How to (almost) pull a save after major job screw-up
November 03, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Menschlichkeit, Uncategorized, career mistake, humor, job screw-up, mensch, menschen, mensches, mistakes
It’s been a stressful couple of weeks, and we now have proof that there are no functioning brain cells left in our house.
Exhibit A:
- My cell phone, for some reason, failed to notify me of a voicemail message I received in response to my recent application for a nice job. “Please call back,” someone asked, sometime in the last two weeks. Moreover, I had submitted a version of my resume with that application bearing a defunct email address on it.
- Two weeks. S.H.I.T. — but what are you going to do?
- When I finally discovered the message on my phone Sunday morning, I immediately sent an email AND left a phone message, e.g., my apologies & please know I’m still interested in the position.
- ((if you haven’t written me off already as the total twit I obviously am))
Basic Competence: what a damnably elusive beast.
Exhibit B:
- My husband is in charge of a unit that is having a ”mid-cycle review” beginning today, and so my husband made an additional effort to look respectable this morning (e.g., he shaved!)
- Unfortunately? He also discovered he’d forgotten to pick up the external reviewer at the airport yesterday evening.
- That’s bad. That’s really, REALLY bad. That’s like rear-ending your judge’s car, right before your trial.
It would serve both of us right to never work again. And if you want to glean any appropriate career lessons from this post, you should stop reading RIGHT NOW.
I sucked it up and called the organization back first thing this morning, ready to be told to go to hell.
I was offered a job interview later this week, instead.
And my husband? He apologized to the external reviewer, who fortunately is also a friend, and the reviewer readily forgave him. In fact, the man had been feeling a little incompetent himself as he’d forgotten to recharge his cell phone before the flight. Believing his dead phone had cost him making a successful connection at the airport, he hadn’t waited long before hailing a taxi and getting himself to the hotel.
Later tonight, they’re going out together. My husband is buying the beer.
Please don’t make career mistakes like these.
Ever.
But if But when you do screw up? Suck it up, get back in there, and go for the save. You were an idiot, and if the stakes are this high, you need to admit it. Can’t stand the idea of looking even more incompetent than you already are? The model here is not that of a snivelling, defensive groveller, but that of a mensch. Stand up and face your enormous mistake like a mensch. You may go down in flames, but do it anyway.
The world doesn’t need more perfect people, but it definitely needs more menschlichkeit.
Plus also, you may just pull a rabbit out of the hat, after all.
Any wisdom to add or rebuttals to record, dear readers?
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Yes just suck it up. I once did a wedding at a time when i kept mixing up the words: funeral and wedding. I did this all the way through preparing a couple for their big day, promising it never happened in public. Lo and behold the bride arrives to stand beaming next to the man she will spend the rest of her life, or the next five years, with to have me happily announce how pleased I was that Simon and Esther had asked me to do their funeral.
I haven’t appeared on “you’ve been framed” yet, but when i do i want my half of the £500!
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Y’All lead such interesting lives.
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Omg. All signs you are both overstressed and tired (though it WAS your cell phone’s fault).
Yes. The only way to handle a flub-up is to admit and apologize. The only way.
It’s hard but it shows class. How many opportunities do we have in life to be really classy?
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Hey no one can make this stuff up. I love it.
Billy
November 5th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Absolutely right. A lesson I try to teach my step-sons is that sometimes it’s the recovery from a mistake that shows the world how good you are.
November 5th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Dave! What a HILARIOUS story! I would give you £500 myself if I even could remember how much that is “in Amuricun”, anymore.
@pages: “interesting” may not be the word. “Disastrous,” maybe?
Thanks Working Girl, for even remotely suggesting either of us showed any class here! But you’re right. We’re totally zonked. And yes, of course, it is TOTALLY my cell phone’s fault. The typo on the resume, too!
Glad you’re reading, Bill and Alex, and thanks so much for your comments.
November 9th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
‘Glad to see you’re still keeping corporate America on its pointy, little toes.
November 9th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Welcome back, Rockyroadoflove! Your recipe for rosemary pecans sounds wonderful….
November 11th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Awesome stuff. I do like your approach more than anything, speaking to the fact that people need to admit when they are wrong. Not the easiest of things but something that can smooth over even some of the worst circumstances.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
what if you moved to another city for your husband, ended up unemployed for 2 years, and 2 of the most potentially productive and career-making years of your life (under 30, no kids)? After you had already had to give up a very promising and well-paid job in another city? And now you realize you will never have a really col job and kids at the same time? And you are too old with too much of a broken resume to ever apply to and get into a top business school, which you have only come to realize is essential to having transferrable job skills that people actually want to hire? How do you get over that?
March 27th, 2009 at 2:31 am
Hi Tanya, and thanks for stopping by. Your comment hits me in the gut. Sounds like we’ve had a whole lot of experiences (and feelings!) in common. I don’t have any easy answers.
I’m going to answer you in a new post (see March 27, 2009) and see if anyone else has anything to add…
March 27th, 2009 at 4:50 am
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