I've fucked up, how do I pick myself up again

[groundhogyear]

Feel like I am failing at everything at mo. Three kids two school age, one with SEN. Am completely failing on life admin, self care, being a good mum and my job.

I am main breadwinner (but we are dual income so DH has a busy job too) and work is super stressful. Am senior enough that I am expected to manage and cope.

DH is away and I had an important piece of work to do, youngest was sick, middle child had a wee accident and eldest had a meltdown, so I finished this morning, only to realise the work had already been sent out.

I am beside my self as it's a massive fuck up and I could have avoided it, but I was so so so tired.

Why is it a massive fuck up to have duplicated a job? Frustrating waste of time, maybe, but what's the actual damage?

Is your manager someone you could speak to about the stress?

Sounds tough OP. Everyone makes mistakes - I’m sure you can pull this one back. What do you mean the work has already been sent out? Can you call whoever it’s gone to, ask them to delete as it was sent in error, and get the finished version to them this morning?

Deep breath and a cuppa OP, then what origamiparrot said. Act fast to minimise the damage. These things happen from time to time.

It’s not really clear op are you saying someone else did the work and rhen you did it again and both of you distributed it?

OP, you are trying to juggle too many plates and then blaming yourself unfairly for dropping one.
Have some compassion for yourself, and give yourself credit for all the times when you didn’t “fuck up”.
Then use those management skills to start delegating!
Get a cleaner, for a start. Ditch the chores. Consider ready meals rather than cooking from scratch - or batch cook and freeze, so on the busiest evenings you can just pull one of your precooked dinners out of the freezer.
Give the two school age DC regular duties, such as setting and clearing the table, sorting the laundry, weeding the garden etc.
Sit down with DH and delegate half the life maintenance to him. Start with making him buy and wrap all the presents and cards for his own relatives’ birthdays and Christmas.
You are trying to do far too much, and you need to step back and offload as much as possible.

Is it a small company? Being expected to 'manage and cope' actually goes against the way most international companies work now (or at least how the profess to work from the top, individual managers are a different issue). It sounds to me like you need more support. Do you think you can ask for it?

Do you mean you duplicated it? Or someone else did it and sent it out?

Or it went out without your part?

If you duplicated it, it's not a massive deal frustrating for you and you have spent time with it, but not a massive fuck up.

I think you are being to hard on yourself. I get that as senior management you are expected to cope. But I have also learned that sometimes, the most professional thing to do is ask for help and

First of all if your working from home then it's stressful enough with you having 3 kids to look after as well also with your DH being away a lot then you are trying to juggle the house as well, just speak to your manager an explain the situation yeah accidents happen an yeah they can be rectified. Maybe now the children are back in school you can relax a little more an spend your time concentrating on work if you feel like it's all getting stressful again just stop an give yourself a break, we are all human an yes we do get tired an if you work for a decent company then your manager should understand an maybe see if there are anything they can do to help you. Don't go blame yourself an certainly don't ever pull yourself down you are most prob doing the best you can at home an for work but what about you, you need to take time out for yourself just relax an don't pull yourself down look at yourself in the mirror an pull yourself back up, an be proud of yourself.

Most fuck ups are avoidable!

Deep breath, tackle damage limitation. It's still early. Contact whomever is responsible for distributing the work (even if it was auto-distributed by a system, there must be someone who managed the distribution system eg downstream into another system, or issued as a report to a distribution list, or whatever)

Urgently explain it was not completely finished by the deadline from your side, and you need to either pull back the work/report to submit the final version or contact the recipients with an amended version.

Also ask for a list of key users/recipients of the work and email them immediately to explain due to unforeseeable delays, the work was distributed incomplete and cannot be relied on until you send further update, and you're aiming to fix the situation by x o'clock today. If you are able to summarise what edits need to be made to finish the work, do so (it might be broadly okay in parts or 100% unreliable depending on nature of what you do).

Contact your own manager and explain the situation. Apologise but don't belabour the circumstances, just explain briefly and focus on actions you are taking to fix the situation.

Things can't run perfectly all the time. What counts now is what you do to manage the situation.

And then maybe a chat with your manager when the dust settles, to review how this happened and how to prevent in future.

Take a deep breath! It sounds like you had a stressful morning, but doesn't sound like it's anything that can't be fixed.

Take a very big deep breathe and then take another one.

To be honest, it sounds like more of a fuck up on whoever sent incomplete work out from how I am understanding it... They should have checked everyone was ready/satisfied if it was a team effort for the work.

People are usually very understanding of fuck ups, particularly at the moment.

@Luobogao

Is it a small company? Being expected to 'manage and cope' actually goes against the way most international companies work now (or at least how the profess to work from the top, individual managers are a different issue). It sounds to me like you need more support. Do you think you can ask for it?

This is nonsense. I’m sorry but it is. It might well be a small company but in nearly all organisations when you reach a certain level you’re expected to be able to do yout job without hand holding.

I'm not talking about hand holding. I'm talking about support with stress and other employee welfare issues including any (reasonable) accomodations necessary to support an employee who has a child with SEN. That support can take various forms (and OP would probably need to work out what she needed for herself at her level) and obviously it has to be reasonable but decent employers work with employees dealing with work life balance issues because otherwise the employee ends up either under performing or quitting. Neither of those are good for the employer. At the moment it looks like OP doesn't even feel able to raise what's going on at home. With a decent employer, her acknowledging the situation shouldn't be an issue.

Of course not all employers are decent employers.