The next story comes only a couple of years after the first one. I had left Nevada and was now in Washington working for a small manufacturing company. I had answered a job ad for an admin “who’s not afraid of computers” and was spending most of my time doing tech support and database administration. One of the things I did was create part numbers for new products as well as new materials.

One day, I was working at my desk (which was in a big open area, facing our production line) when one of the company founders, the machinist, and my boss came up to my desk. The founder was not in a good mood. He was working on a new invention, or at least an innovation for one of our products, and had needed a certain screw. The screw we ordered was NOT the right screw. Its thread count was wrong. (I know thread count is what you use for sheets, but basically, on this screw, the threading was at the wrong incline.) Believe it or not, this makes a difference.

They were at my desk because the screw was wrong. The purchaser claimed it was not his fault because he ordered the screw that went with the part number he was given. The machinist was positive he would not have told anyone the wrong specification for the screw. My boss was there as the VP of purchasing and head of research and development (I mentioned it was a small company, right). And they were at my desk because I was the one who had created the part number and therefore entered the specifications into the computer system.

By this time, our founder was frustrated. I said it must be my fault, and give me the right specification, and I’ll change it in the computer system right now, and then our purchaser can order the right screws and get them overnighted, if need be.

The founder and the machinist walked away. My boss stuck around. He told me he knew that could not have been my fault, because I did not know enough about screws to make that kind of mistake (this is absolutely true). He knew that when I created the part number, I only would have entered the information given to me and that information would have come from him (but in this case he knew it had not), the machinist or our purchaser. I shrugged and told him that it was pretty obvious that by that point, our founder was as unhappy with no one taking responsibility as he was with having the wrong screw. It was no skin off my back to claim the mistake, and more importantly, I was then able to fix it.

After that, the founder took a liking to me, and would call on me to help him with projects (there were only two admins in the entire company) when he needed it.

While these may seem like two very different stories, I see them very much the same. In both cases, I admitted to a mistake, did my best to rectify it, and then moved on. The real difference was not whether or not the mistake was mine, but the attitude I displayed (I had learned from the first mistake), and also the attitude of the people around me.

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. What is important is how we handle the aftermath. As in so many things, attitude is everything.

We all make mistakes. We make them in our personal lives and in our professional lives. One of the ways I judge people (because we all judge people) is based on how they handle those mistakes. Do they deflect? Offer excuses? Or take responsibility and try to make it right?

In our work lives, it can be scary to take responsibility for a mistake. It could cost you your job; it has me. (Well, not necessarily the mistake itself, but my attitude post mistake.) But the ability to take (or claim) responsibility for errors, as well as the ability to move on from them, is key to performing well and gaining the confidence of your peers and superiors at work.

The first story I am going to tell you took place almost 15 years ago. I lived in Nevada, where either you or the employer could end your employment within the first 30 days for any reason, or no reason, at all. No notice has to be given, no paperwork has to be filed. The position just ends, and except for tax purposes, you never worked there.

I had taken a position at a manufacturing company. I was basically doing data entry, bills of lading, shipping information and such. Two weeks into my being there, one of the senior people in the office was going on vacation. I was trained to do a few aspects of her job, which included scheduling trucks to pick up goods we were shipping. For one particular customer, there was a rule that if an order was over a specific size, we needed to schedule the truck an extra day in advance. I was also told that while the order always looked like it would be that big at the beginning of the week, by the time the trucks had to be scheduled, it was almost never that big anymore, so I really should not worry about it. (You can see where this is going, right?)

Please note that one of the other things I had been told was that overtime was in no way, for no reason, authorized.

While the senior person was gone, it came the day I would need to schedule the truck if the order was over a certain size. But because I had been assured it would not be (or that it would shrink), I did not check it until the end of the day, after doing all the other work I needed to do. Naturally, the order was big enough that I needed to call and schedule the truck. The problem was, that would take at least half an hour, and it was only five minutes from when I needed to leave.

I had been there less than three weeks, and I was left with a decision that required me to break a rule. I had no idea which one to break. I wanted to ask, but the only other person in the office had only been there two weeks longer than me, and she had not been trained on any of this.

I was young, dependent on the bus system for transportation, and so I made the decision based on my own personal wants and needs. I chose no overtime, not to schedule the truck, and to hope the delivery went down even further. However, I also made no secret of the decision I made. I told the other senior person the next morning, and I mentioned it to the VP who hired me (but who had also only been with the company for about a month). Neither of them seemed to think it was a big deal.

When the person I was covering for came back, I told her about what happened. She did seem to think it was a big deal, and I was sent to go speak to the senior VP. We talked about how what I had done had cost the company money. I nodded, said I understood, and did not worry about it too much.

Why did I not worry about it? It was a one time thing. I was training on day shift, but in the future was supposed to be working swing or graveyard. This was never going to be a job task that I was responsible for. That, and it had happened the previous week. I was over it. I had moved on.

None of this was a problem until I was back in the office. The other new staff member asked me about it, and I said that I was not worried about it; that I knew I would never make that mistake again, so I had nodded through the conversation, but I was over it.

That attitude (unsurprisingly) was not appreciated by the senior staff person I had been backing up. She went and complained to the senior VP, and that afternoon, we decided my employment there would end.

Let me be perfectly honest with you. I, in general, still feel the same way about mistakes I have made. I make them. I acknowledge them, and then I move on. I do not dwell on mistakes. I figure out how to not make them again and then get on with my work. But that does not mean I did not learn anything from this experience. I learned to be more careful about how I expressed my attitude toward mistakes and who was around when I did so. But I also learned something to look for in future employers, and something to ask in that dreaded part of the interview- do you have any questions for us.

I now routinely ask- how do you, as a company, view mistakes?