worker. I asked her to delete the e-mail, which she said she had not read. I told her why.
She said it was no problem, it wasn’t a big deal (refering to the process that was late). I told her what was a big deal was that I tried to pass it off on the guy I was training.
I felt better whan I came clean to her. I was not able to come clean to the person I lied about. Cowardice. Needless to say, I didn’t like learning this about myself.