Today was an icky day. Just dripping in it icky day. It started out OK. I’m whittling down the last few days at my full-time-job. (For those of you just tuning in, I quit my job last week to pursue….stuff). Of course, once people start to make the connection that you will not be around anymore for the little things—like maintaining those niggling corporate records and account passwords and the like—a small frenzy develops. And suddenly people want everything from you, NOW.
So it’s been a bit stressful this week, trying to make everyone happy. They’re all being so supportive of my impending freefall, not questioning my sanity, that I feel compelled to get it all done, without errors, neat and on-time, with a bow on it.
Things haven’t quite turned out that way. The maelstrom started early in the week, when my boss asked me if I wouldn’t mind surrendering my nice new laptop to a newly hired employee. I wouldn’t be using it in four days, and she had to get on a plane, so why not? It seemed like a simple request; we have a few community laptops sitting around. I could use those. Why would I possibly need to have all of my contacts and past project files?
Now, I’m not THAT stupid. I did move over the bulk of my files to our network environment, so that my co-workers could sift through it after I left. But then we lost our network connection, and then our email was down sporadically for two days and I must have missed a few messages that my boss sent me about some critical issues, and then I got two “quickie” projects assigned to me to complete before I left, and then I had to had to recreate some of the files I’d left on my old computer, and then…you get the idea.
There’s really no need to get into exactly what happened, but I screwed up. Big time. My mind raced for people and technological situations to blame, and there were plenty to choose from, but in the end I simply screwed up. End of story.
“Don’t worry about it,” a girlfriend said to me. “You’re outta there in a day. Who really cares?”
I didn’t feel better hearing this. Leaving my job was my choice, but this final performance reeked of carelessness. What upset me is that this whole week I really TRIED to make things happen, to finish with a bang, not an oil spill. It was one of those days that make you question your competence, and any attempts at changing your misfortune create a spiraling effect downward, compounding the errors and the shame. I call these Exxon days.
I often wonder when I am due to have an Exxon Day. They usually start well; it seems like I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing, and doing it well. And then I get a phone call, a simple query asking me for something, or asking me for clarification or a correction that I need to make on an email. I'm asked an innocent question like, “But what you just sent out was just a DRAFT, right?” I start to reply normally and then it hits me: I’ve sent the same email out to 2,000 clients. The blood begins to rise; I start to smell myself; and I feel a quick pang of grief, as I bid goodbye to having a normal day.
I’d say my percentage of Exxon days has significantly decreased as I’ve gotten older. Many of us have learned from past mistakes to doublecheck the distribution list on company memos, for example, or to convene with a nervous boss and let her approve the copy, even if it’s been pored over eighteen times.
But then we let our guard down; we learn about some exquisite new feature on Microsoft XP that keeps our tracked changes in the contract, even if we think we’ve removed our edits; we realize we forgot to let the CEO know about the call that we picked up in the office, during lunch, from a big client; we realize that the Fed Ex the client HAD TO GET ASAP is still sitting on our desk a day later.
And the shit hits the fan; or worse, it doesn’t, and you wonder if any consequent investigation into the matter will pick you out like a splinter. Even if you remain undetected, the skin never remains the same. A sore grows over the screw-up and keeps emerging in other projects until someone comes totally clean.
I suppose Exxon days help us to put our jobs back into perspective. I often get complacent, or bored, with my quotidian tasks. I don’t always track my calls or keep records. But grand screw-ups often make me remember that every movement is meaningful. There are three levels of meaningfulness:
1) Mild: You screw yourself. For example: You forget a meeting that you set up with someone for something you need. Maybe you need to get approval before moving forward with something; maybe you need to pick up paperwork from HR regarding your health insurance. The person you are blowing off may suffer for five minutes, but once the 10-minute meeting window has closed, they are under no obligation to have to wait around, or to call you. They know that they have something you want. The ball is in your court.
One infringement is not a big deal. But this low-level of incompetence has a deteriorating effect. People don’t trust that you’ll make meetings and will either exclude you or fail to honor future appointments. You lose points with people, and thus miss out on the favors that you may need in a pinch.
2) Embarrassing: You screw your colleagues. Not intentionally, of course, or you would be toast. But you don’t hold up your end of the deal and make the rest of the team look bad. There could be—and should be—extenuating circumstances you can mention that kept you from performing; technology is a convenient scapegoat in a pinch, as is public transportation. For instance, your email was down; the printer was jammed irreparably; the commuter bus never showed up. But ultimately, it is understood that you were on the hook for completing a project, and you must likely make amends, if not in the current project, then in projects immediately following.
Case in point: I really wanted to work-out today, but after screwing up I realized that would be an impossibility. Even if there was nothing to be done about my mistake, I was obligated to stick around and man the cleanup. Although the project can now technically be done by someone else on my team, it’s mine to finish. To screw over others and then maintain your hectic schedule is really bad Karma.
3) Pressworthy: You screw the client, or public perception of your company tanks as a result of your screw-up. Think oil spills, think corporate memorandums that get leaked to a competitor, think full-scale career change once the whole thing boils over.
The closest I ever came to this level of screw up was when I worked at The New York Times, in its syndication division. Our division wasn’t actually in the venerable Times building, which gave us the illusion that we were our own little start-up. I was a little po-dunk editor just out of college, who had cleared some dark office and claimed it as my own. Had I been working in the actual Times building I probably would have been assigned to sit under a desk.
It was the mid-90s, and The Times was just getting up to speed with company-wide email. The system could only be accessed through DOS and was antiquated as hell; it was so ass backwards that I could never figure out how to send email. Every time I tried I had to pick a mailing group, and then a sub group. I never actually figured out how to send email and had to wait for someone to send mail to me so that I could simply hit reply.
A former colleague and friend who was in a bitter battle with her boss sent me notes about her exchanges with her boss. I responded with a friend’s requisite response, insisting that her boss was being unfair, only using several four-letter words to adequately make my point. I sent the email, but it didn’t seem to go out. So I tried again, and again.
Apparently with each attempt, I was sending my reply message to different divisions of The New York Times, not excluding the office of the Publisher. I became aware that something was amiss when I received a call from the Publisher’s assistant, telling me that she would not be forwarding my message to her boss, and that I might want to be aware that my note had gone to the entire executive staff.
I thought long and hard about this news; prayed a little, and then counted my blessings that I was such an underling my email was probably seen by many of the mucky mucks on 44th street at SPAM. At least that was the rationale that got me through the afternoon, until the knock on my office door. It was the division president. He wanted to chat.
To make this already long story short, he gave me some sound advice, “Life’s hard enough,” he said. “Why give people a reason to think you are an ass.” He smiled, sort of, and then he left.
Piggybacking on that advice: Life is short. I’ll consider today as my warning for when the stakes are higher, when I’m out on my own. I won’t have anyone to screw over but myself, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t pay attention.
Alternatively, if the boss isn’t going to forgive you, and you are the boss, then you have no business being self-employed.
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