Stress Awareness Blog: Learning From Mistakes

In support of Stress Awareness Month, each day this week we will share a personal experience from one of our team members who communicate how they dealt with, or learnt from, a stressful experience.

Customer Contact Team Administrator, Diane McKay opens the series:

“Working for a large supermarket, I took on a higher role and I was made up because it was still within the department I loved.

The hours were long and the job involved hard, physical labour and it meant stepping in to several roles on any given day.

My mistake was believing I had to prove myself against two other people in the same role.

I started work at 5am, often after finishing a shift at 10pm the previous day.

I took shorter lunches and wouldn’t have chance to take a break during a 12 hour shift and I covered absences at short notice.

All the while I thought that the work I was putting in was appreciated by management.

Sadly, it wasn’t.

It took finding onions in my steak pie one day and breaking down in tears to realise that I really was unhappy and my family life was suffering because of it all.

I just simply had to do something.

In the end, I applied for a job here as a receptionist.

I realised that I’m not invincible and my mistake was not delegating work and letting others take advantage.

Not long after leaving, I finally started to experience a happy work/life balance.”