What's the biggest mistake you've made at work?

danger_mouse_tm

i have done too many mess ups to mention. I will start with a couple and maybe add more later. I used to work for a steel company. we did cladding aswell. thats the stuff that industrial sheds are made out of. I took the orders over the phone from our belfast office and entered them into the computer in Dublin. Belfast would send the orders up in imperial measurments and i would enter them into the computer in metric. One time i sent a full 40' trailer load of the completely wrong size of cladding into production ( which took a week to manufacture) and down to Armagh to a site. There were big board meetings over that! (got sacked!)
Another time I was delivering a big heavy pallet of copy books to a school supply shop in Cork. Losing the head i was cos i couldn't find the place and when i eventually did find the shop it was a nightmare to find somewhere to stop my big lorry cos of the narrow streets. Eventually i decided to just stop in the middle of the street and work really fast to get the pallet off. So fast in fact that when i got into the back of the lorry i never brought the taillift up and rolled the pallet straight off the back of the truck into the street! Gosh, Cork people are patient!

Another time i was taking a heavy load from Dublin to Cork one night and decided to take a detour into Kildare town to see my freinds new house. Drove past his house by mistake cos it was a wet dirty night and ended up in the Curragh near the race track. Dumb as i was, i decided to reverse the truck onto the grass to do a turn around manouver and buired the back wheels up to the axel in the mud. Bless, some young girl stopped in her Micra and asked if i wanted a tow out People stopped in a mercedes van and tried to pull, another guy came along and threw loads of carpet under the back wheels to help. Some other dude came by in a truck similar to mine and he tried with no luck. Then the gardai arrived on the scene. Eventually i had to call a big 8 wheeler crane down from Dublin to lift me out. I don't know how i had a job after that!

Rabies

Carlsberg don't do mistakes, but if they did....

Silverfish wrote:

Possibly the time a part went on a machine that was the most important machine in the production line. Thousands of computer chips would be sitting useless unless this part was replaced. We didn't hold one in stock as it was extremely expensive. Year's salary expensive, kinda thing.

So, I ordered it from the manufacturer in Japan. Got it ferried to a plane. Got it flown to Ireland. Got a taxi to collect it from the airport and drive like the clappers to the plant.

Grabbed it at reception and ran down the hallway to hand it to the maintenance engineer....... and dropped it.

Edit:
I know of one major screw up. Lucky it wasn't me but I know the guy. His company was contracted to do work and over the year he ran over budget by nearly €2m.
His contract is now terminated

The Sweeper

What I loved most about Silverfish's story was that 'the engineer tried to save it with his foot'. I'm envisaging her setting up a drop kick that'd make an all Ireland finalist proud...

xzanti

One day, I thought it was 5pm when in fact it was only 4... I packed up all my stuff and sauntered out only to be followed by my boss.. He could see I genuinely thought it was 5 and he just laughed and told me to go on anyway.. I'm sure that was only so he could go up and have a good laugh about it with the other 6 people in the office That was soooo embarressing.. and it was a friday too so I had all weekend to cringe over it... Uuuuuuurgh

cormie

haha, as if you thought it was 5;) I'm onto you!

xzanti

cormie wrote:

haha, as if you thought it was 5;) I'm onto you!

Swear to god.. No idea how I thought it was 5, was just really busy that day and thought the day had flown by.. There are no clocks on the wall in the office, all we have are the digital ones on the bottom of our screens which I just glanced at and came up with it being 5 lol..

ScumLord

Rolling a 3 skinner was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done. Didn't even realise i was doing it, it wasn't until I went to burn the hash in and I didn't have any on me that I realised what I was doing. I was smoking allot back then, I ment to roll an ordinary ciggie. Lucily no one saw me.

Car Mad

xzanti wrote:

Swear to god.. No idea how I thought it was 5, was just really busy that day and thought the day had flown by.. There are no clocks on the wall in the office, all we have are the digital ones on the bottom of our screens which I just glanced at and came up with it being 5 lol..

i thinks you need a holiday:D this one time pulled into a petrol station to fill up van had a young fella with me told him to fill up when i went to pay anyway that was alrite 5 mins up the road chug chug chug boom i said what the flup did u put into it (petrol) its a diesel flupin car:eek: it all worked out in the end though:o poor young fella got a beating but u know sh!t happens:rolleyes:

Wacker

In the newsagent I used to work in, one of the lads said to a heavily preganant woman who was buying smokes: "You shouldn't be smoking while pregnant."
I'm not even going to post the reply; surely everyone here can see it coming a mile away?

I made some classic errors in my time banking. One mistake of mine resulted in a company paying fifteen members of staff who had all left six months ago! That cost thirty grand. I was able to sort it out though, so I don't know if it really counts. Bear in mind, this was a few days after my boss had given me a formal warning about all the mistakes I was making.

cee_jay

My biggest one was probably kissing one of the managers (luckily I didn't report directly to him or there would have been trouble) on a work night out - in front of all his managers and my supervisor who weren't very happy the following day - got quite a few dirty looks

0ubliette

I remember when i was 16 i worked in rish rail in dun laoghaire dart station. Back thent hey had a massive flight of steps down tot he platform. I was checking tickets like a carefree 16yr old would, i.e leaning against the steps railing and not really giving a f*ck. This guy comes up to me and start talking, but i cant understand a word this dude is saying. Hes like 'het de hook ourra weyyyy', and im like 'ummm what?'. So im standing there leaning on the railing listening to this dude who i think is drunk or something going het de hook ourra weyyy for about 5 minutes until it dawns on me: The dude is handicapped and cant get down the stairs with me leaning on the railing. het de hook ourra weeey = get the f*ck outta the way
Current job, a couple of weeks ago, i was upgrading one of the board memebers blackberries firmware, 'backup all data?', naaah, f*ck that! click next, all data erased, 'umm why isnt it just downloading it all from the server now??'. Whoops. All contacts, email and whatnot gone forever. This guy is like a government advisor or some sh!t

kevmy

I've made no big ones but then only 6 weeks into first permanent job so I suppose I could fcuk up big time yet. However a girl I know was working as an operative in a large multinational medical devices company. She had been out the night before and had a major hangover. Anyway she gowns up (takes ~ 5-10 mins), goes onto the floor and goes to her workstation. A couple of minutes later she realises she has to puke. Runs towards the gown room, doesn't make it and throws up on the floor.
The factory had to close down the whole line for 2 weeks:eek: to decontaminate the place. Cost millions. And she kept her job.

fozzle

Only in my new job a month. Answered the phone yesterday:

Me:"Good afternoon, Harvey Normans, **** speaking"
Customer:"Er, do you mean Harry Corrys?"

Girl at the next til nearly fell over laughing. May my boss never know.

User45701

Dan133269 wrote:

care to tell us what it was?

typed 30:20 instead of 30:15 but i wont tell you the significance or where it was because it was recent enough that there are still one or 2 things to work out...

liamo

Many years we had a planned power outage in work. It wasn't a problem because we had huge f**k-off UPS which would support all of our servers for 4 hours ....... until Yours Truly decided that a cup of tea was in order and plugged the kettle into a UPS socket. Poof .... 4 hours of server power drained in a couple of moments.

Ooops.

h2s

One of a number cockups I can remember over the years was years ago when I worked night shift and I formatted the wrong hard drive on a machine, it had load of production data on it. The moment I hit the enter key I realised what I had done and I could feel a cold sweat breaking out. That was a bad shift, trying to figure out how to get away with it.

Funny thing I did get away with it and nobody coped it for weeks by then it was too late to track who was working on the machine in question as records were suitable doctored in the meantime.

h2s

Silverfish wrote:

My advice is start blaming the system. Fast. First offence? Talk your way out of it.

Eh..... my biggest mistake in work? Possibly the time a part went on a machine that was the most important machine in the production line. Thousands of computer chips would be sitting useless unless this part was replaced. We didn't hold one in stock as it was extremely expensive. Year's salary expensive, kinda thing.

So, I ordered it from the manufacturer in Japan. Got it ferried to a plane. Got it flown to Ireland. Got a taxi to collect it from the airport and drive like the clappers to the plant.

Grabbed it at reception and ran down the hallway to hand it to the maintenance engineer....... and dropped it.

In fairness, he tried to catch it. With his foot. Both our faces drained of colour as we watched this part shatter all over the corridor. Ahhh, fun times.

Hey Silverfish - that didn't happen to be a factory in Tallaght did it?

Silverfish

h2s wrote:

Hey Silverfish - that didn't happen to be a factory in Tallaght did it?

Busted.

J.R.HARTLEY

reformatted a webserver before i remembered to back it up. my boss had backed it up before giving it to me, but he let me sweat it out for a day to teach me a lesson, i never made that mistake again.

gary the great

Not my mistake, but a manager mistake. While working in a fast food kip a manager decided she was in a pisser and screamed and roared at a mate and I for a few mins for no reason. So we said **** this, we went down to the chemcial store and ****ed about 5k worth of chemicals down the drain (the years supply).

Stupid, dangerous and environmentally disasterous, but when your a 16 year old working in a kip like that for feck all money, you dont give a flying ****.

Kipperhell

One I let somebody lie about the progress of a project to the boss while I was in the room. When the boss found out the actually progress the liar turned around and said I lied to her about how much work had been done. She claimed if I knew we were so far behind I wouldn't have let her lie about the progress. The boss belived her !! After that I informed the boss of every delay I saw and then got accused of being a nay sayer. When I left I sent an e-mail from her address telling the clients about all the faults in the system she had been hiding from them and denying.

When I was phoned about a job I thought I was on hold and continued to talk about the drink and substances I was consuming at the time. When the person eventually came back on the phone they asked me a few questions and then told me they heard everything.

me and the biz

Working as a nightporter last year in Dublin city centre I was pretty bored in reception and started looking around the little office for stuff to amuse me. I saw these little walkie talkies (or what I thought were walkie talkies) and started messing with them pressing all the buttons trying to get em to work. No luck so went back to the internet. About five minutes later two Guards came running in the door shouting "Where's the trouble?" Me leaning back in the seat says what trouble and they tell me the panick button was pressed and its only used in emergencies (ie if I'm being held at gunpoint)

Finally dawns on me that the 'walkie talkies' must be little mobile panic alarms and start laughing and say to them 'Ah lads, I was messing with these earlier. That must be it.' They weren't best pleased with that, Started screaming at me calling me every name under the sun...

Also in that job I flooded the basement twice by accident.

Houston Griffin

I once destroyed two trucks in a single day. It was before I had an office job, when I was a garderner for the city. There wasn't much for garderners to do in the winter, so when it snowed, they sent us to the roads department to help plow snow. Nobody bothered to explain to me how to plow (even though I told them I didn't know what I was doing). They just put me in a truck and told me to get to work. I was getting the hang of the controls and was merrily clearing a parking lot when the truck suddenly came to an abrupt halt and smoke was pouring out from under the hood. I blew the engine because I didn't know you could only plow snow in first gear (I don't think the temperature guage was working). After getting chewed out, they put me in a salt truck. I salted the roads for many hours without any problems, until I noticed I was running low on fuel. I didn't realize it was a diesel truck (all the garden department's truck ran on gas), and filled the tank with gasoline. My punishment was that I was sent back the gardens department to sit on my ass and collect a pay check until it was time for Spring planting....

Arohanui

I can't remember when I've laughed so hard, these stories are great!

To give an update on my original problem, I prayed for a miracle and I got one!! When I went into work today, I was ready to confess all to management and prepare for the fallout before it was discovered. But before I did, I asked for a check on the material that was almost out of stock just so I could tell them exactly how dire the situation was. But I got a very surprised phone call back to tell me they had found twice the normal amount of stock we hold even though we were absolutely definitely almost out yesterday. Noone has any explanation as to where they came from. But I'm not going to argue. I haven't been in the job all that long and bringing the entire factory to a standstill for days was not how I wanted to make my mark (or exit).

I don't think the coathanger grin slipped from my face all day...But I hope the stories keep coming because even if my worse case scenario had happened, it would have been reassuring to know others have done worse!

Arohanui

I can't remember when I've laughed so hard, these stories are great!

To give an update on my original problem, I prayed for a miracle and I got one!! When I went into work today, I was ready to confess all to management and prepare for the fallout before it was discovered. But before I did, I asked for a check on the material that was almost out of stock just so I could tell them exactly how dire the situation was. But I got a very surprised phone call back to tell me they had found twice the normal amount of stock we hold even though we were absolutely definitely almost out yesterday. Noone has any explanation as to where they came from. But I'm not going to argue. I haven't been in the job all that long and bringing the entire factory to a standstill for days was not how I wanted to make my mark (or exit).

I don't think the coathanger grin slipped from my face all day...But I hope the stories keep coming because even if my worse case scenario had happened, it would have been reassuring to know others have done worse!

Red Hand

I used to work in a Deli.

There were these chicken ovens that had to be cleaned of fat after the roast chickens were taken out and put in their display. The fat that had drained off the chickens as they cooked would be emptied into an empty coleslaw bucket and dumped around the back of the shop by the skip.

Anyway, this one time, the health inspector showed up for a surprise visit. A bucket of fat/grease was lying on the floor ready to be taken out. Of course, I grabbed it being the nearest one to it, only the have the bucket handle unhinge before me, letting the grease go everywhere.

Have you ever tried to get solidifying fat of the floor with a mop and bucket?

Luckily, the inspector was in a different part of the shop at that time.

It doesn't come free that easily!

Sparky

The usual Friday evening thing, I screwed an extra screw in the wall and started packing up. Came back in on Monday. First thing I get from the head man was a "You, come here!", "Did you screw that in there?"
What happened was the plumber installed the main water pipe behind the wall and I happened to do the worst. The place got flooded.

I'll never forget the slagging I got from that.

Car Mad

Sparky-s wrote:

The usual Friday evening thing, I screwed an extra screw in the wall and started packing up. Came back in on Monday. First thing I get from the head man was a "You, come here!", "Did you screw that in there?"
What happened was the plumber installed the main water pipe behind the wall and I happened to do the worst. The place got flooded.

I'll never forget the slagging I got from that.

lol eveyone of yis is not fit to work priceless.keep em coming:D

veXual

I work part-time in a DIY retail store that has a yard & trade centre aswell.

Anyway July bank holiday weekend and we're doing a massive promotion where if you spend a certain amount of money your entitled to a free gift example: 250 euro - Kettle,toaster etc & on to up to 10,000 where you can get a free bathroom suite blah blah blah...

I was behind the till which was giving out the smaller of the free gifts tv's and what not when a man and another chap (which I later discovered was his brother) came to collect their free gift. He had just spent roughly 2,000 on flooring and doors.

So whilst he was getting his gift brother approaches me with an air compressor in his arms saying that he had just bought it in the trade centre and they had forgotten to remove the security tag. He asked me if I would oblige and I said no problem removed the tag they got their free gift and were on their way.

Cut to 2 days later manager comes thudering down the shop and asks me if I ad removed a security tag on an air compressor because apparently one had gone missing and they were checking cameras to see if it was stolen. I said I had when he then informed me that he hadn't paid for it at all and that it was worth 900 euro.

Needless to say I was left red faced, but not as much as the fella who robbed
it because we were able to contact his brother because he had an account in-store and tell him that he better return the compressor or the gardai would be called.

HA!

fred funk }{

I was an apprentice at the time and me and the boss were installing access control in a large office block in Santry. We had to drill through one of the concrete floors to get the cables through, he was drilling for ages and eventually got through but the hole wasn't big enough so he changed the drill bit and kept drilling to enlarge the hole. He was nearly through when all of a sudden water started gushing down through the hole like a river. The whole ground floor was flooded, we were kicked out by the boss of the company, they had to Kango hammer out a ten foot section of the floor above us to replace the pipe (think it was the old steel type). We ended up going back to finish the job but there was a bit of an atmosphere to say the least.

cantdecide

there is a transport company next to where i used to work. on his first day, a new driver was going overnight from cork to dublin and jack-knifed his truck in kildare. result: bent truck. bent trailer. i heard he had to sit next to his soon-to-be former boss in the bent truck on the trip home the next day.

rmacm

Worked in a medical devices company during the summer. About 20 minutes from the end of a night shift I accidently hit an emergency stop button that stopped the entire line I was working on. That was one severe oh **** moment especially so close to the end of the shift. Took about an hour to get the line restarted and well it didn't run incredibly well for a few shifts after that.

Cheers
Rory

Peteee

Worked as a Localisation engineer in dublin last summer.

Once sent back and entire batch of files untranslated. Read as, I was too lazy to check the files and assumed they had been translated. Major printer company were not happy.

There was a meeting about it and everything. Processes were changed and what not. My boss came up to me afterwards and said 'just be more careful in future'.

My boss also deleted an entire project off the live work server, while he was trying to impress upon me how I had to be careful :rolleyes:

Fajitas!

Jaysus, I have a good few...

I rmember being 14 and working in a car park at a stadium, a bus came along and dropped off the passengers, and needed someplace to park, asked me and I told him to drive down to where the storage entrance (Which was covered by a metal roof) was, knowing there'd be no stock dropped off until the day after. Was helping him back in...when I heard a massive crunch & grinding of metal...and realised that, though I knew the bus would fit in lengthways and widthways...I had forgot about the height.

Neither the Driver or my boss wasn't best pleased...

Alkers

This has got to be fairly high up there:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/2006/11/hot-tub-mishap.html

ucd_guy

Sure what about the guys in Vincent's Hospital who ****ed up and took out yer man's stomach? Ultimate bad day!

The_Minister

ucd_guy wrote:

Sure what about the guys in Vincent's Hospital who ****ed up and took out yer man's stomach? Ultimate bad day!

I'd say it would be the lab technicians who mixed up the samples that had the bad day.

tba

Simona1986 wrote:

This has got to be fairly high up there:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/2006/11/hot-tub-mishap.html

I love how everybody scampers to get out of the water

I once added up the wrond square metreage on a project and told the client the building would be a few million less than it would really have cost. Luckly he was clued in, figured something was afoot and asked me to recheck it, so sloppy on my part.

samo

I used to work as a travel agent and on 3 seperate occasions managed to book a passenger to the wrong city (thankfully not the wrong country!)

Am still laughing about earlier story with the girl in the micra offering the guy in the truck a tow!!!

OP - glad the situations looking better for you

eamoss

Simona1986 wrote:

This has got to be fairly high up there:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/2006/11/hot-tub-mishap.html

Ah at the taught of sounding stupid ah what does she do? Does she s.hit her self?

Talliesin

Didn't acknowledge that the degree to which I was sick meant that there was zero chance of a project getting completed. Kept struggling to get it done anyway. Hence made very little progress on the project and made myself much more sick.
Client lost money, I lost client and was too ill to do more work for a long time, hence losing me more money.

Rb

I've never made a mistake in any job I've had, not once.

netwhizkid

eamoss wrote:

Ah at the taught of sounding stupid ah what does she do? Does she s.hit her self?

No it is not the Girl in the corner, but from the looks of it a dopey plumber or hot tub maintenance fellow who sent either dirty water or sewage up the pipes into the Hot Tub. Note she says at the start, "Is thing going to take long" ? How terrible for her as it floods into the tub.

matrim

I was working in a call center, the phone rang and I looked at the number. Thinking it was one of my friends, I answered the phone "Alright sh1thead". It turns out it wasn't and was a manager of a different department looking for help. I was lucky that your man say the funny side and didn't report it to my boss or I would have been in big trouble.

Another time I was got a job in a kitchen in a hotel in Germany. I don't speak german and only 2 of the chefs speak english. On my second day, the chef told me to throw something out. I threw it in the bin and kept working.
A couple of hours later, he asked me where it was and when I told him he went mental and started screaming at me in German. Then told me I was fired. When I was leaving the other chef came up to me and told me that what I had thrown out was 500 euro worth of some special pate and I was only meant to put it away. The first chef had said it wrong because his english wasn't great.

Reaver772

Luckly i wasn't the one who did it but about two years ago one of the managers wrote down the wrong number on the paperwork (a 4 became a -25) and didn't notice it until the next day, approximately ten tonnes of computer parts were turned into ice cubes.

gary the great

matrim wrote:

I was working in a call center, the phone rang and I looked at the number. Thinking it was one of my friends, I answered the phone "Alright sh1thead". It turns out it wasn't and was a manager of a different department looking for help. I was lucky that your man say the funny side and didn't report it to my boss or I would have been in big trouble.
QUOTE]



SAme thing happended me, was working in an office and one of my mates sent me a text askin was it ok to ring me on my work phone (cos its cheaper than ringing a mobile), i said ye work away. 2 seconds later the phone rings and i answer "hello youve reached gay sex chat, how may i be of serivce" in a really gay voice and then start laughing, but quickly realised it wasnt my mate but the voice of our biggest client! I hung up straight away and pretended nothing happended. A few seconds later she rang back and she asked did i just answer the phone, of course i said "no, you must of dialled a wrong number"

NUTLEY BOY

Two patients in the same hospital with the same names who both die around the same time.

Yes, you've guessed it. Each set of undertakers was given the wrong body. It gets worse, one of the bodies was buried before the mistake was realised. Good job they had no opted for cremation...

No, I didn't do it but I think I know who did....Tut Tut:)

angeldelight

Nothing too major but when I was working in a call centre doing market research over the summer I kept forgetting what survey I was on :

"hi my name's Stella and i'm calling from .... we're just doing a survey on mobile phones today and I was wondering if you'd have a few minutes?" then they say yes and I go forward on the system, look at the screen and "actually really sorry about this but it's about the garage where you bought your new car recently... would you still be interested in taking part?".

people usually presumed I was taking the piss and hung up so I'd just code it as "engaged" and let someone else call them back!

Or the surveys where it's important not to let people know who is doing the survey as the company don't want to be identified and my intro was hi we're doing a survey on behalf of XYZ would you be interested in taking part? Erm no just a survey on mobile phones actually, in general, sort of..."

Mr Magnolia

Crashed the boss's new car - €5k damage.

ekevosu

Sparks400 wrote:

Crashed the boss's new car - €5k damage.

A good few years back when I was a first year in college I was working on a building site during the summer. My boss needed beams transported to a different part of the site so he asked me could I drive? I had recently started and was on a provisional so I said I could. On the way over I went in to a big pothole and heard a bump but thought nothing of it as it was a normal pothole bump. It was at the end of the day and my brother was waiting to pick me up so I parked the car, ran to where the boss was and handed him the keys before driving away with the brother. It was only the next day that I discovered I'd destroyed the bumper off the front of the car and it looked liked I'd ran withut telling him. All I got was a mumble from him. He was fairly screwing me in wages anyway.........