A rather expensive mistake at work

Damn! A three-month old source of income leakage has just been discovered at my workplace and I think I just might be found out to be the chief culprit amongst those who allowed this happen. Simply because I could have prevented the huge loss which comes to several tens of millions of Naira by being diligent in my work at a certain point in time.

As fate would have it, the income leakage started at a time when I was no longer in charge of the lossy application. The leakage was due to the presence of a software bug, which was first brought to my notice over a year ago. And now, because of sheer tardiness on my part, my employer has lost so much in income.

I feel utterly terrible, for the simple reason that I had envisaged the possibility of this occurrence but failed to follow through on ensuring that the bug was fixed in good time. Until I eventually forgot about it. I recall that I had gone as far as informing the application vendor of this bug, and if I remember correctly, they actually sent a fix for the issue. But for one reason or another, I did not get the deploy the solution to the production environment of the application.

The vendor has now been engaged by the business and there's an astronomical chance that my negligence would be blown open in short order. There was a mail trail on which I personally communicated this issue to the vendor and I'm quite positive that under normal circumstances, the vendor would waste no time in producing an evidence of resolution from their end. That's all it would take to wash their hands clean of liability in this case; they have done their part after all which is to send us a patch. At that point, all fingers would now point downwards at me; he who was in charge of the application at the time. Unfortunately, I would have to give a good reason for why I did not deploy the patch. And trust me, no excuse can be good enough when we're talking about this kind of money gone down the drains. Oh my God, the thought of it makes me nauseous.

The pressure to own up while I still can and become the chief responsible officer of this saga is mounting within me. If my values were to be in order, I would own up to my mistake immediately. But then, the consequences of this mistake are simply too huge to come to terms with. If I will be exposed, then I would rather be exposed in the process of investigation, which is very likely to happen anyway. Whether I own up or not, I don't think that the consequences for me would be very different if the truth comes to light. The shame of being discovered for keeping silent when I should have spoken up would be significantly higher, but either ways, I'd be pretty fucked!

Oh man. I feel very irresponsible right now. And to think that I've spent the past few weeks at work wasting my employer's time makes it even worse. I pray the Lord to make me a better man. You never know what your negligence or ignorance can lead to in this industry until it freaking happens. You just need to have your game of diligence solidly beside you every freaking time. Dammit! Fuck it! This is all my fault and there's no rationalizing my way out of it. It hurts my soul so much, I want to confide in a colleague already. But then, I know how doing that could mean the difference between getting my ass fried and getting away scot-free in this income leakage saga.

EDIT 1
My colleague who is now in charge of the application just walked out of my office. We had a discussion where he was basically explaining the bug to me. I had to pretend through the conversation like the discovery is as new to me as it is to him, mouthing one fake 'wow' after the other. The apprehension that judgement is coming for me now waxes even stronger!

I will keep you posted. Perhaps, this is how my time at this institution will finally come to a much anticipated end, even though I never wanted it to be in this way.


EDIT 2
I got away scot-free!!!