My work ethos is under siege...
It's been a while since I could say I was in trouble with my boss. In fact, I can't exactly recall ever being in 'trouble'. In all previous instances, any 'trouble' was mainly various flavours of 'gentlemanly disagreements', so to speak. But recently things got a little more serious. Serious enough that they had to mention less-than-offhand the thinly-veiled threat of 'disciplinary measures'. In geekier terms: the dreaded banhammer.
I'm guessing the main reason for this is that I'm too casual about everything.
My mindset when I punch in is mainly “Do your work. Don’t show up late. Be nice to colleagues. Endeavour to not daydream too much.” But the Creed also includes some other commandments: “Don’t ever let work get between you and a friend. Don’t bring work home. Don’t let work get in the way of work. Don’t take criticism too personally”.
Just to be clear: this is not my career. There are two reasons that keep me in this job: money and my teammates. I like my salary and schedule well enough (fits the lifestyle) and most of my co-workers are friends I already knew before getting here. This is where my loyalties begin and end in regard to this line of work.
Which means I have no true commitment to the company. Additionally, I always had trouble pushing a product or service I wouldn't use myself, so we're off on a strange footing. The fact that I'm not at all passionate about this work also translates in being detached from it, which means inevitably my mind will wander during my shift. I just can't get 'involved' in the work the same way I would in a more creative job (which is actually a euphemism for ‘interesting but unstable, uncertain, underpaying and resolutely untenable job’).
Errors are common occurrence in an office environment. Most of them are recorded and fixed as soon as they are found out. Where I work, this process is appropriately dubbed 'quality control' and is an essential part of the company's business model. Precision is the main selling point, the care of which falls to we, the operators', hands. Beyond that, there can be the occasional slip up that we don't have time to fix before the clients notice and come calling. That's when the company's reputation suffers.
I'm more than okay with all this. In fact, I support it. When we discover a problem, we fix it instead of denying it. It's great. I'm proud of working for a company that doesn't play ostrich with its own flaws.
I'm a really fast worker. I'm talking Speedy Gonzalez fast here. I clear out more work orders in a week than anyone else in the office. But that also means they can get... well... botched in the process… Sometimes…. Okay. more than 'sometimes', but less than 'often'. The exact figure stands between 8% and 9% errors out of hundreds of work orders per month. Most of these mistakes are corrected before the documents even go live.
I already have my team-lead to go over those with me when they happen. But when work-related issues are deemed important enough to be escalated to a higher level of management, it blows everything out of proportion.
And I don’t mind being told I made a mistake. That’s how you learn. What I have trouble absorbing is the “Hah! Gotcha!” overtones that come out of people’s mouths sometimes. It’s insulting, and it carries the subtle message that they’ll never tire of reminding you about that ‘one time’.
An honest mistake is an honest mistake.
Even a downright stupid one (in my case essentially a copy-paste mistake. I was so hell-bent on obtaining a certain information for the dossier I was working on that I completely forgot to include this other important information, which led to the client noticing said missing information. Emphasis on the client noticing part, because otherwise no one would have made a big deal of it. I would have simply been asked to correct it myself, something I am entirely for - your fuck-up, you fix it).
But corporations are soulless entities. They do not forgive. They do not forget. They do not know empathy. They do not have a sense of humour. They do not know how to deal with employees like me that happen to be human beings first and professionnals second.
But work is serious business.
When you fuck up one task hard enough, all the other trivial things which you thought were perfectly... well... trivial... tend to surface up and bite you in the ass. Meaningless things like forgetting a few minor details here and there, or a harmless and obscure in-joke written by hand in the margins of an old work order. These things, no matter how idiotic and insignificant at the time, have a way of sneaking up on you later on when they suddenly become important. It’s what we get for working in the digital age: not much escapes scrutiny. Stuff that even you forget you did may appear again on someone else’s radar. It’s like the system itself accumulates frustrations and things it can hold against you when you finally push the Wrong Button. Past that particular threshold, be prepared for a shit-storm of little ‘misses’ regardless of your more numerous ‘hits’.
I have no problem ‘fessing up for my mistakes and working to eradicate them. Aiming for the brass ring of “not going to do it again” should be enough of a burden to bear, because this is a performance-heavy job and I need my mental real estate. But being slammed just this once more for the very same issue that was already addressed a week ago sounds like overkill, and only contributes to make me more jaded and depressed about my work. Can’t I just concentrate on not screwing up again instead? I’d love to be able to concentrate, but someone’s trying to guilt-trip me and sadly, it’s kind of working…
Now the hard part.
This is really rough to bring up because I know it will make me sound like a chauvinistic motherfucker (which, you guessed right, I am obviously NOT and do not wish to be associated with). I can just imagine the snipers taking aim, but I have to say my piece.
From my experience (read: from my experience), women in a position of authority have a hard time staying emotionally neutral about it. If you make a work-related mistake, instead of getting an "Uh, okay, so what happened and how can we fix it?", the message they send often is "what the fuck is wrong with you?". If you’re male, the fact that they respond with their emotions (no matter how they try to mask it professionally - which actually shows their level of dedication) will still make it sound to you like a direct attack on your person. I try to not let it show too much, but I'm a deeply-emotional person (they say still waters run deep) and that makes me vulnerable to this kind of assault. That and a propensity for doing everything by-the-book which, sadly, really gets on my nerves (I’ve always postulated that if you always refer to procedure, it only means you can’t think on your feet, but that’s for another debate, and this trait might only contribute to widen the gap between my brand of thinking and the corporate world’s brand of thinking).
My direct superior, (let’s call her A.) is actually very good at suppressing this phenomenon. She's very fair with any and all of her colleagues, and always looking to improve the workflow without sacrificing anyone's sanity. I am insanely glad for that fact. A’s own superior, C., however, is more of a panic-prone, gotta-look-good, middle-management type. Preserving the sacro-sanct Reputation means everything in her job, and I can understand her position well: when nearly the only feedback you get from the office is bad news, it must be kind of nerve-wracking. Also, having to report said bad news upstairs must feel like shoveling shit. So okay, I get it. My little mistake snowballed and made you work twice over. No need to rub my nose in it out of spite. All I should be concerned with is the details of my mistake and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again. And when I’ve gone over that with my direct superior, I sure as fuck don’t need a second lecture from someone else who just got the memo.
I just don’t get how big deals can be made out of little nothings. The moral of the story is probably: never fuck up, no matter how slightly. Also, become a robot. Robots can’t be blamed for their behavior, only their programmers. They also have this cool dance that they do.
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