Office Blunders – What’s a Girl to Do?

By: Beth Slagle

“I’m having a moment”, is my typical “recovery” statement upon trying to regain dignity from the office gaff, goof, misstep, or blunder.  We all have them, or at least I’m hoping that we do.  Some are more memorable than others, and my bigger ones seem to revolve around shoes, fainting and falling.

There was the instance when I was a young attorney, patiently waiting in the courtroom for the judge to call my case.  I sat properly, legs crossed, and very patiently with about 50 other lawyers in the room waiting for their cases to be heard.  45 minutes later, the judge finally called my case, and when I stood up to walk to the judge’s bench, I realized that while waiting, my foot had fallen asleep.  When I took my first eager step, my shoe flew 8 feet in front of me (yes, my shoes were way too big and because my foot had fallen asleep, I couldn’t adequately scrunch my toes to keep my shoe on).  Instead of quietly retrieving my shoe, I had one of those spontaneous utterances proclaiming with gusto a very loud “whoopsie” in an otherwise very silent room. It was a moment. It was painful.

Another memorable day in the office included me fainting, and when two senior (and shorter) attorneys rushed to my rescue to help me to my office, I whispered to them in my whoozy state that “I’m glad you’re so short because you fit right underneath my arms.”  I have several other foot, fainting, shoe stories, but you get the picture.

I’m not alone in having those “moments” as a recent survey by Office Team revealed.  The Office Team, a staffing service specializing in the placement of executives, developed the survey which was conducted by an independent research firm and is based on interviews with more than 1,300 senior managers at companies with 20 or more employees in the United States and Canada. And, yes my friends, they found that just about everyone had a moment.

Executives, interviewed to recount their most embarrassing moments, had some classics which included:

• “While interviewing a job candidate, I fell asleep.”
• “I answered the phone using the wrong company name.”
• “I sent an offer letter to the wrong candidate.”
• “I called my boss ‘my love’ by complete accident.”
• “I left the boss behind and went to a meeting without him.”
• “I called my boss by the wrong name during a meeting.”

Ah . . . hearing those make me feel so much better.

So what’s a girl to do when the goof is a doozy?  Tips from the OfficeTeam to help you bounce back from office blunders include:

1. Remain calm. Try to maintain your composure. Take a deep breath and try to collect yourself.
2. Own up. Fess up before anyone else calls you out on it.  And, if appropriate, make fun of yourself or address the situation in a humorous way will put everyone else at ease.
3. Make amends. If your blunder offended another, apologize quickly and say it like you mean it.
4. Move on. There’s no sense dwelling on the gaff. The less you focus on it, the less others will too.

And most importantly – know that you’re not alone.  Everyone goofs or gaffs. So, why not make the most of it and try to get a good story out of it without getting terminated.

Beth Slagle, Esquire – Meyer, Unkovic & Scott, LLP bas@muslaw.com or 412.456.2890