“At some point on your road you have to turn and start walking back towards yourself. Or the past will pursue you, and bite the nape of your neck, leave you bleeding in the ditch. Better to turn and face it with such weapons as you possess.”
― Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black
I fucked up today. One of those huge, cost-people-money mistakes, one of those you-couldn’t-have-fucked-up-in-a-worst-place mistakes. It hurts, I’ll admit.
Two things kill about making mistakes onsite.
The first is that it’s your TRADE. Your craft. Your skill. The reason you’re paid more than some other halfwit. Mistakes are what the cowboys make, you my friend have been a cowboy for five minutes and look at the result.
The second is down to the definition of a mistake. Now I’ve made plenty of errors, I probably average about one every two months - you know, something like the "100-mil-trick", where I measure from the 100mm mark on the tape for extra accuracy but forget to subtract the extra hundred so I have to redraw the line when I double check. I’d say I'd rate as pretty good at my trade, but even the very best trades, the people I’d take any advice from about the craft, even they must make an error like that every six months.
But a MISTAKE... well that's when you mark a line in the wrong place and THEN cut without checking. The mistake is when what you’ve cut is worth more than a weeks wage. The mistake is when you can’t do anything to rectify it, short of getting new materials. That, my friends, is a fuck up, a catastrophe, a disaster. A Mistake.
So what to do when you make a mistake? The first, the most crucial rule goes back to primary school:
Always Own Up.
It's often said that people who don’t own up get caught out in the end, lose work in the end. That’s not necessarily true, I know trades who’ve been fucking up for years now who are expert at passing the buck, electricians who can convince you that the lights aren’t working because the plaster is skewed. Those people have negotiated more money than you, arrive later, leave earlier, and have three weeks in the Bahamas booked this year while you’ll be in Bognor Regis Butlins.
No, you must Always Own Up for no better reason than it is good for the soul. You’re not a cowboy, you’re not a worm. You are a TRADE, my friend, site managers sing when they know it's you fixing the tiles / connecting the boiler / cleaning the windows because they know it’ll be done well. They trust you so much, in fact, that were you to lie and get out of Owning Up, it’s very possible you’d get away with it. But you’d know. Your soul would be dimmer, you would march onto the next job with your step that little less sure because you’d know that you were a cowboy for five minutes and then a fraud ever since.
And that brings us to the second rule, tied right up with Always Owning Up, is that you Must Let it Get To You.
What’s that, you cry?! Everyone makes mistakes don’t they? Of course, you’re right, and I’m not advising you give up the day job because your work got ripped out. But this Millennium Dome-sized disaster you’ve perpetuated on the British public shouldn't be repeated, ever. Every time you measure from 100mm there must be a shadow cast across your mind, a Vietnam-style flashback, a Christ that won’t happen again. If it doesn’t get to you then you won’t have that, then there is a real chance it won’t happen again.
Because of course everyone does make mistakes. Those best trades I mentioned previously, the ones whose advice I’d always listen to gladly? Their heads overflow with mistakes, with errors, with near-misses. They approach a job packed full of cautionary tales. One of the best carpenters I know is mad on screws, uses twice the number most other people do. This chippy is the bollocks, I’d always depend that his door frames are plum, his vanity unit made exactly square. So why does he use more screws than Holloway Prison, like some nervous apprentice? Because he lets his mistakes get to him. Here endeth the lesson.
And pray for me please. After the mistake I made today I need it.
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