The Looming Threat

I tend to feel inadequate at my job. I try my best to be courteous and nice, but always worry that I am not productive enough. One of my more pessimistic musings is that my niceness will serve only to make it a more uncomfortable conversation when I am eventually fired.

My boss tells me otherwise. It is possible that she is just being polite when I ask about my performance (she is an extraordinarily positive person), but it is more possible that I am just being down on myself.

Oh yeah, about my boss… I kind of maybe sort of broke her finger today.

She came in to relieve me of my nightly duties at seven this morning, and after some pleasantries were exchanged, she requested my assistance. In the process of emptying the dirty rags into the washing machine, the plastic garbage can that we pile the rags into got its mouth wedged in the industrial washer’s opening. It took some minutes of struggling, but with a loud pop, I removed the garbage can.

Immediately following this, my manager let out a sound of distress. I looked at her as she reacted to pain, eyes wide, for several seconds. Eventually she was freed. Though I could not see it from my point of view, her finger had gotten caught between the plastic and the metal.

When she showed me her finger, there was a deep indentation. No skin was broken, but I was nearly sickened by the mark, wincing as I imagined the pain. She has reported that she is okay and applied ice to her injury. She did admit, however, that her finger may be broken.

I apologized as best as I could, but I still feel bad about the accident. Hopefully everything will be alright—by the time I left, she was already in her signature good mood—but while reflecting dwelling on the incident, I could not help but think about how much I might be screwing up. This is a specter that haunts me. Sometimes when I am being self-deprecating I am aware of how ridiculous it is, but other times it more difficult to tell what is real.

I really should try to turn this worrying into something constructive and channel it into better workplace performance.