"I Screwed Up"

Those were the words I uttered to my boss when I walked into his office yesterday morning.

It happens to everyone. You screw up. You fail. Does not make it any easier. Fear of failing causes procrastination, making excuses, and can result in failing to do anything. Everyone knows this. I cannot tell you anything you cannot learn in Psych 101 (I assume, I never took it, which makes me unqualified to speak on, oh let's just say anything).

I suppose I could have made excuses. But that would have looked pretty stupid considering I sent my boss an e-mail last week saying everything was going as planned. And at that time, I really thought it was. In that e-mail I stated I needed X, Y, and Z, and that I should get them next week. Everything was on track. We were cutting it a little close, but there was no reason to worry.

Then, Monday afternoon, the mail came. I got the letter I was looking for. Read it and said, "What the fuck?" I got Y. I got Z. But there was no X. And X was the most important part. At first I got pissed. They did not send me the information I specifically requested. Then I looked through the case file. I did not actually request it. Oops.

I am fairly certain I told them about X on the phone. But X was not in the writing. Oops.

So, I cursed myself for about twenty minutes. Then ate lunch. Then decided to bite the bullet and tell my boss what was going on. Head into his office and, hello, he is gone for the afternoon. At first I was annoyed. I fucked up, won't someone help me. Won't someone please think of the children!?

Turns out, this was a good thing. I went back to my office, and instead of wallowing in my own misery, thought to myself, how can I make this right? There was no way to make it perfect, my fuck up had pretty much sealed that, but there is always an answer, and I set about considering my options. I eventually settled on the proper course of action and did the paperwork and drafted the shit I needed to accomplish that course of action.

So, Tuesday morning (well afternoon actually, I had a bunch of shit and meetings and crap and other types of malarkey to do in the morning, point is, soon as I had a free minute) I went into my bosses office and announced that I screwed up. I explained what happened and how it happened and how it got to the point that a fuck up like this could have caused this problem (i.e. excuses, not all my fault, but I take full responsibility because really, it is my fault). So we talked about it for a while, and worked out a solution, which happened to be the same one I had come to. So when he said, how soon can you have this drafted, I was able to say, it is right here.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, this is not that important (and really, what is?). I did not miss some sort of hard and fast, no questions asked deadline. It can potentially make me, my boss, and my department look bad. But not that bad. It is still unfortunate, simply because this should not have happened. And if the big boss comes calling, it is my boss that is going to take the heat, not me. I have not even been there for a year. The big boss would consider it a failure of management.

But because I went into my boss's office; because I owned up to the error; because I came in with a solution; well, I do not think my boss will mind getting any crap about this screw-up.

And most importantly, I have recognized the error of my ways. I screwed up. It happens. But now that I recognize my screw up, I have to learn from this. I cannot make this error again. If I do, well, I suppose I either get fired or allow my boss to grift me in a fantasy trade.