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Ugh.

So I recently started this new job I love, and it's the first time I'm in charge of actual money for any company.

Well, I went away on time off, and when I returned, I realized I had forgotten to cancel a venue we wouldn't use. The cost was 5k USD and nonrefundable.

I told my manager, and she had a poker face; I even told her I tried to call the venue and the agent but had no luck.

Am I fired now?

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  • 7
    There's no way someone on the Internet can tell you what's going to happen. Nov 21, 2022 at 11:50
  • Funny enough that is not what he is asking - he is asking whether he already GOT fired. Past.
    – TomTom
    Nov 21, 2022 at 11:52
  • I am answering the ONLY question asked. And how else than literally can you answer a simple straightforward question?
    – TomTom
    Nov 21, 2022 at 12:40
  • How big is your company ? Does it have lots of revenue and profit ? How does $5K compare to your salary or the company revenue ? --- Have you asked your manager what you can do to fix this mistake or what will happen to you ? Nov 21, 2022 at 22:17
  • Yes, I would have answered it different - OBVIOUSLY.
    – TomTom
    Nov 22, 2022 at 1:39

2 Answers 2

2

I think the relevant question you didn't ask is "what should I do to minimize the damage to the company and my career?"

Everybody makes mistakes, it's a basic fact of life and happens all the time. What's important is how you deal with it. There are actually many formal failure analysis methods that are employed in corporate life (8D, FEMA, Ishikawa charts, etc) but most boil down to

  1. Fess up: communicate open, honestly, and accurately
  2. Damage control: salvage what you still can, ask for help if needed.
  3. Analyze: what went wrong? How could this have been prevented?
  4. Corrective action: What will you be doing differently in the future so that does not happen again either for you or for anyone else in the organization

The last step is the most important one. In this case it could be something easy: have a pre-vacation check list in place, implement an automatic notification system for "last day to cancel" events, have a shared calendar for bookings that other people can see, etc.

Dealing with mistakes is one of the more important ways how an organization learns and gets better. Most mistakes are easily forgiven. Making the same mistake twice is typically not: Because that means you have failed to learn from the experience.

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Quite obviously you ARE NOT FIRED NOW. Firing takes communication. They MAY fire you, but you ask whether you magically got fired via a manager having a poker face. THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS.

Now, depending on country you could dispute a firing. After all, you are NEW and this is a totally new experience (as you say), so someone should have been looking over your shoulder.

In other countries you may or may not lose your job - depending on company. But, again, this is not what you ask.

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  • The last question was a joke...
    – Vera.mily
    Nov 21, 2022 at 12:19
  • 2
    Interesting enough your joke was the ONLY question you asked AT ALL. If you did not answer to that, your post was totally off topic as it contained no actionable question at all, just a description of a situation.
    – TomTom
    Nov 21, 2022 at 12:40
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    @TomTom, "THAT IS NOW HOW IT WORKS." Did you mean to say "That is NOT how it works ?" Nov 21, 2022 at 22:55
  • Yep. Changed...
    – TomTom
    Nov 22, 2022 at 1:40

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