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In which I make mistakes
For two days I have gone to work and had that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The feeling that I've done something wrong, that I've legitimately goofed without excuse or assistance, and now I'm going to have to sit and listen while people tell me I goofed.
I did some housecleaning in one of the file lockers I maintain. That was on Tuesday. I was trying to get rid of old versions of software that no one uses. I did that, but I also broke some things because I deleted some files I shouldn't have deleted.
I am pathological about making visible mistakes that could have been avoided. Now, accidents will happen, and I don't mind those. And if it's a mistake only I can see, I fix it and there's no fuss. But if it has public consequences and I think it's my fault, I will deny and lie and obfuscate and throw all sorts of smokescreen and chaff, and I don't really have a lot of control over this behavior. When I start to get that sinking feeling, my defense mechanisms take over and I am officially not responsible for anything I say after that. I hate being told I have made an obvious mistake through ignorance or neglect. Even if I did.
As it happens, my recent mistakes are tangled in the fact that I don't really like this aspect of my job much. There is a connection. I'd have been much more careful about making trims around software I actually use or care about. What I deleted was stuff that I don't see the point of, stuff I hate having to keep in the locker because four or five people use it. Needless to say, I heard from every one of those four or five people in the last two days ... and because these people are, more or less, my customers, I don't have the liberty of saying to them, "Oh, get a life! Why don't you upgrade to a version of Netscape that's less than three yearas old, heh? How many old versions of the software am I expected to keep around just because you don't like the new ones?"
There are people here at the Institvte, I'm told, who are still using Mosaic because they don't want to buy into the whole Microsoft/Netscape hegemony. Well, that's good and well, but I don't want to have to maintain a browser that was written almost before there was a World Wide Web, and I don't want it taking up space in a locker that I need so I can keep up with the stupid Netscape version steeplechase - which I also don't like very much. The latest Netscapes had executables - that's a single file, people - of ten megabytes or above. That's right. When you run Netscape on a Sun, you're running a 10MB file. Can you believe it? I can't. And I'm asked to install about two new versions of Netscape - in triplicate - a year.
Actually, now that I think of it, I don't want to do any of this. I don't want to maintain this locker at all. That's my other reaction to a situation I feel will require a lot of spadework, or runs too high a risk of error, or one where I feel I've already made too big a mistake once, and thereby trashed my reputation: I want to just abandon the whole thing.
I dislike "challenge" in the workplace. I do not feel that the workplace should be challenging, in the sense that the term is usually meant. I like acquiring new skills, sure ... slowly and carefully and not in a time-critical fashion. I don't like having to learn where something is or how it works with a deadline and people ready to flame you if you do it wrong. I inherited this locker with no training and no instructions, and the more I work with it, the less I like it.
If this doesn't sound pathological to you, let me explain how strong the panic attack is. OK, I deleted some files I shouldn't have. When the first email came in, telling me what I'd broken, my immediate reaction was: Flee. Leave work and never come back. Tell the boss you had to go to the Andes for an extended time. Deny. Deny. Say you meant to do it that way.
Really, this is unnatural terror.
Part of this is because I assume people are unforgiving. I figure if I make one big visible mistake in a given arena, no one will trust me in that arena again. I think this, in turn, is because my own standards are too high: I probably won't trust myself in that arena again.
The final upshot of my deletion rampage will ultimately be the most unpleasant. The most urgent issue I had to fix was that I broke Netscape for all Linux users. I had to get back a library file that Linux apparently depends upon. Well, I dislike supporting Linux. My attitude is, if you have Linux running on your computer we have no way of knowing what you did to it, and it's ridiculous to expect us to provide software for you to use with it.
But this will apparently be unacceptable in the future, as Linux is apparently here to say. Our users can't put Sun workstations in their dorm rooms, so Linux is spreading like wildfire around the Institvte. So I'm going to have to familiarize myself with Linux sooner or later.
The only thing worse than being told you did something wrong is being told you're going to have to learn how to do better. It's like the difference between getting a speeding ticket and having to take a mandatory driving class. The former says, you goofed; the latter says, "You are so lacking in information we think you're going to goof again."
Wouldn't it be easier just to never give me any work to do that I'm not already thoroughly competent in? That way I don't have to use my brain at my job, and I can save my deep thinking for my personal life, which is the important part.
You may wonder, then, why I don't just go work a McJob that doesn't call for thought at all. Well, the short answer is money, but the truth is - I don't mind using my brain at work - for programming, say - as long as it's programming I feel confident doing.
I hate not feeling confident. When I'm queen of the universe, everyone will be confident all the time. And no one will ever make big public mistakes.
© Columbine
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