What's the worst mistake you've made at work?

[Againstthegrainn]

Mine isn't the worst mistake but enough for an email to be sent to my manager along the lines of "please speak to againsthegrain and sort it out! This is getting very annoying now".

I kept sending forms out with wrong dates/details. How this happened was I was editing a word document and when i'd go to attach it, it would send an old version rather than the one I edited. My fault for not opening and checking once attached.

Only happened ocassionally before but I kept doing it this morning. So embarrassed now. Make me feel better? Share your stories 🤣

I accidentally left a banking bag containing personal information and about £2,000 cash on the roof of my car when travelling between branches. Only realised when I got to my final destination. Spent the next hour or so plucking up the courage to tell my boss and just as I was about to, I got a call to say it had been found near to where I'd started from. The person had had to take it back to their own office to crack it open to know who it belonged to. Phew!

I worked for a charity who had bought at great expense a new all singing and dancing photocopier. The day it arrived I used it to copy training material onto acetate sheets for the overhead projector. The sheets melted around the drum rendering the machine useless. The national director came out to inspect the new machine to find me dismantling it to unwrap the plastic from the inner workings. It did work again but I think I buggered the warranty by tinkering with it.

I used to work for a small company and I was waiting for weeks for a customer to send a cheque for around £250,000 which was a lot of money for us.

When it finally arrived in the post, I thought that I would take it straight to the bank. Unfortunately, it flew out of my hand in the wind and in to the road. I manged to get it back, but I was lucky that there weren't any cars coming as I would have probably go run over as I was in such a panic.

Not my story but my mum was spelling out a postcode over the phone to a customer and was using the phonetic alphabet to do so. She says she doesn’t know why she said this, but when she got to the letter W, she said ‘W for wanker.’

She still recoils when she speaks about it and this was about ten years ago now!

Back in 1984 I started a new job with an independent stockbroking firm. The Managing Director, and basically the owner of the company, was called David. He was very, very posh, vaguely aristocratic and struck fear into most of the staff. Anyway, at this point in time I was having a casual relationship with a guy also called David. One day the receptionist put a call through to me saying it was David on the phone. Now it wasn't unusual for my David to phone me at work and I assumed that's who it was as the receptionist would invariably announce "Managing Director David" with his surname as well. Convinced it was my David I said "hey there passion pants, get your gigantic wet willy out". It went suspiciously quiet at the other end until I heard an incredibly posh voice say "I'm awfully sorry, I think I've got the wrong number". I replaced the receiver with a shakey hand and waited for the fall out. Thankfully nothing was ever said but Managing Director David kept a strangely wide berth from then on.

As a newly qualified solicitor I sent a message to a colleague saying "see that Toby? Hes your best friend he is." Unfortunately I sent it to everyone in the firm.

Rang in sick (I was actually ill!) and got a really shitty response from my boss.

Texted my Mum calling my boss every name under the sun…and realised I had actually sent the message to my boss. Pre-smartphones, so no way to recover the message 😟

I’d have just died on the spot, you poor soul 😂

Signing the initial contract..

styrofoam manufactory
standing in water the whole time lasted about 4 days
used for packing for new items

Sending a job applicant's CV to everyone in the company and not just the hiring manager.

Tripping over when carrying £50k in brand new £10 notes when going out into the banking hall to refill the ATM and dropping the lot. They floated to the ground like something from a movie.

Telling my line manager that I was into crime rather (than saying that I was into crime fiction).

I think I should retire before I cause any more havoc.

First week in first job as junior admin and was asked to put toner in the photocopier.

There was a large container of a clear liquid on top of the photocopier so I poured it into the toner area.

I didn't know that toner was a black powder that came in a smaller bottle that you poured into the toner area.

I had poured white spirit into it.

This is probably why toner comes in cartridges these days.

Six months ago I was dealing with a client who was very nit picky and expected a response to emails instantly. One day after sending a barrage of emails she asked that something be done asap. This involved another department. I emailed the department asking that they action this asap as she was being particularly difficult. Unfortunately I managed to copy the client in. As soon as I realised this I went into panic mode. However I continue to work with her and she has never mentioned this. A colleague suggested that she may have regarded my comment as a compliment.

@WetBandits

what happened after that?!

After the second lockdown, I was worked in a high-end department store part-time as I was studying for my postgrad degree.

I was asked to stand by the entrance and offer hand sanitizer to customers walking in. I did just that.

I asked a man if he wanted some hand sanitizer and he said “I would, but I’ve only got one hand, so I can’t rub it in.”

I wanted the ground to swallow me up.

I forgot to put the yeast into 12 loaves of bread. They came out like breeze blocks.

Second month on the job almost 15 years ago now, when "fraping" (hijacking a Facebook status with something amusing/embarrassing) was still somewhat funny.

Colleague had brought their laptop up to my room to finish off some work, and asked to leave it with me while they went to the shop. I dutifully updated their status to "No better way to end the working day than frigging myself off to the Backstreet Boys greatest hits in a nice warm bath", and proceeded to shut down the laptop and hop in the bath myself (no Backstreet Boys/frigging).

The perfect crime... apart from the fact that they were actually logged in to one of the company Facebook pages 😭

Got out of the bath to about 10 missed calls from my colleague who was sprinting back to the hotel to sort it out 😅

Ended a very heated phone call with a client and accidentally redialled him with my elbow while telling my colleagues all about it 🙃🙃

I did it too. I worked for a bank.

My husband wins this one in our family. He works in a professional IT business and was on an important call with clients. He accidently flicked his camera on and was sitting there in his boxers 😁😁.
He frantically tried to turn it off and couldn't so threw his laptop across the floor, they still love bringing it up at work 😆😆

Neither of these are mine but they are memorable:

The payroll manager forgot to hit the final
button to send the payroll at the end of the day. Came into work the next morning to find her in floods of tears as nobody had been paid.

In the 90s, a new manager brought a bunch of floppy disks with her on her first day. They contained lots of files she’d painstakingly saved from her previous role/other work she’d done and wanted to refer to. Took them to IT for them to be virus checked and the IT bloke formatted them instead (ie wiped everything off them).

.

This really made me chuckle😀.

@ZoeyBartlett @VeronicaBeccabunga i have also fucked up on more than one franking machine. I now work somewhere with a mail service so I just have to chuck anything outgoing into a box & it is brilliant.

working as cabin crew … my friend picked up a man with drawfism so he could put his bag in the overhead locker 😳😳🤣🤣