A Bad Impression on my Boss's Boss's Boss

Things are always changing. The seasons, your appearance, your job and change is difficult.  The reason is that change affects your habits and habits are what makes life easy.

Recently, there was a reorg at my company and my boss's, boss got a new boss. I'll call her Debby.

Now one of the habits I have is to eat an Atkins protein bar at my desk. It saves time, increases my productivity and prevents me from waiting on long lines to get lunch.

But, I had lunch plans this day.

I probably hadn't taken a lunch away from my desk in 3 months.  So what happens while I'm away?  My boss's boss's boss needs a report for her boss's boss (I'll call him Rob).  That's 5 levels above my position and I'm no where to be found.

I probably took a little over an hour for lunch and got back to my desk at around 2 PM.

A co-worker and my boss's boss try to reach me.

So I have to do some emergency work that needs to get out by the end of the day for Debby and Rob

Dealing with your boss's boss's boss for the first time, you want to make a great first impression. But the impression I started with is "I take long lunches."  I mention to her that I never take a lunch and now I've made a second impression "I'm not honest."  Who doesn't take lunches?

Now Debby seems smart and wants me to do a report in Excel. I'm having trouble following what she wants because she knows the new changes better than I do, because I haven't been involved with them and I don't want to appear dumb.

To make matters worse, I don't work that well under pressure and this is a lot of pressure to get out a report before the end of the day working on it with your boss's boss's boss for your boss's boss's boss's boss's boss.

So I start on the report and it's already 2:30 PM.  I've already told my wife that I'd pick her up at work.

In the morning I wound up taking my wife's keys to work with me by accident. She had to get rides to and from work. So I called her and offered to pick her up but then had to cancel on her.

So I get an number of spreadsheets from Debby and copy of email from Ron and I set out to build the requested report.

Debby keeps on changing what she wants and tells me different calculations to include that don't make sense.  First she says that a field is  A - (B - C) and then later she says it's A - B - C.

I tell her that they're not the say and she doesn't understand why.  So I send her an example

2 - (3 - 1) = 0
2 - 3 - 1 = -2

So she sends me changes and I send her back results. Now it's 8:30 PM and I'm pooped, can't think straight.

I decide to leave so I can make my 9:42 train and be home by 11 PM.  I send her the final results and leave. It turns out that the email never gets to her. It gets stuck in my Outlook outbox because I don't have enough space to send it.

I get home and 11 PM and try to log in to work, but my computer reboots and my Chrome browser can no longer access work.

By 12:30 AM I try to use IE and I get into my work computer and find out that I never sent Debby the email.

Woops.

Some lessons learned:

1. Don't take you wife's keys to work with you
2. Don't take a lunch
3. Keep up on all the new terminology of what's going on in your group or dept.
4. When sending an important email make sure it gets delivered before leaving
5. You get one chance to make a good first impression don't blow it like I did