Can you beat my colleague's mistake?

I used to work as a followspot operator in a theatre. It was several nights into the run of a show and I was familiar with my cues etc so was on 'cans' bantering with colleagues. Got ready to open up my spotlight on the star of the show on a blacked out stage and realised I hadn't turned my spotlight on, so the star was singing in pitch blackness until my spot warmed up! I

I've just taken delivery of 6000 disposable gloves
My colleague ordered 6 lots
She thought we would get 600
We are not going to have to order anymore for years now

My mum used to work in hospital labs back in the 50s - one of her jobs was to look after and provide equipment needed on the wards.

When new hospital porters started working there the nurses would sometimes play silly tricks on them - mum often had young male porters turning up asking for a set of Fallopian tubes.

Eek, some of these are hilarious

Spent a night in a pub trying to calm down a friend of friend who had just realised he'd lost the company he worked for 1.5 million pounds... not surprisingly he wasn't very easy to calm! I seem to remember him trying to work out how many years it would take him to repay it assuming they let him basic cost of living and nothing else... it was many, many years!

Completely shockingly he didn't lose his job over it... he must have been bloody brilliant at his job when not moving decimal points in spread sheets.

Many moons ago my parents bought a new build house which included a house alarm and attached personal alarm button in the master suite.

Except the builders (who to be fair had built 100 house of 4 designs but 8 because they could all be mirrored) put the personal alarm in the second bedroom. Which, of course, is the room you'd put both your five year old and toddler on the first night you move in.

Which is how to meet all your new neighbours, at midnight, after hours of moving.

I don't think so, @CondensedMilkSarnie - so, worryingly, there's more than one inept hospital designer around!

In fact, there may be three. Some of the lifts at the brand, spanking new Queen Elizabeth University Hospital won't take the trolleys from A&E - I was in there with a friend, and the staff took her, on her trolley, to the main bank of lifts but couldn't get in, so we had to go to a different set.

When I was nursing some years ago I was late shift on Christmas day. The nurse on the early shift was just coming back from sick leave so hadn't been in the ward all week (it was an MH ward, we only had one trained nurse per shift).

While my colleague was off, one of our patients had been prescribed insulin by injection, starting off on a very low dose of only units. The morning nurse had been reminded by the patient about the insulin and had trotted off to read the prescription list but unfortunately read the handwritten instruction '6iu' as '61u'.

The Doctors were supposed to only write 'u' for units but this particular chap was a bit old-school and had written 'iu' for insulin units instead. The nurse could be forgiven that, but we had no syringes in stock that would hold 61 units so she had used two and got one of the Nursing Assistants to check it with her. It wasn't until 6 hrs later that I came on shift and mentioned the insulin that the overdose came to light. There was a lot of rushing around for appropriate treatment on Christmas afternoon but the patient was ok.

SDGT I wonder if it's the same hospital where the door to inpatients X-ray room wasn't made wide enough for beds to go through ?

Sorry I meant to say "not so much THEIRS"!

FortyFacedFuckers Well that's lucky on your part! But not so much yours

@WhatToDoAboutThis2017 no they didn't! Luckily I noticed what happened and contacted the bank to recall the money meaning they got payslips saying they were getting millions of pounds but in reality they got nothing!!! I had to pull an all nighter doing the full payroll again and processing same day payments to thousands of staff! It definitely wasn't a great impression to make in my new job!!

I used to work in a jewellers and was sitting in the staff room one day when I noticed a thick layer of dust on the top of a small black box on the wall. I idly ran my finger across the top of it exclaiming to colleagues about how dusty it was, when part of the box sort of depressed. I thought I'd broken it, but no-one else seemed bothered so I went out into the shop without giving it another thought. A few minutes later, half of the local constabulary came running in. Yep, it was the emergency silent alarm button that basically tells the police station we're being raided! Red faces all round. I put up a pretty good defence that not a single one of us knew what this box was, and the manager had the good grace to forgive me and make sure that was part of the induction for all newcomers after that.

One pancake day many years ago, the pancakes were being piled onto a plate when it was realised there was no Jif lemon. My friend was swiftly sent out to get some from the local shop - everyone's faces were a picture when she came back with Jif (now re-named Cif ) lemon.............

Have told this before but my first job as a nanny back in the day I went for an informal chat with the mother and went into full Mary Poppins mode with the three kids to get them on side. Swung the 20 month old up onto my shoulders which she loved, then proceeded to walk through the door in the style of a large lorry going through a low bridge... Luckily she didn't have to go to hospital and the mother saw the funny side. I got the job, God knows how, and am still in touch with them 25 years later!

FortyFacedFuckers Omg! Did they get to keep the 282x their salary??

I've heard of an elevated swimming pool being designed for a uni sports centre, they got as far as building the supporting pillars when someone belatedly realised they'd forgotten the weight of water. Maybe this was apocryphal but there really was a set of short pillars doing nowt...

I made a call to my colleague who usually sits next to me but was working out of another room but still.on his normal extension. As I rang his number the phone next to me started to ring and after a few moments I picked his line up while waiting for him to answer my call, introduced myself and said he wasn't there.
So there I was sitting with a phone to each ear wondering why I could hear my own voice.
Honestly took me a moment to register what I had done. My 2 other colleagues were pishing themselves with laughter.

A woman in work was asked to photocopy 10 pages of a workbook. The teacher wanted 10 copies of each page.
After half an hour he phoned the office to see if she was alright, she said she was but it was taking a bit longer than anticipated. After another 45 minutes someone went to see what was going on. She was surrounded by paper and had photocopied over 1000 sheets and was still going.
We have no idea what the hell she was doing.

Quimreaper sorry but that really made me laugh.

MackerelOfFact

I spent some time at a client where the network protocol was that your username had the first 2 letters of your first name and then as much of the surname that they could get in

Anthony Alcock used to phone up IT every day to compain about it

Like the helper being helped to the loo, my collegue - a serious looking chap with a beanie hat - turned up to a client wearing an over-sized overcoat and carrying his files in 2 carrier bags. He also has a big beard and a strange stature - think Oddjob from Carry On Screaming. He asked to see the FD and they told him to wait before booking him in - he thought it odd that they wanted so much detail and he eventually twigged that they were trying to book him into the half way house for homeless people with mental issues that he supposed to be auditing ....

Thanks HeartsTrumpDiamonds. I'm actually in one of them right now.

(My apologies if there's a MNer called 'workplace' that I've accidentally just triggered an email to ).

(Names changed to protect the guilty).

We had a new member of staff joining, let's call him William Inkle (not his actual name but along those lines). At our workplace, the email addresses are first inital and last name @workplace.com, meaning his email address was going to be winkle*@workplace*.com.

We were told his name a week or so before he started, and we referred to him as Winkle whenever we spoke about him. It wasn't to be unkind to him at all, it was just out of amusement at our stupid email address system.

Fast forward a week, and it's William's first day. We've all said hello and he is an utterly lovely chap, although obviously nervous about meeting his new workmates. My colleague offered him a cup of tea, but instead of addressing him as William, he addresses him as Winkle...