Can you beat my colleague's mistake?

Mine is REALLY bad. I used to deal with life assurance claims for a mortgage firm. I had two death claims with the same surname and they had both used the same life assurance company. When the cheques came in I paid the wrong surplus, after repaying the mortgages, to each family. One surplus was significantly larger than the other. By the time I realised and we tried to get the money back, the family had divided up the inheritance!!! The firm had to let them keep it AND reimburse the other family. The thought make me want to throw up even now, several decades later.

The cautionary tale I was told during my induction as a trainee solicitor was of the corporate lawyer drafting a long 100 page + syndicated loan agreement. And forgot to include the obligation to repay...

JakeBallardswife How did you resolve the issue?

The swimming pool thing (correct length until tiled) happened in Bangor in Northern Ireland a few years ago too!

In my first summer job, I was left in charge of answering phones for an hour while everyone else was busy. Didn't really know what I was doing and was a bit stressed.

Someone phoned up to ask when our late night openings were, as he had to travel quite a distance and wanted to make sure. I didn't know (didn't work in the evenings) and didn't know how to find out, so just said "Monday and Wednesday". Turned out it was Tuesday and Thursday.

Adding to that it wasn't just one persons it was a family of 4 and I still inwardly cringe thinking about it now.

Accidentally cancelled someone's first class flights to Australia two days before Christmas. No other seats left anywhere, flights had been paid for, they had the tickets was rather costly. BUT I tried to fix the situation myself and not tell my manager. Was a nightmare when I did eventually tell him 24 hours later. Was a really costly mistake and I've never covered anything up ever. Complete transparency moving forward!

The tannoy ones remind me of a woman in my first job, she was a bit of a gossip and worked on reception. One day over the tannoy in Pauline's gleeful conspiratorial tone came " well apparently, according to Viv ..." I have never seen a woman sprint to reception faster than Viv did that afternoon. Good old Pauline, Viv was a cow.

I work as a PA. I decided I wanted to look for another job and started sneakily typing my CV up whilst printing and preparing a report for my boss, somehow I got the pages mixed up when they printed and my CV ended up in the middle of a client report which I then sent to them without checking it.

Needless to say my boss did not see the funny side when he had to attend a meeting with the client to discuss the

Messed up a stock count at my old job. Basically told the computer we only had 1/2 of the amount of something than we actually had. Was bricking it.
Supervisor just went on and altered the figure manually. She said she was glad I was honest about it as in the past they'd had things like someone booking in the same delivery three times or ordering 10 times the volume of something and trying to hide it.
Pales into insignificance compared to the time someone at head office deleted half the product lines off the system.
Was a frenetic two days until it was fixed, half the products wouldn't scan at the till.

Not a mistake but definitely not appreciated - I was in charge of booking tickets for colleagues and I to go to Bratislava for a meeting. I hate flying so I booked us on the train (we are in Italy but it was still an overnight journey). Thought everybody would be fine with it but they weren't!

As a student engineer I made a few, managed to order to little concrete for a garage floor on a Friday afternoon, wasn't too bad, and somehow set steel for a roof a two different levels, meaning there would have been a lovely slope on the interior ceiling, thankfully one of the foremen spotted it before it was installed!

I used to work at Halfords.

2 incidents....

I didnt adjust the measurement on the paint machine and instead of mixing 100ml of paint with different colours, I had the quantities for 1L. Only realised when i said to a colleague - "The cup is full, how do I mix the rest of it" Its ok, said colleague must have taken a shine to me as he's now my husband

Changing a wiper blade. Left wiper arm up whilst gettign new wiper out of box. Spring of wiper sprung into action. Right back onto customer's windscreen.

I worked briefly a a car dealership. Took a customer out for a test drive. Managed to catch the whole driverside of the car on the stupidly narrow bollards existing the car park.

@TheBadgersMadeMeDoIt

Unless you know how to say those names, they are impossible to pronounce correctly.

@MaxPepsi I was going to say I thought it was Leeds that did that re the pool

@QueenMortificado yours is the best!!!!

I hear some spectacular mispronunciation of names at work.

"Percy-fone" (Persephone)
"Moisten" (Mostyn)
"Sy-Ann" (Sian)

I swear half the people I work with are barely literate.

Cheshire yours reminds me of when I worked in the food industry. We had a new Head Chef whom I'd never met before, but I needed to email about some problem with our duck. I took more care over it than I normally would given that we'd never met, wrote a very formal email introducing myself, and entitled it "Aromatic Crispy Fuck"

A colleague mixed up the measurements for the design of a new bakery shop - he used cm rather than m..... He ended up designing the worlds biggest pasty shop!

He went through various stages & iterations of the design quite oblivious. Thankfully it was caught just before it went out to tender.

Kid's Company ordered 14 kilos of spaghetti for one of their residential homes. Or possibly 140, I'm not sure. What they got was 14 pallets. I know this because the friend who delivered spent 4 hours unloading it by hand. They had to go to Travis Perkins Catford to buy a DPM to cover it so it didn't get wet.

Work in an accountancy firm. Asked a junior colleague to file a set of accounts (meaning file them with company's house.) she filed them in a filing cabinet and we didn't realise until client got a penalty letter!

My friend, solicitor, once emailed back one of the most important heads of the firm, 'OK, I will give you anal in the morning' instead of 'OK I will give you a call in the morning' Give the guy his due he said nothing, she avoided him for weeks!

I used to work in a petrol garage on days, I switched to nights for a while to help some one out but on my first night shift I locked myself outside...

2 police men tried to break in for me particularly the younger one who seemed to want to outdo the older guy

I was out there for 3 hours turning away taxis and suh before I managed to get hold of my managers husband to let me in.

cakes the Olympic pool in Leeds met the same fate too!
It's been demolished now but what a waste!