Thanks for reading girls!

On the bright side: when I got out of the bank with the loan agreed to buy my flat, I felt rather proud of myself. I was nearly 26, single and there I was, buying a flat like an adult. Of course, I now have to pay 850€ every month for the next 18 years, but still, I feel like a grown up.

warning: rant ahead
I’ve just had the shittiest end to the working day. We had a meeting on Friday afternoon with a colleague, our boss and our boss’ manager. Said colleague has this habit of asking me when there is something she can’t do with an IT programme (word, excel…) even if I’m not the one creating the file. She’s not the only one to do it, because they tend to assume that as the youngest, I’m the most IT knowledgeable person. Fair enough.
During the meeting, she made a remark that now that the big boss had validated the work, she did not know how to send it to the department needing it because they had changed the IT system. I answered that on the sheet it was written what to do and said “maybe next time there’s an IT training you should go”. I meant it as a joke, but apparently my tone wasn’t right (possibly due to being slightly annoyed at having to fix her IT problems often).
So this afternoon, she arrives in my office, closes the door and starts speaking really loudly, almost shouting, about how I humiliated her in front of our boss and the big boss (and his assistant). That it was the first time she had a meeting with them and that what I had said amounted to saying she was crap at her job.
She went on for 5mn, only pausing to tell me to stop scratching my arm (I had to find a way to fight back the tears as she was really upsetting me).
I managed to tell her that I was sorry, that it was not my intention to humiliate her, that I hadn’t meant it as a reproach but more as a bit of banter, that I had not wanted to hurt her feelings, that I did not think I was exempt of reproach in my daily work, that yes everybody makes mistakes and that I never thought I couldn’t make any and so on. And I meant every single word of it. I also admitted to being sometimes a bit harsh in my dealings with people, not having the best relations skills and being arrogant (she disagreed on the arrogant point).
She left feeling much better because I had really upset her and she needed to get it out of her system. So good for her, but now I feel completely crap and angry with myself for being an arrogant selfish bitch.
I checked with the big boss’ assistant and he doesn’t even remember the incident, and does not seem to worry too much about it. Well, he only hopes he did not make a similar remark.
So now I have very red arms (not the part with the KP, the normally spot free part), since I managed to scratch them to the blood (and got a reaction with the nail polish), and I’m seriously considering hiding myself in my office for the next 3 months (till I change service) and stop talking to people.
I know I certainly did not use the intended tone, otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten upset, but the way she nearly shouted at me for 5mn really shook me.

Sorry, rant over, but I had to get it out too