Everyone makes mistakes, but what matters is how you respond when you realize you’re wrong. Nobody can avoid making errors over the course of their life or their career. It’s simply inhuman and impossible. So don’t sweat the small stuff. What you can sweat, though, is how you react. You can either admit your wrongdoing, apologize, and move on (correct course of action), or you can double down on your mistake as to appear infallible, burning bridges and losing credibility in the process. There is a clear answer here, but that doesn’t mean we’re always up to the task. Sometimes it feels too difficult to apologize.

That’s the situation this HR manager was in after they tried to call out an employee for missing a meeting. When it was revealed, though, that in fact the meeting had never crossed the employee’s desk, they refused to back down. Instead of just admitting their mistake and letting the employee off the hook, they refused to say they were wrong. This left the employee in an impossible situation where they ended up punished for something they never did.