I suck.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I fucked up…big time.

I volunteered to help out during the summer by covering the sales reps national accounts while they were on vacation, in additiion to my own duties as national advertising coordinator. Well, Doreen went away, and she has the buck of the national accounts at the paper. Two weeks she was gone, and I had more stress that I have had in the 15 months I have been with the paper.

Well, this week, a big chain, (think Walmart - but higher brow) booked an ad for Sat. They called to ‘kill’ the ad, but it was way past deadline, so we told them they had to pay for it - even if it didnt run. (they didnt want it to run because the stores in my city are closed on Monday, and the ad was telling people the stores were all OPEN on holiday Monday)

Well, we got the local store to do up an ad, I got the spec artist to do it up, and we got final changes from the client on friday afternoon.

The wrong ad ran in Saturdays paper. Boldly, it proclaims that all _ _ _ stores are open Monday!

I fucked up.

When the ad was first booked, I sent up the ad info to production, and forgot all about it. It was an ‘electronic’ ad - (it came off the companies website) so it was foolproof! You sent it up, you forget about it. THEN they wanted to change it. I forgot to kill the first request, and sent up a second version of the same ad insertion.

I should have either killed it, or sent up a pink copy change form with the second instructions.

I really fucked up.

Production is SUPPOSED to send down a proof 24hrs prior to pub date, but I didnt see a proof - if I had, I would have caught the error.

I almost had a stroke yesterday when I saw the ad. I tried to call the advertising manager - he is unlisted. I tried the paper - no staff on Saturdays.

I am gonna call after 3 pm, and TRY to get the production staff (the INcompetants!) to find the correct ad, and get it into classified overflow for Monday mornings paper - its my only hope…

On my desk, I have about 4 different situations I have to look into, the bank is mad that all their ads arent in A section (but they didnt want to pay for positioning) the bank says the blue in the ad is too purple. SOmeone else wants to know why they werent invoiced for one of their ads… AND THEY ALL WANT FREE ADS!!!

Another big store (rhymes with Smellers) will be mega pissed because they didnt get a proof on friday. The space booked was a half page vertical, the ad they provided was 2/3 page horizontal. It took production all afternoon to rebuild it (of course if they had started working on it before the DAY BEFORE THE AD RAN we could have made Smellers provide a correct ad.

I fucking hate incompetant, irresponsible people who fuck everything up.

Now poor Doreen will come back to a mess, and its all my fault - I hate myself.

2

Don’t be so hard on yourself Kels. We all mess up at some time or another. With all that people have on their plates at work it’s a wonder anyone can get anything done. It shows that you are very business oriented or it wouldn’t bother you and you would just shrug it off.
You did the best you could under all the pressure you have on you. Explain the situation to your co-worker and I know she will understand. She should be thankful that you were there for her.
You wouldn’t be in the job you are in if people didn’t have confidence in you. You’ll get it right next time and they know that.
Keep your chin up.

3

Screwing up on the job, and having other people screw up for you so you end up looking awful. Very publically awful. THIS is a rant I can relate to!

Kellibelli, I feel your pain. I REALLY, REALLY feel your pain! Just realize that on a daily paper there are MANY opportunities for error, and another person will have their chance real soon. But I’m REAL GLAD I’m not you for the next day, stewing about what might happen when Doreen gets back.

4

As a newspaper guy myself, kelli, I definitely know first-hand that our job is up there with microsurgeon in terms of allowable margin of error.

I had a major, mortifying gaffe in a top-of-page-one story a few weeks ago. Worse, all of the local radio stations whose news departments consist of simply reading our paper on the air (which they’re not supposed to do) spread the error (saying a pretty major local event was that night when it was actually a week away).

I find something really big and bad happens like that in our business once every year, year-and-a-half. No one could beat me up worse over it than I beat myself up. I pride myself on accuracy, and stuff like that is like an icepick through the heart to me.

But my co-workers and superiors were understanding, and it all blows over.

I wish the same for you, kels.

This shit doesn’t define you. Think of the thousands of things you do right, day after day after day. This is the hiccup, the aberration – and, in your case (unlike mine), mistakes by other contributed.

5

Uh, that should have been, “mistakes by others contributed.”

I pride myself on being accurate at work, not here, silly. :smiley:

6

muttering to self

[sub]Stupid misleading thread titles . . . [/sub]

Seriously Kelli, so you made a mistake. You’re human. That’s what we do. You were also overworked. It’s completely understandable, so don’t be so hard on yourself.

You wanna hear about a screw-up? A few years ago, in St Louis, a convention was booked for the TransWolrd Dome. Unfortunately, the person who made the booking screwed up and the convention was planned for the same day as one of the Rams games. The convention had to be canceled, and it cost the city over millions of dollars (estimated) in hotel fares, dining, and the money that would have come into the TransWorld Dome itself. Now THAT’S a fuck up. They let that guy keep his job, so don’t feel so bad.

7

Thanks guys - especially you Milo…

That helped ALOT, page one eh? Holy shit!

8

I hope everything worked out okay for you…

It happens to the best of us.

Reminds me of the day that I walked into work as the other reporters were laughing about the fax from the lawyer that had just come in, threatening a libel suit over a small mistake in a story I had written. Aiieee.

9

Kelli, welcome to the Fuckup club. I think you’ll find our membership is a friendly lot. Heck, we’re mostly pretty competent, too, but each member has fucked up from time to time.

One of my personal fuckups: I once misunderstood a provision of Canadian bankruptcy law (aside: you Canucks go bankrupt weird). The mistake I made cost my customers USD 4 million. Fortunately, my customers, employers and board of directors consider the totality of my work to be pretty darn good. I’ll bet yours do to.

But it’s nice to have you as a member of the club. Our current membership is 6,000,000,000 and rising.

Oh, and traditionally the new members make chocolate chip cookies for the rest of us, so get cooking! :wink:

10

Of course I meant to say, “I’ll bet yours do, too.”

Damn, now I have to make 6 Billion damned cookies again. Anybody know where I can get 750 Million eggs, cheap?

11

Hey, it happens, kelli. If we were all perfect, all the time, we’d be so dull there would be no point in living.

At least you admit you made a mistake and are willing to do what you can to fix it or at least atone for it.

IMHO that speaks volumes about your character. A lot of people would be too busy flinging their finger everywhere but at themselves. I’m proud to call you friend.

12

Here’s the bottom line: are they gonna take you out in the parking lot and stand you up against the wall and shoot you?

No?

Then don’t worry. You don’t suck. You just fucked up. Welcome to the human race.

Wanna hear my Big Fuckup Story? Our church used to serve Communion by having several pews at a time from each side of the sanctuary come up to the Communion Rail, then you’d be served together, partake together, and then file back to your pew together. One week, I happened to be the one on the end, and I faithfully led my pew back to the wrong pew, and we all had to reverse direction and go back out, while two pews’ worth of people behind us stood there in the aisle and waited patiently (not to mention 200 other people watching in fascination).

And nobody took me out in the parking lot and stood me up against the wall and shot me, although I wished they would have, to put me out of my misery. It would have been the humane thing to do.

13

Sure, manny… From 750 million chickens, in a day and a half
D&R

14

It sounds like you were doing the best anyone could do under impossible circumstances. Overwork is particularly deadly in publishing because there’s no breathing space; everything has to be done now. And, of course, there’s no place to hide a screwup.

I recently added a word to copy that made it mean exactly the opposite of what the writer intended – and it turned into a major error of fact that required boatloads of phone calls, apologies and retractions. This all could have been avoided by simply asking a question, but it seemed so obvious what the writer really meant…

And two weeks ago I misspelled the name of our own newspaper, and it got past four proofreaders and into print :o

Catrandom

15

WOW!

I suck in great company!

I called the production dept, and they remembered the ad I spoke of immediately… by the time they ‘got to it’ on Friday night (paper prints 2-3am Saturday) it was too late to call anyone, so they picked one.

They are gonna find the space somewhere in the paper to run the right ad, with ‘correction’ and ‘not open Monday’ on it.

What is really funny is that an agency ad that WAS approved ran just opposite the ‘bad ad’ and it declared that Smellers was open Monday for seniors day-----its not! ANd THAT one isnt my fault - that one is totally the agency.

I think Milo, Scribe and Catrandom should come work with me, and manny can be the lawyer!! :smiley:

16

I hear ya too, Kelli!

I spent eight years working for a newspaper, four of them in ad services. One of my jobs was to see to it that the nearby stores got their proofs before they ran. I had to talk personally to the store owners, and write their corrections down on Xerox copies of their ads, amongst a bazillion other jobs in ad services.

Having been there for sooooooo loooooong, I saw sooooooo many mistakes. Hell, I caught mistakes our reps missed, I caught crap the keyliners missed, I caught stuff everyone missed. Of course, others caught crap I missed too.

I loved the job, though. It was never boring! But yeah, we all make mistakes, and in a daily paper, there’s thousands of opportunities every day. It’s a wonder more don’t get made!

You don’t suck. You’re just a human who works in advertising. :smiley:

17

Well, she MIGHT suck, but the big question is, does she swallow? :wink:

18

Always.
:wink:

19

I do. But that’s something saved for a select few.

20

I like the direction this thread is taking.

Alas, back to the OP.

Here I am, Conscientious Teacher-Man, and I’m presenting a class. They’ve completed all of the material and it’s time for the final exam. I glance at the final just as I’m handing it out. Wrong system. It’s as if I taught in Spanish for a week and I’m giving the test in French.

I immediately switch gears to Panicking Ad-Lib Man and tell them that I’m going to write the test questions on the board, and I hand out blank paper for them to use to write down their answers. I translate the questions into something they’ll understand and scribble madly. They answer the questions, and actually do pretty well.

Afterwards I felt like Dodged The Bullet But Now I Can Handle Anything Man.

Sometimes adversity makes us better. Sometimes we create our own adversity. Sometimes you just gotta say “fuck it” and have a beer.