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Episode 18 - Making a mistake
Making a mistake
The scene - Blakes, a gym in Leighton Buzzard... Tuesday 6.45pm
The ice in the diet Coke was almost all melted. Faye was staring at it rather too intently she suddenly realised. Would other people have noticed her? No she was just having a bit of “me time” after a tough session with her personal trainer.
Her thoughts, as they had been for most of the day and indeed for most of the week, were on the 2 cm thick green file in her (much prized) Longchamp bag. M. Smith-Evans - File Ref. ABR/FD/147632/15. This time she wasn't only feeling guilty about having a paper file that she could drag around, while almost everyone else had complied with the new paperless regime.
For the last seven working days the file had accompanied her back to her flat, onto her sofa, on to her dining table, then back to her sofa and back to the office. She had opened it and looked at it and then cooked supper, done some cleaning, sent some emails, even done some ironing.
Ok so she had made a mistake. The initial lease period should have been two years not ten years – but that was fixable. She would just – JUST! – have to tell M.Smith-Evans, plus the solicitor on the other side with the strangely interesting accent, plus her head of department …. and finally the firm’s head of risk. The last was a particularly depressing prospect.
“Get it right, first time, every time!” wasn’t that what had been drummed into her as a trainee? It seemed to make sense back then and everyone else seemed to manage it. And then there was that training course where the theme had been about learning and developing by making mistakes and embracing setbacks. She like the others in the room thought this was basically silly – and in any event the trainer was not a lawyer so what could he know.
Faye got up and left the gym. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she would get things sorted.
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Episode 18 - A mistake
What’s your experience of a similar difficult situation? Have friends or colleagues come to you when they have made a mistake. Do you have any advice, suggestions, do’s or don’t’s to share?
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