trust yourself

There was a time when a colleague came to me with the company camera, asking where the SD card was. (An SD card is a small memory card, about 1 cm tall, 0.5 cm wide and 0.1 cm thick).

I was the last person to use the camera. In general, I was one of 3 people to use the camera and I was the one who used it most - by far.

I was fairly sure I had put the SD card back in its slot - though there was a tiny chance I had kept it in my laptop or a pocket. I checked my laptop. It wasn’t there.

“I’m 90% sure I put it back in the camera - I’ve been particularly careful. You’re sure it’s not there? Have you checked both slots?”

“Yes Dror, the camera has no card in it”

“What about the camera case? It’s got quite a few pockets”

“I’ve checked, Dror, it’s not there. Is it in your laptop?” (The sass in her voice was as thick as syrup).

And so I proceeded to search the office. I searched the cabinet where we kept the tech, shelf by shelf. I searched my desk, my cabinet, my backpack. The colleague stood around, waiting.

My manager asked what I was doing, crawling on the floor under the desks with the torch on my phone. I explained.

“Did you check the camera yourself?”, he asked.

“She’s pretty certain it’s not there.”

I had been searching for about 30 minutes when I told my manager, “I’m just thinking maybe it was in the jacket pocket I was wearing yesterday… I’ll go home, check and bring it back”.

“Wait a second”, he replied. He went over to the colleague of mine. Took the camera out of her hands, despite her insistence that she had checked, opened the flap and sure enough… there was the SD card.

She stuttered. She umm-d and ahh-d. Various colleagues were keeping their heads down, looking at their laptops, hoping that the tension would float over their heads. The manager demanded an explanation. Why had she interrupted my workflow and sent me on a wild goose chase, when the card was very clearly in the slot? What was so urgent that she needed it now? What was she doing whilst I kept searching? (Nothing).

Her excuse was that she turned on the camera and a message box flashed up, which she thought said there was no card. “Show me.” She turned on the camera, the message came up. Just some generic message. Nothing to do with an SD card. I can’t remember what it was now, but it wasn’t complex.

“Take the camera and get back to work”.

Then the manager pulled me into a meeting room.

My first thought was, “how the hell is this my fault?”

“I know you’ve had issues with her before. So have I. You know she’s like this. So why didn’t you check the camera yourself? I could tell you knew you put it back. You were going through the motions, checking thoroughly, making sure you covered every base, but in your head you knew you didn’t forget or lose the card. You’ve got to trust yourself a bit more, because she just wasted 30 minutes of your time and it would have been more if I hadn’t stepped in before you went home”.

I was getting an important lesson here. My tiny insecurity - the fact that although I believed I put the card back, I didn’t trust myself enough to demand to check the camera myself - was costly.

Trust yourself. That’s all.