Forgetfulness and Double Standards

[AutistAcolyte]

Why does it always seem that when I forget something (work, personal, whatever) I'm guilted about it and have to come up with this apology and what I'm going to do to fix it, but if someone else forgets something, then its just "oops, people make mistakes" and I have to deal with the consequences myself? It's frustrating.

 

[Rodafina]

I'm guilted about it and have to come up with this apology and what I'm going to do to fix it,

Who puts you in this position? Yourself or someone else?

 

[AutistAcolyte]

Who puts you in this position? Yourself or someone else?

i think both. i definitely feel bad when i disappoint people, but an example i'm thinking of this morning is that i asked my boss to start including another email on the weekly message she sends out to our team for that week, and she never does. and when i reminded her that i had asked her to do that, she said "well you can just forward the message to that address." and she still isn't including them on the inital thread.

a mistake that i made was that one of the printouts i made for this past weekend was incorrect, but it was correct somewhere else, so there was a little hiccup in our meeting, but nothing actually went "wrong." then in our staff meeting this morning, i was asked what checks i can put in place to make sure that doesn't happen.

 

[Judge]

Depends on the context. At work people may choose to be polite, even low-key about such things. Or not at all. The "bottom line" being that with work, they give you only so much rope to hang you with. As an insurance underwriter, mistakes in my field were usually quite costly to the corporation. I saw coworkers both abruptly and incrementally terminated for such things.

In essence in the private sector, regardless of how such things may appear, your employer neither forgets or forgives.

Elsewhere the stakes are likely to be somewhat less critical. As to how people may socially react to you over such events may well depend on how frequently it happens.

 

[Au Naturel]

Why does it always seem that when I forget something (work, personal, whatever) I'm guilted about it and have to come up with this apology and what I'm going to do to fix it, but if someone else forgets something, then its just "oops, people make mistakes" and I have to deal with the consequences myself? It's frustrating.

You said it yourself. You are guilted about it. They don't feel guilty about it. The absence of a guilty feeling creates different behaviors and expectations.

I have never seen any point in feeling guilty about a genuine mistake. To err is human. Feel guilty only if you were negligent or knew something to be wrong but did it anyhow. Negligence is the absence of due diligence, not an unintentional oops.

Then also, not being fully incorporated into the social network gives you no leverage in deciding how a mistake will be fixed. You may simply be at the bottom of the food chain and we know what rolls downhill. Does fixing others' mistakes adversely impact your own duties? Make sure management knows. If you repeatedly get stuck fixing other's goofs, you need to insist on being rewarded accordingly.

It isn't easy.

 

[AdamG]

There is the guilt you feel, but I have found that double standards are real. People tend to hold themselves to a lower metric than those they judge. It is a real phenomenon, and it bugs me to no end. Glass houses and stones, ya know?
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I tend to be more patient with people who bug me over things I also do myself.