Please tell me other people have made expensive mistakes at work?

[Biancadelrioisback]

So, I might have just been involved in a very expensive mistake at work. It wasn't solely my fault, it was a mixture of miscommunication and lack of understanding (supplier).
I had been dealing with something and the final evaluation was to happen while I was on annual leave. Apparently my coworker didn't really know about it (despite me telling them) and the suppler got the wrong end of the stick. At no point did anyone tell me there was a problem until today.
Now it's going to cost us quite a bit to fix it and I feel awful.
Have checked all my correspondence and it's all very clear, but could be misinterpreted if skimmed I suppose.

Please tell me other people have accidentally (and indirectly) cost their company chunks of money??

I was supposed to lend it, but they went bust and we lost it all.

@DropOfffArtiste your firm probably had insurance...

God I hope my boss is that canny.
Although my mistake wasn't quite that big...

Last year I filled the works minibus with petrol instead of diesel.
God knows why. We normally go to the direct services yard (council)and get it filled there. On this occasion the person who used the minibus before me didnt fill it leave a message that it needed doing. I thought I'd have enough for the run I was going on but got cold feet on the return journey. The last thing I needed is to run out an hour from the end of my shift with two kids that need medication and are tube fed. I decide to put a tenner of fuel in. However it was the wrong one.
We broke down pretty quick.it was a Sunday ( that why I hadn't gone to direct services, they were shut)it cost a fortune in taxis as we had to send staff out in taxis that could fit large wheel chairs so they could accompany the children back to the unit, we had to have out of hours breakdown recovery from an approved council list who couldn't get out for 4 hours plus all the repair work!
It was a long day!

And then three was the The Mars Climate Orbiter, built at a cost of $125 million where SI and Imperial units were confused and disaster ensued.

www.simscale.com/blog/2017/12/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metric/

My secretary sent the wrong price lists to 2 buyers years ago

They had the same first name but worked for different retailers

The buyers promptly demanded they got the better prices we were giving other customers

£100k lost overnight and she lost her job...

I have submitted an order that ended up being worth thousands, and was oblivious untill I got bollocked. (We needed the things though!)
Have also broke equipment worth thousands, all accidents.
Still not fired 😊😂

You might enjoy this old thread OP, although it is a bit holey now.

I nearly electrocuted myself and threw the (expensive, custom-built) piece of kit on the floor. It broke the circuit though, and everybody was too worried about me and how the equipment had become unearthed to be too cross that it was now in pieces...

I'm a nurse so these aren't quite so financially catastrophic but they felt like it at the time. Dropped and smashed several vials of morphine which then had to be documented carefully so it was accounted for. The worst though was when I dropped a bag of blood as I was trying to juggle too many things at once andI'mfuckingclumsy. Don't know the financial value of that (probably over £100) but I felt and still feel horrible about the fact that I'd wasted something so precious that someone had given in good faith that it was going to benefit a patient. Plus a unit of blood dropped on the floor makes quite a mess

Not me but a colleague sent £8k to the wrong place once! We got it back thankfully.

If it makes you feel better Elle at least you didn’t wheel the entire delivery of vials off the side of a steep ramp.

Thankyou rafals
When I was about 15 I worked on the deli at a supermarket, one morning I was doing the hot chickens and dropped an entire rack of them, they all just slid off the skewers and went plop plop plop on the floor. That was probably about a tenners worth but my boss was such an arsehole about it you'd have thought it was thousands.

While we're talking about morphine, a university friend did a year in industry at a pharmaceutical company that made controlled drugs.

They were doing a stock take and thought they'd lost 3 kg of cannabis leaves. They hadn't zeroed the scales properly...

@RandomMess Unfortunately not, that kind of risk was impossible to insure.

I had put together a load of welcome guides for various different courses, with the help of a marketing team who designed the covers. They misspelt one word on the back cover and I missed it (so did my manager and her manager) but because I was in charge of getting them (hundreds of copies) printed it was my fault. I got a bollocking of one of the managers who had missed it too. I felt shit.

A few years later I saw someone else in the office upset, they'd done the same thing.

Mistakes happen, As long as you learn from them don't beat yourself up too much. We are all human.

To the person who got the title wrong on the book - you're not the only one! I got a book out of the library on "lanuguage ".

Crikey DropOff

Driving a work car on a country track and a pothole has been "fixed" with a couple of bricks. Caught the underside of the car, ripped a hole in the oil sump, drained the sump and knackered the turbo.
I'm told it cost over £2k to fix!

We'd been waiting for ages for long lengths of metal to come in for a specific part. The machinist then carefully cut them into pieces that were 6 inches too short. It's not the money so much, it's the fact it takes weeks to get any more!

I felt and still feel horrible about the fact that I'd wasted something so precious that someone had given in good faith that it was going to benefit a patient

As a blood donor I reckon you do more for the good of the patients than me turning up and donating a pint. I want to help not cause nurses angst

OP I once made a massive one, I can barely talk about it tbh it was linked to a bad time in my life. Not entirely my fault alone but even so.

Yeah man, an extra two scholarships 6k a piece

The students were chuffed to bits

I also remember a colleague who ordered pizza for 600 kids, twice. From two different pizza companies.

So we had 300 pizzas delivered

I worked at M&S and on my first till shift I refunded someone for a coat which was dirty and they hadn't been selling for years it wouldn't come up on the system and they had a receipt no one checked the date I didn't think and I called someone to help they didn't notice either and we managed to get it up on the till and refund for £200 or something ridiculous.
Hours later managers kicking off asking who did this and have we seen the state of it didn't get sacked though but fancy that my first proper shift and I got a chancer through the door to my till

I dropped some very expensive necklaces....think diamonds etc in a shop window in front of a load of customers, and they all managed to tangle.

I spent a good few hours with 2 needles trying to undo the knots.

My manager just sent them back to head office, no issue at all.....15 years later I still can't go near the shop window where I dropped them!

You say you have clear communication, that may have been misunderstood if skim read.....they shouldn't have skim read!

My boss mis sold travel insurance. Cost the company tens of thousands. Hence why the regulations and training on it are watertight and include annual tests to continue being able to sell it. Major f up and I think having got a slap on the wrist if that (the big boss had his favourites )