To feel like this has spoiled my job

[MsPollysDolly]

I am having to be a bit vague here. Sorry.

A couple of months ago I organised something at work. It was outside of my normal role; there was no expectation on me to do so but I thought it would be a good thing to do. I’ve done it a lot in previous roles and it’s always gone well.

It did not go well 😬 No major disasters or anything but a lot of stress and a lot of obstruction from those above me.

So - OK, we move on, won’t do that again. But my colleagues won’t stop talking about it, rehashing it, talking about what a disaster it was, so stressful and awful.

I thought it would die down after Christmas but it hasn’t.

It’s really spoiled my job. I feel like I’ve gone from someone competent and together to being perceived as someone chaotic and shambolic. And the endless going on about it isn’t helping.

I don’t know if I’m just being ridiculously sensitive or not?

When someone brings it up

Can you tell me what you want to achieve by bringing this up? Are you looking to embarras me continuously or do you feel like there is learning that can be gained from the situation? What would you have done differently? How could it have been done better?

If they say something you've already attended say, yes we've done xyz, what else? Yes we've done that since, what else? When they have nothing say, ok fabulous, maybe we can put this behind us now then?

Turning the question back to them, making them disect

Just groan, eye roll and say oh not this again! With a smile on your face.

“I don’t really see why you keep bringing this up?, I’m finding it a bit much actually so please stop.”

Then if they don’t you can do something more formal with managers or HR.

Agree with them and add something to help move on:

’I agree, it wasn’t my finest moment. But we all live and learn’

If they keep bringing it up either:

• they’re taking the piss out of you, or,
• you have some ‘learnings’ to acknowledge

I’m sorry it all went wrong despite your best efforts, OP. Your colleagues sound like a pain in the neck. I’d take Joelle’s advice, and if they still carry on, tell them to do it themselves next time!

Just a thought but I wonder if it's not really
Directed at you but it's just a bit of office fodder. Sounds as if they don't spend much time together outside of work so despite the chaos it was probably an indirect team building exercise.

If you stuck your neck out and did something outside of your job description that caused your colleagues a lot of stress, they're probably constantly raising it to make sure you stay in your lane.

It's difficult to say without knowing what it was, but some people see that sort of thing as you being 'self important', so they could be glad you fell flat on your face.

Either way, just roll your eyes and as a PP said, just say something like 'Oh not this again'.

It'll be yesterday's news soon enough.

On what scale and scope was the project or activity? Was it a Secret Santa, for example, or something that generated work for your colleagues?

I would take the approaches suggested above; either we learn from it and move on, or we laugh about it and move on. Either way, we are moving on because it is distressing you.

There will be something else that comes along soon and takes it's place in the gossip mill. Personally, I'd just tune out and ignore all mentions or change the subject if it was raised with me again. Do your job, go home and don't worry about it. You tried, it didn't work, so what? You've hardly committed a crime or fucked the boss.

You probably have to let the gossip run its course - which it will do, either they'll run out of things to say or something else will come along. It will be forgotten sooner than you think.

Tell them the conversations getting boring.

If it's something that has worked well elsewhere, I would turn it round on them.

"Yes, it's worked well previously but obviously the audience/culture here is a bit different and everyone more set in their ways. Never mind, I've read the room now'.

”Next time it’s your turn to organise it, Jane! Sounds like you’re an expert.”

Don’t feed it. Wait it out, it will go away.

but a lot of stress and a lot of obstruction from those above me.

Why were those above obstructing do you think?

Did they know it wouldn't be well received perhaps?

But it didn't need organising to begin with!

I'd say "clearly this is something that people still have unresolved thoughts about, so I'll organise a postmortem and we'll ensure we've captured all our learnings for the future". If they balk at that, then I'd say "okay, clearly we've exhausted that topic and our time is best used on other things then, so let's move on".

Argh I get you OP. I was pulled into delivering a presentation in person to our remote team at a face to face event. It felt like a development opportunity but really (and naively I didn't realise this at the time) I was being asked to step up to cover a (male) manager who should have been doing this, and I believe it fell to me through a combination of me being more palatable to the team, and him not wanting to do it.

On the day it wasn't great for several reasons, and said male manager was quite annoying as he cut across me quite a lot. What I thought was a bit of a flop though, turned into this big overblown things with many colleagues getting in touch with senior management because of their perceived misogyny about this situation. I really appreciated their defending of me, but it made a bit of a crap presentation which was unavoidably dry due to what I had to cover, into this big palaver, and a result it was brought up to me many times. Frankly it destroyed my confidence as it confirmed to me how much of a shrinking violet people perceive me to be. Everyone was trying to come to my rescue and all I took from it was that I gave off damsel in distress vibes. I'm sure not a word of my actual presentation was remembered. Just the fall put from it!

All you can do OP, is do what others have suggested and move on, with polite and professional challenges. I've learned a lot from working in a team of people who are quite comfortable being IMO kind of awkward and just straight saying what's on their mind and challenging things, but that's a good trait to have in the world of work.

This is what I would do too!

I know EXACTLY this feeling!

This has happened to me too recently. I’ve dealt with it by repeating “and what is good is we have learnt a lot from it and we know in future if it happened again we would xyz”.

Repeat repeat repeat.

No one brings it up now (it’s been a month…) but like you annoying as it was an extra thing, and IMO not everything can be perfect and if we only did safe things we would never learn.

Good luck, OP! Your good reputation will rise above this one smaller not even your actual job thing.

Ah, thanks. It’s stupid really.

It’s true it didn’t ’need’ organising but it is something that’s generally felt to be beneficial. But the culture is different and I know that now. I just wish I could forget about it but it’s like I’m not being allowed to!

I agree with a slight variation - I’d look them straight in the eye, expressionless and say “I tried to do something to make ppl more motivated/happy etc. You live and learn.” Then get back to what I was doing.

They’ll seem like dicks for taking the piss if they continue.

You can point out that it worked out well the previous times you’ve done it. But hopefully you won’t need to. It doesn’t exactly encourage new ideas. Sounds like they’re a boring shower of bastards who are setting who’re ways and don’t want any deviation. Their loss.

I've had ideas and implemented them at work that have fallen terribly flat and embarrassingly so, or made errors in judgement.
One error of judgement I spoke to the team individually and apologised to all and thanked them for their feedback - not the nicest day but it was at least sorted.
Others if I've done something a bit random but well intended and not detrimental at all then I tend to not apologise or explain but just sort of make a joke - oh I'm full of silly ideas kind of.
It does depend on the team though - I have had one that would complain the pizzas I bought were late or something - this wasn't personal really they just despised anything any managers ever do and moan forever. In this case I would actually act a bit more firmly if it began to become 'behaviour' issues - fortunately only one team in many years.
You know the people and what is your best approach - you will need to grit your teeth - personally I have to work hard to avoid passive aggressive comments but that's a me thing 🙈
It is horrible and depressing but try to choose an approach and stick to it and totally forget about it outside work. They are a bit mean imo as it must be obvious to most you meant it well and don't go out of your way to make others cross.

Are we talking something along the lines of a Christmas party that wad poorly attended and ended up being a bit boring for those who attended but only affects your colleagues? Or something that was public facing such as trying to put on a charity event and inviting clients and it ended up being more than you could deliver and either your colleagues had to take on extra work to make it happen or it has negatively effected business image due to not being a success? If the former then your colleagues need to forget it but if it’s something that’s effected your workplace more widely, through a negative company reputation or extra workload for colleagues, then I suppose I can see why they haven’t let it lie yet.

It depends. If it negatively impacted them and upped their workload, they'll grumble for a while, I suspect.