The Vine: November 11, 2009
Dear Sars:
So I have my first “real job” and suffice it to say, it’s not going well. I’m 26 and have had a wealth of jobs, from retail to reception. But this is my first job where I have an actual position and don’t spend my time answering phones and ordering supplies for others and I think it could be a springboard to something better.
The thing is, it’s a hard job, it’s a small company with only about 10 people and new hires are thrown right in, no introduction, no training, and when I say no training I mean no training. Every day is busy, there isn’t one moment where there is no work to do.
I feel like I mess everything up. I can’t do a single thing without there being some stupid mistake that I should have caught. Forgetting to include a date on a letter, a typo, forgetting to include an important fact, and sometimes big mistakes. I feel like I can’t do one thing without someone I work with pointing out a mistake I made.
The real problem is I don’t recover from these mistakes very well. I beat myself up about them, I’ll spend hours, if not the whole day, in my cubicle freaking out about my mistake and convincing myself that I’m going to get fired and then freaking out more because I cannot afford to get fired, and then, due to the freaking out (internally — I don’t ever say anything out loud) I can’t focus and make more mistakes.
And I can’t talk to my boss about this, he isn’t the pat you on the back and tell you it’ll be ok type of boss, he’s nice, but more like the boss who says, “Life’s a bitch, we’re all busy.”
In terms of the mistakes I know that I just need to take my time and triple-check everything. The real question is how do I stop being so hard on myself? How do I keep one typo from ruining my entire day, how do I just let things go without feeling like I have to punish myself in some way for what amounts to a stupid mistake that was caught before it even became a real mistake, as the only people who saw it were the people I work with?
I just want to be able to actually not care instead of pretending I don’t care while simultaneously making myself sick with worry over nothing.
I do like the job and don’t want to quit, not yet anyway
Dear Like,
It seems like I addressed a very similar question last month.The therapy may or may not come into play for you, but first, you need to understand that your anxiety is heightened because you feel that this job is more significant, and your performance more relevant, than at jobs in the past.It’s probably not something you think about consciously every minute, but it’s pretty much the first thing you thought to tell me in your letter, so clearly it’s an issue.You take it seriously, which is not a bad thing at all in and of itself, so your first task is to acknowledge that that’s a factor, and stop beating yourself up for worrying about your job performance.
The next task is to start compartmentalizing so that you can get through your to-do list without getting stuck in your own head.As I suggested in the previous letter, keep a list of the day’s mistakes.At the end of the day, write a report on them for yourself.The purpose of this is not to castigate yourself further for making mistakes, which we all do a hundred times a day; it’s to take control of the anxiety by looking at patterns in your mistake-making, and identifying strategies for improvement and mistake prevention.
Your list for next Tuesday, for instance, might include all typos, dropped words, and misdialed phone numbers — things you messed up on because you were in a hurry.That suggests a strategy of slowing down, proofreading, double-checking facts, and taking a few extra minutes to get it right the first time.
You should also talk to your boss — but it’s not a conversation where you should seek comfort or compliments.It’s a conversation in which you present a list of functions or tasks that you would have liked some training on, and ask for some help on learning the ropes.You should have the same chat with co-workers who’ve worked there longer than you have; you don’t want sunshine blown up your ass here, you want information on how to do the job better.You probably should have had training, but you didn’t, so you’ll have to train yourself.Do it.Take control of the problem.
Not everyone can just not care about making mistakes at work; it’s not realistic for you to set that as your goal.(And your boss isn’t likely to appreciate an overly laissez-faire attitude towards screw-ups either.)But you can keep it from interfering with your work, by figuring out how to minimize both the mistakes and the time they eat up in your head.View that as part of your job description, and do it each day.
Dear Sars,
I really don’t know what to do about this one. I’m currently studying in China and overwhelmingly the experience has been great, but I’m suddenly completely out of my depth here.
Recently two of my American friends have been having problems with sexual harassment and sexual assault. A couple of our classmates from Tajikistan moved past “creepily over-attentive” to “borderline sexual harassment” to “sexual assault/attempted rape” in a matter of two weeks. I personally haven’t gotten anything past the “creepily over-attentive” stage from them, and I think my “don’t fuck with me” glare and my unwillingness to deal with them once I got the creep vibe from them spared me the worst of it, but I also clearly have a vested interest in seeing that this matter is dealt with.
But…how? We can’t prove anything. My friends are worried that if we tried anything it would just make matters worse. They’re worried since the two or three main guys who have been a problem are within this larger group that if we make any sort of stink about their behavior that they might get violent. I think things are escalating anyway and I’d rather act now than not act and have someone get raped (if that hasn’t already happened). Within the Chinese legal system, I doubt there is very much we could do, especially since we’re leaving in two months, but my inclination is to see if we can get them kicked out of the program.
But again, we can’t prove anything. And since nothing has happened to me directly, I don’t feel like I can go against their wishes not to make a big deal about it. I don’t fear for my personal safety, which might be really stupid, because I don’t have any interaction with them outside of class. My two friends went over to their apartment for dinner, which is where the sexual assault/attempted rape took place, and are participating in the international student volleyball tournament, which is where most of the harassment has continued.
The only person we could really take this to is our resident director, who manages the five American students on campus, and we’re all really close to him, but I don’t know what he might be obligated to do if we report it. I just don’t know what to do. If I ask my parents, they’ll freak out and probably contact the resident director anyway, and my adviser from school, while being an excellent person to get advice from, might have similar obligations to contact someone and start a process that my friends don’t want to happen.
I know there isn’t any good solution for a problem like this, but how do I protect my friends and myself AND not let these pathetic excuses for human beings off the hook?
There is a special hell…
Dear Hell,
Isn’t it possible for one of you to ask the resident director, or the head of the university program, a hypothetical question about how these things get reported and dealt with?Can’t you tell someone in authority that, while you don’t want to name names just now because there’s the possibility of reprisals — and that you guys feel unsafe is on its own probably grounds for the program to look into the situation, at the very least — you wonder what would happen if you reported an ongoing campaign of harassment and an attempted assault for which you have no proof.
I mean, at least get the minimum of information.A significant portion of your stress over the situation is coming from the fact that you don’t know what would happen, or how your creepy classmates would react.
And as to that, well, obviously you and your friends need to avoid them.Sit as far away from them in class as you can manage.Do not spend any social time with them outside of class and do not react to anything they say.Document everything they do.If they take the harassment into the volleyball venue, report it to the organizers and get them barred from the premises.Don’t go anywhere by yourselves; make sure somebody else always knows where you are.Guys like this thrive on the intimidation — basically controlling where you go and what you do because you’re afraid.Once that titillating reaction is no longer on offer, they often move on.
I understand that your friends don’t want to risk it, but if you have any real basis to believe that the larger group could become violent, you need to report that, and at the very least, you need to learn what the policy is on matters of this nature — and to take safety precautions.I do suspect that a stated willingness to dime them to someone in authority will back them down, but if you guys aren’t comfortable with that, you should at least know your options.
Hi Sars!
So it’s a cat question. How long do you have a take care of a stray kitty you took in before you can tell the newly surfaced “owner” that she can’t have him back?
Here’s the story: All summer, there’s been this cat living under my bird feeders. I assumed he belonged to someone, and chased him away. I live in the middle of a mid-sized town, a few blocks from the commercial district, so everyone has a postage-stamp yard and there’s traffic, etc. — not a great place to have an outdoor cat, but for some reason people do.
About five weeks ago, said cat approached me as I got out of my car, which I thought was weird because he had no reason to think I was friendly. He meowed and rubbed against my ankle, and when I went to pet him, I realized I could see every rib. It’s against my policy to feed strays, but he was just so friendly and so sad looking that I gave in and started setting out bowls of kibble, which he devoured twice a day.
A week or so later, the temperature dropped. With nights in the forties, it also began to rain, and became quite raw. After a couple days of this, kitty came to my back door, and cried to come inside. I brought him up to the bathroom till I was sure he used litter okay, and then moved him to a bedroom.
Later that week, I took him to the vet. She agreed he appeared to have been abandoned — although he was neutered and clearly loved people, he had fleas, worms, ear mites, and scratches on his body from fighting something. (Oddly, we have raccoons and groundhogs in our tiny yard.) He got his vaccinations and other medications, and I took him home.
I took a photo, and put flyers in mailboxes for blocks around, as well as on Craig’s List, trying to locate the owner, with no luck. So a friend of mine offered to take him, and I gratefully placed him. (I have two already, and three would be cat overload for my place.) My friend named the cat “Romeo,” as he’s quite the little lover — always begging for a cuddle. My friend has never had a cat before, and has really fallen for the little guy!
Last night, another neighbor emailed me to say she was chatting with neighbors up the street, about seven houses away from me, who think it’s their cat. (How they missed the flyer is a mystery.) A dark part of me wanted to pretend I never got the email, but I got over that and sent back a note explaining the whole situation and asking if she thought the previous owners might agree to let my friend keep Romeo — it’s not right to keep the previous owner worrying, but on the other hand, she was clearly a crappy pet owner and Romeo is so happy now! I’m pretty sure the previous owners will put Romeo back outside to fend for himself again, which isn’t good for him where we live, and also means he’ll be hanging out in my yard again. (The birds he chased away all summer are just now coming back — yay!)
So I think I need to take a walk to the neighbors with a photo and beg to keep the cat if it turns out that he’s hers after all. But here’s my question: What if she says no? We’ve only had him indoors for three weeks now. Putting aside all concerns about the cat, I have spent over $200 on vet bills and another $100 on litterbox, litter, food, and other supplies to set up the cat at my friend’s place, since he was doing me a favor by taking him. Can I point that out? I don’t want to get all judgy with the previous owner, but I need to tell her the cat was in bad shape when I found him. She has a two-year-old and perhaps the cat has simply fallen off her radar in terms of care-giving, but who knows? Maybe she thinks the cat was fine as he was.
I also don’t want to create a lot of drama on the street — we’re all pretty friendly with one another. (These people just moved in last winter, so I don’t know them as well as I know other neighbors.)
Any guidance you or the readers could provide would be tremendously appreciated!
WWSD (What Would Sars Do)
Dear Sars Would Do Nothing,
…Do nothing, for now.You explained what happened to the other neighbor; if the previous owner believes that it’s her cat, she can contact you herself.It’s not as though you snatched the feline off her front porch and placed him with a friend that very day, giving the real owner no chance to find him.The cat had gone off the rez ages before, you got no response to the flyers…I wouldn’t make excuses for her.If your toddler is so high-maintenance that you don’t have time to read your mail and notice a flyer for a lost cat?When…you have lost a cat?Come on.Weeks went by.
I’ve had indoor/outdoor cats, and if you actually give a shit, you notice when they don’t show up for dinner once, so I’d wait for her to contact you.If she does, ask her to describe the cat, and then tell her with as little affect as possible that, yes, that could be her cat — but the cat you found had visible ribs, had clearly mixed it up with other animals, didn’t want to stay outside in the cold, and cost several hundred dollars to vet, feed, and re-home.And then just sit there and do not say another word.See how she reacts.
Nikolai was a somewhat different situation, but if someone had emailed me weeks later all, “I saw the photos on your blog and that’s definitely my cat,” I’d have been like, not anymore he ain’t, dickhead.Do valid excuses for letting this happen to a pet exist?I’m sure they do.Do I really want to hear any of them when the cat has already found a new home?Not particularly.If she really cares about the cat’s welfare, she’ll leave him where he is.
The short version: wait for her to contact you, and if she does, don’t make any promises.Tell her what you just told me, and hope she talks herself out of expecting to get the cat back, when she did nothing in the service of that for weeks on end in the first place.
Tags: cats Nikolai workplace
Like – Time, experience and patience. You’re new to this area of your career; I am a career assistant (*sigh*) with a fantastic mentor/boss, and she has told me many times about the things she messed up and how she had to learn to deal with it. You can do this – it’s learning how to put these things behind you and try not to let them happen again. Practice and patience!
Hell – I work for a company that deals, in part, with international study programs. ABSOLUTELY REPORT IT. Also, your friends should do whatever possible to NEVER be alone or too near those guys again. Make a fuss, make noise, etc. – I know it’s rough in another country, but remember that YOUR safety comes first!!! If it were my company, they’d take steps, believe me.
WWSD – I had a semi-similar issue a few months ago. I found a sweet little orange striped kitten crying and hunting for food in my building’s back yard. I took him in and discovered he was not so shabby in the Casanova department himself. My coworker and his wife adopted him, and we all spent money at the vet’s to make sure he was healthy. (I’d have kept him but I have 3 cats already and they hated him on sight.)
I kept an eye out for flyers for a week, and then gave up (there are a lot of strays in my neighborhood anyway). I later found out that the previous owner’s roommates had deliberately put the cat out, and the guy hadn’t bothered to do much searching. I wouldn’t have given him back if he’d begged on his knees.
I agree with Sars. Let them come to you, and if they do, I’d be blunt about the cat’s condition. I have had and continue to have several friends with young children and pets, and the pets never ended up starving in other people’s backyards. He’s WAY better off in his new, loving home.
Best to all!
“I’ve had indoor/outdoor cats, and if you actually give a shit, you notice when they don’t show up for dinner once….”
Amen to this. I had an indoor/outdoor kitty who left our yard basically to go die (we had no idea he was sick- it was a VERY fast cancer), and we knew the day he didn’t come home, and put up flyers of our own, walked the neighborhood calling for him, etc. Those folks don’t deserve that cat back. I completely agree with Sars: don’t seek them out. If they come to you, follow her script, but I’d lay good money that they won’t.
For Like, it’s taken me YEARS to realize that the kind of little mistakes you describe will not get me fired. The bottom line, though, is that it’s a big hassle to replace an employee, and if the company is as busy as you say, firing you is the last thing on their minds. Yeah, maybe they wish you didn’t make quite so many typos, but they are grateful you’re doing the work you’re doing, and they can see that you take your job seriously, which goes a long way toward forgiving this kind of stuff. This isn’t to say that you don’t want to improve on the mistake-making, but to try to help you relax that these kinds of mistakes won’t lead to losing your job. Feel bad about the mistakes, take Sars’s advice on a strategy to improve on them, but try to reassure yourself that unless it costs the company serious money, whether in the form of clients or otherwise, it almost certainly will NOT get you fired.
WWSD, he’s your friend’s cat now. If the neighbor were actively missing her kitty, SHE would have put up fliers and whatnot.
My kitty and doggie both came to me from the streets. I haven’t had anyone pop up and claim to be a previous owner, but you’ve done due diligence (say that five times fast!).
I don’t have anything to add to Sars’s advice to Like, but I’m starting to suspect that These Kids Today haven’t learned how to fail without it freaking them out. They seem to lack coping skills for managing even a typo. Is that a consequence of The Way Kids Are Raised today? It strikes me that everything has a safety net anymore, so young’uns like Like don’t get a chance to learn how to assess the difference between fail and Epic Fail.
You’re getting practice at it. And like everything else, it takes some practice before you’re good.
Like: A great book that helped me in a very similar situation was “Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman. I’m sure there are other great resources out there, but this book helped me learn how to stop beating up on myself everytime I misspelled a word or missed an apostrophe. I go back and read it whenever I start getting down on myself. Good luck!
@WWSD — Sars’ advice pretty much rocks. If the previous owner wants the cat back, she can get in touch with you herself, at which point you can sweetly explain that the cat you found was starvation-skinny and infected with worms, ear mites, and fleas that cost you several hundred dollars to treat, and so you’re pretty sure it was a stray (hint, hint). You are under no obligation to run this down yourself. Frankly, if the owner actually gave a crap, she would already have come to you in person to ask about the cat. Romeo is almost certainly happier where he is.
Situations like this make me so mad! Not all cats do well outdoors. A few years ago, my friends and I were spending a few nights at a lake, and encountered a very sweet, friendly cat that had no identification except a tag from a vet saying she’d had her shots. Oh, yeah, and her belly was shaved and had a not-quite-healed scar from a recent operation. We called the vet with the tag number, the vet called the owner, and the owner called us. We learned that the cat is their “vacation cat” — the cat lives at their vacation home, a neighbor who lives there year-round puts out food for her, and she mostly roams the neighborhood and fends for herself. We were left spluttering at the idea of a “vacation cat,” and it was so upsetting to think of this sweetheart of a kitty wandering around alone when she clearly wanted to be with people. Oh, yeah, and did I mention the *recent surgery*?! Who leaves an animal mostly alone after it’s had an operation? One of the guys in our group came close to taking the cat home with him; we probably would have if the neighbors responsible for feeding the cat hadn’t come and picked her up (she had apparently wandered quite a distance). Gah. Some people don’t deserve pets.
WWSD, my parents had a similar situation with their dog. One of my brothers found the dog wandering around his apartment complex and gave it to my parents; several months (and vet bills) later, the original owners found our flyers and called up to say they wanted her back. My mom told them where we live, and that if they showed up, they could take her back… Apparently the 30 minute drive was too much for them, since we never heard anything else about it.
You’ve done all you need to do, it’s on the previous owners now to get in contact with you and do some begging if they really want that animal back.
@WWSD – i concur, heartily, with the “do nothing” advice. at the “doing something” end of the spectrum, there’s the world’s most adorable kidnapping note (forwarded by a coworker, coincidentally, half an hour after i read this “vine”)…
Another story for WWSD, just to show what should have happened:
A friend of mine was out of town for the weekend, and her pet-sitter accidentally let her new cat out. Despite flyers and searching, the cat wasn’t found. A few weeks later, she got a call from a guy who matched up her cat’s picture from the “lost” flyer with another cat on a “found” flyer. Apparently, some guy had been in town that day looking at apartments, and the cat “just jumped in his car” when he was at her complex, probably within hours of escaping. The new owner had paid several hundred dollars for a spay and lived two hours away. My friend immediately offered to pay all the vet bills and drove to get the cat within the week, even though she had already adopted a new cat in the meantime. THAT is what good pet owners do.
@WWSD One of my co-workers had his indoor cat escape about a week ago, and not only do all his neighbors know about it to the point where they call him with sightings, but he has rigged an elaborate trap with, like a stick in the door to his breezeway, and a line going from there to a window where he sits waiting for the cat to show up and get the food in the breezeway. He’s a wreck and has gotten little to no sleep staying up into the wee hours of the morning. Somehow, Squeaky always waits until he’s nodded off to come get the food. But he’s still trying, and that to me is someone who loves and misses his cat (Squeaky’s brother Franky is still inside and will sit with co-worker during his vigils).
This lady? Does not deserve Romeo. Ethically, I’d say you’re in the clear.
‘I saw the photos on your blog and that’s definitely my cat,” I’d have been like, not anymore he ain’t, dickhead.’
Bingo. If you, as a non-owner, need to intervene to help a sick/injured/starving (!) animal, and the owner doesn’t respond to fliers for more than a week, it’s your animal. This is (approximately) the standard that the animal shelters in my area use. and while IANAL, I’d bet it would stand up in court.
My dog was obtained in more or less this manner (I saw her just miss being hit by the car in front of me, and I got her to come to me rather than run off), and I can assure you that while I would have happily returned her to a tearful and embarrassed original owner two days later, I wouldn’t have parted with her at gunpoint three weeks later.
People who don’t feed their cats don’t get them back. Period. End of story.
I have “re-homed” many cats in my life, and some of them I knew good and well technically had owners, but…if you’re not feeding them and providing them with basic medical care, I feel not one pang of guilt about finding them a new situation. I “stole” my next door neighbors’ cat once in the middle of the night–I’d been feeding her for a while, she was heavily pregnant, and there was no way I was letting her have her babies in my flowerbed. She had them in my bathroom, I found homes for them, and she’s still with me, years later. They never even looked for her. I moved out of the neighborhood a few months later, and my last act before I left was to steal her brother, too. He was adopted within a week, and I’ve never regretted my act of cat burglary!
“I’d have been like, not anymore he ain’t, dickhead.” Yes, and then a swift kick to the crotch. To abandon a cat to the outdoors is awful, to leave one on the street in a carrier is worse. There are shelters, people. Take your unwanted pets to shelters!!! All three of mine are shelter cats. Two were turned in by thier former owners -thanks, former owners! – but one was picked up on a busy street corner – in February, in Colorado – when she was only three months old. Gah! (@Lauren – awwww, thanks. Loved the comments on the poster, too!)
@attica – I agree. I think it’s the whole “Everyone gets a ribbon, there are no winners or losers” thing, which is good IN THE MOMENT for a kid’s self-esteem, but eventually undermines the very thing it’s meant to build. Like, no one is perfect. NO ONE. I think the fact that you’re so worked up over them puts you in a state in which you make more little errors. EVERYONE does this sometimes, so there’s no need to punish yourself. Take a deep breath, remember that we all do this, and move on. Watch your coworkers & you’ll see them make errors too. If the management wanted perfection, they’d build a damn robot to do your work. Allow yourself to be human. I’ve had some hugely cringe-worthy moments in my career, and you will too. It won’t kill us. (Wait, you don’t work a big panel at a nuclear plant, do you? :-) ) Hang in there.
Hell, I am a study abroad advisor. I deal with this more often than I would care to think.
ABSO-EFFIN-LUTELY report it to everyone you can. You can specify to each the degree of confidentiality you wish.
Since your resident advisor is American he will likely take it as seriously as you. He will arrange for counseling or medical attention for the students who were assaulted, as needed. That’s the most important thing. Even if you and the other two girls don’t think you need counseling, I suggest you do it anyway. It should be covered through the study abroad insurance you purchased prior to going abroad.
He will also provide you with information on the school’s disciplinary procedures, as Sars said. If you care to pursue discipline, you can.
Realistically, most of the discipline that will be available will really only be effective for the next two months and contained within the host school, as I imagine their Tajikstani home school advisors may have a somewhat cavalier attitude towards this sort of thing and the Chinese authorities probably won’t get into it. But the matter is, you will have it on record that there was an incident. Should the two girls’ academic performance suffer, you can point to this episode when asking for relief.
Your home school advisor really should be notified. He/she can and should put pressure on the resident advisor and host school to pursue discipline. And if no discipline happens, your home school advisor may make the decision not to send any students on that program again.
The program needs to do everything it can to make you feel safe and to eliminate the threat of violence. Yes, you’ll perpetuate the impression that American women are “uptight” about sex. But really, that’s a trade-off I can deal with, in return for your safety.
Tell someone about it NOW, so steps can be taken, rather than after you come home. Please.
Hell – I agree with Sars that you should hypothetically ask what would be done in this type of situation. You should also encourage your friends to speak to the resident director and tell him what happened. Don’t be afraid to escalate the situation, unless you feel that the resident director and the other program staff will not back you up. In that case, you may have to contact the US sponsor (if any).
The program has the responsibility to protect students while they are abroad as well as protect future students from similar situations if this is not addressed adequately.
I have been an exchange student twice (high school and college) and both volunteered and worked for US-based exchange programs. Unfortunately the college program did not take (thankfully non-violent) criminal situations seriously and my only recourse is to tell others not to go on this program.
(Oh, and PetCha? It’s not too late to go back & steal that kitty. :-) And Blue, good luck to your coworker!)
Like – It’s as if I wrote this same letter a year ago. I started my first “real” job, was shown my desk and given next to no training, and was terrified for the first six months that the next time I failed to catch “teh” instead of “the” in a letter I’d be fired (it did not help that I had seen my predecessor clean out her desk and be escorted from the building after she’d been there for only two months). I’ve calmed down a lot since then, although I do freak out every so often about some things that I feel I really should have caught before printing in final form on the good paper.
Don’t worry so much, you’ll get better and the mistakes will happen less often. It takes time, and it’s tough, but you WILL get better. Keep reminding yourself that it’s not the end of the world, and they won’t fire you for a little mistake. Talking to my more experienced coworkers revealed that everyone felt the same way when they started, and made many of the same silly mistakes.
Slow down, take your time, and remember that at the end of the day you haven’t done anything major that will even matter in the long run. It will be OK.
@Like – I know nothing about your office, so I don’t know if this is an apt comparison, but you might try looking at it this way: at my office, we tend to throw people into the deep end with very little training or guidance. It can be rough, but what I realized is that we hire really good people; to extend the metaphor, we hire people we trust to be able to swim when we throw them into the deep end. And we expect them to ask questions when they need help, even though it may APPEAR that we expect them to know exactly what they’re doing. So if this applies to your office at all, try to think “They hired me because I’m good; I can handle this.” I get where you’re coming from – I, too, have a terrible time recovering from mistakes. I like Sar’s advice regarding dealing w/ that issue.
@Like,
I have sooooo been there, only I have a boss who is hypercritical. He freaked out at so many small mistakes that would have taken like 2 seconds to fix that I became absolutely paralyzed at work. I was so anxious I didn’t even want to check my e-mail because I was afraid there would be an e-mail from my boss harping on a mistake. I didn’t want to do anything because I could vividly imagine my boss’s reaction if I messed it up.
I had a mess of personal issues surrounding me at the same time (two friends passed away, mother in hospital, chronic pain with an unknown source) so I wound up being diagnosed with depression. But it took me months to realize I had depression because anxiety is not considered a “typical” symptom of depression. Since I’ve started medication my anxiety has toned down a lot and I feel much better about my job. As for my boss, I had a talk with him and he’s gotten much better about toning down the criticism. Our group is bigger now too so he can’t micromanage too much either.
Two books you need to read
1. The Power of Now
2. The Mindful Way through Depression
Do you have depression? Maybe, maybe not. You’d have to see a therapist to find out for sure. But since anxiety and “putting yourself down” are common in depression, the second book offers a lot of good advice for training yourself to deal with the critical thoughts that keep popping up into your mind. Plus, the CD that comes with the book has one of the best 10 minute meditation tracks ever. I do it at lunch time every day and it makes a huge difference.
Hell – Please, please, please speak with your resident director. If possible, bring your friends with you. If not, you should speak with him yourself, without giving their names, as Sars suggests. The resident director should be trained to deal with such situations, and can also give you information on what options you have both within the program, and within the Chinese judicial system (if any).
I spent a semester abroad, and I know it can feel incredibly far away from home when something happens. I was pickpocketed, which was not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but at the time I felt completely unmoored and had no idea what to do about it. The resident advisors for these programs are there to help you make your way through the host country, and act as a sort of “lifeline” in emergencies. You don’t have to solve the situation yourself – you just have to ask for help.
Meanwhile, Sars’s and RJ’s advice is spot-on: avoid these guys as much as possible, stay together and stay in contact, document any and every incident, and stay safe.
It goes without saying that all of the behaviors you’ve described are unacceptable. But when things rise to the level of assault? It’s vital that someone take action.
Like,
Thank you for giving me an opportunity to vent!
Dear Business Owners/Managers of the world:
If you want your business to run smoothly, YOU MUST TRAIN YOUR EMPLOYEES. I don’t care how good they are at Quicken or bookkeeping or whatever it is you hired them to do. If you want them to function smoothly in your office, you must have a training session or six that focuses ON THAT. Training is not a five minute intro and a “see ya!” Training is not handing said employee a battered binder with one smudgy, out of date phone list and several random Xeroxes on how to operate equipment you phased out in 1997. Training is not forgetting to mention that the way you take messages for Susan is not the way Margaret wants her messages written up. Training is not asking the person you hired as an associate lawyer to organize the basement files because you can’t be bothered to contact a temp agency, than getting furious with her six weeks later because you’ve been assigning her work she hasn’t done because you never told her that you’ve been dropping stuff off at her desk.
Gahhhh, sorry, but this is a HUGE pet peeve for me. Whenever I interview and the person asks what I expect from the job, I always say I want adequate training on how this particular business works so I can do my job in the way that most benefits the company. Needless to say, I’ve been disappointed about 90% of the time. One reason I like the job I have now is they spend a WEEK training the newbies before they go on the job (paid time) and that’s just taking pizza orders! There’s a reason we have a 99.9% satisfaction rate among our customers.
Mind, I’m not saying the company needs to teach you how to use the phone, or the internet, or the copy machine, or how to spell or write a business letter, or whatever. That’s stuff you should know coming in as a competent adult. Don’t take my ranting as an excuse to slack or say it’s your bosses fault–but it kinda is, a bit. People who can’t be bothered to train the people who represent them don’t care as much about their jobs as they should.
WWSD: My Houdini-like dog escaped his crate, my basement and the fenced backyard to go on an insane, city-wide odyssey that lasted ten days and ended with his miraculous return. During that ten days, I posted flyers, went door-to-door, called every police station on the Northside of Chicago, and went to the city shelter every day (on the South Side and a good thirty-minute drive each way) to see if he’d been brought in. I had a business trip to London at the end of the ten days, and I left an out-going message telling anyone who found the dog to contact a friend, had someone checking my messages, and arranged for “coverage” on my endless haunting of the shelters. And he was found (because of a posted flyer) when I was in London, where my friend called to tell me she had him in hand, making my return home that much better. My point is not how super-awesome I am, but what a normal pet-owner who loves her pet does when said pet goes missing. (Where he was during those ten days, pieced together from various sources, and the group of colorful and unconnected-to-each-other people involved with his care during that time is one of my most-requested stories. Too long for this forum, alas. It is second only to the story of when this same dog jumped out of a third-floor window for no apparent reason. That dog was crazy, yo.)
In this case, in addition to the utter neglect of the animal when it was under her “care” (ironic quotes in use), after learning you may know where her cat was, the alleged “owner” did not even bother to walk SEVEN HOUSES AWAY to ask you about the cat herself. Instead, it sounds like it kind of came up in another conversation and she left it to some other neighbor to bring it up to you, maybe. If she happened to think about it. In passing. Not enough. Way not enough. Ownership relinquished. Rights waived.
To Like: one thing that might help lower your anxiety is something my therapist had me do when I spent my days at a stressful job freaking out about every little thing — as soon as you make a mistake or start worrying about something (a phone call you’ve been putting off, a conversation that went badly, a letter that went out with the wrong info in it, etc.), write it down. At the end of the week, I had a piece of paper covered in tiny writing with daily freakouts. She had me read it aloud, and then tell her the consequences of each mistake. The answer? A big fat NOTHING. I had literally worried myself into a stew all week over things that had no consequences or reprisal for me later. I still get anxious about stuff because it’s in my nature, but that did wonders for me in terms of learning how to get over momentary problems, by understanding that they’ll just be water under the bridge.
I have slightly different advice for @Like. Please make sure that you aren’t apologizing so profusely that you’re actually taking time away from you doing your work and other people doing theirs, and also? Please try not to make the same mistakes over and over. I have an employee right now who is just not pulling her weight, and though we all like her a lot, I’m going to have to let her go. She’s the front line of my business and responsible for lots of little details that, while boring to her, are the foundation of everyone else’s work. When those details get buried under a pile or forgotten or not prioritized for days, it bites everyone. Apologize, move on, get better.
@WWSD- I agree that you in no way are obligated to give this crap pet owner ‘their’ cat back, but if you want a little extra ammunition (like you need it!), check to see what your local animal shelter’s policies are. Then, you can hit them up with, ‘well, if I’d have taken the cat to the shelter, it would have been held for a week and then adopted out…or put to sleep because you didn’t give enough of a crap to look for it’. Or you could be nice and leave that last part out.
I’ve seen folks lose pets because of bad choices in pet sitters and said pet sitters not letting them know until they got back, but if you live on the street, I’m guessing you’d know if they hadn’t been home and that doesn’t seem to be the case. That’s about the only time that I would have mercy on the pet owner and see about giving their pet back (with the bills that you presented paid for, of course).
PS- if you have your animals microchipped, have your vet test the chip every time you go for a check up. Sometimes they move so much they aren’t scannable.
@lauren: The kidnapping note was wonderful! I feel the exact same way.
Thanks to everyone for your comments. Normally, I wouldn’t have thought much about it – but because the “owner” is a neighbor, I had some concerns that maybe I had to make more effort here. But you’re right – a crappy pet owner is a crappy pet owner, whether she lives on my street or not. (BTW, my friend sent me a photo last night of Romeo sitting in his lap, stretching to rub his head against my friend’s face. Awwwww!) So all’s well that ends well here, and no worries – kitty isn’t going back. Thanks!
@bluechaos – your coworker might want to buy a live trap from the hardware store, or if it’s possible, borrow one from your local animal control. That way he wouldn’t have to stay up waiting for his cat. Here’s what I mean: http://tinyurl.com/yjjgrhh Just put the food in the back, and the cat (or other culprit) will be inside in the morning.
WWSD, you did everything you could to find the owners of the cat, and you’re clearly looking out for his best interests. He’s way better off with your friend than wherever he was before.
For Hell: I understand you’re scared to report it, but chances are it will actually help, and here’s why: your resident director is in direct contact the the Chinese university hosting you and its offices. There is no doubt in my mind that the university has a set of institutional rules about this which they would have informed the Tajiki program of. Chinese universities host students all the time who have very backward ideas about women; this CANNOT be the first time. You can’t tell me that no one at the Chinese institution hasn’t already told directors of all their study abroad progams that there are rules of behavior. If the Tajiki students aren’t in a specific program, then they’re subject to the rules for ALL students, and that includes sexual harrassment. I’ve been to China; I did my master’s research in Taiwan. Chiha takes its communism, which in its “all people are equal” tenets includes feminism, and they take it seriously, especially at universities and in major cities. I know it might not seem like that (yes, I KNOW about treatment of girls on rural farms), but trust me. The university would be embarrassed about such an incidnet; you know how important “face” is to the Chinese. Report it, and get it seen to. If the Tajiki assholes get angry, you can learn what tools you have to get them ejected — and they are there, for serious. Try and see the authorities with your resident director, and spin the “face” issue; how embarrassing it would be for such acts to continue and the reputation of the university be harmed.
@Like: Years ago, I was working one of my first jobs in the pro field of administrative assisting at a branch of a company that had about 20,000 employees. One day, an email with an attachment popped into my inbox. I didn’t have the chance to open it right away, and about 5 minutes later, a frantic-looking follow-up email popped into the inbox, asking us all to please delete the previous email titled whateverthehellitwas.
Turned out, that little attachment in the first email happened to list everyone in the company, even high-ranking executives, and the salaries they were being paid. I had followed the instructions of the 2nd email, and deleted them both without looking. But a fellow coworker hadn’t done that, and told the rest of us what it was. To this day, I still wonder what happened to that poor girl who accidentally sent out the list of salaries to 20,000 employees. And I wonder how long she hid in the bathroom after it happened.
Now, whenever I make a mistake (we’re human…it happens!), I think back to that story, and I wonder to myself, “Is it THAT bad?” Most times, it’s not. And I mellow out, and I follow through, and I get things corrected or I apologize and say it will never happen again, and I try to move on and find a way to bump my pride back up to a satisfactory level again.
Shit is gonna happen. As long as you own up to the shit you cause, and learn from your mistakes, you should be golden. Good luck in your new career!
***
your coworker might want to buy a live trap from the hardware store, or if it’s possible, borrow one from your local animal control. That way he wouldn’t have to stay up waiting for his cat. Here’s what I mean: http://tinyurl.com/yjjgrhh Just put the food in the back, and the cat (or other culprit) will be inside in the morning.
***
At the risk of making light of a serious situation, I can just picture waking up to, “Dang! Squirrel! Shoot, this time its a gopher” Anyway, coworker may see if a local pest control business would rent a live trap (not sure if they would do this, but maybe). Otherwise, I bet he could buy it and sell it pretty easy again.
In the Peace Corps, I lived so close to the Tajik border that I accidentally one time crossed it without meaning to. So, I know Tajik men, and they tend to have an entitlement problem when it comes to women.
Central Asians care a lot about face too, just like the Chinese do. In these cases, it is always best to make a scene, tell as many people as possible and do whatever you can to make them uncomfortable about their behavior. They will back down, because in Central Asian culture, once the community stops ignoring something that’s happening, you don’t get away with it and you stop. At least, that’s my experience.
Like: Here is an experiment for you: Take a day to listen to what your co-workers say to each other. Odds are everyone is feeling horrible and overwhelmed and are pointing out everyone else’s mistakes in the hopes that they can distract from their own. Perhaps you can find someone as scared and overwhelmed as you are and the two of you can help look over each other’s work or at the very least go out for wine and laugh about your mistakes.
Hell: Something to consider–These guys might do something violent and dangerous if you don’t tell anyone about them. You need to start establishing a pattern and documenting actions with the authorities now in case anything escalates.
WWSD: I would see if the vet would write a letter as to the cats condition and why it was reasonable to assume the cat was abandoned. This will cover your butt if the neighbor decides to take legal action (sorry, day off and I have been watching a lot of trashy courtroom television). Also, sending a copy of that letter to your neighbor might wake her up to exactly how badly the cat was doing. Because, if the neighbor was not actively looking for the cat, the cat may have been neglected rather than missing. Maybe with this document in her hands she will realize that she either needs to take better care of the next cat she gets or realize that she needs to not get a cat since she cannot take care of them.
@Like – I had the exact same problem with my first job out of college. I was overly serious and tried to work too quickly in a job that had very little training and ended up making a ton of mistakes, followed by major anxiety/dwelling on typos.
I had to learn two things about myself. First, that I needed to slow down and take a deep breath when I found myself kicking it into warp speed (turned out that went for ALL aspects of my life, not just work). Second, that I am just not all that detail oriented. I do not notice or care about details. #1 was relatively simple, #2 was harder to work around. Employers aren’t trying to hear “So, I kind of don’t care about those details. I’m a big picture kind of girl.” One of the best ways I found around #2 was to set everything aside before proofreading, and do another project or task in between. I found myself much more likely to look at the details on a project I hadn’t JUST completed than on one perfectly fresh in my mind. Once there are fewer mistakes, you can at least feel good that you are doing everything you can to overcome your flaws.
Here’s how it ended: I ran into the previous owner, who said Neighbor had mentioned I’d found a cat. We determined it was hers, and I told her how happy he was living inside now, etc. She asked if my friend would like to keep him, and so while it was certainly an awkward conversation, it all ended without drama. (phew!) It turns out Romeo (and his brother!) were indoor cats when the couple lived in the city, but when they moved here, Husband refused to allow the cats to live indoors. So when she couldn’t find homes for them – honestly, not to be harsh, but it didn’t sound like she’d tried all that hard – she turned them into outdoor cats. Brother cat is still out there somewhere, but Romeo – through his own initiative – has found a nice, warm home with a tough guy who gets all mushy and baby-talky as soon as Romeo jumps into his lap. (I cannot emphasize the cuteness of this quite enough. You really have to see it.)
It was great having the support of The Readership (and Sars, of course!) in the back of my mind during this conversation and I really think things went better because of it. Your strategies were all excellent – thanks, Pet People!!
@Hell,
I join the multitude of others pleading with you to report your concerns to someone. Reading your letter was a serious deja vu for me, as it mirrored very closely an experience I had as an exchange student in high school. There was a group of guys (Eastern European, not that it really matters) away from their parental supervision, surrounded by girls from different cultures with different mores and expectations. Their behavior started kinda creepy and escalated because NOBODY CALLED THEM ON IT.
I’m guilty too, it didn’t affect me directly and I didn’t want to raise a fuss and embarrass anyone. But in my case, a girl ended up force-fed vodka and gang-raped at an event sponsored by the exchange organization.
If your friends don’t want to face up to this themselves, at least report the incident without naming them. Definitely name the guys involved though. “Steve B and Adam A harrassed some people I know, and I don’t feel safe around them,” will get your advisor’s attention and start the process of at least watching them to make sure their behavior doesn’t escalate.
Please, please, please say something. Take it from someone who knows, if you keep silent and someone is seriously hurt you will ALWAYS regret it.
Aw, I’m so happy to read all these stories of stolen pets! I have five cats, two of whom are technically “stolen.” One of them was a three-legged Siamese mix who’d had a litter of kittens near our apartment complex. She “belonged” to someone in a house just beyond our parking lot. (And by “belonged to,” I mean that she took shelter in a crevice beneath their house.) Other neighbors picked off the kittens, we took in Mama Cat, and then we heard stories about how the “owners” were sad that she’d run away. I felt that a three-legged, recently-pregnant cat with no collar was fair game. (We then had one of her kittens dumped on our doorstep, and stole the other one who’d been supposedly placed with another family but was actually wandering around the parking lot outside our window.)
We knew some people who moved from AZ to TX. They had six cats (all former strays), and one spazzed on moving day and took off. They looked all over, couldn’t find her, drove the other cats to TX, and then the wife flew back to AZ and stayed in a hotel for a few days until she found the missing cat. That’s what a good pet owner does.
Aw, I’m so happy to read all these stories of stolen pets!
…Hee.
I agree with SadBoss — don’t apologize, do.
As a boss I have to tell you that I understand that everyone makes mistakes. Hell, I made a big one just yesterday. But as long as you take responsibility, figure out how you can repair the damage, and tell me how you’ll avoid similar mistakes in the future, you’re good. If you’re defensive, tell me that it “doesn’t really matter,” make elaborate excuses or blame others, or tell me that people are “picking on you,” …. well, you might want to get your resume together. That goes double if you keep doing things “your way” even if that way is shown to be causing the mistakes (using the wrong tool for the job, inefficient processes, etc.)
I agree that employers need to give employees more training, but sometimes that’s not possible — especially when the company is trying to do something new and nobody knows the right way to do it! :-) I don’t think that’s Like’s situation but it’s something to take into account.
I don’t have much to contribute to the discussion of Hell’s situation, except I’d like to add something to Lisel’s remark:
Yes, you’ll perpetuate the impression that American women are “uptight” about sex. But really, that’s a trade-off I can deal with, in return for your safety.
To which I say: aw, shit, LET the asswipes think American women are “uptight” about sex. In fact, ENCOURAGE them to start thinking this way.
Obviously I’m not there with you, but from my experience in culture clashes, these guys probably assume the opposite. Their problem is likely that they assume American women will open their legs for anyone, and when your friends went to dinner at their apartment, they figured that was as good as consent. In their culture, it very well may be taken as a given that if an unmarried woman comes in for a meal at an unrelated man’s residence, without a family member or equivalent chaperone, that she’s going to have sex. Which absolutely DOES NOT make your Tajik classmates’ behavior okay, I’m just saying, if they go back home thinking American women aren’t nearly as much fun as they seem on TV, that’s a good thing.
As a boss I have to tell you that I understand that everyone makes mistakes. Hell, I made a big one just yesterday.
I can’t speak for all bosses, but mistakes themselves didn’t/don’t bother me. What tended to bother me about them over time was 1) seeing the same mistake over and over, or 2) having to have A Big Talk every time I caught a mistake. My preference generally is for “set it and forget it” staff who don’t require a lot of cleanup or hand-holding; this is everyone’s preference, I’m sure, but given my tendency to micromanage, it’s necessary for me to rely on staff to do their shit and not need me too much, or to let me know what information and guidance they need, so that none of us gets bogged down.
We know everyone biffs things. I screwed up a power of ten more often than the staff did, on a daily basis, starting with forgetting that not everyone knew as much about the business as I did and needed explicit instructions that I frequently forgot to give. Amandrence of Arabia gets vague instructions like “can you help me with that thing with the guy who has the stuff” all the time. But very few bosses want each mistake to require a postmortem, because that takes time nobody has. Just fix it and move on. (Or tell me I made it so that I can fix it and move on.)
I wish my friend had stolen a kitty that lived outside her apartment building. The cat was always near the entrance of the building, and my friend discovered that the lady on the bottom floor said he was “hers”, but all she did was keep food on her patio, and that was IT. This cat was never inside, and she had other cats you could see in the apartment! When it was raining, he would be on the patio on the chair, but he had nowhere else to go.
I wanted my friend to steal him, and I probably should have, but he was always friendly and talkative. Then the stupid lady moved, and we never saw him again. :( I doubt she took him with her, but yes, some people shouldn’t be allowed even near animals. Who keeps an outdoor cat when you live in an APARTMENT in the city?? We probably should have at least snatched him up and taken him to the shelter. I feel terrible that we didn’t. So kudos to those of you that have “stolen” them for good reasons.
When I was growing up, we had a dog friend that would come play with our dog when they were both young. This dog friend lived miles away, but she would always return home. Then one day she was so old that she stayed at our house and didn’t go home. We called her owners, and they didn’t even care to come and get her. Ugh. (Of course we kept her and cared for her as our own.)
Aw, I’m so happy to read all these stories of stolen pets!
I can add another one… my dog originally belonged to my next door neighbor, who kept him in his driveway, tied to a boat trailer. He never took him indoors, and seldom fed him. Other neighbors had gotten in the habit of sneaking him food. Poor “Rambo” spent most of his time wailing. City animal control said that they couldn’t do anything. A guy at the Humane Society said that they couldn’t take official action, but if the dog were turned in at their facility without tags, anyone could adopt him after a week. *wink*wink*
So, a few weeks after I moved in, “Rambo” mysteriously slipped his collar and vanished, and a week after that, I was the proud owner of “Shadow”. My neighbor just kind of shrugged in a “good riddance” kind of way.
That was twelve years ago. One of the best risks I ever took :D.
@WWSD- I’d respond to your neighbor and let her know that the cat missing neighbors can certainly contact you to discuss the situation and see what happens from there. If it was their cat, then I think explaining that you took him in, fed him, vetted him and found a good home for him would be sufficient- that he’s doing well in his new home.
It sounds like that your neighbors (the ones who lost the cat) aren’t great pet caretakers…but I’m just throwing out there that sometimes animals do get out and the original owners do try everything in their power to find them without success. My cat has been missing for almost three months (I think my sister/roommate let him out when they got in late one night) and I posted flyers, went door-to-door, called local shelters, paid for an ad in the paper, walked/biked my neighborhood myself and with volunteer friends…I’m still leaving ads on Craig’s List, but I haven’t had any luck. I hope that some neighbor has taken him in and is caring for him (that’s probably the best case scenario at this point) but I would also hope that if that neighbor heard about my missing pet, he would at least tell me he’s been caring for him, even if he weren’t planning on giving him back. It’s been horrible wondering where he is and if he’s okay, and I wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone…even crappy pet owners.
I’m just throwing out there that sometimes animals do get out and the original owners do try everything in their power to find them without success.
The woman in question apparently did nothing but mention it in passing to a neighbor — or in response to a neighbor. It’s not the same thing, at all. Sure, pets get out, hide in weird spaces, what have you; the Bunting family could have written a graphic novel about Dusty’s continuing adventures up trees, living with neighbors, “conquering” the garage roof, going on walkabout on Cape Cod, on and on. He got bitten in the head by a deer. Twice. It never fuckin’ stopped.
But we looked for him, is the point. I don’t judge people for letting their pets get out, God knows; I spent half my adolescence at the bottom of some goddamn tree or another with an open can of 9 Lives and a jingle mousie, trying to get Dusterico Fellini: Amateur Treetop Explorer to come down, so I know what it’s like. But pets aren’t patio furniture. You adopt a kid and let her wander the neighborhood half starved and sleeping under some dude’s porch, you’re going to jail, end of story, and you can equate your pets with your kids or not, that’s up to you, but the “[shrug]” attitude: no!
I mean, pets are a pain in the ass. But nobody’s making you get one. Got one? Give a shit.
“Amandrence of Arabia gets vague instructions like ‘can you help me with that thing with the guy who has the stuff’ all the time.”
Good thing Amanda for All Seasons speaks fluent Sarahbic. (It’s an even better thing that I’m nobody’s boss, because the telepathy my poor employees would clearly need isn’t, y’know, an actual thing.)
Like:
Getting fired is a big deal and a huge pain for the company–especially if you are past your probationary period. At my job, the paper trail they have to accumulate on you to justify a firing is RIDICULOUS. You’d pretty much have to show up sloshed and try to murder somebody to get fired without them spending months building up “cause”. Believe me, no one is going to fire you unless you make it incredibly necessary.
Nobody gets fired over typos. People don’t even usually get fired over single really big mistakes, unless they are so remarkably huge as to threaten to bring down to company or cause serious physical harm or something. What people get fired over is one of two things: being consistently unlikable to the point where nobody wants to work with them, and making the same mistakes over and over with no obvious effort to fix the problem.
You can control both of those things. Being unlikable doesn’t really sound like it’s your issue. You’re not freaking out and melting down outwardly over these things. You’re not constantly bringing personal drama to work, or berating coworkers, or acting flippant about mistakes like you don’t give a crap about the company. So just maintain a friendly, professional demeanor as much as you can, and you’re fine on that front.
As for the repeating mistakes part, Sars’ recommendations are (as always) quite sound. Examine what happened, make a note of it for the future, and move on. As long as you’re not doing it over and over, nobody will even remember you made the mistake a day or two later.
The only thing I have to add is that if you’re doing most of your work on a computer, as it sounds like you are, one thing I can’t recommend highly enough is to print everything out on scrap paper and read it over that way before proceeding. I don’t know what it is about the way that our brains process information on a screen vs. information on paper, but as someone who has worked several jobs where catching mistakes was the whole point of my existence, I can tell you that I can have read something a thousand times on a screen, but the second I print it I immediately see four or five mistakes I missed before. It makes a HUGE difference, and is easy to do. Give it a try.
And good luck! You’re not alone.
I 100% agree with Alyson. Most everyone I met in Central Asia thinks American women are loose as hell. When I would walk in, I had to be far more uptight than anyone else in the room. I would never go over to a man’s apartment without his wife, mother or daughter nearby. I would absolutely never drink in the presence of a man who was not related to me. And I was very quick to make a scene in the face of impropriety.
I am all for the reputation that we are not all Britney Spears.
“Husband refused to allow the cats to live indoors”?
I’d have put HIM outdoors.
“Good thing Amanda for All Seasons speaks fluent Sarahbic.”
Sandman, I think I love you. You made me laugh and laugh in the midst of a truly awful day. So, thanks for that!
Also: @WWSD — I’m glad all’s well that ends well. It sounds like Romeo and his owner were a match made in heaven. (Lord, what is it with me and cliches today?)
Hey there, Like. I was/am a total uptight perfectionist, too, and I was *mortified* at first when my coworkers would catch my mistakes. But I finally realized that it was important to have a coworker read my stuff before sending it out, and I also do the same for them. You tend to read what you *meant* to write, after all, and totally miss the little mistakes. It’s normal in the workplace to edit and proofread each other’s stuff, and nobody takes it personally. The idea is that the whole office/company can look stupid if a poor-quality document goes out, so you do all the fixing within your own walls, as a team, and put your best products out to the world. I recommend a very simple, “Hey, Julie, would you mind reading this over before I send it out to make sure I didn’t miss anything? Thanks!”