First impression don't always count

After we were done with cases yesterday, Dr. D pulled me aside and said, "When you get a minute, come into my office.  I want to tell you something."  Normally he is fairly high strung but I've worked with him long enough that I'm beginning to recognize the tones of his voice and I knew with a fair amount of certainty that I wasn't in trouble about anything.  I did my best to hide my internal panic and followed him to his office where he said, "This is a prime example about why you should never talk bad about people."  Now?  I'm in full-blown panic mode.  I am a professional about sticking my foot in my mouth and have yet to learn my lesson.  Except about asking if a woman is pregnant.  That mistake I've learned the hard way. 

At any rate, he is kind of smirking at me watching me squirm around as I rack my brain trying to think of something that I may have let slip about him to the wrong person.  Here is the story that followed:

"Back when we were still looking for a nurse in our department, your name came up for consideration.  I don't remember now who it was, but somebody said something negative about you.  I cannot remember exactly what it was but it was something along the lines of, 'Oh, that Tara.  She's bad news.  She is sorta hard to get along with and isn't all that bright'.  Well, naturally we don't think that about you at all and we are delighted that you are working with us.  But, I will admit that for the first couple months that you were down here, I was holding my breath, waiting for something to happen.  And you just never did live up to my expectation of you--which, in this case, was definitely a good thing."

::and breathe::

I honestly wasn't even all that upset that somebody had said something bad about me because I know that there are people in this world that are not going to like me no matter what I do.  But it definitely did make me think about how many times I've had preconceived notions about people and have written them off without giving them a chance to show who they really are. 

Life lesson: 1.  Tara: 0