I did!

We have 4 different price list 46 pages each. We made a ton of changes for this year's pricelist going out for July 1, the changes have been over the past 3 months, my boss kept bringing me different changes, adding products, deleting products, re-pricing, each time I thought it was complete, he made another change. The format is in Word which amazed me, it needs to be in Excel, and next year it will be! Being in Word, each change has to be made 4 times in 4 different locations, and I have to calculate it in excel and manually transfer it over.

Anyway, my boss made about 32,200 copies of these packets based on my changes, but my last revisions didn't take for whatever reason, I don't know if it was just as simple as not hitting save or what happened.

So I am now unstapling and putting in some correct pages to about 300 of these packets. What's worse is while I am fixing them I am now paranoid, I keep thinking "Did I make this change, or are these prices for this product correct?" and rechecking it over and over. Tonight, I start thinking about the wholesale pricelist and grateful it is correct because he made at least 400 copies of the 46 page packet of this. Then I think, "What if I forgot to make a price changes on this product of the wholesale?" I looked and mistakingly thought I had messed up when it was fine. I then have a panic attack, something I never have but this week is the exception. I go to the bathroom thinking I am going to throw up, wondering how can I face my boss, a lot of these have been sent today, this is so costly! So, in the bathroom, I calm down, come back, look again, and realize nothing was wrong at all. I am so glad, but what a night!

Mainly, I just want to cry, I worked so hard for so many months on this. When I came to work for this company I spent months converting over one accounting program to another with all our data, which was not hard but it went smoothly, yet I couldn't get our price list correct!

I also really feel like I lost my credibility as an Office Manager. I am constantly telling the office, proof and re-proof, yet, I end up making this huge error!

Anyway, there's my vent, if you haven't messed up this royally, I hope you never do. My week is not going to be a fun one at all! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

I guess it could be worse, I could have messed up on the main pricelist, or on all 700. Oh gosh, even the thought of that makes me sick.

Night all, Hope everyone's week is better than mine. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Anna

I like to tell this story to my employees...

I heard about a large corporation where a young manager made a mistake which cost the company 100 grand. When senior managers discussed with the President, they asked, "aren't you going to fire him? This kind of mistake sets a bad example." The President replied "of course not. Why would I spend $100,000.00 to train an employee and then send him to work for another company."

Mistakes are good... it is how we learn. Don't let it ruin the affects of all the good work you must be doing.

Have a great week.

Shaden

Anna,

To answer your question - yes, all the time...in our company, depending on where you are at in the food chain, its what we fondly call a "career limiting move" or it will get you promoted - what determines which it will be is whether you learn from it and put your learnings into practice in a way that others see.

Regards,

BB

Shaden,

Thanks for that story, it was a wonderful story and one I will probably refer back to when I make a mistake or one of the employees.

Today I told my boss that I really REALLY appreciate him being so understanding on this mistake. He was very kind, he said, "We all make mistakes from time to time, you can not be perfect. No one is God but God."

BB,

You are right, it's how you learn from it. There are people who learn from it and try to make changes to illiminate making that mistake again and then there are people who don't take them seriously and just keep making the same mistake over and over.

I feel much better tonight. Gonna get back to correcting my mistake, I told my boss I insist on correcting it on my own time. He was kind enough to even offer to help me correct it, even though he knows he's way too busy and doesn't have time.

Later and thanks, you two really helped make me feel better today. (it's not the quanity of post you get but the quality of words written in the post) <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Anna,

until you have made a $1 million mistake, and i made one this year, don't sweat it. . . you have only lost time and paper. . . and you won't be the first person to lose time. The auditors were hot on the trail, and i had to come clean ASAP in order to stay ahead of them.

however, my suggestion is don't wait to put it in excel, or MS access which is even better, do it ASAP and show your boss the difference. . . that is being proactive. . .

Access can automate the printing much easier than excel, and print is separate from the data. If you really dare to try Access, I can point you to a good resource, and even then, I would be willing to take a look at it to suggest a design for you, including automation.

good luck

wiftty

also remember, its not the mistake because everyone makes them, its ALL in the recovery. . .

wiftty

Thanks for the help Wift, I have studied Access long, long ago. Never applied what I learned so I am sure I forgot everything. I don't think I have it on my computer at work, I do have it on my home computer. I e-mail these to all the reps so I would have the concern about easy "access"....hah...made a joke of sorts. Anyway, any suggestions? Maybe possibly Adobe after it's created?

Anna

Also, How easy is it to convert Excel to access? I would think quite easy. Our accounting program sends the items to Excel.

Absolutely. . . You want a document that can't be changed, such as Adobe, and Access reports can have embedded graphics, like company logo's etc, and with Adobe, you get all the color, which is great. . .

Excel to Access is easy, however, there are some tricks,

http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/index.php

is teh best place to read and ask questions. . .

wiftty
I am there, but under my professional name

There are very few mistakes that can not be fixed.

Unfortuantely, in my job, a mistake can cost a life! Fortunately, I haven't made too many as yet <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> but I'm sure that I have indirectly contributed to a life lost at some point during my working career <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

looking4nike,

that's a tough career to have to be responsible for peoples lives... but think of it this way... the experience you learned from on that lost life, will help you to make the right decisions and save many more lives that would have been lost without your learning experiences.

(I would imagine, though, that it doesn't make it better for the unfortunate one who was the learning experience for you...<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />)

Shaden

I guess I'm probably due since my last big mistake was 14 years ago, LOL. (I've had some smaller ones, but the biggie was a long time ago.)

I was working on a project for the AirForce, in charge of a software development environment for about 25 programmers. One day, on the development server, I deleted the wrong directory, and wiped out all the work done since the previous day's backup. So essentially, what work had been done since the beginning of the day.

I ran over to the developers and told them to save their work in ther personal directories, because the source code tree was gone due to my mistake.

The lead programmer started to give me a hard time, and experienced programmer, close to retirement. I simply said, I'm sorry for my mistake, I came as fast as I could to minimize what was lost, and asked if would have rather I just buried the mistake, making it look like the server crashed and lost the directory.

He said no, and apologized for yelling at me, and thanked me for doing the right thing.

Very little was actually lost. I restored the previous days tape, informed him that the files had been restored, and he let the programmers know that they could check in anything that had been checked out prior to that morning. We also worked on the procedures to check out again, code that had been checked out that day, so the programmers could check in the code they were currently working.

Probably the funniest mistake at work was the last trip I took as a Java Programming instructor, before taking a new job, and my first trip with my new employer.

As an instructor, I travelled probably 20 weeks/year. Never missed a flight from 1995 until early 2000. I showed up at the airport, for my last flight with this employer, and I had booked my flight for the previous day. Since I was a VERY frequently flyer, they changed my ticket without cost, and got me on the next flight out.

I did something similar for my first trip with the new employer. I had to take some classes to learn about clustered computer systems, and I had booked my return flight for Saturday instead of Friday afternoon, right after the class. Again, the airline was gracious, and I was able to fly out Friday afternoon.

Enlighted, When I was first hired, we had horrible IT guys out-sourcing who worked on our computers. The computers all had problems, one had multiple viruses, I was amazed. Now, so far, I do all the work on them myself, and oddly, and very suspiciously, knock on wood, we haven't had any problems with crashes etc, since we got rid of the "so-called IT" guys, but I would say the biggest stress of my job is maintaining the computers and doing back-ups, and this is a relatively small office, just 65 computers, most work in the warehouse area. Every time I make changes, it scares the Ba-geebies out of me.

Then I have to think of the poster who saves lives, one mistake and he can cost a life, I could never have that kind of pressure yet it is so wonderful and I am so thankful for those people will take on that huge responsibility!

Well, interesting stories.

Still workin' on my mistake, I am hoping about 8 more hours will do it...

Well,

Today was just another day of career limiting moves for me. The kicker of it is that, in this instance, I have 20 years' of experience on a very specialized area of US law and this person is outside the US, has never lived inside the US and is not a lawyer. Nonetheless, I am the one in the doghouse because I "rocked the boat" and he is higher profile with our top management than me....

Regards,

BB

OUCH! Sorry BB, Can you get it? Is there a way to do repairs?

Well, I will work my way out of the short-term doghouse. Unfortunately, I have been in the long-term doghouse so long, I have pictures on the walls!

Regards,

BB

There have been 4 days thus far in this work week and all 4 days I have had the pleasure of political doo doo... today's opportunity involves a pet-project of an EVP or our VERY big (Fortune 100), multinational company...in this instance, I am VERY on target and made an excellent "catch" but its going to create negative ripples up the food chain...Lovely, simply lovely....

If perfection is the standard we would all be out of work.