Thank you all for the advice and information. I am trying to not let this bother me to much but I think it ‘s weighing heavily on my mind. I just woke up hours early and my thoughts jumped immediately to this.
To people’s question about the details. So essentially one of my roles is to handle our deceased account s which often includes paying money to beneficiaries. Apparently in this situation there were multiple beneficiaries and at different points another colleague handled the payoff to other beneficiaries. I happened to have received paperwork indicating a request for payoff from one beneficiary. It seems that one of the indicators that should have been marked by the previous person to indicate payoff was not marked so I was operating under the impression it wasn’t done. So basically I proceeded to issue a check to one of the beneficiaries that was already paid. What I should have done was more carefully checked the notes and account which would have indicated this particular person was paid. My fault.interestingly this error was only caught because another colleague who received more paperwork to payoff another person double checked and noticed one person was paid incorrectly.
This wouldn’t have been a loss except for just my luck this person was not a CU member, out of state, and sadly I know this sounds bad but they were young. My heart sank when I realized this because my experience with young people has not been good when it comes to something like this. Worse of all I determined that this person probably knew of the error waiting over a month to deposit/ cash the check when previously it took days to deposit the legitimate check. Especially since The person was notified they were already given all the money they were due. When I called and spoke to the person, I sensed this and the person indicated the money had been all spent on bills and “debt.” Some part of me was hoping this money would have gone to a responsible person.
There is no process to double check for this kind of error and it could easily have been for a much larger amount. In the past just from the few people I briefly spoke to something similar had happened but the money was recoverable. It’s just this combination of who received it was to my great misfortune. Ofcourse I have offered and will mention again my desire to try to collect on these funds if possible but I fear that it will be written off as a loss. Disappointing even more as I had been working on an upcoming promotion.
So, it's not even exclusively your error? The person before you failed to follow standard protocol and your error was in trusting that they had completed their job properly?
Is that what I'm understanding here?
K, well you have two issues here
1: how you should handle this with management
2: how you should handle your personal emotional reaction to making this error, having to admit it, and not being able to repair it
#1:
Let me share an anecdote
I recently had a senior staff member make an extremely inconvenient error that put me personally in a very uncomfortable position with another company with whom I do a lot of business.
This is a new staff member who has decades of management experience in busier and higher pressure offices. I had high expectations.
Well, they took making a mistake at their new job really personally, and that reeeeaaaaalllllly irritated me.
I expect more, I expect an experienced employee to be able to cope with significant mistakes as part of their basic professional skill set. I don't want them to dump their insecurities on me, I don't care and don't want to deal with it.
By the third day of this employee coming into my office and bringing up the mistake "I just don't understand how that happened! I NEVER miss things like that. Are you sure I shouldn't call them myself? I really don't want them to think poorly of me." Etc, I actually snapped, deepened my voice and kind of barked "LET IT GO".
The whole thing has made me question this person's management skills, experience, maturity, and suitability for the role *just* because they don't seem to be able to professionally handle a very embarrassing mistake.
Mistakes in my industry happen every.single.day, which is probably the same in every industry. So not knowing how to demonstrate the appropriate humble but not insecure response to making a mistake makes an employee seem like either immature or emotionally unstable.
So you may have a drive to really emphasize how sorry you are and how desperate you are to fix or mediate the situation somehow, but you should really take your cue from management as to what they want from you, and chances are, they want you to demonstrate that you can handle a mistake with calm competence.
#2:
If this is your first significant mistake that you've had to admit to, then I get why it's waking you up at night and freaking you out. That's a pretty normal response.
However, again, that's just a symptom of inexperience and professional immaturity.
That's not an insult, or a judgement. It just means you haven't experienced enough of the professional world or been given enough responsibility yet to have adapted to making significant and humiliating mistakes.
It's like the first time someone romantically rejects you, it feels fucking crushing. You can either let that set in as your version of reality, where making mistakes is the worst feeling in the world and worth being afraid of, or you can accept that the first experience is the worst, learn as much as possible from it about your own reactions and behaviours, and move forward wiser and better prepared for next time.
[ETA: there WILL be a next time.]
This is like falling off a horse, getting a nose full of water when learning to swim, or fucking up your verbs trying to learn a new language, it's all part of the normal process of having professional responsibility.
The more autonomous and more responsibility you have, the more frequent and the bigger your mistakes will be. So take this for what it is, initiation into the big kids' club where those of us live on a daily basis.
That's why your bosses don't want to see your agony and don't want to be burdened with it, they have to handle their own mistakes all the time, and they're so used to it, that the hyperventilations of a mistake-n00b wear thin pretty quickly.
In summary
-Everything that has happened is normal.
-Making a mistake is normal.
-The level of mistake you made is very very normal, if not INCREDIBLY common.
-Just because this is your first time doesn't mean this kind of thing is in any way exceptional or special. You are now just initiated into the enormous club of normal people who make normal mistakes at work. Welcome, we get it.
-Your reaction is normal.
-Your current feelings of shame and panic are not permanent.
-Your current feelings of shame and panic do not require anything more than some personal reflection, they're not a big deal, this is just a normal reaction to a normal life event.
-Don't make this more than it is, you've done nothing any more interesting than accidentally saying something offensive at a dinner party, it's extremely embarrassing, but it's kind of self absorbed to think it's a big deal.
-This too shall pass.