Mistakes Amid Misplaced Priorities

As those who've worked in any kind of office might know, not every meeting stays on topic. There are always little side trips about weather, or people’s children, or weekend plans, or gossip. Sometimes it's a real distraction, and a waste of time when there's work to be done. Other times it's a break, a necessary diversion to remember we're human beings, not machines.

At a meeting on Thursday, one of my writers slid into a tangent about how a coworker had stopped by her office to discuss one of her assignments. This wouldn't be unusual, except that the woman in question had apparently lost her mother the day before, and the initial funeral services were that evening. My writer felt somewhat awkward with the situation. On the one hand, in times of grief people might embrace a distraction, but on the other, what do you say when it's that soon? “I'll get right on those corrections and by the way, sorry for your loss”?

I remember back in my early 20s, I immediately called a friend when I heard his mother had suddenly passed away. I'm horrible with knowing what to say to people in 99% of social interactions, but especially bad with this stuff. I said “I'm sorry”, he murmured back an “It's not your fault”, and then we both kind of stayed on the phone in awkward silence; I had nothing else. I don't even remember how I got off the phone, but it was definitely a conversation neither of us was especially prepared for. If it was hard for good friends to talk, how much tougher is it for someone to talk business with a superior right after such a loss?

It got me thinking about priorities, and how much importance we place on work. Twice at my old job I only took a half day too attend funerals, once for an uncle and another time for an aunt. On a third occasion I took off in the morning to not only attend the funeral of my old music teacher, but to play music at his mass. By the afternoon I was back in my cubicle, feverishly doing work and trying to stay focused. Granted, none of these people were blood relatives or immediate family, but all were important people in my life. I forced myself to work because I couldn't risk falling behind, thought it would maintain job security I eventually learned didn't exist. If I had trouble concentrating at work when various cats were laid to rest, how could I even consider going in after losing people?

Mistakes happen when we have other things on our mind. Last year when my cat dealt with a near fatal respiratory infection, I missed paying a credit card bill. It was month before I discovered it amid a stack of unread mail, and only after I got the following month's bill with a mysterious surcharge. People told me I could have argued and gotten it waived, even avoided a rate increase, but at the time I thought “my cat was sick” was a thin excuse.

I often put others first, and I'm not sure if that stems from selflessness or masochism. Do I really care more about other people or do I just think I don't deserve to get what I really want? My natural instinct is to cage myself in. When my father was sick last month with a serious shoulder infection, he needed more than antibiotics, he needed surgery to clean out his wound. A 78-year-old man with a bad heart takes a risk going under anesthesia, but we had no choice at that point. We didn't know when the surgery would be, only that he was being added on to end of the surgeon's schedule and it could be any time after 4 PM. My boss was so understanding when I told him I might need to leave early that day, waving my request aside and telling me to take as much time as I needed. He's very cool about priorities, making time for his own family, and it's been about four or five years since I worked for someone like that. I knew before I walked in to his office that it wouldn't be a problem, and it took a lot of the stress out of asking. I'm conditioned to ask anyway, to think I always have to be at work. It took me years after college to get used to the idea of vacation days, that we were allowed to take off. I lost so many days to my first job that I can never get back.

I was a mess the day of my dad's surgery, a zombie going through the motions. I ended up working the full day since his operation wasn't until about 6:30, so I was able to do my job and wait with my mother for news that he pulled through. It wasn't a major procedure, but we were still worried, and fortunately he survived. He was shaking and weak when they got him back to his room, and hopefully too out of it to remember me holding one of his cold hands in both of mine, because that's kind of embarrassing and awkward when it's not someone's deathbed. “Let us never speak of this again.” In time, he began to seem like his old self, and life sort of got back to normal as he was moved to a nursing home to finish his antibiotic treatment, a stay that mercifully ended after two weeks. With him finally home this week, we're back on schedule.

Earlier this week, reviewing proofs of a job I had worked on during this timeframe, I discovered an error in one of my ads. It was promoting three different items, and in setting up the ad I had duped one image three times to keep the box sizes symmetrical and never replaced the art in the 2nd and 3rd boxes. Mistakes, as I've said, happen when we have other things on our mind. So, at a late stage in the process, three identical photos of almonds were labeled “Almonds”, “Mixed Nuts”, and “Honey Roasted Peanuts”. To patch the job at the printer would have cost over $1,400. I was mortified. The writer I was paired with on that particular job said it was proof that I was human. Our superiors decided it wasn't worth fixing and allowed the job to go out as is. I couldn't believe the ad had gone that far without anyone noticing, and it was fairly obvious when I'd made the error and what my mind was on at the time.

The moral of the story is that, not only should major events in our personal lives take precedence over the minutia of work, but that when we go against our emotions for the sake of work, the work might suffer as well. My work isn't life or death, and something I thought was of terrible consequence was brushed off. They were fine with just catching the mistake the next time the ad printed. My fear, as I keep learning the same lessons only to make the same mistakes and learn the lesson all over again, is that this cycle will never break. What happens when my dad's time does come, or when I lose my mom? I don't want to be like that lady that came in to work the next day. People will understand if I take the time I need to grieve, and I certainly won't be taking any half days for my parents’ funerals. It all comes down to priorities, and certain things are universal to being human. Once I accept that others don't hold me to the same obligations I shackle myself to, that they'll understand, then I can be free to put work aside and know that my inbox will still be waiting for me after I've taken care of the important stuff.