Two major screw-ups on the part of Other People have us on edge here at work. The first screw-up COULD be no big deal, but due to the second BIG screw-up, it may very well wind up being A Deal.  This randon clerk in another department screwed up; she didn’t read a request form and sent something to the wrong person. This is bad on several levels.

On one hand I am livid. How could she screw up like this? The form was VERY clear. Why was this error not caught? This is a fairly standard procedure as well; why does she not know what she’s doing? Why hasn’t she been trained?

On the other hand, I cringed, because it’s the sort of thing that I used to do at The-Job-That-Wasn’t. The girl is probably wondering what the big deal is – she’s three or four degrees removed from the situation, and she doesn’t really understand the ramifications of her careless actions. She probably doesn’t “get” the looks that her co-workers/supervisors are exchanging.  She’s undoubtably nodded along and at least pretended to understand the gravity of the situation when her supervisor explains why they have to make a big deal out of it.  Or maybe she does and she’s just as panicked.

Either way, I used to be her. I used to have my major errors picked out by someone else when it was already too late. I used to have the moments of panick and absolute helpelessness, knowing that I had screwed up and that someone else had to fix my mistake.

I really don’t know if this situation will work itself out. And of course, it’s not a matter or life or death. It’s just very expensive and a lot of work and time went into this, so for it fall apart over her little error is really annoying to say the very least.

And not to say I don’t ever make mistakes, because I absolutely do.

But I’m glad it wasn’t me today.