2006-01-20

the cost of honesty

In the last two weeks in the new job I've been made to look like an idiot three times by acting on information received by others that was incorrect. In all three instances, the information was given to me and then confirmed by another person. And in all three instances, the information was wrong.

I'm an honest person. The main reason for this is that I can't lie to save my life; so I don't bother. And also because I think honesty is just plain better. I don't cheat on my taxes, fib to my wife or my supervisors, etc.

Today, I submitted a mileage reimbursement form for the travel to and from the various training sessions I've attended. The supervisor I will soon have to work with on a regular basis questioned the mileage rate I put down, the rate that I was told to use during the training. It turns out the supervisor was right and now I have to fill out the forms again with correct rate and resubmit them. That doesn't bother me at all. It doesn't bother me that the error was in my favor so I will now get less money for my travel. What bugs me is it looks like I was traying to milk more reimbursement than I was entitled to.

And this was just the latest instance. The worst part of all this is every one of these three mistakes was caught by my supervisor. That speaks well for her performance, but not necessarily for mine. And I'm not even out of training yet!



Posted to:

No comments: