This morning I was feeling particularly unattractive so decided it was going to be a big make up day. I spent considerable effort on my eyes to detract from the lines around my mouth (women will get this – men ask women over 40).
Having achieved a look which involved a heavy eyeliner on my top lid from a liquid pen I then started thinking about other stuff. I reached for
my makeup setting bottle (I understand my straight male readers are completely confused at this point – again ask a woman). I was not wearing my glasses, I am blind, I sprayed my face with Argan Oil which was meant for my hair. Panicking, as my entire eyes’ eye makeup headed towards my chest, I then sprayed my face with the makeup setter which of course has lead to me as I write this, trying to fix a drooping mess that now has the makeup fixer added to it. I am faced with three options:
- See how good my “simple, kind to eyes makeup corrector pen” is;
- Wash my face and start again (my PA Jill’s advice); or
- Give up entirely on the understanding that at my age nobody will really notice if I have makeup on or not.
By the end of this article I will not have made up my mind what I am going to do but because I am relatively busy I think I will go with option one.
Isn’t it funny when you are an employer how often you make mistakes when you are busy and rather than take a deep breath you react in a knee jerk reaction that only makes things worse.
In my makeup debacle of this morning, what I should have done after I realised I had sprayed myself with the Argan Oil, was sit quietly and try to dry my face. This would have minimised the amount of damage to my eye makeup. What I did of course was run screaming from my office yelling at everybody “Oh my goodness I have just sprayed myself with Argan Oil”. This lead to my eyes watering more than they were already, and elevated blood pressure which resulted in my face going red, which in turn did not help the general melting of my face.
What I have learnt in life - although clearly not in relation to putting makeup on - is that generally once one thing goes wrong in a file/romantic relationship/sports game/putting up a tent, unless immediate action is taken to calm the farm and reassess matters, things can go downhill if decisions are not made without the panic or rising sense of hysteria that we often get when the unexpected occurs.
The same can be said for employment relationships. As an employer if you do something that is wrong or unlawful (and we often do this by mistake, particularly in relation to paying wages, sick leave etc) instead of reacting in a way that is defensive, go to your employee and say – sorry I may have made a mistake here, let’s try to sort it.
I have no doubt that in most employment relationships, where people have had a good working relationship, most honest mistakes can be fixed.
Similarly with employees. As an employer it is very clear to me that people will make mistakes – we all make mistakes. What employers need to know though is that the mistake has been made so that they can fix it. Similarly many work place issues would be resolved (if people are decent human beings of course and this is the rider on all this advice) with honest communication.
Anyway the good news is that after dictating this article my face has dried, the eye makeup is indeed salvageable. Hopefully there are some women who are thinking this is a good end to the story and some men who have actually read to the end of it.
