Why did I give her so much power to ruin my day?

I am distraught with myself because I gave somebody the power to ruin my day.

I am old and experienced enough and should be able to anticipate these situations or people and prepare or react appropriately to be unaffected by them. But it rarely happens. I get nailed every time. For this instance maybe I could or should cut myself some slack since I am going through a depression.

This how this Wednesday went south.

This lady who takes care of my accounting and tax return for my small company calls me this morning complaining to me about the lousy work that I’ve done. Early in 2017, they have given me a spreadsheet to fill out all expenses to facilitate the accounting procedure at year end with the instruction to keep all receipts. As the year went by I modified the spreadsheet to make it more analytical following my logic. Therefore I started to add macros with some simple visual basic coding. What I didn’t think of is the repercussion that my modifications had on the filters and sub-totals that excel gives you access. In order words, I create my tool according to my needs and not theirs.

I went on and did the same thing which was to scan and number every receipt and discarded the paper copy as, in my opinion, the paper receipts became obsolete and ended up in the trash can.

Currently, we have a huge mess to clear up. I take my share of responsibility and will fix it but what angered me was this idiot of an accountant who can’t even master excel and basic coding. Because of her incompetence, we’re in a royal mess. Granted I probably shouldn’t have played with the number and made some visual cool stuff, I was bored back then and didn’t the blog yet. What was getting to me was her speech, talking down to me as if I was the imbecile who couldn’t fill out a basic spreadsheet, also repeating time and time over the same thing. It was a miracle that I didn’t lose it.

Guess what happened! Early in the afternoon, the same genius calls me back, and it took all my willpower to pick up the phone as I still have some manners. But it turned out to be a big mistake. I mentioned to her that I was out with my family, therefore was not equipped to answer precisely. Her call was almost a copy paste of the morning one but more aggressive and forceful. She didn’t bring up any other concerns or problems. For about forty minutes I had to listen to her garbage. Why did I let take the lead in this conversation is a mystery to me unless it is due to the depression?

I am proud of myself as I didn’t blow up my top, it was close. This idiot, who didn’t listen to me in the first place, ask me to look up on my screen at the spreadsheet when I told her earlier that I was out. This is a classic case of miscommunication which happens too often as people only listen to their voice and stuff and are hermetic to others.

We have set up a meeting for Monday to look at this over again.

It is very difficult for me to deal with this with my current condition. I don’t have the energy to waste for these kinds of situations.