Share with me your big f%#ck ups at work to make me feel better!

[Hotankles]

Absolutely ballsed up at work today. It was a big one. Totally my fault and had an upset client. I was mortified and apologied profusely. I can’t say what it is as it’s really outing.

It’s really knocked my confidence and can’t stop obsessing about it

What dingers have you done ?

Not me but a contractor working on the roof of our local ASDA. They were using a blowtorch and accidentally set fire to the roof. Store evacuated, all stock lost, place closed for months, staff redeployed, the lot.

I managed to have traders buying/selling on out of date share prices! 🙈

This is one about work. I was on the train travelling to a meeting as was a colleague (on a different train) and we were updating each other on when we’d each arrive at the station. As my trsin was pulling in I texted DH to say something like “Boring meeting imminent. Goodness my colleagues are boring”, only by mistake I sent it to the colleague. Luckily it was a wee bit garbled because my phone was having a nervous breakdown, so either she was terribly gracious, understood the message and said nothing about it or it was too garbled to make sense.

Waitressing. Big table, completely messed up their order so I gave them a bottle of Prosecco for free to compensate them, they were lovely and really weren’t bothered about the mix up.

I carried the bottle and glasses over on a tray and the Prosecco bottle fell over, rolled taking out all the glasses, and landed in the male customers lap with loads of shattered glass.

Being helpful I then decided to pick the glass out of his lap in front of his wife and children. Mortified doesn’t come close. I no longer carry Prosecco on a tray. Thankfully they found it funny but I still don’t know what I was thinking 😂

Sent a one off platinum and glass music award to be presented in Ireland at a press event by courier. Think it was FedEx.
Yes, it did, lots of pieces. Next time someone is going with it

Had been searching for a service online for ages. Finally decided the one to go for. Having looked at a number of companies, I had a few windows open on my computer.

Paid a huge amount with my card, and work would reimburse me after. Clicked on the worst company instead of the good one and paid, very pleased with myself as time was running out and had to be done on a certain day that inconvenienced everyone else. Confirmation email comes through and I see the bad company name, tried to convince myself they couldn't be as bad as the reviews.....Then had a look at their pages on twitr and insta, it was literally full of complaints all over the company's posts. They ignored all complaints but kept updating their pages as if nothing was wrong. Ranged from not turning up, being double charged, destroying client property, not issuing refunds, etc. Panicked and phoned my bank to say my card had been stolen, denied knowledge of pending transaction and had the transaction stopped. Meant I now couldn't pay the proper company as card had been stopped. Had some explaining to do to my boss but luckily she was ok.

@OurSurveySaid,
Not the poster either but used to arrange calls at a certain time as code, say 10;10am, 12:12pm, 16:16pm etc. Of course could be a chance to pick up the unwanted call but always worked.

@JustMarriedAndLovingIt

Friend of mine went to give a talk at the Local Deaf Institute. As she started she asked "can everyone hear me at the back" 😂 she said the signer/interpreter was lovely and said she had it covered!

Threw away a bilateral ministerial agreement that had just been signed at a big ceremony and had to ask them to sign it again.

Sent foreign teenagers with no English on a train to a town at the other side of the country to where their host families were waiting at 10 o'clock at night

Oh another fairly mild one. Managers wife died I wrote a sympathy card saying Heartfelt "Commiserations" instead of the word Condolences. As if he lost the caravanette on Bullseye. It dawned on me about three days later I'd used the wrong word.

Waitressing in a two story cafe with an open tread stairway between floors was an accident waiting to happen. Going to the second floor carrying a tray of tea and cakes, a teaspoon fell off the tray and landed in a cup on the table below, covering the customer in hot coffee. Cue me, racing down stairs again with loaded tray, dumping it on a spare table and trying to dry off the middle aged man. Turned out he actually owned a larger and very successful teashop and had come out for a quiet break. Instead of being furious at stained trousers and scalded skin he actually offered me a job! I was so embarrassed, I refused, though the pay would have been better.

Ooph a few come to mind without an awful lot of thought

1. Saturday job as junior in hair salon No one mentioned not to put conditioner on when someone was having a perm when I first started. Cue all those who had had perms on my first day having to come back & have them done free of charge.

2. Started apprenticeship in tv newsroom in early 90's & was encouraged by boss to delve into archives & rewrite scripts for broadcast. My access permissions supposedly meant I couldn't overwrite/delete existing data. Somehow managed to delete an entire decade of September news stories.... blood ran cold when I couldn't get back to the originals.... called News editor immediately who laughed a lot & showed me where I had gone wrong.... after 10 minutes of increasingly irate jabbing at key board, he called IT. IT guy swanned in all patronising.... and yep, all data gone. 3 senior IT guys worked all weekend to find & restore original data. 🙊 Technically wasn't my fault as my access codes hadn't been set up correctly but was totally mortified!

3. Different job in finance/accounts - irate, often difficult client calling & emailing about allegedly unauthorised charges. He was adamant no one had contacted him before payment was taken. I found the original email detailing info. He swore blind not received. I asked him to check spam/junk folder.... it auto corrected to "spunk" folder & I hit send before realising... fortunately he saw the funny side (eventually!!)

I'm sure there's many (many!) more

Temp job - I auto corrected a memo from the CEO & MD to a sizeable 100+ workforce so it was from Mr Killer & Mr Artisan.

I wasn't hired permanently

Not me but a colleague many years ago once managed to switch the hospital pharmacy fridge off at the plug instead of a floor cleaner.

This wasn't discovered til the next morning..

They never found out it was him and all plugs were properly labelled after that

Not me but I was there at the time in the neighbouring operating room. Long story short - locum vet didn't do pre-op checks properly on a new patient and tried to spay a male cat. Unnecessary flank incision and a fair bit of fruitless digging around in poor Georgina/George's insides before the realisation dawned. Owners were surprised but ok about it (they'd just rehomed the cat and been told it was a girl) but the practice owner was furious, poor locum didn't last long after that.

I used to work in a lab. The lab was on the top floor and the office on the ground floor so we used to get the lift. I picked up the paperwork for some work and went to take the lift. Somehow I managed to drop the paperwork down the lift shaft, there was a narrow gap between the lift door and the floor. Telling my boss that was embarrassing.
I now work in computing. A few times I have lost work as I haven't realised it wasn't checked into source control before deleting my project on my machine. Fortunately it has never been a lot of work!

I was to administer a subcutaneous injection of a drug to a bouncy canine patient. After much squirming and calming of the dog I went for the shot. The needle went into the dogs skin out of the dogs skin and in to my thigh. Drug n all.
I had no way of knowing if I’d had it all, some or none.
It was a particularly dangerous to human health drug know to cause cancer in humans. So far I’m ok. That was about 15 years ago.
The dog eventually was euthanised because of his aggressive tumours.

@SelkieFly

Junior nurse, first time on nightshift, thought it would be a good idea to collect all the false teeth from the resident's rooms and give them a good clean - collected them all together, did a wonderful job cleaning them - and then they had to try to work out which teeth belonged to who??

hilarious!!!

Oh God, I worked with a junior nurse that did exactly that! 30 sets, all in the same sink.

@Merryweather80

I was to administer a subcutaneous injection of a drug to a bouncy canine patient. After much squirming and calming of the dog I went for the shot. The needle went into the dogs skin out of the dogs skin and in to my thigh. Drug n all. I had no way of knowing if I’d had it all, some or none. It was a particularly dangerous to human health drug know to cause cancer in humans. So far I’m ok. That was about 15 years ago. The dog eventually was euthanised because of his aggressive tumours.

I once uploaded a dodgy picture to our work website which wasn't actually dodgy just looked it at first glance and for some reason a national newspaper picked it did an online article about it taking the mick. I almost lost my job and was the start of a lot of anxiety for me haha!

I used to work in a primary school office as admin. I was young, it was my first job and I was only a trainee. I was staying behind in the office doing something, (Principal and other admin lady usually left before me) and also using the internet (which I shouldn't have been doing but the internet was a new thing in our small rural area and I didn't have it on at home) and the cleaners wouldn't be there that afternoon so the Principal asked if I could lock the doors on my way out. I got so caught up on looking up stuff on the net (screensavers IIRC - it was the late 90s, I would download them on the floppy disks and then load them onto my home computer - games, wallpapers, stuff like that) that I forgot about the request and left sometime after 5pm went home as usual and left the school office door/s open - meaning files, computers etc left accessible.

I got home about 5:30pm and mum had dinner ready at 6. I took one bite out of it and suddenly realised I'd left the school office completely open and unlocked. Told mum I have to rush back to work and put my plate in the oven, took off and made it there in 9 minutes by speeding, it's normally 15 mins drive. When I got there, door had been shut and locked. I drove back home (normal speed) and could barely finish my dinner as I was worried about what would happen the next day.

Next morning, Principal asked to speak to me and I told him what happened, that I had honestly forgot - rushed back and it was all locked up. Transpired that another teacher who was doing work in their classroom noticed the office was left open and unlocked and locked up for me, but told the Principal. He wasn't impressed, more so because I had stayed behind mucking around on the internet and had somehow accidentally set the screensaver of the computer I was on to a Freddy Kreuger screensaver! (I remember looking at it, but not setting it). Yikes! So that was a double fuck up.

From then on, I had to leave work at the same time the other admin lady did....

Luckily I didn't need a reference for my next job.

When instant messaging first came out on word I sent a message about a work colleague to the person I was gossiping about rather than to my gossipy friend....

It was horrendous.... Despite being 100% true....

Many many moons ago I was a lowly clerk of 19 in a finance company. A regular client of the Branch Manager rang and asked to speak to him. Knowing he'd gone for his morning shit I politely apologised and explained that he was in a meeting. The customer, who rang every day and was always chatty and friendly, put on a jokey voice and said 'Oh he's in a meeting is he? We are being formal today. ' I admitted that actually he'd just nipped to the toilet, whereupon the customer asked how long I thought he'd be. Realising I couldn't say he'd gone for a big shit but having to say something I thought desperately and then I remembered he'd had his 'Flight' magazine with him so I announced 'Well he took a magazine in with him.' The rest of the conversation was a blur and mostly drowned out by my colleagues laughter, but the customer agreed to hold. I got on with my work wishing the desk would open up and swallow me.

After 20 minutes or so the phone rang again, I answered it and it was the same customer who just asked 'Mr Mgr still in the toilet is he? ' Yes in my embarrassment I'd put him on hold and completely forgotten him. I apologised and put him straight through to the Branch Manager who I could then hear doing a lot of very confused spluttering. When he came off the phone he came straight out of his office very red in the face and wagged his finger at me saying 'Don't you ever....ever....ohhh.' and then disappeared back into his office.
I can still recall the feeling of wanting to reach out, grab hold of the words and stuff them back into my mouth. Not a big mistake but one I'll never forget though now it makes me smile.