Poor work ethics could be linked to depression

A few months ago I was fired from my job as a senior manager with a multi-national company. I was based in Harare.

My director called me into his office and asked me to approve the wiring of some money to another company in South Africa.

I did the chore without checking whether the said company had supplied all the items it had billed for. While I acknowledge that there was negligence on my part, my director was part of the team that was crucifying me for gross negligent.

I did not want to embarrass him before his peers and decided to leave. But I still feel bitter and don’t know how to deal with it.

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Your question gives me three or four reasons to worry for you. You seem prone to mistakes and it is possible that you were fired or left the job for this reason.

Let’s go through the errors you reveal in your short question, if only to make my point.

The first relates to whether you were indeed fired as you say in the first sentence, or whether you actually left because you did not want to embarrass your director before his peers as suggested by your penultimate sentence.

Whether you jumped or was pushed out of the company is not clear from your question. I wonder how many other similar situations existed in the company before your departure.

The second error you reveal is from your own confession. You tell us that you did not do your job well, specifically that you did not make sure that the items billed for had been delivered.

That being the case, you leave one to wonder how many other mistakes the company could have tolerated from you before deciding to let you go.

It is unlikely that the company would ask you to leave on account of a single isolated mistake.

The third, and perhaps a minor mistake that would ordinarily not attract my attention, is your spelling of the word “negligent” where you mean to say negligence.

I only point out this seemingly minor mistake because it helps me make the point that to err is human, but to err many times over is not good as it could lead you to lose your job.

A few weeks ago, a company doctor asked us to see a young accountant who had lost his job. He had worked for a multinational company for five years and although he had been doing well for the first four and a half years, his work output had deteriorated over the six months preceding the referral.