one week to redeem myself at work?

June 13, 2009 12:24 PM

I'm a good, solid employee 99% of time. But I screwed up badly a few days ago and my performance review is in a week. Damn primacy/recency effect. How do I redeem myself?
posted by anonymous to Work & Money (7 answers total)

Was there a [more inside] that got eaten by grues, or something? Not enough info here.

If your screwup was basic sloppy human error, you have nothing to worry about as long as you can show that you understand what you did wrong. If you're pre-prepared to explain what you've already done to reduce the odds of this ever happening again, you'll probably come out better than if you had done nothing wrong. There's nothing harder to evaluate than a perfect/boring employee, but if you've made mistakes and I believe you have learned from them, I will like you.

If your screwup was malicious or criminal, though, you're probably screwed.
posted by rokusan at 12:32 PM on June 13, 2009 [2 favorites]

Rokusan pretty much has it. If you really have done something wrong, then face up to it. Don't make excuses, try hard not to sound "defensive". (That's an annoying word, because it always seems to mean different things to different people. But just don't act like you're a defendant in a courtroom.)

I might even seize the bull by the horns. If you have a meeting to discuss your review (which I presume you do), you could say something like, "You know, I'm glad we have a chance to discuss [screwup]. I've done a lot of thinking about it - this is what I think I've done wrong [...]. And this is what I plan to do in the future to avoid making a similar mistake [...]. And I'd be grateful to hear more from you on how best to do things in the future." People are so accustomed to buck-passing, bullshit artistry, and general denial that I think an approach like this might be refreshing to your superiors.

More information would certainly be helpful here.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 12:41 PM on June 13, 2009 [2 favorites]

I'm putting up another vote for going the disarmingly honest and to-the-point approach.
posted by potch at 3:42 PM on June 13, 2009

Agree with the above. Making mistakes is human, not learning from them is the big flashing warning sign you wish to avoid.
posted by Sparx at 3:49 PM on June 13, 2009

Went through this about a month ago - made sure I took the steps to prevent it from happening again before I had my meeting to go over the incident (and make sure to mention them during the meeting). If you give yourself the punishment/remediation then they really don't have much left to say.
posted by SirOmega at 4:27 PM on June 13, 2009

Ignore it. If they raise it, say "Look, I acknowledge it happened, and if you'd like, we can talk about the steps I've taken to make sure it doesn't happen again. But I don't think that incident is reflective of my performance overall, and beyond treating it as a learning experience, I don't propose to dwell on it."
posted by obiwanwasabi at 5:22 PM on June 13, 2009

I know at my job, performance reviews are intended to cover a specific time frame (e.g. my last review was given in early March, but went from Feb 1, 2008 to Jan 31, 2009). If that's the case at your job, and the period that's being reviewed has been finished by more than a week or so, its inclusion shouldn't be reflective of that period.

That being said, if this is the case, you have almost a whole year for your employer to "forget" about the incident and show them the 99% for which you're known.

Good luck!
posted by Angulimala at 9:10 PM on June 13, 2009