VA: Pet Peeve #8: Excuses, Excuses, Excuses
Jan 1st, 2008
(16 votes, average: 3.06 out of 5)
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Original post: Pet Peeve #8: Excuses, Excuses, Excuses
Aww, it’s just her kind of post:D Loved the last paragraph.
See - V has a sense of humor!! Kudos on a thoughtful/funny blog. (However, I DID think shoveling 14 inches of snow off my driveway was a pretty good excuse for being late today……)
my pet peeve:
authority figures who ask for excuses, and reject the truth.
Subordinates MUST be perfect for demanding and unforgiving supervisors.
what am i to do with this:
[img]http://www.bureauofcommunication.com/apology.jpg[/img]
i already filled it up…
I must disagree with this post.
There are a difference between excuse and explanation.
Yes, if I would have a person who cares about productivity and only productivity as my boss, I would not give excuses. I’d give solutions to problems. In the real world, though, it doesn’t work like that. (V, you are welcome to visit us here in the real world…)
Bosses want to hear your excuse if you make a mistake. I hate making one.
Some bosses are eager to hear your excuse just so they can say they don’t care about my excuse.
I don’t give excuses unless I’m probed for them. And oh yes, that happens. Sometimes not explaining is worse than a crappy excuse.
But without excuses, how the heck can bosses sit in their break room gossipping? They need fuel for their gossips, and Sandra from accounting’s and Bill from HR’s possible affair doesn’t take the whole day to gossip about.
If that weird thing happens and I’m late for work (like 24th of December last year when metro drivers decided no-one’s gonna work - bunch of lazy Dutchmen who don’t even celebrate christmas on 25th, but on 5th, decided I’m not gonna work on christmas either - and instead of driving the sunday schedule - a metro per 15 minutes - they decided to drink glühwine and come one train per an hour) I say to my boss “Sorry for being late”. I will not say “It will never happen again”. Not before I’m omnipotent.
There are things you cannot affect. Those are not excuses, those are explanations. If anyone is interested. If a thunderstorm breaks out and you are stranded somewhere, how can you say it won’t happen again? We already have weather control devices? Gimme one! I would’ve needed one in the last country where I was living.
Of course from productivity’s side it doesn’t matter if you don’t show up to the work because you have a hangover (never happens with me; if you can drink, you can work.) or if you can’t get to work when you are trapped in your house because the only bridge leading out of the 20 house complex you live in is flooded in the autumn. (That has happened to me. Very annoying. Especially if you don’t have anything in the fridge and you are trapped on an island. Work was least of my problems. That was in the place where I needed the weather control device.)
In the latter case you have to specify it wasn’t your fault - nothing I could’ve done. (Except to buy an open-sea capable boat to go to work.) I don’t want to be labelled as a work-skipper the same way as the guy who goes partying in the middle of week and lays in bed with a hangover. I can’t change the weather, but that guy can change his drinking habits. We are not on the same line. After that has been cleared out, and if that happens again, should be enough explanation (not excuse) to say “sorry, the bridge thing happened again. Here’s my project I finished home.”
On the other hand, I have used the following excuse in the past: “Friend’s birthday party yesterday. Hangover. Didn’t wake up.” I reserve the right to be fallible and be late from work because of my foul up once every two years.
Deadlines, however, are a different thing - and here I do agree somewhat. If your computer doesn’t work and you can’t deliver - tell your boss it doesn’t work. If I still go over the deadline, I told my boss about the problem, problem’s not fixed, not my fault - It’s my boss’ fault.
My car, my watch, my mobile phone - my problems. No whining, no excuses. “My bad.”
Tools to work with - my boss’ problem if I inform him/her. Not my problem. “I did inform you about this on xxth of xxx, but nothing was fixed.”
Any natural event or what some like to call ‘act of god’ - Have to info about the issue, why it happened and what can be done to fix the issue and how to prevent it in the future.
Simple as that.
Of course there are situations where new info comes out like few hours before deadline and it changes so much you are not going to deliver in time. Again: Info the boss: Responsibility off my back.
Easier to give the problem to your boss. I wanna work, not to bother if my tools work or not. It’s my boss’ job to make sure I can work proper.
But in that case where that ‘act of god’ thing happens, of course you need to explain what happened and why. There’s a construction site next to the parking lot, and couldn’t find a space. Info your boss, who’s responsibility is to contact facilities, who’s responsibility is to get someone there to tell the workers to make space so people can get to the parking lot. Can’t do that and boss gives me no solution? Not my fault if I’m late tomorrow, too.
If a boss doesn’t want to hear explanations he/she is neglecting his/her responsibilites. He/she needs to know if the situation is a single incident and it won’t happen again, or if this is an actual problem. In the latter case, solution can be found. It is not necessarily boss’ job to find the solution in the first place, but he/she has to be aware of it should he/she have the need to step in and fix it him/herself in the future.
In the last country when I was stranded when it was flooding, my boss had a brilliant idea and gave me a solution: Don’t go home. But she didn’t want to share her bed with me. Where should I go then? Actoually we did sleep in the car couple of times with my housemate, since we couldn’t get to home because of the floods. But if I wake up in the morning and today I can go to work, tomorrow morning the bridge is flooded. Couldn’t foretell that in the country where I was living in. When you go to city centre, take sunglasses and an umbrella with you. Don’t know which one you are going to need, or both.
When I throw the ball to my boss, it’s his/her job to either throw the ball back to me or through the proper channels.
So, all in all: Make sure you throw the ball to your boss as quickly as you can.
Sorry for poor writing construction this time. Written piece by piece, adding bits here and there while hugely agitated of V’s neclegt of her responsibilities as a boss. And I never proofread blog or forum postings. (Excuses, excuses, excuses…)
An excuse is something that is given as a reason we think we should be excused from something… excused from the responsibility of a commitment we have made.
If I screw up, then I will admit it. If I am asked why, if I have a reason, I will present it, but I will not asked to be excused for whatever it is.
One of the things that drove me crazy at my last job was that the boss did not want to hear the simple statement of ‘I did not complete the task. I will do better in the future.” If you gave that, he wanted to know WHY… but when you told him why, he would yellthat he was tired of {your} excuses.
On my exit interview, I made it very clear that the main reason people were not able to finish the tasks that he set was because he set unreasonable deadlines, he did not provide the tools that were necessary and that his son was a complete screw-up that caused people to spend 80 percent of their time cleaning up his messes instead of doing the jobs that he set.
Funny how some people not only do not want to hear ‘excuses’ but they also are not interested in reality.