And the battle continues

2.00 a.m. last Friday morning found me scrambling to complete a presentation which had been due earlier that evening. At that point exhaustion must have got the better of me, because I ended up sending out an email to the entire management team with a whole bunch of erroneous information. Now this, as you all know, is not particularly out of character for me, even at my sharpest best. The difference was that this time I failed to catch myself and send out the usual email of retroactive correction and apology.

Early the next morning, my inbox displayed a sharp stricture from Rizlo.

Now, this is the first time I've mentioned Rizlo here, so perhaps a little background is due. Rizlo's a member of the management team, and the only person at the company with whom my relationship got off on a bit of a rocky start. He is a stickler for detail and accuracy, and takes it upon himself to reprimand those who fall down on these two points. Being as I often fall down on these two points, I am accordingly often the subject of his critique. Of course, the infuriating part is not so much the ensuing argument (although that is pretty rankling), but rather the fact that he is always right (dammit).

So with some helpful advice from Seagull ("every time he says something, just laugh"), I've been working hard over the last few weeks to improve my relationship with Rizlo. Gradually our interactions have developed from adversity to tolerance to respect and friendly banter. I've been feeling especially proud of these giant strides of mankind.

So it made me especially glum to see his correctional email in my inbox yesterday. It was like picking a Chance card: Go back to Adversity. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

As usual, he was right, and I was mortified by the enormity of my mistake. Yikes, they're going to fire me, I thought, and then remembered that as the HR bod, I'D have to fire me. This made me feel somewhat more cheery, although all the same, I did indulge in a fair share of moping and sulking, primarily for Rizlo's benefit. By the end of the day, he finally picked up on my hints.

"Don't worry about your email," he consoled me, "you want to know about the big email error I made today?" Ad he told me about a pretty shitty email he had accidentally sent to a client. Rizlo is never one to easily admit his own flaws, so for him to share this with me just to make me feel better, I thought was a great bonding moment.

"Oh Rizlo that's awful!" I exclaimed. "Thanks for telling me about that, now I feel so much better about what I did!"

At once the bonding moment was over. "Oy, steady on," he said. "What I did wasn't that bad."

Hmm, I do suspect this relationship needs some more work. Time for Seagull to give me Advice step # 2.