I work in IT managing several government websites in my country. Due to my negligence checking a really simple thing while doing a configuration change, one of the websites throws an error for every single user who visits it.

This entire snafu could have been avoided if I had checked a simple thing. But I did not. I'm prepared to burn my Friday and weekend to fix this, but certain things I need are out of my control and in the hands of others. Again, the entire mistake could have been avoided if I'd just double checked.

At the minimum, this will cost me several hundred dollars, and maybe I'll get fired, but the business impact is much more severe than that.

[sans]

I know how badly I feel when I make a screw up, and I do it quite often. Try not to beat yourself up over it. Best thing is, accepting responsibility and the consequences. You will be diligent in rechecking this from here on out.
Best of luck
Sans

[winter4me]

Everyone makes mistakes. But it is also important to look at the system itself and stop the blame game. eg: Is there something that could have been 'there' that would have prompted you to double check? What is your general approach, can it be changed, are others involved, should they be etc...
You are human. You cannot always do everything 'right'. ((((hug))))
I work in health care and I can tell you mistakes are too easy to blame on one person but if you look deeper it is not so simple...

[hvert]

Hopefully you have got it fixed by now! I've been in your shoes, it sucks! I hope the people you work with understand that this is not just your fault, especially if you do not have access to immediately resolve the issue and need to wait for them.

I managed to get it fixed late at night around 10:30pm on the same day. Was so relieved! Updated all my bosses, and crashed into bed.

Thank you for the kind words all of you! While waiting to get what I needed to fix it, I was struggling with self harm urges. I'm glad I didn't give in to my self hatred.

The mistake was avoidable, hence the internal harshness directed to myself. Sure I'm overworked, underpaid, was tired and brain was foggy...yet I really should have checked that I was applying changes to the correct website / web server. I had actually read the instructions "check which web server you're making the changes to" twice and yet messed it up.

I hope I don't have to write up an incident report when Monday rolls around. I will try to be brave...I tend to internally cower when being reprimanded, even as I did tell my CIO all the fault lies on me. Fortunately we did not incur after hours support charges.

Next time I'll make sure I'm alert and clear minded!

[hvert]

Awesome! I'm glad you got it fixed. Hopefully no one gets on your case too much - people just make mistakes sometimes. The important thing is that you quickly found and resolved the problem.

Last year someone I work with forgot to tick a box on a form and the company lost 50k because of it. One check box!