Ask Before You Do

I’ve been working at my full-time job as a video editor for about 3 months now and there have been a ton of things I’ve learned. From pushing myself to meet deadlines, working with coworkers, and doing my best to communicate with my boss through just online communication. Everything so far has been going smoothly but just recently I came across a confusing situation.

I had just passed 2 videos that went under a couple of revisions because of a misunderstanding with instructions. Having passed it I thought everything was going smoothly but a message from my boss came and I was told that the client had a question regarding the video. Upon reading the screenshot from the client, a coworker of mine had answered the question of the client but my boss took the question as a unsatisfied edit. So he asked to edit a newer version. This ultimately annoyed me as I had just finished the new revisions that he had asked for previously. At the same time that coworker of mine had messaged saying thank you for the edit and it was alright with the client.

At this point, I was now confused and I wasn’t sure what to do and who to follow. I decided to clarify with my boss and was told to just edit it. So I complied and edited a new version of those videos. This situation still bothered me as I felt the time I put into the first 2 videos had now gone to waste. So during the next team meeting, I was nervous about what my supervisor was going to say but I decided to bring it up and shared it in a way to clarify what I should have done in case the same thing happened again. To my surprise, my supervisor was happy with the feedback and we discussed more on what I can do next time.

This taught me that asking questions and clarifying instructions is good and is something that I should continue to do. Communication plays a big part especially when you are working online with others. It’s so easy to come across situations like this where there might be miscommunications and instructions that aren’t clear. So now, I keep in mind that if something isn’t clear, it’s okay to start asking for clarification.