Getting chewed out at work is never fun. The first time is even worse. Specially if it’s not even your fault.
When I started out after college I was a general handyman type of guy. I would get assigned all the monotonous and boring jobs. Digitizing monkey was the worst.
Our company would make maps and someone had to take the hand drawn maps and transfer them to digital format. Nowadays we have digital scanners and software that does this. Back then it was labor intensive work using a digitizing tablet. Something like a drafting table with a mouse attached. I had to trace each and every line on a map. After eight hours of doing that you felt mindless and asleep. So we called the guys that did this the digitizing monkey because it was such a mindless task that we joked that even a monkey could do it.
I finished my first map after a week and drove to our cartographic expert at the time and delivered it to him. He exploded. He told me it was all wrong, that it was sloppy, that it was incomplete, that I had wasted his time and it was all garbage and then he kicked me out of his office.
I went home feeling that I had lost the job. Totally dejected; I was already looking for another job.
I got called into my superior’s office the next day. I was sure I would be fired. I wanted to protest that it was unfair and that the cartographer was a jerk. Instead I kept my mouth shut and stood up straight. Determined to take whatever was coming without showing any emotion and be professional about things.
Instead he apologized to me. The work I had done had been a raw version and not the finished version. Our expert had realized that after kicking me out and called my boss to apologize to me.
I wanted to laugh or cry. Don’t know which. Most of all I was glad that I had stood up to my first real challenge at work without making a fuss. Ever since that day I have learned not to react too quickly or to make snap decisions. Always think before you do something that you may regret later on.
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