A Lesson in Humility

"Pride comes with disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom." --Proverbs 11:2

I'm thankful that God has already been convicting me on this important value called humility. Even so, I had a sour dose of it on Friday night. I have also experienced mercy and grace in this the fiasco. I feel very blessed and fortunate that everything is okay.

On Friday night, at work, I made the silly mistake of putting the receipt paper in the printer "backwards." This was only my second time putting in the paper-- though it isn't rocket science. When I tested to see if the paper worked, I thought it was strange how nothing printed. However, I thought it was just an error with the computer and didn't even think to double check.

Unfortunately, I found out the "sour way" that I had made a mistake. I was re-merchandising a shelf unit when I saw my co-worker start to ring the customers up (and mind you, there were several-- it was a busy evening). When the transaction wouldn't print she said, loudly, "Angela you put the printer paper in wrong..." And the worst part is, that when she put the receipt paper in correctly- only half of the receipt would print. So something got messed up with the printer head (which I learned later was more of a coincidence than anything else!). Of course, I was extremely embarrassed and all of the customers were looking at me. I couldn't believe how dumb of a mistake that was; something so simple!

The rest of the night was pretty irritating and a blow to my psyche (to be honest- I was flipping out!). I contacted the help line for the registers but unfortunately, the tech guys didn't do much besides stress me out more. I called my manager and she came in later to check on the situation. She was very nice about it and comforted me. She knew it was a mistake. I was pretty good about not crying over it the whole evening until we talked about it. That's when I started to get emotional. Ahhh...

So anyway... Good news is that she said the register could still be used (the part of the receipt that wasn't printing wasn't a big deal). Today I worked and the printer was better, some of the ink still is kind of light on the receipts. Whew.

My manager was very sweet and called me today to see how I was doing. She was concerned with how personal I took the situation but she was proud of me for trying to solve the problem. That made me feel better! She also isn't mad at all and is very understanding of mistakes. I feel so blessed to have a merciful manager and co-workers.

It's amazing how one little mistake can lead to that tough lesson of humility. It made me blush tomato red, cry for a few minutes, cringe and want to crawl under a rock. But I survived. I can't laugh about it yet but someday I will. As my manager says, "Things just happen!" Oh, that is so true.