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 ?

I still absolutely die inside when I remember a lovely new customer in Austria calling me up to chase up a very large order that they had placed as it was due to arrive that week. I was feeling very smug as we had a new dispatch and tracking system so I could pull the information up immediately rather than chase individual transporters as I used to have to do. I put in the details and saw about £20,000 worth of our product on a cargo ship off the coast of Senegal, headed for a town in South Africa with the same name as the Austrian town. I’d thought the shipping fees seemed expensive at the time but didn’t double check them. It was 15 years ago and I still die of embarrassment thinking about even though the factory went bust about 5 years ago (not related).

Walking out of theatre to grab something and accidentally knocked the light switch plunging the whole theatre into darkness while a doctor was midway through a Caesarean section 🙈🙈

Years ago, my boss at an investment bank asked me to post something on the internal message board. He may or may not have told me it was embargoed until noon (he swore he did, I didn’t hear him) so I posted it. It was market sensitive information and there was no way to delete it so IT had to take the whole system offline globally for three hours. The department head took us both to the pub at lunchtime which was a nice gesture as we could have both been sacked.

I have done an email to pick the meeting time and then opted for one that wasn't on the list.
I've also missed meetings I've organised.

Apparently I work much better with admin support.

Please share more about this...what happened next

Many years ago a very young student nurse was asked to do the patients teeth. She went around everyone with false teeth and put them all together in a plastic washing bowl. Don’t know how they figured out whose was whose.

I put the wrong date on an invite that went to 750 people. Only realised when they started to RSVP.

Worst was when copied a journalist into a sensitive internal email. He was so nice about it - I always pay it forward when something falls into my lap that could land someone else in choppy waters.

In my first job, as editorial assistant, my boss (who was a bully) kept having a go at me saying I'd missed details in the info pages at the start of books.

When a cover proof came, I was pleased to spot that the preface-writer's name was misspelt. I checked it in emails from the authors.

They had spelt it wrong, so it went to press that way.

I realised when they came back from the printers and owned up immediately; I thought maybe it wasn't so bad as it was just the preface writer but no, he was big and important and really angry about it and I apologised profusely and bought MD a bottle of wine and sent a card to apologise after I heard her having to grovel on the phone to him.

MD was very philosophical about it. Boss never trusted me again and (illegally) pushed me out of the job a few months later.

Deleted the entire Nominal Ledger from the accounts at a college I worked for, by creating a file with the name [College].NL. They had to recreate it using a tape from the previous day, and a day's work was lost ;-( I didn't own up to that, because these were the days when everyone DIDN'T have their own screen.

Confused the parents of an excluded child with the LA Officers on a permanently exclusion. I did (eventually) get the push for this.

Fairly early on with my existing employers, a councillor had a melt down about a contract we'd lengthily and painstakingly negotiated and subjected me to an extended rant - at which point I completely lost it and said "Councillor XXXXX, if you knew the shit I have swum through to get the school to sign this...". My boss was completely mortified, but the Strategic Director thought this was completely hilarious and wouldn't hear of any disciplinary action at all.

Sent a copy of a huge, in depth, psychiatric report to the patient's neighbour. Think putting 12 on the envelope, instead of 13.

One of the worst ones I've heard is a guy I know who was in the army and they were attaching some brand new, £millions radar equipment to hang under a helicopter and he was sure he checked everything. But after the helicopter lifted off, they all watched the it tumble into the sea

I once nearly sent a centre page spread to print with Middle East spelled with 3 Ds in it.

But honestly OP, when this shit happens I just think about the time David Cameron accidentally led the UK out of the EU and I realise how trivial anything I can do is.

Separately, at different times 20 odd years ago

a) included my (final demand) gas bill in a report to Full Council - how this had infiltrated the papers I have no idea, but thankfully it was in an annexe that no-one read that included hundreds of responses to a contentious proposal

b) included a Wikipedia article on tobacco in a different report.

Neither of which I owned up to and neither have ever been discovered.

I have the same name as a politician. I was accidentally sent some secret military documents to my email which they clearly were trying to email to her. I forwarded them on to her -and I got an email from her office thanking me and asking me for my details and I had to meet with some security people -and have a debrief. The person that emailed her apparently realised their mistake seconds later and reported themselves to the relevant department. This was in the days before coded encrypted emails etc I got a nice thank you card in the post a few days later -I didn't read the emails beyond the top line

Not nearly as scared as some of these, but many years ago I was a PA to the company chairman and succeeded to booking his extended family (12 people) on unchangeable non-refundable flights to a European airport 8 hours away from where they were going to stay.

Can you imagine how it must've felt to be the junior engineers who fucked up big time on the night shift at Chernobyl?
I watched a documentary about it ( not the drama) and it was shocking. And not really their fault! Just a huge mistake.

Once applied 45k to reduce a clients loan without the cheque being cashed, 6 months later had to call him and ask for the 45k

Wrote a training manual and mid sentence it had 'shit' god knows what distracted me but it was a load of shit obviously, luckily it was proof read before publishing

As a young journalist, I was detailed to go interview the borough's new chief of police for our local weekly paper. All went well - I'd prepared thoroughly, had plenty to talk about, he was keen to make a good impression on the local media as he took office and I went back to the office and wrote up a pretty good feature.

Except for one small detail - I got his name wrong! 20 years on, that can still wake me up at nights. Ended my career as a crime reporter as well, obviously. Sport was way less stressful.

I was asked to put some boxes of eggs on to the shelf of the shop I work in. What I wasn't told was that the cardboard box had a folding flap up the middle. I picked up the box as I would a normal box, the sides of the box spilled over and I smashed 6 dozen boxes of eggs all over the shop floor. Thankfully a) the shop was empty and b) I had a lovely team leader who is used to my dyspraxic disasters. While I was almost crying with worry and panic she cleaned the whole lot up for me. It is now an unwritten shop rule that I don't touch any eggs in the shop unless I'm scanning them over the till!

I’ve had a few massive bloopers!

Ordered red meat instead of chicken for 240 people at a wedding when the bride had specifically said no red meat, that was a massive fuck up. I had to apologise to the bride and her family and I every member of staff in the hotel knew it was me, I was so mortified I left shortly after.

Not me but my friend loaded a full passenger plane going to Spain with passengers who should have been going to Edinburgh! Huge security alert, hours of swapping the passengers/luggage over at the gate and had to call in emergency staff as it was the last flight of the night. She was almost sacked but got away with it has she had been the only staff member on the gate that night, so technically the airline hadn’t met safety precautions. This was way before 9/11

In my first job, I deleted the Company database.
No idea why. Just felt like it. It was irretrievable (pre-Windows).

The person I replaced spent £500 on a bulk load of business cards with our Director's name, followed by the title 'Manging Director' - still makes me smirk.

Years ago, working in Sales support, I accidentally booked accommodation in the Isle of Man instead of Ireland.

I agreed contracts with 30 staff for extra work paid for at £40 an hour for 30 hours each. It amounted to just about £45,000 including oncosts.
After it was all agreed and signed, I realised I had miscalculated the government funding which amounted to £22,500 including oncosts. We had to honour the contracts which should have been £25.00 an hour including oncosts. I still don't understand how I made the error.

@16purplecolour16

Amazing the fuck ups and people weren’t sacked. You are blessed sisters. Those of us sacked for minor mistakes carry that tension for a long time.

Yeh, it's all how you're perceived. In one city job I sent one Japanese company's rates to their competitors. I was so embarrassed. I'd had a few glasses of wine at lunch and so had my boss. Nightmare. Years later in a crappy job where I was treated like a fool from day one, a colleague counted out 50# too much and at the end of the day, the manager said to her ''you'd think he'd have come back and told you'' (eh, why?) and they tutted the customer, but then when I accidentally counted out an extra #10 and my float was short at the end of the day, I was tutted and made feel like a buffoon. That was all my fault but in the case of the other woman who'd counted out 5 times as much, it was the customer who was tutted.

ps i was sacked from that job!

@TSBelliot

My friend went for her first day as a new teacher, in a new school. She ran over a year 8 pupil as she arrived outside the building. The pupil was ok once the bones healed.

Ok I thought @TheBullfinch's deleting the company's database on day one was unbeatable but this one is a strong contender!