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 🤣

Secondary school open evening for the next year’s intake. We were bottom dogs so a lot at stake.

About 4pm I set laser cutter going, cutting things to use later. I’d no tea and later it’d be too busy to go out and get something. So I nipped out to get a sandwich.

25 minutes later I got back to find a smoke filled room, a burnt out laser cutter and discovered that the fire brigade had been, come and gone.

The evening went ok - but that room was out of action. Head was fine about it - he quite understood. We’d left the laser cutter to its own devices many times prior to this.

We got a new laser. We never left them working alone again - but they never caught fire again.

Back in the 90's I worked for an insurance company that specialised in "well known" people. Actors, rock/pop stars etc
One pop star had a girlfriend at the time who wanted to buy him a Ferrari to add to his collection. She wanted to have it delivered to their house and she would drive it out of sight until the big reveal.
She didn't have a driving license.
I said, no you can't do that, whereupon she kicked up an almighty stink so I said I'd see if I could find a work around and call back.
Time passed, I was busy and didn't call back until the end of the day.
He answered the phone and I just blurted out that yes, under the circumstances, she could drive the Ferrari but only on private land.
It spoilt the whole surprise and I got a bollocking for spilling the beans

I farted in the lift it was silent but smelt like onions and eggs, I said “god who did that’, but it was obviously me. I thought about leaving the job but it was a good job and fortunately quite big so I hardly saw the people in the lift. One had her top pulled over her face in desperation. I never used the lift again and walked 11 floors regularly in heels, even when heavily pregnant.

Years and years ago I worked at a video store which had a "the price you see is the price you pay" policy. It was basically to stop people trying to get it cheaper if there were marks on it or anything, but unfortunately it worked the other way around.
I was in charge of pricing things this particular time, and had been fiddling around with the pricing gun in my hand during my break. Went back to work, and a while later was called into the office by my manager, who wanted to know why he'd just had to sell an almost £300 record player for £1!
I'd accidentally changed it and not double checked before walking out.

I was actually surprised that I didn't lose my job.

Went to kiss a client on the cheek (worked in fashion and beauty industry, it’s a thing mwah mwah) and we both went the same way and our lips brushed. DYINGGGG

Yes, when we first moved over to PCs with a hard drive rather than twin floppy disc word processors, a colleague typed in "format" assuming that it would format the floppy that she'd put in the floppy drive, like it did on the wordprocessor. Unfortunately for her, the default format drive was c: and she obliterated everything on the hard drive, including all the program files and operating system

I did that but with my (female) boss.
We just pretended it never happened

Left a till box with about 20k in out unsupervised

Got a final warning for that one

Feck good times

Oh my god ! I remember the CTRL ALT DEL command! We used to dare each other to try it 🤣

You poor thing! 😂

BBC Head of Sport had sent the whole dept (hundreds of journalists) an email telling us they'd signed two former sports 'stars' to be commentators for forthcoming World Cup. Email was very self congratulatory in tone about how much the two pundits would add to our output quality etc.

BBC deputy head of sport replied to him. Except he didn't....he hit "reply all".

His message said
"Well I still think they're a couple of useless tossers"

Some of these stories have really made me laugh 😂😂 thank you for sharing! What a good read!

I work in IT.

Working on a cloud migration project about 10 years ago, I accidentally reconfigured a DMARC record that knocked everything - email, network drives, the lot - out for about 24 hours. We had no DRP / back-up server because we weren't allowed the additional budget.

Fortunately, I was able to get recover everything and nothing was lost, but my blood still runs cold thinking about it.

A few months ago, I was running a payment program which requires manual inputting and accidentally underpaid the participants by nearly 2k each due to incorrect figure that was entered

This was also missed by an approver, only realised when people called asking why they had received less than what they should have done it, it was fine in the end after I fixed the problem but had to write a report explaining what happened and how it can be prevented again

Oh dear the image of that is making laugh 😂

@VeronicaBeccabunga

No, franking machines still exist. And I've done the exact same thing once or twice.

IT. Every IT person will have their tale(s) of when their blood ran cold a microsecond after realising they're in the wrong directory or rebooting the wrong machine.

Mine was with a bank, overwriting the production French clearing database with the test data rather than vice versa. I recovered it, but I felt pretty sick for a few minutes.

I also remember the manager of our local pub putting the till drawer in the oven overnight for safe keeping. Put the oven on the next morning to cook breakfast and baked the till and all its contents.

I've charged someone £50 odd for a pint when it should have been £5 odd, in my defence we had a system where we had to input the amount manually and the card machine was fixed so only able to swivel to face me and then the customer, he was waffing his card at it despite me asking him to wait until I'd put it in and it connected before I could delete the extra zero.
He was actually fine about it and put it on a tab rather than a refund, for more drinks and there was a few quid left when they were done which he told me to put in tips.

I've made a few mistakes over the years, booked someone in on their check out date, rather than check in date, in high season, so when they turned up to check in a day 'early' we were full 🙈 I sourced other accommodation that was better than what she originally booked and arranged a taxi etc for between. I mean she wasn't happy it happened but she said she was impressed with how it was handled. My boss not so much because we paid out roughly twice the price of the room she'd booked with the upgrade and then taxis etc, and 'lost' the booking for the next night too.

It took a long time to relax again when we had a full hotel and I was on check in. I have no idea how people work in places that routinely over book and have to deal with that regularly and by design, I felt so bad about it for the lady even though it was a genuine mistake! I dread the day it happens again, because it likely will one day!

20000 litres of orange squash down the drain because I couldn't see the spec said "pasteurised" while tired on a night shift. I tested it and approved it for bottling without pasteurisation as a lab technician.
The lab manager managed to talk the MD round from sacking me.

Another one: reviewing body worn video footage (I worked in the police) with headphones on. One of my colleagues tapped my arm to tell me that the superintendent had come in to say hello to us. I removed the headphones, turned around to greet the Super and the first thing out of my mouth was, "It's a good job I wasn't watching porn!"
He looked confused and moved the conversation on, but I will never know how I came to say that. He did offer me a permanent job on the team in the end.

🤣🤣

one of my line reports fucked up and I did t notice for a day or two. They put the cost price as the selling price (eg price the retailer buys it for as the selling price.) we sold shit loads almost all the stock. Must have lost £10,000 in a day.

Working in sales selling ski holidays, I sent one large group of 15 details for their holiday which had the wrong start and end dates on it (out and back on a Saturday rather than a Sunday). Mistake was only realised about 3 days before the holiday took place. They had booked all their flights and transfers already obviously…massive cock up. It must have cost thousands to sort out. Manager was v apologetic but had to fire me. It was the third time I had been let go in about 6 yrs and I became very anxious about work generally. Diagnosed ADHD in late 30’s, which now explains a lot

You can rub in with one hand though?? Put the sanitiser on your palm and then use your fingers to rub together. I had a baby during lockdown so did many things one handed!

That’s what he told me 🤷🏻‍♀️