Awful mistake at work - totally panicking, please help

[triangles5]

I’ve made a dreadful mistake at work and am devastated. I’m in tears, feel very low and am having suicidal thoughts. I’ve been with the company for several years, adore my job, am hardworking and usually careful and diligent, but it was simply silly human error. I feel sick with fear as it’s going to cost the company a significant amount of money. I haven’t spoken or apologized to my managers yet as I was so upset and couldn’t face it. But they’re aware it has happened, we’re due to meet next week and it will obviously come up. I feel sick with fear that I’m going to be sacked. And if they don’t sack me (unlikely), they’ll never be able to rely on me again as it’ll always be in the back of their minds. I’m distraught and can’t think of anything else. I’ve let the company and worse, my kids (who rely on my income) down so badly. What can I possibly do from here?

OP. I think you are more worried than you need to be. Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes can’t be easily fixed, or at all. But unless you routinely make mistakes, or lied about it, it absolutely does not follow that no one will trust your work again.

As for sacking you - making an error is not usually enough reason to do so. My staff make mistakes. I (their manager) make mistakes. But we learn from them and never make them again. No one gets sacked!

Just own up. Say you are sorry and offer to help however you can to fix it. I bet it will be fine.

I do work with life and death and pets and yes sadly mistakes happen there too. But it is important to learn from the mistake and I am sure you wont ever make it again. But please don't feel suicidal or be so upset about it that it effects you to that extent, all mistakes except death can be sorted xx

You are correct to explain the mistake first . I recently made a mistake that cost the company about £8000. But managed to regain the money eventually . I apologised , explained what had happened and they were ok about it . The MD made a mistake recently that lost money so he was not really in a position to criticise. Don’t worry about breaking down it will show you care . Without knowing the full circumstances none of us can tell what will happen but most decent companies will offer support/ retraining .

try not to worry too much . This too will pass .

My heart sank for you when I read your post and how this has impacted you . Darling please go and see your GP asap … if possible try get the meeting with your managers moved forward you can not be waiting days in an extremely panicked state. Now breath and I mean breath . Not matter what happens you are going to be ok you will be ok sending you a virtual hug

You say you're due to meet next week. Have they called a meeting with HR to discuss your error, or is it just a regular meeting in which you think it will get mentioned?

Either way, I hope this thread has been of some comfort to you, and that you can see we all make mistakes. I made a massive one in my last job which cost them a few thousand pounds. It was incredibly embarrassing, of course I was upset, but they recognised it was just a mistake. It wasn't malicious. I didn't break the law. No one was physically hurt. It wasn't done on purpose.

Please let us know how you get on. And so what if during your apology you get upset, it will just show that you're human and you're sorry. All the best for Monday.

NRTFT but you are definitely being way too hard on yourself. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. And you absolutely haven’t let your kids down. I’m a teacher. Letting your kids down is shouting at them all day, showing them no love, prioritising your fun over them being fed. I don’t think you’ve done any of these things. I’m a solo mum and my wage is all we have so I get the pressure. But you clearly care enormously - about your kids and your job. You sound like a pretty decent human to me, and I’m sure your employers will see that. And when you see them, just be honest. I recently had an awful time personally and I was going to lie to my employer because I thought they’d think poorly of me. My brother convinced me to be honest and my employer was so supportive. You’ve got this xx

Ah @triangles5 I made the mother of all fuck ups on Wednesday, was absolutely the worst thing I could have done. I reported my mistake to the compliance officer and he was bloody amazing. Spoke to the head of department who again was amazing, and the following morning spoke to my my immediate boss, which was the one I was dreaded. Yes, he told me what I did was stupid, but he was understanding and basically said don't ever do this again. It was over, all sorted and dealt with.

It was awful, I hardly slept all night, was worried sick, and cried when i spoke to every person I had to. The one thing I did do was own to up to it, apologise and said no more.

It may not feel like it now, but it really will be OK x

I love the advice from the poster who said think what you'd be saying to a colleague in this situation. You'd be telling them not to catastrophise, to remember what an asset they've been to the company all this time. You'd be saying it's not like you did it on purpose or fraudulently etc. You are only human and humans make mistakes.

The fact you're so upset and worried shows how diligent and conscientious you are, which I'm sure your manager values.

Take heart from the positive outcomes that mumsnet have seen in similar cases.

Good luck, and try and do some tomorrow instead of going in circles. A walk in a nice park, some window shopping and a hot drink in your favourite cafe.

Keep talking, especially to friends, but don't be afraid to reach out to professionals- eg the samaritans. They are so lovely and they have bags of experience with helping worried people calm their minds and get through difficult moments.

I'll be rooting for you on Monday.

I know you have said that the processes are not at fault but I'd respectfully like to disagree. If your mistake is that catastrophic, it shouldn't have been able to happen. Everyone makes mistakes at some time and businesses have to either accept the consequences of those mistakes as part of work life or they have to prevent them. No business can assume humans make perfect decisions all of the time.

On a personal level, why would you only focus on one bad decision/moment if you've years of good work too? That shows many more positive decisions than bad. You sound so sorry for your mistake and owning it and offering to help rectify it goes a long way to being able to move forward.

Good luck -hopefully the reality of next week at work will not be as bad as your are thinking right now.

The thing is, if a silly mistake can have such catastrophic consequences for an organisation, then there is a serious problem there, so if you were to get threatened with sacking, it would be very easy for a semi articulate person to argue that it is unfair dismissal.

you can be sacked over gross misconduct, and purposefully ignoring safety mechanisms. But if the system
is so fragile that a silly mistakes ends in catastrophe, actually it is you who is being the victim and if anything they should be apologising to you for not putting safeguards in place.

Stop panicking, apologise and say you want to figure out what happened that meant you made this mistake. Human error mistakes are usually a sign that processes need to be improved

OP in your shoes I would draft an email - you don't have to send it but knowing it's there and you can send at any time might be therapeutic

Along the lines of:

Dear XXX

Ahead of our meeting on Monday, I want to apologise for the mistake that I made. As I hope you are aware, I am usually careful and diligent. It was a lapse - human error - and I was entirely to blame. I am fully aware of the consequences and have thought of little else since it happened. Lesson truly learned, and if there is anything I can do to help mitigate, I'd be glad to try and rescue the situation.

I am very fond of my job, workplace and colleagues and would very much hope that this will not spell the end of my time with you. I will see you on Monday, but did want to apologise ahead of our meeting and express my wish to remain as part of the team.

WIth best wishes
OP

And you might not send it - but knowing you've got it down and could send it, might help you relax until Monday.

Try to not to stress too much.

That is really great advice

Some brilliant advice here. I'd say call a meeting yourself, use the rest of the weekend to calm yourself, raise your mood, plan what you're going to say. Then first thing Monday morning call the meeting yourself. Own it. Tell them you need to let people know you've made an error and are looking for their advice on how to deal with this and take it forward. Sitting there waiting for something to happen actually feels worse.

I work in IT and have seen people wipe the live national system and the entire day's data from the live system. Rm from root - just saw the entire thing scroll off into the void. Shit happens. Think of a national system in a crisis time that system was the key part of. Once you see that, nothing phases me. I have had to bring back live national systems while the company gets fined £15,000 every five minutes it's down. One day we lost the entire Unix side of the company IT system - around 250 systems. People getting irate, coe helicoptered in. It takes as long as it takes to bug fix and it costs what it costs. If you don't know and you loose £5 or one million, you don't know the fix so it's irrelevant. But that's IT. Shit happens.

I did that in 1989, the days before backup systems. We had to recover the entire system from days worth of backups on reel tapes taken over several night before, so they also lost a days worth of transactional data. It took 4 days to just get the system back up and impacted our entire european operations, factories didn't know what they were supposed to be making so had to stop production, orders with containers full of goods were lost from the system.

I was only 19 and shaking like a leaf when I realised what I had done. Boss was brillant, calmed me down and told me just to focus on the recovery. Not a mistake you make twice! 🤣

Our business continuity plans, or lack of, had a lot of focus after that!

I used to work with government depts who
clung onto old systems for grim death. We used to
point out they were end of life, no
maintenance etc but they didn’t mind. The media have picked this up recently but they don’t know the half of it.

I also knew someone who was meant to take down a back up
firewall and took the real one down. Alarms going off everywhere! Muggins here had to explain to client and immediately stated it was purely human error and appropriate meetings were being held to ensure it didn’t happen again

@SlightlyJaded huge thanks, that is a great email. I still feel in such a spin that I’m struggling to collect my thoughts, so it’s really helpful to have something to base it on. I will take your advice and draft it today.

@triangles5 please do not send that email/message.

It would be stupid to do so and some of the language gives you no wriggle room "I was entirely to blame" and "fully aware of the consequences".

It basically puts in print that they have grounds to fire you. No option to fight it then because of what you've written.

What you want to do is get off with a warning so confessions in print are really ill-advised.

Just take it on step at a time and see how they take it.

@triangles5 write that email but for the love of God do not send it, it's absolutely dreadful.

Get your worries down on screen or paper for your own benefit, but please please please don't send it because it would be really really embarrassing and not help your cause at all.

Wallow again this morning, but set yourself a deadline today to stop that and start to think about two things - how exactly this happened and what exactly could stop it happening again in future. And I mean root cause analysis, which is NOT taking all the blame on yourself.

If you don't do root cause analysis, you can have a stab at a basic one with online guides like this: https://www.mindtools.com/ag6pkn9/root-cause-analysis - maybe stick to it at superficial level if it's not something you're familiar with.

Go in on Monday, see what happens and run with it. Talk about how it happened and what you think the problems are for the future that require action. Taking responsibility and looking to the future are good things, but you can't keep wallowing, it's won't make you feel better in the end.

Oh really? I thought the best policy is to be honest about how I’m feeling, which is that it was a stupid mistake and I’m feeling dreadful and so upset about it. Followed up with an explanation of how it happened and how I plan to ensure it won’t happen again. But I’ve never been very good at this sort of thing so I’m probably completely wrong.

Putting stuff in writing can be ill-advised at the best of times, writing what is effectively a confessional, however well-intended, is probably career suicide.

I didn't lose it, no. It went to the wrong place and due to it being over a BH weekend a) the recipient couldn't return it so it could be paid correctly and b) we racked up a lot of OD costs.

I manage a lot of people in a high risk environment and your approach sounds absolutely spot on to me. Particularly if that is your instinct. There's a lot to be said for dealing with these things in a way that suits your personality type, because whilst others might pull off a different approach, if it doesn't feel natural to you then you won't come across as genuine.

I think that email is perfect. Good luck OP, I'm sure it won't be as bad as you fear. We all make mistakes.