My Bad.

I almost cost my company P60,000 ($1,200). Now, I know that’s not big when you convert it to dollars, but it's almost 3 months worth of salary here in the Philippines.

I was sick that week and this magazine was waiting for my go signal for them to include our ad in their September issue. We were the only brand they were waiting for, so I was pretty tense waiting for our general manager to sign the contract-or not. We usually attach the old contracts for reference together with the proposed contract. Unfortunately, I thought he signed the new contract, but what I saw was the old one. BIG MISTAKE.

I noticed the contract 3 days after and realized it wasn’t approved. They already sent the go signal to the publisher and everything was ready for final printing. HOLY CRAP. I tried asking the account executive from the magazine to cancel it, and she said she couldn’t. So I had to tell my immediate supervisor about it right away. She called the the magazine and the ad placement was canceled. I expected a whole lot of scolding from her but all I got was, “So did they cancel it already?”, and they did. I think I was incredibly BLESSED that she didn’t yell at me. But I was ready to take the blow. It was entirely my fault.

I realized one thing about office life, if you make a mistake, OWN IT. Don’t blame on someone else or some adverse event (even if you want to). Don’t reason out unless they ask you. Admit that it was your fault; you are terribly sorry and make sure that it will never happen again. It also shows your boss that you take full responsibility for your actions which actually shows maturity in your work ethic. What I love about mistakes is that you really do learn from them. You analyze what you did wrong, and then change that ‘step’ or ‘action’ you did to prevent it from happening again.