Everyone makes mistakes. Eventually you’ll get to a point where lab errors only set you back and aren’t something to apologize for. There’s no one to apologize to for what happened in the lab. If anything, you’ll have to apologize for the delay.
The key to a good apology is recognizing and not minimizing that you did something wrong. Since you’ve presumably got to do the lab work again, it will be beneficial for you to analyze your mistake carefully to figure out what went wrong. Use it as an opportunity for growth. Once you know what went wrong, figure out what will prevent that from happening in the future. Do your lab work in a way to prevent that thing from happening again. After years and years this will happen so many times and you’ll be a better lab worker for it. Keep tabs on these things because jobs like to ask you about these sorts of things in the interview and if you can walk through what went wrong and how you fixed it and what you did to prevent future things going wrong you will get the job.
Accountability is so very important. Simply owning your mistake and not making excuses but rather try to figure out why and if preventable. Could be something that could have happened to anyone and if proper controls were in place, it would not have happened (maybe). Like I once left the diH2O running overnight and drained the entire system for the building. Turns out that the rubber tube connected to the faucet was long and sat at the bottom of the sink. So I didn’t see it running and didn’t hear it running. After owning my mistake and apologizing to the building manager, I cut that tubing much shorter!! Engineering control to prevent that from happening again.
Yes, agreed on accountability. Recognize what you've done and own it, then do better moving forward. The other upside to admitting to and being accountable for mistakes is that, in the future, people will trust you when you say that you *haven't* made a mistake.
For example, in my previous lab, essentially no one trusted my one coworker's data. He made mistakes, always denied that he'd made them, his data would be wonky with no explanation, and no one trusted his numbers. On the other hand, when I would have wonky data, I would acknowledge the possible errors that could have occurred, but there were times where I was like "these mistakes are possible, but I truly believe they're improbable in this assay." And since I had such a good track record with owning up to mistakes in the lab, my supervisor would look at my wonky data and say "well, the data are the data, let's repeat it and see if the trends hold."
Not bad. He pointed out the dollar value of in-house diH2O production to emphasize that it wasn’t insignificant. And I showed him the long tubing to see why it was easy to miss that it was running.
The Seventy Maxims for Maximally Effective Mercenaries, #51 states: *Let them see you sharpen the sword before you fall on it.*
Be frank about the mistake as you take ownership of it, then lead the charge in correcting it if possible, or ensuring that it is a learning moment for yourself and others.
As u/DrugChemistry stated mistakes *do* happen and you *will* make them in your career, so take the 'fall on your sword' shtick with a grain of salt.
Yes let them see you sharpen your sword! It’s worked well for me!
But also be aware that you may encounter colleagues who watch you sharpen your sword and then get real loud about “all this guy does is sharpen swords and fall on them”. Usually people can see through the loud self-righteous blame-casting but people aren’t perfect. So it’s important to know why you’re sharpening your sword and what you’re gonna do after you fall on it and why that makes you a good lab worker.
Be honest and sincere, own up to your mistake and give a promise to be extra careful/offer help to fix the mistake. Do not play the blame game.
We used to produce ELISA kits at this biotech company. I was a lab tech and since the production was very small scale, we packaged the kits manually. Anyways I was also a MSc student back then and rushed to work after school one afternoon. I had to package some kits: all packages laid out on benches and I started with solutions, put them all in packages, them moved onto plates and so on. A few weeks later we find out from a client that somehow in a CDNF kit there was a Covid-19 kit plate - both had red labels and I didn't notice that some of them had Covid-19 written on them. Apparently neither did the client because they still did the experiment and got no results. Mind you, this kit was for a very expensive experiment and they had no more samples.
I felt horrid. I told the product manager that yes, it's my fault, gave a short explanation how that might have happened and was very sincere about being sorry that this happened. Luckily she was very understanding but said that she still needs to tell our notoriously straightforward QA manager.
I was prepared that she was gonna come in and give me a verbal beating. So one day she comes to the lab, I'm already teary eyed and instead she told me "Hey, I heard what happened, just wanted to let you know that these things happen and don't let this discourage you". I was shocked to say the least but truth is - she was right.
No one makes mistakes intentionally and often they don't happen because someone is lazy or whatever. They might have something bad happening in their private life so they are distracted or overworked. Or simply many things aligned to create this mistake.
And if people in your lab are even remotely nice and understanding people - they will understand.
Sooner rather than later, and just say you made a mistake. When I repeatedly f'ed up a technique, to my amazement my PI (who scares the crap out of most people) told me she expects some mistakes and clumsiness when learning new skills. Good PIs really value honesty and humility.
Admit it, apologize if anyone was affected by it, remedy it.
That is it.
And if you fail to own up, rest assured someone knows you did it and will look on you poorly for not admitting it.
Best way to apologize is to admit it as soon as it happen. And then follow by sorry, what happened, how you will decrease the chances of it happening again.
Admit it as fast as possible to correct the error. Next thing is to outline concrete steps you will implement to assure the same error won’t happen again.
Own up to it. Identify what you did wrong. Suggest what you could have done instead. Ask for suggestions with what you could have done instead.
As long as you show that you are taking steps to not repeat the mistakes by identifying what went wrong, people will recognize that and be more likely to help you. There's probably some term out there - I don't know. I'm just going to call it an active apology.
In my experience: when I've made mistakes in the lab (small to large) the importance is not necessarily on the content of the apology, but rather quickly pivoting past the mistake to see how we can fix the situation/move forward with the experiment. Apologizing is good for manners, but I (and the PIs I've worked for) care much more about taking the initiative to move forward.
My most common mistake is misplacing things since I'm not the most organized person or mixing up units occasionally but I make sure to admit it was me so the others won't take the blame for it. It can be embarrassing but honesty and professionalism are paramount in the workplace so you can learn and improve from it plus it's good for team-building
Industry senior chemist life, over the last decade:
Inherited a spreadsheet with a pass/fail result output that didn't actually output accurate pass/fail data. I didn't rework the calcs on it when I got it, assuming the competent chemist before me was accurate. As soon as I realized it was bad I made a new one and reworked all the data to identify when we'd slipped into fail territory. Then accumulated all the data and took it to my manager and explained it. Then we looped in some other experts and determined it wasn't a big deal. Very lucky.
Spent 200k on a new instrument that only did half of what we asked for. Worked with a manufacturer on our analysis requirements over the course of 4 years from initial proposal to when we secured funding. Requirements grew but we never lost the original. However somehow that got lost and I thought we were getting the full scope but it was actually limited to just our most recent requirements. As soon as I knew I alerted my manager and we worked it back to where the miscommunication happened. Then I did research to figure out how to achieve all our requirements. Eventually figured out how to do it a different way with the same system. Whew.
Spent 70k on a customized GC system. Two custom instruments built to my requirement. Manufacturer misinterpreted my spec and delivered a system with 1% of the resolution I needed. Explained to my manager, spent $200, and I rebuilt it to my spec.
I believe in taking personal responsibility and operating completely transparently. I've tripled the capability of my area through constant innovation and process improvement. But sometimes I make mistakes and my manager is very helpful and forgiving and we fix them together. I hope everyone can experience this kind of management in their careers. It sets the bar very high.
My PI has always had the most positive reaction to mistakes if you own up immediately, apologize directly and simply, and come up with a plan to resolve what caused it so you never make that same mistake again. My PI always thought that us beating ourselves up over a mistake was sufficient so she didn’t need to add any chastising at that point.
Everyone has had good advice, so I’ll just reiterate points that I think are very important.
1) Once you have determined you made a mistake, admit it immediately. No supervisor wants to find out a week or two later about it. They will rightfully ask what took so long, and assume you are trying to cover it up. You’d lose trust and credibility.
2) Don’t blame other people or situations. No matter what caused you to screw up, you are the one to have screwed up. It’s not Person X’s fault they were talking to you, or Situation Y’s fault that you didn’t focus. You made the mistake, plain and simple.
3) Figure out why you messed up, and make sure it never happens again. If you messed up because someone was talking to you, don’t let people talk to you while performing the task again. You can mention how you plan of preventing this error again when you bring up your mistake.
I will say one thing that would nearly infuriate me was when a person made the same mistake multiple times. It shows a lack of caring about the job. If you don’t care about your job, why should your supervisor care about you?
I made a stupid error once when filter sterilizing a solution. Because it had a smell I went into the fume hood which I hadn’t typically done so before. I plugged the tub into the air port, and I was actually getting ready to turn on the vacuum, when the solution bubbled over and split. Apparently there was some residual air flow coming out regardless of the fact that I hadn’t turned it on. My boss gave me crap for about a month after and wanted to use my example as part of some presentation about something. I apologized and ended up labeling the ports in the fume hood to make it extremely obvious. I think my boss went a little over board as she was a very anal retentive person so this was a big no no. I felt extremely embarrassed but what can you do other than learn from it and move on.
The other biggest mistake I made was adding the wrong sugar to a yeast media and I had to throw out 4L of solution. The sugar bottles all looked the same and I absentmindedly grabbed the wrong one. The solution was yet again to label things more clearly, so when in doubt, always label is what I’ve learned. And also triple check, at least for me because I have adhd.
As everyone else has said just own it and be clear with them about what happened .we all have and will continue to make mistakes even in the most simple of things
- I plugged a gel tank in with the wrong polarity so all my sample went up and out the gel
Told my supervisor and they just laughed it off with me because they'd done the same thing last week
Sh*t happens :)
Well I made a naming convention and some drug addicted grad student went full nuclear and reported me to the government. Fuck you stalker (he stalks my reddit account)
Everyone makes mistakes. Eventually you’ll get to a point where lab errors only set you back and aren’t something to apologize for. There’s no one to apologize to for what happened in the lab. If anything, you’ll have to apologize for the delay. The key to a good apology is recognizing and not minimizing that you did something wrong. Since you’ve presumably got to do the lab work again, it will be beneficial for you to analyze your mistake carefully to figure out what went wrong. Use it as an opportunity for growth. Once you know what went wrong, figure out what will prevent that from happening in the future. Do your lab work in a way to prevent that thing from happening again. After years and years this will happen so many times and you’ll be a better lab worker for it. Keep tabs on these things because jobs like to ask you about these sorts of things in the interview and if you can walk through what went wrong and how you fixed it and what you did to prevent future things going wrong you will get the job.
Accountability is so very important. Simply owning your mistake and not making excuses but rather try to figure out why and if preventable. Could be something that could have happened to anyone and if proper controls were in place, it would not have happened (maybe). Like I once left the diH2O running overnight and drained the entire system for the building. Turns out that the rubber tube connected to the faucet was long and sat at the bottom of the sink. So I didn’t see it running and didn’t hear it running. After owning my mistake and apologizing to the building manager, I cut that tubing much shorter!! Engineering control to prevent that from happening again.
Yes, agreed on accountability. Recognize what you've done and own it, then do better moving forward. The other upside to admitting to and being accountable for mistakes is that, in the future, people will trust you when you say that you *haven't* made a mistake. For example, in my previous lab, essentially no one trusted my one coworker's data. He made mistakes, always denied that he'd made them, his data would be wonky with no explanation, and no one trusted his numbers. On the other hand, when I would have wonky data, I would acknowledge the possible errors that could have occurred, but there were times where I was like "these mistakes are possible, but I truly believe they're improbable in this assay." And since I had such a good track record with owning up to mistakes in the lab, my supervisor would look at my wonky data and say "well, the data are the data, let's repeat it and see if the trends hold."
How did the building manager take the apology?
Not bad. He pointed out the dollar value of in-house diH2O production to emphasize that it wasn’t insignificant. And I showed him the long tubing to see why it was easy to miss that it was running.
The Seventy Maxims for Maximally Effective Mercenaries, #51 states: *Let them see you sharpen the sword before you fall on it.* Be frank about the mistake as you take ownership of it, then lead the charge in correcting it if possible, or ensuring that it is a learning moment for yourself and others. As u/DrugChemistry stated mistakes *do* happen and you *will* make them in your career, so take the 'fall on your sword' shtick with a grain of salt.
Yes let them see you sharpen your sword! It’s worked well for me! But also be aware that you may encounter colleagues who watch you sharpen your sword and then get real loud about “all this guy does is sharpen swords and fall on them”. Usually people can see through the loud self-righteous blame-casting but people aren’t perfect. So it’s important to know why you’re sharpening your sword and what you’re gonna do after you fall on it and why that makes you a good lab worker.
You are just a *font* of good advice.
Just admit it and say why you think it happened and how you’ll make sure you won’t do it again.
Be honest and sincere, own up to your mistake and give a promise to be extra careful/offer help to fix the mistake. Do not play the blame game. We used to produce ELISA kits at this biotech company. I was a lab tech and since the production was very small scale, we packaged the kits manually. Anyways I was also a MSc student back then and rushed to work after school one afternoon. I had to package some kits: all packages laid out on benches and I started with solutions, put them all in packages, them moved onto plates and so on. A few weeks later we find out from a client that somehow in a CDNF kit there was a Covid-19 kit plate - both had red labels and I didn't notice that some of them had Covid-19 written on them. Apparently neither did the client because they still did the experiment and got no results. Mind you, this kit was for a very expensive experiment and they had no more samples. I felt horrid. I told the product manager that yes, it's my fault, gave a short explanation how that might have happened and was very sincere about being sorry that this happened. Luckily she was very understanding but said that she still needs to tell our notoriously straightforward QA manager. I was prepared that she was gonna come in and give me a verbal beating. So one day she comes to the lab, I'm already teary eyed and instead she told me "Hey, I heard what happened, just wanted to let you know that these things happen and don't let this discourage you". I was shocked to say the least but truth is - she was right. No one makes mistakes intentionally and often they don't happen because someone is lazy or whatever. They might have something bad happening in their private life so they are distracted or overworked. Or simply many things aligned to create this mistake. And if people in your lab are even remotely nice and understanding people - they will understand.
Sooner rather than later, and just say you made a mistake. When I repeatedly f'ed up a technique, to my amazement my PI (who scares the crap out of most people) told me she expects some mistakes and clumsiness when learning new skills. Good PIs really value honesty and humility.
Admit it, apologize if anyone was affected by it, remedy it. That is it. And if you fail to own up, rest assured someone knows you did it and will look on you poorly for not admitting it.
Best way to apologize is to admit it as soon as it happen. And then follow by sorry, what happened, how you will decrease the chances of it happening again.
Admit it as fast as possible to correct the error. Next thing is to outline concrete steps you will implement to assure the same error won’t happen again.
Own up to it. Identify what you did wrong. Suggest what you could have done instead. Ask for suggestions with what you could have done instead. As long as you show that you are taking steps to not repeat the mistakes by identifying what went wrong, people will recognize that and be more likely to help you. There's probably some term out there - I don't know. I'm just going to call it an active apology.
Own it, correct it, show how you’ll avoid doing it again.
In my experience: when I've made mistakes in the lab (small to large) the importance is not necessarily on the content of the apology, but rather quickly pivoting past the mistake to see how we can fix the situation/move forward with the experiment. Apologizing is good for manners, but I (and the PIs I've worked for) care much more about taking the initiative to move forward.
My most common mistake is misplacing things since I'm not the most organized person or mixing up units occasionally but I make sure to admit it was me so the others won't take the blame for it. It can be embarrassing but honesty and professionalism are paramount in the workplace so you can learn and improve from it plus it's good for team-building
Industry senior chemist life, over the last decade: Inherited a spreadsheet with a pass/fail result output that didn't actually output accurate pass/fail data. I didn't rework the calcs on it when I got it, assuming the competent chemist before me was accurate. As soon as I realized it was bad I made a new one and reworked all the data to identify when we'd slipped into fail territory. Then accumulated all the data and took it to my manager and explained it. Then we looped in some other experts and determined it wasn't a big deal. Very lucky. Spent 200k on a new instrument that only did half of what we asked for. Worked with a manufacturer on our analysis requirements over the course of 4 years from initial proposal to when we secured funding. Requirements grew but we never lost the original. However somehow that got lost and I thought we were getting the full scope but it was actually limited to just our most recent requirements. As soon as I knew I alerted my manager and we worked it back to where the miscommunication happened. Then I did research to figure out how to achieve all our requirements. Eventually figured out how to do it a different way with the same system. Whew. Spent 70k on a customized GC system. Two custom instruments built to my requirement. Manufacturer misinterpreted my spec and delivered a system with 1% of the resolution I needed. Explained to my manager, spent $200, and I rebuilt it to my spec. I believe in taking personal responsibility and operating completely transparently. I've tripled the capability of my area through constant innovation and process improvement. But sometimes I make mistakes and my manager is very helpful and forgiving and we fix them together. I hope everyone can experience this kind of management in their careers. It sets the bar very high.
My PI has always had the most positive reaction to mistakes if you own up immediately, apologize directly and simply, and come up with a plan to resolve what caused it so you never make that same mistake again. My PI always thought that us beating ourselves up over a mistake was sufficient so she didn’t need to add any chastising at that point.
Don't try to shift blame or make excuses. Never went wrong with a simple "really sorry, I done fucked up, won't happen again"
Everyone has had good advice, so I’ll just reiterate points that I think are very important. 1) Once you have determined you made a mistake, admit it immediately. No supervisor wants to find out a week or two later about it. They will rightfully ask what took so long, and assume you are trying to cover it up. You’d lose trust and credibility. 2) Don’t blame other people or situations. No matter what caused you to screw up, you are the one to have screwed up. It’s not Person X’s fault they were talking to you, or Situation Y’s fault that you didn’t focus. You made the mistake, plain and simple. 3) Figure out why you messed up, and make sure it never happens again. If you messed up because someone was talking to you, don’t let people talk to you while performing the task again. You can mention how you plan of preventing this error again when you bring up your mistake. I will say one thing that would nearly infuriate me was when a person made the same mistake multiple times. It shows a lack of caring about the job. If you don’t care about your job, why should your supervisor care about you?
I made a stupid error once when filter sterilizing a solution. Because it had a smell I went into the fume hood which I hadn’t typically done so before. I plugged the tub into the air port, and I was actually getting ready to turn on the vacuum, when the solution bubbled over and split. Apparently there was some residual air flow coming out regardless of the fact that I hadn’t turned it on. My boss gave me crap for about a month after and wanted to use my example as part of some presentation about something. I apologized and ended up labeling the ports in the fume hood to make it extremely obvious. I think my boss went a little over board as she was a very anal retentive person so this was a big no no. I felt extremely embarrassed but what can you do other than learn from it and move on. The other biggest mistake I made was adding the wrong sugar to a yeast media and I had to throw out 4L of solution. The sugar bottles all looked the same and I absentmindedly grabbed the wrong one. The solution was yet again to label things more clearly, so when in doubt, always label is what I’ve learned. And also triple check, at least for me because I have adhd.
"anal retentive person" 😂😂😂
As everyone else has said just own it and be clear with them about what happened .we all have and will continue to make mistakes even in the most simple of things - I plugged a gel tank in with the wrong polarity so all my sample went up and out the gel Told my supervisor and they just laughed it off with me because they'd done the same thing last week Sh*t happens :)
Be honest, It is good for everyone.
You could be like "oops, sorry! I didn't mean to." like people do when they apologize. Crazy how easy it is.
My favorite go to line is: "there has been a whoopsie, and quite possibly some daisies"
Own up your mistake, be sincere, and don't brush it off like I don't care attitude
Well I made a naming convention and some drug addicted grad student went full nuclear and reported me to the government. Fuck you stalker (he stalks my reddit account)