Made a mistake, text annoying supervisor. Seems difficult.

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This started last week Friday, where i messed up by asking the wrong person where to report to work today. And it was a higher ranking person instead of the person i was supposed to contact. This person reached out to my supervisor and then said supervisor chewed me out for contacting the wrong person. He reminded not to do it again which i won’t and things should have ended there.

So when i needed to ask for safety shoe reimbursement, my team lead told me to ask my supervisor. Which i did, but he did not answer my question the whole day.
But today when i made a mistake of contacting the wrong person (this time him) for help on navigating around at work today to find my bag at a room i only went to once, he replied for this one.

I was trying to contact my team lead but their profile pic is so similar from afar i mistook them. I know today is my first day but i messaged the wrong person and he doesn’t seem pleased to see that i am disturbing him especially since i messaged the wrong person.
He started with “what are you talking about” to → “Are you messaging the wrong person” then when i apologised, he wrote this:
“…”
And of course, he didn’t reply to my previous question either…
And i felt my heart sank. Cause i feel terrible. I don’t know what kind of bad impression he has on me right now. He made me feel weak, pathetic, terrible.

And i can’t stop thinking about it… makes me so anxious… its to the point where i am starting to feel afraid of asking him about anything in the future… while he is not at my workplace and we mostly talk via WhatsApp, he is still my supervisor and in the future there might be things i need to ask him… and i am afraid because he is the kind of person who will ignore messages if he doesn’t want to reply, or scold over minor things…

He made me feel scared to ask him about anything in the future…

I don’t know how to deal with this… I hope you can help advise me on this…

I know the best way is to let it go, leave it and move on. But i hate that he might have labeled me as the not focus person or text trouble issue. Or unable to follow simple instructions guy.

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Hi @productivefrog2739 thank you for sharing!

What you have shared sounds really stressful, especially on your first day when you’re already trying to navigate everything new all at once. Mistaking two contacts with similar profile pictures is a very understandable slip, not a character flaw. And this single incident should not be causing you to be labelled as someone with focus issue or text trouble.

I would say moving forward it would be the best for you to address the fear of texting him or asking him questions directly instead of avoiding it as anxiety tends to grow when you avoid the thing you’re afraid of. The next time when you need to reach out to him for something legitimate, just be clear and concise. Keep it professional and gives him nothing to be annoyed about. Remember, you’re not bothering him by doing your job!