My Bad

Lately, I realised that I have been apologising a lot. Sometimes, I am not even sure if I am in the wrong but the fact that it was something I said or did that triggered a reaction, no matter how insignificant, makes me feel lousy about myself.

My record for the most number of apologies? I'd have to say three in three days. That'll be this Monday, Tuesday and today!

Monday

My boss sent me an email last Thursday informing me to brief one of the Engineers regarding work to be done at 1 am on Monday morning. I had tried to seek out this Engineer till early Saturday morning but to no avail. This was because he was off. I had planned to call him on Sunday night to brief him but it slipped my mind. When I got to work on Monday evening, I was greeted with a "Did you brief **** on the system issue?" from my boss. I explained and he was understanding about it. Nevertheless, I apologised personally and via email.

Tuesday

My boss made a statement about members of my team playing our corporate online game. As all the top scorers were from my team, my boss felt that it might not bold well for our reputation as it may be viewed that we are "too free". I don't blame him. My team has been "blacklisted" by other departments way before I was re-assigned to lead them. This prompted an email from one of my surbordinates to my boss saying, in summary, "Why make a big deal about a small matter? Let others say what they want to." Personally, I thought it was uncalled for and since it was cc'ed to everyone, it showed a level of disrespect to him. As the team's supervisor, I emailed an apology to my boss - who was again very understanding about the matter.

Wednesday

I received an email from my fellow-supervisor who works days (I work nights) to a surbordinate asking him to install some hardware. It seemed like a lot of work so I emailed my fellow-supervisor to offer my team's assistance. At a meeting yesterday, I highlighted this issue and she said that our surbordinate could handle it on his own without issue. Case closed, or so I thought. Today, I received a relatively blunt mail from my co-supervisor saying, and again I summarise, "The email was sent out to everyone and if **** can't handle it, he will ask for help." I was definitely taken aback. There was nothing left to do but hit the "New Memo" button and populate it with apologies.

I don't think I am doing a very good job this week. I don't know. Maybe its age. Maybe I'm just losing steam. Or maybe I am really not cut out for Management work. After all, I am an Engineer by training.

I hope this unfortunate streak ends.