Only As Good As Your Last Mistake

(My boss is actually a very nice guy who gets along well with everyone in the company. However, he seems to have an issue with the concept of ‘simple mistake’ not being in his vocabulary. Case in point.)

Boss: “Hey, we have this product showing as “still open” in our system, but the vendor site shows it as shipped to us.”

Me: “Well, I normally process those ones but, when did it show up?”

(We look up the shipment date, and sure enough it’s one my coworker processed; one of a dozen in a row, and that was the only discrepancy because he processed lines 1 and 2, instead of 2 and 3.)

Boss: “Well, we really need to make sure that everything is received in correctly the first time.”

Me: “I know. It looks like he just marked the wrong line on this.”

Boss: “I know. Just, make sure he’s up to speed on the proper procedures of how to do this.”

(He then proceeds to list of the entire product-receiving procedure, that I’ve been doing for 11 years now, with my nodding my head and adding ‘I know’ or ‘Mhm’ along the way.)

Me: “Well, like I said I think he knows the procedure. He got all the other ones right. This was just a slip because the products are almost identical, just the one part of the ID# was different.”

Boss: “Yeah, we just have to make sure.”

(Thinking this is the end of it I go to sit at my desk and keep doing my work… At which point my boss goes over to [Coworker] and repeats the entire spiel to him! About five minutes later he’s finally done, and I turn around.)

Coworker: “Um, am I in trouble for mixing up one thing a month and a half ago?”

Me: “No, [Boss] just seems to think 1 mistake out of 500 means you need a complete retraining…”