my worst day at work

In my first professional job after graduating from college, I was managing a CVS/Pharmacy in Syracuse New York. It was a great job but I was not emotionally mature at that time to handle all the demands of the role. One day a customer demanded to see me, she was not happy with the fact that we were out of stock of some items and proceeded to share what she thought of me and my store. In a nutshell, I did not respond well to her criticism. She left the store threatening to call every “higher up” at CVS. Sure enough, later that day I got a call from my boss, he told me he had spoken to the customer and would be in my store the next day to speak with me in more detail. As I mentioned in my previous articles, he was a great boss. I was fully expecting to be disciplined or even worse- fired- as I had broken a cardinal sin of not keeping my customer satisfied. 

When we spoke he asked me what happened, I admitted that I didn’t handle the situation correctly and was prepared to accept the consequences of my actions. He then asked me what I had learned from the experience. After I finished talking he simply nodded his head, stood up and said "learn from this experience and make sure you don’t make the same mistake." He then smiled and left the store. That evening as I was driving home from work, it hit me, “your worst day at work is your best learning day”. Take those experiences and learn from them, things that happen to us that at the time are bad, provide us an opportunity to be better.