When You Balls Up At Work

It’s an occurrence that I manage to avoid the majority of the time but I’ve always allocated myself 4 complete balls up per year before my confidence is shattered and all I see around me are the shards of a broken career. Last week I did make a big mistake, I arranged certain things to occur on certain dates inviting dignitaries to divulge their expertise over coffee. My error, telling people the wrong date.

When I discovered my mistake, which a helpful catering assistant pointed it out, I pulled out my packet of Polos withdrew four of them and plopped them into my mouth before chewing aggressively to exercise my fury. Alas, being in my office means reactions of anger must be curtailed to within the remits of one’s own space, and in this case my mouth. However I had to get out of the office so walked out of the building and started to mouth expletives to the audible level of the two ladies taking their fag break. They chuckled and I felt a fool. So what do I do? There were two options available to me, the first was to tell my boss who would give decent advice and probably be able to solve the situation without too much stress. The only negative point for me was that I would be considered nothing more than a harlequin’s assistant and not be given responsibility again. The second option was that I try and sort out things myself, not let my boss know and hope I manage to do a good job of it.

I have to say the former sounded appealing. It was my fault and I was responsible for making sure everything went to plan therefore I should just sort it and think nothing more of it. However, my boss was also involved and if one of the invitees were to mention that the wrong date was initially given, then it would be highly likely I would be considered a bit of a devious devil. I clasped my hands together, ran my fingers through my hair before starting to think how to handle this. I picked up the phone and rang the person in charge of the venue. I explained that the wrong date was given and could I have it for June. The guy who seemed accommodating, said he’d have to clear it with his boss and would get back to me. I placed the handset back down into its place and started to think this through again. It wasn’t possible to tell the invitees that the date had been changed as I couldn’t confirm the venue. I therefore also couldn’t tell catering too. Rather flummoxed by it all I decided to seek advice and mailed a sound source for an opinion.

After weighing up their opinion I thought maybe it was best to just digress all to my boss and receive the potential clip round the ear hole when the phone rang. It was the person in charge of the venue who informed me they could do my new date. I made a coffee before calling catering to let them know it had changed to another date. Then after my third coffee I called the invitees and let them know it was all taking place in June because May is considered passé, especially in June. To my sheer fortune they all were available to come. Excellent, I got away with it by drawing on skills the corporate entity salivates over such as initiative and thinking independently. I could stroll out of the office without my boss knowing. In fact at the end of the day I slipped on my jacket picked up my big with the broken zip and started to walk down the corridor when something didn’t feel right. I wanted to tell my boss. Let them know that I screwed up but wasn’t afraid to tell them. Everyone messes up, no question, I guess it is how we deal with the consequences that the differentiation begins amongst us. From this experience it took me awhile to think of a plan and even really until the end I didn’t make a choice on what to do whereas someone else would just send a few emails and everything would be rearranged. I knocked on my boss’s door and let rip on what happened letting them know as well what was going through my mind before walking out of the building feeling a lot less lighter around the conscious and still relatively high on caffeine.