Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Work gets me thinking.

Today I was at work, which is not an unusual place for me to be. One of my managers got flustered later in the day,and it was almost as if he had died. Every mistake was a personal failure,and taken personally. Later he said something that I found interesting. "I accept failure","You don't learn anything from failure".  For me it is literally impossible to simply accept failure. Expect it yes,because in some way or another failure is inevitable,but to simply accept that I am a failure is too much. I like to break failure down. What led to the failure? How can I avoid failure in the future? What thought processes led me to allow this? Can it be corrected? He simply accepted that he was a failure and commanded that I throw everything out and that he needed to do everything over again. In the food industry this is wasteful and unnecessary because you can simply remake what wasn't made correctly and keep the rest of the order going. I find that his belief that you don't learn anything from mistakes is also flawed. I believe you learn the most when you fail to achieve the goal you've attempted. You gain a deeper sense of the gravity of the goal and the things needed to reach it. I see these things he said as a weapon only designed to cause harm to its wielder. This is what happens when you allow emotion to cloud logic. Emotion and logic can be used to attain the same ends,and can be used in tandem. When you allow emotion to overrule your better judgment it's dangerous. I said to a friend of mine you need to look in the mirror and be realistic,it's okay to be critical but you can't be harshly critical. You just need a realistic view of yourself and what you see. Sometimes looking in the mirror at yourself you can only focus on faults,and I believe that's what this man does every day. The key to improving yourself is to first identify the things you don't like AND why. It's hard to do this without being overly critical but you can do it.

To my readers:

  • Do you agree with either of my manager's opinions?
  • Do you agree with any of my views and why?
  • How would you respond to a person in a situation like this?

I'm hoping to see lots of comments on this though I have no idea how many followers I will have after only a couple posts.

2 comments:

  1. Being non-confrontational, I would probably face that situation by not saying anything, even though it would probably deeply bother me.

    I agree that sometimes failure is pointless and teaches people nothing, but that is purely the fault of the person and their attitude towards it. The world runs on people who make mistakes.

    I also agree that failure helps people realize how much the thing they're working toward is worth it. They appreciate success only because there is such a thing as failure. And sometimes, failure may help you see that what you're working for actually isn't worth it, which also teaches you a lot.

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  2. I completely agree with you steve. Pessimistic and poorly thought out views on the world dont just happen overnight. i would bet that over his lifetime he was told that same thing on more than one occasion.

    mistakes are there to learn from. but its not automatic. it requires a want to better yourself. this guy obviously doesnt want to better himself.

    if i were in your situation...i wouldnt give anything this guy said a second thought ever again.

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