Thank you sir, may I have another

The beatings are part of the job. And on my side of the letterhead, you better get good at taking your licks - whether they're deserved or not. You learn to keep your mouth shut, endure the blows silently and retreat to your office to nurse your wounds behind closed doors.

The most legitimate of defenses don't matter when your punishment is being doled out - your mom could be in the hospital, you could have done exactly what you were told to do, the building could have been hit by lightening erasing the 65 page brief you had worked for a month on... In that moment, the only words that matter are, "I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

I've choked out those words while the blows fell fast and furious. I've held back tears of frustration at a situation so patently unfair and stupid that I just wanted to scream. And I've taken the beatings that more properly belonged to someone else.

Today was one of those days.

It wasn't my fault. I answered the question based on my personal knowledge and when I was asked to verify that answer with the others who work this file, I did as I was asked. But I was the one who represented that we didn't have certain documents, documents I never saw, never reviewed and was told by 2 other people didn't exist.

This statement proved to be untrue. No harm done really. We found the docs an hour later and our expert is too busy right now trying to go on vacation to go through these 500 pages of daily reports.

But I misrepresented the state of our file and how could I not know what was there in 100,000 pages of stuff that we've billed the client so much money to go through? Blah, blah, blah...

I'm sorry...It won't happen again.

I come back to my office, close the door and say the words I've uttered far too many times in the past "Thank you sir, may I have another."

Just another fun-filled day at the office...