Bad Day

Well it's finally happened. Today I had my first bad day at work on my new job. Up until now I have certainly had my fair share of days when I felt incredibly overwhelmed with all of the new things I have had to learn but it was just a byproduct of training. Today I began my 8th week as an HR representative and I felt like a total failure. Everything that could go wrong totally did.

I came in this morning and before I could even set my purse down Donna one of my co-workers came in all flustered wondering who had entered  information into the system for something she usually handles herself. It was me so I gave her the folder with the information in it. I of course forgot to copy the papers we got before sending the originals to the higher ups for review which is kind of a big deal since we don't actually get that paperwork back from them. She was able to get it back from our director before she took it into her meeting so the crisis was averted.

Donna came back into my office to have me make some changes to the information I entered onto the agenda for the directors' meeting. I made the changes and she asked me to send the corrected version out to all of the directors for the meeting that would be taking place in 10 minutes. I sent a friendly little email letting them know that I was sending a corrected copy. I immediately got an email back from our chief financial officer saying that the corrected copy was not attached. Of course I had been in such a rush to send it out that I actually forgot to attach the dang thing to the email. I had to send another message apologizing for my first message which was missing the document and then attached it. This is a big deal because our chief financial officer is our director's boss and she likes everything to be done precise and correct meaning no errors whatsoever. I have heard from every single person in our department to drop everything when she calls or emails you because whatever she needs is always a priority. I was able to get the email with the corrected document out to everyone 5 minutes before the meeting so crisis second averted.

I put away my lean cuisine pizza in the freezer for lunch and came back to my desk to put up my Christmas wreath which I had been very excited about all weekend because it was fun and I like decorating my office. I sat down to check my emails and two more of my co-workers came in to ask me if I made a copy of something else I had entered into the system. I hadn't but to be honest no one ever told me that I was supposed to copy those before entering them in. After some investigating they realized that this is something that Donna usually does before giving them to me so I actually would not have known to do it. The reason they weren't copied was because they came through the week that Donna was gone.  This is a big deal because that copy goes to payroll and without it someone won't get paid. There were only two of them so they were able to make the copies and send them to payroll right away. Third crisis averted.

After the director's meeting my supervisor came into my office to ask me to change the font on certain areas on the agenda were the physicians' names were not wrapped around in the spreadsheet. I noticed it was that way for weeks but the person who trained me to do this never fixed it and no one ever said that they didn't like the way it looked so I left it that way. Of course today it was noticed and now they think that I was careless and didn't proof the agenda before I sent it out. She acted like it wasn't a big deal but I imagine it was our chief financial officer who pointed it out and asked that it be changed so actually it is important. I went in and fixed it to make sure it looks perfect for next week though so crisis four averted. All of this happened within the first hour of my day by the way.

Later this afternoon one of my co-workers was checking my work to make sure everything was correct. She had about 5 changes to make on some forms I completed but went on to say that it wasn't completely my fault because the paperwork I used to complete the forms was filled out incorrectly by the department. That's all fine and dandy but being handed something you worked on with red marks all over it never feels good.

I usually stay at least 15 minutes late to finish up things in preparation for the next day but I could not get out of there fast enough today. I drove home and decided to write about my sucky day as a way to vent and promised myself not to revisit at all for the rest of the evening. I will likely think about it later tonight but tomorrow is a new day and I will leave all these negative thoughts behind and vow to do better because that's really all I can do. Did I mention that I dialed the number for my co-worker Steve when I really meant to call my co-worker Lisa? I got their extensions mixed up because they are similar. Luckily he laughed about it and Lisa wasn't even at her desk.

The funny thing is last Friday I was just told by my supervisor and other co-workers how well they thought I was doing. In fact, they were impressed at how well I was taking initiative to do things and I was doing them much better than expected and then today happens. It is discouraging to say the least. I am trying so hard and it is imperative that I do well here because my whole career just may literally depend on it. I'm probably being too hard on myself but if I'm not I'm afraid that I will slip up and do something wrong....oh wait, that happened anyways. One thing I can promise you is that I will never forget to make a copy ever again in my life!