PLEASE Take Note Of My Reading Of The Notes

My manager is legitimately one of the nicest and sweetest people I’ve ever met in my life. However, she has a habit of conflating “didn’t do correctly” with “didn’t do at all.” My biggest pet peeve is being accused of something I didn’t do. Put these two traits together and… Well…

I was brought into a side office because I had been making too many mistakes. They were mostly little mistakes, but business had been down and every little mistake that cost the company money — reshipping product, addressing correction fees, etc. — was being felt more. I understood and accepted that, and I earnestly asked for suggestions and help to fix this. My supervisor had some actually helpful advice, but [Manager] dropped this.

Manager: “You just need to read the notes.”

Me: “I do read the notes, and 98% of the time, I apply them correctly. It’s just the 2% that I accidentally apply them incorrectly.”

Manager: “Well, if you read the notes, you wouldn’t.”

Me: “Like I said, 98% of the time, I do. I make mistakes, though. Sometimes I get distracted, sometimes I just misread, or I’m overtired. It happens; I’m human. I’m going to try to minimize them.”

Manager: “Start reading the notes, and we won’t need to have these talks.”

Me: *Getting upset* “[Manager]! I just said multiple times that I do. Just this morning, I brought up to you and [Supervisor] three different things which I caught because I read everything. I’m sorry that 2% of the time I have slipped. I’m not excusing those. I’m saying I will fix them!”

Supervisor: “Just out of curiosity, why are you so fixated on this 98%, 2% angle?”

Me: “Because [Manager] said the others only make mistakes about 1% of the time, and I make twice as many as the rest. And a 2% error rate is a h*** of a lot less than the 100% rate she keeps saying.”

Manager: “I never said that!”

Me: “Your literal, exact words were, ‘You never read the notes,’ which means I screw up literally everything. I accept the mistakes I’ve made and will fix them, but I will not accept that.”

Eventually, the supervisor was able to verbally get between us enough to de-escalate, and the final resolution was basically what I was saying in the first place. [Manager] and I have since made up, though I may snarkily add in “because I was reading the notes” whenever something needs addressing.