The New Kid's Screw-Up at Work

Anonymous Guilty Busybody #715 · General

I started my first job two weeks ago as an office assistant at a busy accounting firm. From day one, I was told to learn and follow the procedures without making any mistakes. So far, everything seemed fine until yesterday. Yesterday morning, I received a call from Mary, our department's lead accountant who works remotely. She asked me to print out her reports so she could review them in person today. Easy enough. But something went wrong with my computer. The files wouldn't open properly no matter what I tried. Feeling stressed and rushed for time, I quickly scanned through the email instead of printing it directly from Mary's Dropbox folder like instructed. I noticed there were two different sets of reports, one was for clients and one was a summary sheet that should never be shared publicly. Unfortunately, in my haste to impress and not make any mistakes, I accidentally sent both emails with all their documents attached, instead of just the client report as requested. When Mary came in later, she went through her emails only to find out what happened. She was pretty upset, and rightly so. Since then, everyone has been walking on eggshells around me. I feel like my reputation is ruined before it even got started. But honestly, I'm the one who needs a reality check more than anything else. Maybe being meticulous isn't the only way to succeed here.