Made a mistake at work, meeting has been put in with my manager

This is the most ridiculous (and mean) thing I have ever heard 🤣 a formal warning or going to HR for a proofreading mistake with no major impact. Get a grip, HR would laugh at you.
Also the idea that if a person makes a minor error, they can't be trusted with anything is such a low level logical fallacy I'm embarrassed reading it.

OP, you will be absolutely fine, acknowledge the error, explain that you have corrected it and talk about what preventative actions you can put in place-perhaps another QC review round or something. ALL humans make mistakes every day. Including the mean posters on here.

Let us know how it went! You will be FINE!

@Anxioussss I hope all is OK.

Any idea how the op got on? Ive been thinking about her

Well said - agree with everything you say

We’re human and we ALL make mistakes at work on occasion. If they fire you for that they are a terrible employer and they must go through staff like hot dinners as, as I say, we all make mistakes.

Your workplace sounds insane. Please quit and go elsewhere.

That is such a tiny and easy to make error. Lots of other people missed it before you too! You don't have to come up with a way to stop it happening because you're a human being rather than a computer, so it's literally impossible. You already have lots of reviews in place as it is.

Tell them you're not a computer and them for a healthier place!

It goes beyond even a 'culture of blame and secrecy' where people hide mistakes, though that is all correct and is a major problem of this kind of workplace.

It leads to the situation where employees aren't going to risk putting their heads above the parapet and consider any creative risk taking with potential benefits, if they think the consequences of getting it wrong are not worth it to them. That's what an extremely error-averse workplace does - stifles creativity.

It will probably lead to the best employees not staying. As well as a miserable, toxic working environment for those who remain. But then employers either are the kind of human beings who care about that, or they aren't .

What is a starchitect?! So out of the loop. Presume it is an architect crazily obsessed with the PR angle and controlling and promoting mindless flannely guff?

This with bells on.

God your work would hate me. I absolutely have form for doing that exact thing, more than once 🙈 convinced I go number blind after a wee while.
I also once accidentally overrode our full base price list with an important customer's tailored price list on one of our systems. There was no formal meeting, no one died, there was just an admission, an apology and it was fixed.
I would hate a whole formal meeting situation for making mistakes

OP, hope things went OK today.

I’m going to guess you are and architect or maybe even a Starchitect- both of whom I have worked with. One of them where I was the client.

There were occasional errors/typos that I picked up, and actually it was OK, because even though I was the client, I was also part of the team getting the house built, and I know from Projects it is also better to foster a spirit where things can be resolved up front without leaving underlings feeling afraid for their jobs - and then hiding errors.

You sound deeply unreasonable and extremely neurotic. Most clients do not react like you, and don’t want to work with those who manage by fear (even if they are unaware they are doing it).

This.

It sounds like this is not a formal disciplinary meeting because the employee would/should be notified of this beforehand.

I agree this is probably just an investigatory meeting to discuss and understand what has happened; in which case it focuses on the incident itself rather than you as such. You should acknowledge and own your mistake and any proposals you have to avoid it happening again. Best to be completely upfront and avoid any impression of defensiveness.

It will hopefully end there as this looks to be a simple error not negligence. But in the event they do decide to formally make an issue of it, you can cite your positive track record as mitigation.

This.

Good luck for the meeting OP. It does really strike me as a strange way to deal with what is essentially a small error (notwithstanding the wrong number can have a bit impact - can, albeit in this case hasn't). One - because everyone is human and despite taking care at their work and having good attention to detail, will inevitably overlook something occasionally (and I say this as someone who works in a profession where attention to detail is highly important and I pride myself on having very good attention to detail but know that I'm not infallible). Having a meeting about this seems entirely unnecessary (would only be necessary if this was a persistent problem suggesting someone wasn't actually taking the proper care). Additionally they're a bit lacking in awareness if they don't realise that putting it in on Monday with no additional detail is highly likely to cause someone to feel anxious (and to spend the weekend feeling anxious) - so that seems a bit clueless/poor management on their part.

I know it's human to worry but just own your mistake on Monday, say if necessary you can implement an additional system of cross checking the figures for example (and maybe can two people do it? - you say you're the last person that checks it - which means other people missed it too - I'm not suggesting you raise that as that sounds defensive, but just so you don't hear yourself up). And if they make a mountain out of it try and frame as (to yourself) as a them issue rather than a you issue if that makes sense.

No, I'm not seriously saying they are the same. That's what the winking emoji means.
I'll politely ignore your instruction to not be silly.

I wouldn't get all defensive. Don't go on about past performance etc.

Focus on how you will mitigate the risk of this happening again. What measures / checks you intend to put in place.

In my experience they're not interested in cracking heads they're interested in protecting their business.

Are you sure they are not just following normal employment law? Which is, mistake, get manager, employee in and keep a note that it was dealt with even by just having a meeting

i help manage someone on the side, so I am required to keep records.

Hope you are OK @Anxioussss I've made a mistake at work before and it's so horrible. Honestly you've not killed anyone. If your work are completely horrible about this it's a reflection on them not you. Life is too short for so much stress about a switch in numbers. They would get some AI to proof the document if the concern is that awful.

It is understandable that you feel anxious but please try not to panic and don't be driven into a state by harsh or misleading commentary on here from people who prove the human element by making their own assumptions or being incompetent at typing, punctuation and sentence construction.

It's a normal human easy-to-understand one-off error in a long document. Nobody in their right mind would think any human can be perfect or immune from making the odd error, even though they might be embarrassed in front of a client or have a bit of a perfectionist tendency.

A meeting has been arranged to discuss it but from the information we have, it hasn't been notified as a disciplinary meeting. I would regard it as part of a normal management process to discuss such a thing. Don't rush into assuming the worst.

Acknowledge the natural human mistake as yours but place it in the context of your record of conscientious application to your work and high rate of accuracy which you wish to maintain and minimise the risk of such errors recurring.

Own up, apologise and be clear about what processes you'll use to avoid a repeat. We're all only human.

Jeez.

I'm glad I'm retired. I'd hate to work for someone like you.

I once made a very costly mistake for a major retailer. Entirely my fault in that I forgot to do something. However, I wasn't disciplined or moved or demoted. I was reprimanded justifiably and I never made that mistake again.

Hope you read @SpringKitten post

Very comprehensive and sensible

Don't panic,

Not caring to understand your employees, industry standards, or setting up a system that insulates your business from human error - what could be more sloppy than that?

And how exactly does that approach work out for you?

Your upset is entirely irrelevant when determining what is actually possible to do.

The vast majority of people don't try to make mistakes. They try to do the right thing. But trying to do the right thing, doesn't mean they'll always succeed. They're human, and humans are inherently prone to making errors.

There's a fundamental concept in process development of 'respect humanity'. If you respect people's humanity, you build your processes accordingly, rather than your suggested approach of finding someone else to do the task thinking they're somehow less human, or thinking discipling someone makes them more capable of reducing their humanity.

The gold standard in processes is to have a 6sigma process - it's one where you have 3.4 defects per million opportunities to make a mistake. Take a look at how many of such processes are entirely human-based processes. Good luck to you with your suggested management of human error. I think you'll find neither of your approaches achieve anything other than make you look like an ass.

OP, As others have suggested, own your error. Suggest ways the process could be improved, but also go easy on yourself - a manual process will always be prone to mistakes.

Really OP please pay no heed to the naysayers. They are genuinely not representative of most employees, even safety critical ones