Humiliating Situation At Work - Need Help on How to Fix This
I have both anxiety and OCD, which comes with cleaning obsessions - what happened is this - I accidentally clogged the toilet at work because I used way too much paper (having IBS does not help either), and this usually does not happen because I flush a million times to avoid this (and it’s high-powered), but this time I was tired and felt rushed, so I was not paying attention to flush as often.
Thankfully, there was only paper in there 😰 because I had flushed twice before that, however not everyone knows that when they hear someone clogged the toilet 😣😬☹️☹️☹️
I also wasn’t thinking very clearly that day because I have been taking a bit too much Ativan (almost every work day for two weeks now)… So, I was too humiliated and flustered to tell housekeeping (and I was not sure how to get into the supplies closet for the plunger, and didn’t want people to see me unclog it anyways) so I was really lazy and selfish and figured that because they usually clean the upstairs bathrooms about an hour after this happened, it would be taken care of then.
However, the head-boss (my boss’s boss’s boss), who happens to be the CEO of this small business, discovered this first and housekeeping must have been occupied somewhere else, so I saw her come upstairs with a mop (because it had overflown). She then came out of the bathroom with a transparent bag full of soggy toilet paper and then she announced to everyone that the toilets upstairs can’t take too much paper and that because the plunger would not work, she had to put on gloves and reach in with her hands to pull out the paper 😬😣One of the people who overheard was the CFO who has an office next to me 😣😣😣 The CEO must have known it was me because I was the first person she talked to about it (while saying my name). Then there are a couple of other people on that floor who have offices there (all of which are my superiors) 😬 and there are customers who visit that floor too. Then, because my office is near a couple of staircases, some people downstairs could have heard this too, and I’m afraid that when she got the mop from downstairs, she could have talked about the clogged toilet overflowing and people could have guessed it was me 😰 because not too many people have their office there (unless it was a customer). Then, when one of my superiors was leaving to say goodbye for the night, she gave me this weird look 😬☹️☹️ I’m afraid that everyone I wanted to impress, or at least not make a complete idiot out of myself in front of (my superiors, someone who works downstairs that I’m attracted to), will know that I’m the one who screwed up, and they will think “what the *** is wrong with her” and also think I am really sloppy and selfish for leaving behind a clogged toilet 😰😬😣☹️ I am afraid that people will talk about it when I’m not there, and because it is a small gossipy place, everyone will know about it, and everyone will know it was me 😰😰😰 Everyone will think I am a weirdo for using too much paper and careless and stupid for not notifying someone when there was a clog ☹️☹️☹️🤬🤬
I’ll be socially ostracized, people will think there is something wrong with me, and my superiors will think I’m stupid.
It is bad enough that my social anxiety and OCD-related intrusive thoughts make me panic and “freeze” which makes me perform less well and probably makes me look and act in ways that make people think I’m weird.
If people know what happened and know it was me who f****d up, how could I fix my reputation?