Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mistakes

Doh

silly me — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 06:02:31 -0800

How frequently do you screw up at work? I'm wondering if it's "normal" to screw up at work with the frequency that I am, and I should cut myself some slack. Alternately, I'm considering the possibility that it's a big problem. Without giving away too much information about myself, let's just say that in the past couple of months I seem to be unable to turn around at work without messing up. Either it's forgetting some minor detail that ends up being crucial to getting a job done, thus resulting in one or more people having to scramble when the detail is discovered; or it's proceeding with a project without thinking through all aspects of it, meaning that the ball gets dropped somewhere along the way.

I would say that since the beginning of the year I've made six pretty blatant mistakes, ranging from minor to slightly catastrophic. I call the one catastrophic because it made a client angry enough at me that I actually started crying in front of him. Ugh, ugh, ugh. The problem ended up being reversible, but I felt like quitting right then.

In my defense, the job is pretty hectic, with lots of unavoidable distractions and minutiae of the sort that I'm not good at managing. I'm a mid-life professional who has been like this my whole life and am actually at the highest level of functioning ever. I am not happy in my job and am actively looking for another. When I mess up like this, though, it's not a great confidence booster, especially given that most people's jobs these days are hectic.

I realize that asking people to freely admit their own work mistakes on the internet may be a bit much, but if there is any perspective on this I'd enjoy hearing it.

Starting over

nidora — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:34:02 -0800

Anybody have any experience with needing to come to a fresh start? I am blessed with an abundance of things, but this last year has been tough. I still have a roof over my head, but I had to move back in with my parents at the age of 37. Not exactly what somebody my age wants to be doing, but will out of necessity. I recently finished graduate school about a month ago. I finished with a degree in counseling psychology. It's kind of ironic, since I am supposed to have solutions for other people, but I can't even get my own life together.

I don't want to have a pity party, but I can say that I have made more errors than most along the way. Everyone tells me that failures are learning experiences. That might be true, but they also are a reflection of how you are doing in the world.

I'm not sure how the rest of my life is going to pan out. I would love to say that I'm going to become a great therapist, but I'm not even sure whether I should go down that path. How can I give others advice about anxiety and depression when I have had my own fair share of that throughout my life?

I am an expert on making something simple, complicated. I'm not sure what else to share with everyone? My life is a mess and the only one that I can blame is myself.

If there is anyone out there who has had to come to a clean start from the way that they were living their lives, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Right now, I feel discouraged and that I am losing perspective. The truth is that I'm a mess.

Any input would be greatly appreciated concerning starting your life over again.

How do you deal with knowing that the person's friends hate you for how you've hurt them?

Autumn — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 15:23:43 -0800

Relationship fall-out: How do you deal with knowing that the person's friends hate you for how you've hurt them? I've posted about my relationship before, but basically we both made a lot of mistakes in it. Now when I see this girl, she tells me her friends and family know about the mistakes I've made in the relationship and don't approve and don't think I loved her and hated to see her so upset all the time. She tells me that her family has even said that if she's with me, they don't want her in their lives.

Now, that can make a person feel like shit. I've only ever heard of a family saying that to someone who was destroying their lives with drugs or something and bringing everyone that tried to be there for them down with them. And I think, is that seriously how they see me? Wow.

I'm going to write out what I've done so you have a clear picture of what I'm talking about:

- I've hit her. She hit me first, but I hit her back shortly afterwards and hit her again a few weeks later when she slapped me during sex thinking I'd like it. It wasn't a reactionary thing, both times I hit her I did it because she hit me and I thought it would help me feel better.

- I was seeing someone else when I met her. I broke up with them two weeks after she and I became official, told her a few months later.

- I broke up with her constantly. Sometimes over stupid things, sometimes over serious things.

- I told her I hated her multiple times, and at one point said "fuck you, I hate you" (which was when she slapped me.)

- I was feeling suicidal at one point and poured myself a glass of antifreeze in front of her. Then I picked up a knife and put it to my wrist. I wasn't actually planning to do anything (I didn't drink the antifreeze or cut myself, just stood there), but she didn't know that and was traumatized. At the time I was seeing a psychiatrist and on medication that made me a bit loopy.

I feel like a horrible person, I replay what she's said they think of me over and over in my head. I don't go places I might run into her friends because I'd be incredibly embarrassed.

The thing of it is I know that I'm human and that people make mistakes. I know that being around certain people can make you turn ugly and it has nothing to do with you as a person. My friends are on my side and say the exact same things about her that her friends/family say about me (minus the abandoning me if I'm with her part.) I didn't include my side of the incidents above to keep this from being too long but I know that there's two sides to every story and she's hurt me as much as I've hurt her.

None of my feel-better thinking helps. I don't know what to say to myself or what thought process I need to be having to get over this. It also doesn't help that I've seen my friends in pain over relationships and there's definitely moments where I've thought "what a horrible person to do that to someone." How do you cope with yourself knowing that you've hit someone and other people know it? She's going through the same thing - my friends know she's hit me and done other physically/emotionally-abusive things and don't approve either. She's pulled a gun on herself (they don't know that part but it ties in with what I did above.)

It doesn't help me at all to think that my friends know all of what I've done too and don't judge me at all. (they blame her) It should help but it doesn't. :( I tell myself look Autumn, some people bring out the worst in each other. Both of your friends are looking in from the outside and see the individual hurt, but they won't ever see the whole picture and even if they did they would feel the same way about you because they're closest to her. It's the same way your friends are reacting. Don't feel bad about yourself. Doesn't help!

This person has a wide network of friends and I go around thinking there's this large number of people who think I'm a horrible person.

Generally, people like me. When I've had relationships, the friends/family tend to like me and nothing as horrible as the above happened. I don't like not being liked by people for something I've done. I've never done anything like the above and I don't know how to deal with other people's reactions. The other thing that hurts is she's such a happy, bubbly person. Everyone loves her. And today she told me that being with me made her depressed and have anger problems and her friends couldn't stand to see her that way. That hurt. I told myself that I'm not solely responsible for her issues - she had them before our relationship went south and her anger/depression is part of the reason things with us went horribly.

But she blames me and I know she's suddenly saying these things because she's opened up to people and that's what they're saying. So I'm left knowing that there's a group of people that think I turned this happy-go-lucky person into a depressed angry monster. I try to tell myself my friends probably think that about her too - that I was happy, then I wasn't and it's probably her fault. Doesn't help. Argh!

I don't even feel that the issue is I haven't forgiven myself - I had forgiven myself and her for the way we acted during the relationship awhile ago. I guess she must have just started talking to her friends about us because she's bringing stuff up that happened months, sometimes years ago. Things that previously she seemed okay about. Now she's done a 180 and is blaming me for everything. I try to tell myself that's how some people move on - that she needs to feel like it was all my fault because if it wasn't then what does that say about her and what she's done? But it just. doesn't. help.

Which makes me think that her friends must think even worse of me - like it was so horrible she felt she couldn't talk to them or I was preventing her from talking to them or something (I wasn't!).

Help me - I'm good at thought-therapy and manipulating the way I think in order to feel better about something. Not this time. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. I don't want to hate myself. Thank you.

If support hit me in the face I wouldn't know what I was look at

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:55:40 -0800

How do normal, happy couples support each other in a non-dysfunctional, healthy relationship? Not surprisingly, longish snowflake details inside. My wife and I both came from households where our parents didn't support each other in meaningful or obvious ways. All of our parents were okay parents to us, but not the best spouses to each other. We're finding out that we're both acting out in ways that mirror our parents' relationships, to the detriment of our marriage.

Lately we've been getting into fights because I don't feel like I've been supported. I ask for support but in the most vague terms, and get angry when I don't get it. I've realized that I get angry probably because I have no idea what support looks like in a healthy relationship, nor do I even know what to ask for. Here a few examples:

- I've been dealing with depression for the past few years and all that my wife has done was given me a plant because she read that plants may help depressed people. When I slip into a depressive episode, she seems ambivalent and doesn't really know what to do.

- In the past, I trained for a few half-marathons. I would get up in the mornings and do my runs while she slept. I asked her to get ready for work while I ran so that we could be on time, but that was followed maybe 50% of the time. I don't feel like there were any special considerations given to my lifestyle. When I finally ran the race she wanted to run with me past the finish line but I let her know that I wanted to cross it myself since she didn't support me.

- I've taken up leadership positions in volunteer organizations, and whenever I have meetings it seems to be viewed as an annoyance, especially since we've had a child. She doesn't particularly seem proud of my achievements nor does she make space for me to continue volunteering.

We have an almost two year old and are finding out that while we're really good parents together, our marriage is slowing crumbling beneath us. We want to be good role-models and give our kid a good foundation for how to have healthy relationships. When we were childless it was easy to push aside problems but it's finally caught up to us. We both have some mental health issues that are definitely the root of these problems (me - depression, codependence; wife - abusive past, borderline/narcissistic personality) and we're seeking counseling, but we need a starting point until that stuff kicks in.

So, hive-mind, what support mean in your healthy relationship?

Think I can solve this privacy issue of mine?

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:28:55 -0800

Think I can solve this privacy issue of mine? If not, what to do if I'm "discovered"? Years ago, when I was an immature, attention-whoring and irresponsible internet user, I let loose on an internet board (internet boards being something I was new to, by the way) and made thousands of posts—especially ones of a sexual nature—that would likely horrify my family if they were to see them. Additionally, being discovered there would disclose my mental condition—which I like to keep private—to my family. And one more trivial reason for not wanting my family to see those posts: My writing, though admittedly still not of a professional quality, sucked back then; I don't want my family to think I still write like that.

All in all, the posts I made on that site paint a false image of my current self and the thought of my family finding me on there horrifies me (note that I say "family" rather than "sister" because if my sister finds me on there, she'll most definitely tell other family members about it).

At the time I frequented the board it felt nice to say as I wished until came the realization that, shit—my sister was familiar with the (super unique) username I chose to use on the board. When this realization came, I immediately requested a username change and was glad that my wish was granted. But, what I didn't realize right away, was that my old username was still showing up in quotes, making me still easy to find in search engines. When this realization came the worrying persisted for a while but I eventually forced myself to stop visiting the site and put it out of my mind and merely hoped my sister wouldn't ever bother looking up my username in Google (which, I believe, all these years later, she still hasn't; I'm sure that if she ever finds me, she'll be notifying me about it ASAP).

Fast forward to the present and I'm suddenly thinking about those forum posts again. I feel that merely hoping my sister won't find them isn't good enough and that I should do something about this rather than hope. But what is there to do? Would anyone even bother trying to help someone who was irresponsible? Even if I could get a staff-member to bulk-delete my posts—something most forum staff don't do (and for good reason)—my quoted posts, which there are many of, would still show up and I'd still be Googleable. A word filter on my old username would do the trick, but this is something I've already requested but my request was ultimately ignored. And requesting a staff member to manually delete all occurrences of my old user-name, which would also do the trick, is out of the question as that would be insanely time-consuming considering how high my post count is.

So what to do? Is there any solution? If you think not, what on earth will I say to my sister in the event that she sees my posts?

I'd like to stop worrying, but there's a lot of embarrassing shit about me out there. Reading through my old posts has made me start worrying again. :(

Reducing my margin of error

never nice — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 06:28:08 -0800

How can I reduce my margin of error on the job? As you can see from my previous questions, employment has been a turbulent issue for me. I'm on yet another contract job that holds out the opportunity for full-time employment, but so far my track record has some glaring spots. It's been pointed out that I have a tendency to make the same mistakes and not understand things the first time directions are given.

I don't know if it's me or if it's my workplace. I have had co-workers gripe over lunch that they get contradictory directives from the higher ups, and have crossed swords with them in the past. At the same time, I have a lot of anxiety as bills are piling up and I'm in a toxic family living situation. In an ideal world I wouldn't be in the workforce at all, but I have no idea how to generate passive income streams.

I literally can't afford to lose this job and have a bad reputation in the small industry I'm in. How can I focus on getting things right the first time, or at least not going through so many rounds of drafts?

Keeping my line of work deliberately vague in case co-workers are reading, as I know some of them are on MeFi. If you'd like to learn more details, feel free to MeMail me.

Does history repeat itself if the players change?

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:24:32 -0800

Moving in with my SO - but worried that I'll end up in the unhappy situation my parents were in. What do you do when you didn't grow up with a positive example of marriage/co-habitation? My dad was verbally, emotionally and physically abusive to me from the age of nine - it messed up my self-esteem, I felt I was unwanted or unloved and my views, privacy and opinions were not respected, I'm prone to headaches due to constant blows to the head with fists or implements such as trays, and I tend to shrink away or become over-apologetic in conflict. I've had a lot of therapy to deal with this, and my dad died six years ago, so that's the only way I can really reconcile all these feelings. Not long after he died, I had a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder - if it's relevant - at the tail end of an unhappy relationship. Since then, I met my SO and we are happy and discussing getting a flat together.

However, the relationship between he and my mother was similar, bar the physical abuse. She was treated as another child, my dad very much ruled the house and what he said went - he was the breadwinner and was in a professional job whereas my mother did a manual job and was unqualified, and I think he liked that situation. As an adult, I realised more and more how unhappy it was and how trapped my mother felt, particularly during two incidents where her 'talking back' to him during an argument led to him not speaking to her for months at a time - coming home and going straight to the spare room, eating food from a drawer rather than using the kitchen, and throwing refuse from the window rather than crossing the living room to put it outside.

Now, after four years of a long-distance relationship my SO and I are in a position to move in together soon (he's male, I'm female) and given what i observed growing up, I am worried we'll start with the best intentions and end up in a conflicted or unhappy household. There are tons of things we've had to work through in our relationship which I won't go into here, but we do disagree on some aspects such as tidiness/clutter and his method of addressing problems tends to be passive-aggressive whereas I like to have everything out on the table. Although we discuss things properly and talk a lot about compromise, I keep going back to how unhappy my parents were and wonder if this is something that happens to all couples eventually. Also, I worry I won't be able to rationalise or put forward my views when we disagree or fight (as is natural when two people share a space!). Has anyone had similar feelings/upbringing and how did you reconcile this?

Help me to stop making simple errors

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:20:11 -0800

I am making stupid mistakes at work and I need a strategy to help myself overcome them. Sorry for the length. I have a task that I do at my job. It is a big part of my job that I enjoy doing. I can (and will) literally spend hours upon hours doing this task which I enjoy doing because I have a LOT that I need to do and I like being able to see progress in the numbers of things I'm knocking off my to-do list. I also like the hyper-focus mode that I get into and I don't like to stop when I'm on a roll. If it helps, the tasks are a specific sort of math work on accounts, of which I have around 1000.

As with most tasks there are several different things that need to be taken into consideration/done for the thing to be done properly. Some aspects are more important than others. I tend to get very focused, almost hyper-focused, on doing the important things right that I will sometimes overlook a smaller aspect. The thing I overlook is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but that I have overlooked it several times is starting to look bad. I have ADD and am taking medication which helps me a lot. I used to have a similar problem at a previous job where I was writing reports for clients that often contained a lot of complex financial information. I would spend so much time calculating and recalculating the numbers and ensuring not only that they were correct but that they made good sense to a client who might not understand the more obscure concepts and also that it made sense in the bigger scheme of all of the client's history and dealings that I would miss simple typos in the reports.

It didn't help that I was writing the reports myself and using a very similar narrative (on the non-numerical stuff) across all reports. So it was basically a narrative that was mostly memorized. I would read each report a few times before I sent it but because it was so familiar to me my eyes would skip over simple misspellings. I was doing this again and again to the point where it was a problem because my boss was noticing it. My solution was to read my reports UPSIDE DOWN on the final proofread, which would sort of force my eyes to slow down and read each word separately. This helped considerably though it did slow me down tremendously. I was not on ADD meds at that time.

The task that I am doing now is not a reading one, but is really just forgetting to consider a small aspect in each task, which causes a small error and too many of these can affect certain coworkers for whom these errors make up part of their performance review.

The thing I am overlooking only comes into play for about 1/3 of my accounts and on those 1/3 I am probably remembering it and getting it right 90% of the time. I work on such a large number of accounts though, that the ones I miss have added up to about 5-10 times this has happened this year so far. This is more than it should happen for such a simple thing.

Is it possible to devise a strategy to remind myself to remember to do something when I work on these tasks? I could slow myself down considerably and only work on, say, five accounts per day, but I can't really do this over the long term. There are days when I need to maybe look at 50-60 accounts and I do tend to get in sort of a lull and pattern when I'm doing this, which is why can I forget to look at this minor aspect. I do not need to do this task every day, though I do need to make progress on how many I get done over time.

I'm sorry for the length of this but I wanted to be thorough because of the anonymity. Any strategies you could give me would be appreciated. These are errors of omission (which cause a bigger problem) rather than actively doing something incorrectly (which I never do). This is not the type of task that I can run before a second pair of eyes before I complete it or I would have considered doing that.

Is there a way to safely separate two sheets of paper glued together?

johnofjack — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 11:25:44 -0800

A printout was inadvertently glued to a copy of a historical photo. How do I get it off? At work we've just discovered a stack of photos, on paper of unknown type, mounted to wood. Someone had the idea of separating each of these with old printouts. One of the printouts in the middle of the stack had glue on it, and is now stuck to the photo.

I don't know what kind of glue it is.

I also don't know what kind of paper the copy was made on, but it can apparently take and keep a visible fingerprint, as someone left one on it. The copy is probably decades old and the photo is on some sort of paper--apparently something had been stuck to it before, and resolved it by simply tearing the paper off, tearing the top layer off the photo in the process. And then made that same mistake again. Yes, yes, I know. It wasn't me, honest.

The original photos are no longer available, so this copy is all we have.

Is there a way to get this printout off the photo without destroying the photo?

I've looked into it a bit online and am not optimistic; most people seem to recommend steam, in hopes of loosening the glue. That doesn't strike me as the least risky option, since the photo is also on paper. Is dry heat a viable option? Wouldn't that just make the glue set further?

Photo of the situation: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnjack/7631302894/

Photo of the masses of glue visible through the printout: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnjack/7631302698/

Photo of the damage done before: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnjack/7631302492/

Photo of the corner, which has started to peel away and shows the layers: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnjack/7631480440/in/photostream

How do I not suck at life?

Anonymous — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 09:08:41 -0800

You procrastinate. You're disorganized. You make multiple careless mistakes weekly. How did you go from being a Bad Employee to a good one who actually contributes positively to your organization? I'm two years into my professional career out of school and have somehow fallen into a career that involves an extreme amount of attention to detail, attention to numbers/finance/budget, spreadsheets, hyper-organization, and managing multiple projects/clients at once on tight deadlines.

I profoundly suck at all of these things. I feel worse because I have a feeling that a lot of these qualities are important for most if not all jobs, regardless of the industry, so even if I'm considering a career switch I still need to get my shit together for the time being.

I am at my second company starting fresh after my performance at my first one went south. When I started at my old job, everyone seemed to really appreciate my work, but as my workload and responsibilities increased, my performance got worse and worse. I had a harder time organizing more things and prioritizing tasks. I rarely met deadlines that my supervisor set. As work started piling up, desire to procrastinate increased. I started putting things off because I was horrified of getting started on them. I'd be on client calls and information would be coming at me so fast that I couldn't keep up with taking notes.

And then the careless mistakes started happening - I'd make so many errors on so many projects, causing my entire team to have to backtrack and cover my ass and producing more unnecessary work for everyone. The scary part is, no matter how much I think I am taking my time on something, and no matter how elaborately I thought I proofed it, I can not count the number of times I'd come in the next morning, the next week, or the next month to find out from my boss or a client that something was completely fucked up because of a mistake or a typo or a detail I overlooked. And I'll pull up the document/spreadsheet that I worked on from that day and THEN and only then will I actually see the error that led to the cluster that we're now in. And it feels like someone who blacked out from drinking too much only to find out the next morning they harmed someone but have no memory of it. It's horrifying, and no matter how much I try to take control over it, the mistakes keep piling up.

So a month ago I left my job to start over at another company. I'd do everything different this time! I'd take my time on things! I'll double check! I'll keep a to-do list and keep everything in folders and binders! Nope, none of this happened, and a month in I've already received my third email from my supervisor telling me "Please be sure to check your work to avoid this from happening again". I feel awful. Just like my last job, I am constantly apologizing. It has already begun - I am doing a Bad Job, and I can sense my supervisor is starting to feel the first pangs of regret for hiring me.

I feel like a shitty worker who sucks at contributing. I want so badly to be a "valuable asset" to the organizations I work for but am just the complete opposite - I screw things up and drag people down with me. I'm starting to feel like I just don't belong here, like I'm not cutting it.

My question: Does this sound like it was you at one point? How did you change your life in a positive way? Did you get diagnosed with ADD and get on meds/therapy? Did you keep at it and things turned around? Did you get fired and hit "rock bottom" forcing you to pull it together? I need to know stories about this with positive endings, because I can only focus on the negative right now. I would also love to hear perspectives from those who are managers and have dealt with people like me.

I want to change SO badly.

Sloppy MicroChips: Can a fair comparison be made between biological and silicon entropy?

0bvious — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 09:05:10 -0800

Was reading about microchips that are designed to allow a few mistakes (known as 'Sloppy Chips'), and pondering equivalent kinds of 'coding' errors and entropy in biological systems. Can a fair comparison be made between the two? OK, to setup my question I probably need to run through my (basic) understanding of biological vs silicon entropy...

In the transistor, error is a bad thing (in getting the required job done as efficiently and cheaply as possible), metered by parity bits that come as standard in every packet of data transmitted. But, in biological systems error is not necessarily bad. Most copying errors are filtered out, but some propogate and some of those might become beneficial to the organism (in thermodynamics sometimes known as "autonomy producing equivocations").

Relating to the article about 'sloppy chips', how does entropy and energy efficiency factor into this? For the silicon chip efficiency leads to heat (a problem), for the string of DNA efficiency leads to fewer mutations, and thus less change within populations, and thus, inevitably, less capacity for organisms to diversify and react to their environments - leading to no evolution, no change, no good. Slightly less efficiency is good for biology, and, it seems, good for some kinds of calculations and computer processes.

What work has been done on these connections I draw between the biological and the silicon?

I'm worried that my analogy is limited, based as it is on a paradigm for living systems that too closely mirrors the digital systems we have built. Can DNA and binary parity bit transistors be understood on their own terms, without resorting to using the other as a metaphor to understanding?

Where do the boundaries lie in comparing the two?

Moving forward after making a mistake?

farce majeure — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:08:16 -0800

It would seem that I've f'd up, big time. Now what? How do you move forward when you're fairly sure you've made a bad decision and can't turn back. (details inside) I'll start with the question and you can read the details beneath if so inclined.

I took a big gamble, and all signs are pointing to it being a losing one, and I'm having a very hard time avoiding the feeling that, this decision and it's aftermath will come to define the rest of my life.

My question is, are there any other mefites out there who've made a decision with far ranging consequences that ended up being a mistake, and if so, how did you move forward after that? I am more or less over beating myself up for making this decision, but it's put me on a path I didn't expect and don't want to be on, and I don't know how to move forward in a positive way.

Details:
About 8 months ago, I decided to leave a decent job in Tokyo, where I was living with my girlfriend, to go back to graduate school in the states. The specifics aren't really important for this question, but briefly, I loved living in Tokyo, wanted to marry my girlfriend eventually, and really didn't want to leave, but was worried about future career prospects (and also a bit insecure about not having made much of myself, whatever that means) and thought that, by getting my degree, I'd be able to come back to Japan, marry my girlfriend and get a better job that would allow me to live a comfortable life and eventually start a family (i just turned 30 btw, so these things are starting to press on my mind more than they used to)

Well, it was a terrible idea. My girlfriend left me after several months of trying to make the ldr thing work. I study international relations, focusing on east asia and trade in the region, and study japanese every day. I thought that I'd be able to get a better job in Japan after finishing my degree, but I've realized that this degree isn't setting me up for a better job in Japan, a place I still would very much like to return to. Moreover, I've taken on a large amount of debt to come to school, so I wouldn't even be able to return to my old job in Tokyo because the salary wouldn't cover my new student loan payments, and those payments are also going to make it very hard for me to have enough money to raise a family any time in the near future.

Where I thought I was going to end up, ie: married, in Tokyo, with a good job, ready to start a family, and where I am going to end up, ie: single, probably not in Tokyo, working a job that I'm most likely not interested in but that I have to take in order to pay my student loans, and unable to support a family for years to come, are essentially diametrically opposed to each other.

So when you feel as though you've put yourself on the wrong path, and that there's no going back to the path you wanted to be on, how do move forward positively without feeling like your life is defined by a bad decision you wish you hadn't made?

I keep trying to find a positive in this, but I'm having a hard time. Any suggestions on how to reframe this so I don't end up a bitter old man who ends up mumbling to himself over his drink at the bar about "If only hadn't left Tokyo and gone to grad school..."

Wrapped up in all of this is probably still some anxiety about getting older. I feel like these kind of mistakes are easier to write off in your early to mid 20s, but after 30, I feel like there's a lot less wiggle room to get things right, and mistakes start to really have teeth.

Oh, and yes, I'm seeing a therapist every couple of weeks. He's helped me to stop beating myself up for making this choice, but hasn't really helped me figure out how to move forward yet, so I'm appealing to the hive mind. As always, your advice and recommendations are much appreciated.

Why would a convenience store always ring up the wrong price?

johnofjack — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:19:45 -0800

Workers at this one convenience store always charge slightly more than the stated price. What is the scam here? When I was an undergrad, the family who owned this convenience store across from the university would almost always charge 5 cents more than the stickered price. (It seems like they didn't do that if it made the price roll over to the next dollar, but given that this was happening nearly 20 years ago I couldn't swear to it.)

At any rate, if I corrected them on the price they'd apologize and say it was a mistake, though it always happened regardless of who rang up the purchase. I'm sure it wasn't a mistake because one time the store came up at work, and everyone else in the office reported having the same experience. After this I decided I'd always correct them when it happened, and eventually it quit happening.

This was about 20 years ago. Recently I was in the store again and remembered this because, you guessed it, they charged 5c more than the stickered price.

What is the scam here? Surely it's not just charging a higher price--no one goes to a convenience store expecting good prices. I can't even imagine this as tax evasion since all the receipts would indicate the higher amount that they shouldn't be charging.

Whatever's going on here, it seems like it's obviously so much work for little benefit that I feel certain I'm missing something.

More money than you know what to do with

d. z. wang — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:05:01 -0800

We had a recent thread on things really poor people do when they come into some money, and now I'm curious whether there are analogous mistakes at every level of society. What sort of mistakes would be made by, say, a poor college student taking his first office job, by a middle-class man marrying into old money, by shoestring startup folk after a successful IPO/buyout? I'm interested in particular in sharp transitions, rather than, say, slowly climbing from the mail room to the board room over the course of a lifetime.

How to accept or help a SO with adult ADD?

Chelsaroo650 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:59:11 -0800

The guy I am dating has unusual tendencies, is this a part of his ADD? Or his quirkiness? How should I approach the subject? I have officially moved on from the previous situation I was in and am very glad I have done so, I have been seeing a therapist and have no contact whatsoever with the last jerk I was dating who was completely not worthy of my time or sympathy. Thank you all for the kick in the pants and all of the support.

That being said, I have been dating a new guy for about a month and a half now. He is the polar opposite of the last guy I was with. He is an extrovert, always talking and chatting. He is openly emotional, affectionate, and isn't afraid to give compliments or receive them. When I first met him, I thought he was confident, composed, and very well-spoken. The well-spoken part is still true it's just the confident and composed that I believe changed for me.

He is almost 25 and only just got his license a year ago and his own car a month ago. He had only had three girlfriends, and was a virgin up until last year. He is dreadfully shaky in intimate situations, is high strung, and will obsess over bad luck occurrences for hours and days. He is nervous very easily. His family has quite a bit of money and mine does not, which can sometimes cause friction between us because I have had dramatically difference experiences in life than he has. He doesn't understand that families can be dysfunctional. Nor does he understand poverty or people who budget constantly (because they have to or that's all they know how to do to live). He resents his stepmother for limiting his father's spending and hates her budgeting (even though it is more common/negative for women to be gold-diggers which he doesn't seem to acknowledge). At the same time, he is still polite and kind. This I'm sure can change if he is exposed to other people's circumstances and lifestyles. He's a college graduate which I can respect and he's looking for his first degree-level job. He was also a good student in college and vice president of a fraternity. There are just some things I have noticed though...

*When we go out to eat, he may forget to order a drink with his meal, or when he buys drinks at a casual restaurant he walks off before the cups are given to us... or when we go to Chipotle and just starting off in the line he mistakenly tells the girl when she asks him what he'd like... he says he'd like a medium drink (happened twice), not a burrito or tacos or whatever.

*He almost ran a red light just talking to me while driving, then a little after that a stop sign.

*We went to pick up a pizza after one of his first times coming out to visit me and he asked, just after we had left, if he needed to turn back into the pizza place's parking lot to go back to my house even though we had just been there.

*He was leaving my house after a snow storm and his windshield was covered in ice and snow so given a scraper, he says he didn't know how to use it and even holds it the wrong way (the handle part, not the flat part). Just seems common sense? Am I wrong?

*He doesn't know how to use his own oven (maybe this is a guy thing?) but put pizza rolls in the oven for 22 hours instead of 22 minutes and doesn't think anything of it when the buzzer doesn't go off.

*He grabbed a bowl of soup my sister had prepared (poured water into) but had not put in the microwave even though he watched her do it.

*We went to another restaurant and he finished ordering all of our food and then when the woman tells us the total... he just pulls out his wallet and hands it to her. ?!

Basically... I don't think this is "normal" and I think he could endanger himself if he doesn't pay attention to what he's doing. Also he has said a few questionable things without thinking which I have read can also be involved with ADD. Additionally, he has been driving as long as I have (since I got my license at 18 a year ago) and I am very comfortable driving while he is terrified of the highway. He says merging is frightening...

I honestly think some of it has been babying on his family's part. He has other people to make him food (his mother), drive him around (his brother, for a long time), so some of it I believe he's been too pampered. While most of it seems to me, to be linked to a very prominent case of ADD. Maybe also some compulsive issues? For instance, he weighed 140 lbs when we started dating. He is 6 feet tall. I weigh 145 and am considered thin.... at 5'4" which is very thin for him, obviously. Apparently he had been that way for nearly 4 years after becoming a serious jogger and severely limiting his calorie intake. His family finally got through to him to start gaining because they feared he was anorexic. Now he is 153 lbs and is still going. He has an extreme fear of being fat even though, upon seeing these "fat" photos, he was not and was not alarmed when he dropped to extreme lows.

How do I approach these concerns? Is this not something I should bring up? I feel like he needs it said to him, though. I do like him, he treats me very well... it's just that something feels amiss.

How do I get out of this hole? I dug it myself.

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 10:38:54 -0800

I've screwed things up and it is finally catching up with me. My job situation is not good and my future is looking bleak. I know that it's my own fault. I need to fix it but I have no idea where to start. I am awful at my job and am surprised that I have not been fired. I'm constantly not following the rules. My job requires attention to detail - I'm making many mistakes. I'm an admin assistant and have been for 10 years!! These are actual mistakes that I'd been instructed to not make. They wont cost any money but this is a very finicky environment and the details are extremely important. I was not good at my last job as well and can't think of anything that I'm actually good at. Something that I don't struggle with. My communication skills are shitty because I can't remember anything and the words in my head don't sound like the words that come out of my mouth. It seems like if you do something long enough you should eventually become more efficient at it.

There are other issues that I'm dealing with as well. I'm finally in therapy and going to meetings which I believe have helped with my general fog and lack of understanding as to whats been happening in my life. I've been prescribed (generic) ritalin and lamactil and quit coffee since it seemed to make me worse. Previously I've been prescibed antidepressants which didn't work and had side effects that made it difficult to function. I do feel so much better but cant hide from my performance earlier this year.

The fear and self doubt are taking over. I'm desperate and afraid. I'm already imagining what I would get on unemployment and how difficult that would be. How would my job search go especially since I only have admin experience? I'm taking baby steps to make changes and improve my life but it feels pretty late in the game as far as my job is concerned. I would fire me and probably would have done it a long time ago.

What can I do about any of this? How do I deal with this now?? What is the best way to deal with this with my employer and potential future employers? I've started to send out my resume even though I'm not hopeful since so many more qualified people are out of work. What should I be considering in terms of getting my life on track and not making these mistakes in the future? I have these moments of clarity and optimism and then this all comes crashing back.

Throwaway email: mnkbutt4@gmail.com

Knowing Your Limits/Accepting or Mitigating Intellectual Failure

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 15:11:56 -0800

I have a serious problem with being seen to be intellectually 'wrong'. I need ways to get over it I consider myself to be an intelligent, popular guy. I'm a creative thinker, and currently studying for a PhD that I am proud of. I am the kind of person who revels in being right, being clever, understanding the world. As a teacher/tutor I also love to share knowledge with others, and believe that a good teacher is capable of learning from their students.

When I am surrounded by people I respect, in a conversational situation, I have no problems debating, sharing ideas, learning new things because of misunderstandings I've carried around. But in a public forum, confronted by people I don't know personally I suffer from a terrible fear of making a fool of myself.

This sounds run of the mill, right, everyone worries about how they are perceived by others? But it haunts me.

The other day I chaired a discussion between three academics. They were each delivering papers on the work of a specific author, who also happened to be in the audience. After they had delivered their papers it was my job to ask a question that united their work and opened up discussion to the rest of the audience. My question was valid, it felt that way, but I think I delivered it a bit chaotically. In many ways, and this is probably a big part of my problem, what I did was tried to ask a question I didn't have a complete tool-kit to put into words. So although in a conversational mode I could have phrased it right, promoted an interesting discussion, in this one-off situation I ended up tripping a bit. Perhaps I aimed above my ability.

Everyone does this. And I don't judge people who I see do this, but still the event haunts me. It's like I'm carrying it around like a rotten shadow that won't budge. Like a cloud.

This problem will only get more pronounced as I move into academia. I don't fear getting up in front of an audience, I don't fear putting my work out there, what I fear is people wondering "what they hell is he doing there?"

I hate the thought that clever people won't think I am clever.

I fear not being able to justify my words, my actions, my ideas. A lot of academic banter is instant, and has to be precise, articulate. I fear that my fear will only further erode my articulacy in front of others.

How do I get over this? How do I promote a modesty in my self-presentation? How do I assess where I sit in the food-chain of intelligence, and be happy to remain there? be happy to use my abilities without carrying this knot around in my stomach whenever I make a tiny error?

How do I accept that it's ok to not know/understand everything?

Breaking a run of small screwups

Elysum — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 23:21:54 -0800

If I have made a mistake at work (or in general), I am much, much more likely to make another mistake soon afterwards. How can I get focused and correct a problem without making yet more mistakes? If I've made a mistake, I'm probably in the kind of mental space where I'm likely to make more mistakes, and all too often this leads to a chain of ever-increasing mini-disasters!
Even if they are small problems, professionally, it makes me look stupid. Making more errors is exactly what I don't need when I'm trying to correct a problem I've caused.

This has happened to me all afternoon - the final straw was when I was so worried about making a typo in the instructions to fix the relatively small problem... I stopped. Yep. Took a break and ate some food. Copied the commands I needed to run into a list in a text file, carefully went over and proofed them, then pasted them in...
and yet still ended up pasting one of the 4 commands in twice, and screwed it up further.

How do you nip a chain of screw-ups in the bud? Especially when you've got to do complicated steps to fix them?

Small mistake or burnt bridge - where is the dividing line?

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:45:02 -0800

After growing up in a VERY authoritarian family environment, I lack a sense of proportion when it comes to when I've really screwed up bad. I'm in therapy but would like some further advice. I grew up with authoritarian parents for whom every mistake was a bridge-burner. I was thoroughly shamed for doing things like accidentally spilling milk (!). If I broke a possession, I wouldn't get a replacement in order to "teach me a lesson." Bad grades? I was watched like a hawk forever even after improving the grade later. You get the picture. I was never allowed to make a mistake and learn from it, offend people and make things up, and so on.

Life and therapy have helped me there. I feel now I can make mistakes and be forgiven. However, what I still lack is a sense of proportion. I have a hard time distinguishing where "petty mistakes that everyone makes" ends and "whoa. You made a big, huge mistake and burnt a bridge here" begins.

Especially job-wise, I now am unsure when I've done something that is a real bridge-burner. Something that can't be made up for, and that will kill any chances of getting a good reference.

I don't embezzle from the company or sleep with my boss - big things like that which are clearly immoral and/or illegal. And as I said before, I no longer live in fear that my little screw-ups will mean "No good reference for YOU!" And I know there are prickly people out there, as well as ones who want an excuse to be rid of an employee and will trump up any reason to push them out the door.

In relationships, the same applies - I know there are touchy, easily offended people and also those who seize upon a mistake to dump you, which they were intending to do anyway.

Long story short, I feel like I lack that sense of proportion and of a clear boundary where "little mistakes that everyone makes" ends and "you really fucked up this time" begins.

Do I need yet more therapy, perhaps of a different kind? Are there books that I can read about this?

Language mistakes compared

sien — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:04:50 -0800

Are grammatical errors more frequent in English than in other languages? What about spelling? Do foreign language have as many substitution errors as English? Do ewe speak a pear of foreign languages or more and what are you're experiences of these kinds of errors? Watt do there grammar Nazis do? The ideal thing would be references to papers that looked at average error counts in various languages. Books on the subject would also be great.

Let's touch base again offline about that next deliverable...

d. z. wang — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 07:08:42 -0800

I'm a computer science and biochem major about to start a software development internship at a high-frequency trading firm. What are the classic mistakes you see inexperienced geeks make in a professional environment, especially a financial-sector/"business" place, and how can I avoid them? What can I do this summer to impress my supervisors and maybe get my foot in the door for a full-time job after graduation? Note that I'm not asking for a crash course on finance. This company employs something like half the world's OCaml programmers, financially experienced or not, so I expect my ignorance there will be a familiar and tolerable experience for them.

I think too fast, therefore what am I?

caminovereda — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:42:33 -0800

What is it called when you make a mistake because you are thinking faster than you can speak/type/etc.? I'm guessing most people have experienced the phenomenon of making a typing mistake because they are thinking a few words ahead of where they are typing, or combine words together into weird non-words for the same reason - your speaking "caught up" to your thoughts mid-word. Is there a name for this kind of mistake? Google-fu for such terms as "thinking faster than speaking" only came up with an entry in UrbanDictionary for "thoulk," i.e. the result of such a mistake, but this only makes me more curious as to whether there is a (not made up) term for this common occurrence.

How do you deal with making mistakes?

inatizzy — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:48:48 -0800

When you make a real mistake, how do you deal with it? How do you deal with yourself and keep from feeling super guilty? When I make mistakes - like, I forget to do something at work and it negatively impacts a project - I quickly get absorbed by a panic attack. I didn't really realize that that's what it was until yesterday - but for many years, when I make a mistake that's not minor, or not at least, that's not easily reversible, I get overwhelmed by guilt and stress and fear.

The level of my reaction is totally disproportionate to the situation. A lot of times the "mistake" is not even something I did really badly or negligently, but I treat it as if it were. Usually it's just because I forgot something, or because a decision that I made with good intentions turned out not to be the right one. I am a dedicated worker, with good intentions, and I think other people see this in me, but when a mistake happens I freak out and I can't keep things in perspective. I feel like I'm the scum of the earth, the biggest idiot, that I just destroyed everything everyone in my company has worked for with my one stupid move, and I get angry at myself for being so stupid. The only thing I can focus on is how to get out of the situation - it's like fight or flight - and in the moment I can't seem to calm myself down and see things in perspective. (Like I'm able to do pretty easily when I'm calmer.)

For what it's worth -- when anyone else makes a mistake, even a big one, I'm usually pretty understanding and able to see the big picture. It's just when it involves MY error that I flip out on myself.

I'm glad to be recognizing this in myself -- because I think it is holding me back from taking on more responsibility -- but I don't really know how to deal with it, especially in the moment. I realize I've been living my life in an effort to avoid these panic attacks, but I would rather learn how to cope with them so that I am more willing to take risks and take on the responsibilities I'd like to assume in order to move ahead in my career.

Anyone else familiar with this? Any ideas about how to deal and chill myself out? Thanks in advance. :)

Surprise! I has a dog.

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:27:25 -0800

Yesterday, my girlfriend of two years bought a puppy that, due to circumstances, she really shouldn't have. What now? I love dogs and I think that, given the right circumstances, getting a puppy can be an awesome thing to do, especially one this cute. Unfortunately there are just so many reasons why buying one now is such a bad idea. Consider the following:

1. She lives in a small apartment with two of my friends (with one more roommate maybe moving in next week) and two cats (plus a third cat from the new roommate). Can you say crowded?

2. She told no one she was going to get this dog. Sure she mentioned a dog she wanted, but actually going out and buying it is another thing entirely.

3. Naturally, the roommates who had no idea they were about to get a puppy without being consulted with are furious. They're the type who are extremely hard to upset, but this did the job nicely.

4. Her insane classes take her away from home for solid 10 hour blocks every day and sometimes require longer shifts or overnights. When does puppy get to go on walks in that schedule?

5. Her response to her roommate's protests: "I'll just keep it in my room all of the time." That strikes me as just about the worst idea, a dog has got to run and ramble.

6. This puppy came from a big chain pet store that I've heard is basically a puppy mill. This is unfortunate, but maybe taking the puppy back would be even more unfortunate.

7. Puppy was probably hella expensive. Especially for someone who basically lives on student loans and credit cards and has no real job or income.

The whole situation is pretty shitty. Literally everyone involved is upset with her over the puppy purchase (well, except maybe the one friend who totally played the puppy enabler role). I'm worried about the welfare of the puppy and I'm also worried this event (as well as a handful of past events) have got me seriously doubting the sanity and stability of my girlfriend. She seemed to have no idea of the burden that this puppy would place on those around her and almost no regard whatsoever for her roommate's protests.

I haven't spoken to her since yesterday's "surprise, here is a puppy!" meet and greet because I'm kind of waiting to get my ducks in row about how to handle the situation. Any advice Mefites?

How bad is shipping a book with errors?

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:57:58 -0800

A book I edited shipped with significant errors because of my negligence. How bad is it? Some colleagues of mine authored a (niche, academic) reference work. I was tasked with updating it for the new edition. I believe most of it was properly updated. Now that it has gone to press and is on shelves, it has come out that a (major) section that I assumed did not need revision actually did and that a (minor) section that I assumed was correct in the prior version was actually in error.

There's a web page for the book where the errata will be posted, but the hard copies are, of course, all wrong. I have already accepted responsibility for the errors and assured my colleagues that I will prepare corrected versions immediately. This is my first experience with commercial publishing, so I don't have a good sense for how common or bad this is.

Here are my questions: How much shit am I in, apart from the obvious damage to my colleagues' reputations? What's the worst case? That the publisher refunds everyone's money? How likely is that? How much of a loss are we talking about, supposing the book would ordinarily sell (I'm guessing) a few thousand copies? Is this the sort of thing that ends academic jobs? Ends academic careers?