Today, I just randomly remembered an embarrassing incident that happened when I was doing my Masters in Houston. It's an on campus job I had taken up to do part-time to bear my living expenses. I had opted to work from 8 am that day and I don't remember if I was sleep deprived the night before or I was just randomly lost in thoughts. The mistake happened whatever the reason it was.
We had a big paper shredder in the office to securely get rid of any physical receipts after they were accounted into the system software. As the part of my routine, my manager gave me some papers and asked me to feed it to the shredder, located in a different room. I have used that shredder umpteen number of times before that day and didn't think much about the task. I went and inserted the bunch of papers directly into the narrow opening of the shredder. There was my first mistake. I should have never inserted the whole bunch of papers just like that. Some of them were clipped together with paper clippers. I usually look out for any such pins or clippers but clearly it wasn't my day. A clipper got stuck in the machine.
Maybe this was ok I my craziness didn't continue further. I got a pair of scissors and tried to push the stuck papers through the iron blades of the shredder. This also would have been okay if I didn't forget a crucial step. I did not turn the power off while I was trying to clear the paper from rotating blades with the scissors! This was the stupidest action of mine for the day. The stuck paper slipped into the shredding bin and then the scissors got stuck in between the blades. It's obvious that the shredder blades were not built strong enough to tolerate an iron pair of scissors while they were rotating at that speed.
The machine just came to a halt with the twisted pair of scissors stuck in the machine. I just stood there frozen unaware of what happened. I then became conscious of the blunder I did and rushed to my manager to explain the situation to him. I detailed everything and apologized in the best possible way. I was in tears and my voice reflected true helplessness.
My manager was such a sensible person who knows how to get hold of a messy situation just in the right way. He was a basketball coach outside work and he clearly showed the sportsmanship and saved my day. All he said was, "What's done is done. You do realize the damaging cost associated with this situation and I'm sure you will never repeat this in your life. Think of it as a lesson learnt with in a hard way. You'll come over a lot of such days in future and this is how you learn to avoid the worst and deal them in a better way."
I was watching him with reverence and his soothing words worked like a spell on my mind. I didn't need any coffee to keep me alert that day.
