To ask about your worst mistakes at work to make me feel better about my own?

I did similar to this - when I was a student in the 80s working a summer job in the bank, I put £2million into the wrong account ! Luckily it was picked up by my boss and corrected

In my role I am the recipient of all external emails into the business, which means I get lots of spam and bot chat and whatever else the internet invents to fill up my inbox. I REGULARLY (as in twice a year) end up clicking suspicious links and have to call IT to sort it out and then spend half a day on the Internet Security training.
IT say don’t click stuff if you don’t know the sender etc but my job is communicating with people I don’t know so………….

A colleague ordered a huge lunch for a big team meeting, for the wrong day.
We all ate it anyway and ordered some more food for the right day.
Manager was fine about it.

I think the people who Reply All to be taken off the email chain are worse than the original emailer. Just delete it!

I missed a zero off a cheque once. There were a lot of zeros, so it was quite embarrassing. Still, better that than one too many.

I was entering blood tests onto the haematology system many years ago.
I transposed an NHS number without realising and replaced a known leukaemia patient’s details with those of a young woman.
A while later a biochemist says she’s found a new leukaemia patient and needs to ring the consultant asap.
Fortunately a senior manager decided to dig out the original blood form and realised my error.
I quite rightly got a very stern talk about being more careful.
I think the systems are more foolproof now.

A colleague of mine gave the wrong patient bowel prep before his surgery and he took it all despite needing to have foot surgery.

I also was doing a shift in A&E and wasn't feeling too hot so put a mask on and cracked on.

Could feel my nose dripping but whatever! Went o see a patient to put a cannula in and she looked at me utterly horrified and started screaming for help. All my colleagues rush in and look at me absolutely stunned and as I looked down there was blood everywhere, all down my neck, my chest, all over my scrubs and the floor.

I had a massive nosebleed without realising 😬, bas to go see ent for that one as it just wouldnt stop! First time being in resus as a patient, it was like a tap just gushing everywhere,
But I'll never forget traumatising a poor little old lady 😳

I always think about the nhs staff that sent a reply all on outlook and sent it to every single staff member in the uk who worked for the nhs,
Then people started reply all to the email and the entire outlook service for the nhs crashed.

I also once watched in horror as a junior
Member of staff in an operating theatre poured the dry ice down that came in a box
Of medication down the sluice sink and added water to 'wash it away' and dry ice cascaded out of the plug hole and all over the floor then the sink exploded from the ice.

Same member of staff was carrying a gallon bucket of formaldehyde (patient with big tumour booked in to be removed) dropped it in the operating room and we had to call the firebrigade to decontaminate the department and closed off the room for 7 days.

both accidents happened before the patient was asleep and in theatre thank God

I didn't make the mistake, but it ended up showing on my shared screen.

During lockdown, we ended up with both Teams and Skype for Business installed. I usually shut down Skype, but on this occasion didn't.

Was in a contentious call with a client who had done something wrong and wouldn't have it, so through Teams started a screen share. Colleague that was on with my sent sent Skype message saying "God he is such a prick." Which popped up on the bottom right of my screen. I stumbled a bit, but quickly shut the notification and waited for the fallout. Fortunately it didn't come.

Write a self reflective piece about what happened, why, if you know, and what you have learnt.

Helps stop the ruminating!!

I have definitely lost my company money before!!!! But so has my boss. I bet your boss has too!

We have a spoken company policy of never taking the blame for anything. It's brilliant.

Oh God, I'm laughing loudly here! 😂😂😂

We do Highers in Scotland and the results have never come out at the same time as English A levels. I believe a very small number of pupils in Scottish private schools sit A levels but I can’t imagine it makes a difference when they get their results given that all the Highers results are already out.

I am the most introverted awkward person you’ll ever meet, but I needed a job urgently and accepted the first one who got back to me - a waitress in a pub/restaurant. It was pretty fancy and I was flustered the entire time, messing up all over the place. Well, one night I was cleaning up this one table which had about 3 large candles on. I was running short for time so I put them on a tray and didn’t think to blow them out before I started to walk off. I kind of tripped over the table leg whilst trying to turn out, the candles went slow motion and fell into me. Luckily I wasn’t hurt, but it literally fell all over my hands and up my arms and HARDENED. This was in front of customers on a busy Friday night. I was trying to scrub this hard wax from my body and it would not come off. full on wax covering my entire hands and arms. I was so humiliated. I think I lasted one more shift before I quit. I was happy to be skint than take the humiliation of dealing with a job like that any longer.

When I was a student nurse,many moons ago,I worked on a ward that had brand new,wall to wall pale green carpet (an experiment I believe). On my first day I put an old lady on a commode by her bed and forgot to put the bed pan under the seat. There was wee and shit everywhere. Sister wasn't happy.
Having been well bollocked I made myself scarce and helped another old lady with her mouth care. Promptly dropped the whole bottle of gentian violet all over said carpet.
Needless to say I didn't stay in nursing very long.

Someone I worked with sent out the Scottish A level results too early (meaning the Scottish students knew their unis and could plan for clearing etc ahead of England and Wales).

He was reading the comments on a news article about it and someone had put something like, "Bet the guy responsible wasn't paying attention" and he was like, "well, I was eating pizza at the time"

😂😂

Not me but a colleague opened her personal emails at work (we have to use them to log into the annual leave system as no work email addresses). She clicked a random email, system slowed down and then froze her computer. She then logged on again at another computer, same thing happened. About 20 minutes later we get a call from IT to say we have a virus. We spent nearly 3 weeks on the emergency server and ended up needing to get q brand new server as apparently the virus kept coming back every time IT thought they got rid of it. Cost the company about £20k, but the original server was on it way out....

I know someone who worked pubs (this is ages ago) who has a lock in with loads of ppl, got stinking drunk, and left their full pub set of keys in the door . To be found the next morning by the delivery guy!

Not me but a colleague (during Covid) who in every Teams meeting angled the camera up their nostrils or at the ceiling. Most frequently, she didn’t notice, occasionally she would mutter about why she couldn’t be seen and what was wrong with her desk set-up? 😂 . Sometimes people let her know or suggested that she turned the camera off. Most of us gave up trying to help. It was great, I always looked forward to those meetings.

I work in retail & we use a security device called a spider tag on high value boxed items. (It's like a wire that goes around the product with a plastic alarm in the middle).
Sometimes these break & malfunction & make a sort of ticking noise & the lights flash constantly.
A manager found the ticking from the broken device 'annoying' so wrapped it up in cardboard & shoved it under his desk.
The following day another manager came in & could hear the ticking & obviously looked under the desk to find a cardboard package containing wires & flashing light plus ticking .....

The whole department store, shopping centre & an 100m area was evacuated by police & the suspicious device was removed by a bomb squad

He didn't lose his job as it wasn't deliberate or a malicious hoax it was poor decision making & poor communication.

Whenever I make a mistake I think of that incident. Whatever it is you did it cannot be that stupid.

I sent out a completely blank cheque for
£10,000 in the post which miraculously ended up in the right hands!

I also forgot to call a customer's insurer to renew the temporary policy on our hire car. 15 minutes past the cut off the customer launched the car over a hedge, across a playground and into someone's garden and it had to be claimed on our company's insurance to the tune of 123k. I was terrified but my attitude and the fact that I confessed immediately went in my favour and my boss didn't fire me!

Back in the late 1990’s I was working for an American/Anglo/French company in the UK.
I had an invoice that needed paying for US$ 5 million. However the supplier we were paying was in a country that the USA didn’t like & there was an embargo on any US$ payments via US banks to that country.
I should have converted the value of the invoice & made the payment in GB Sterling through a British bank, (no British embargo). I didn’t & the 5 mil USD was stopped & held by the USA for months before being returned. And we still had to pay the original supplier this time in GBP for their services.
I did get my knuckles rapped & felt mortified & sick at the time but I wasn’t fired & in the following 10 years of employment my error was occasionally remarked on within the office banter as an example of what not to do.🙄

@FknOmniShambles Poor guy! Was there a loo? My first thought is...did he have to piss in the vestibule thing? I wouldn't be able to go 5pm til the next day without going for a wee.