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 🤣

Going back 20 years- as a junior doctor and having an unexpectedly quiet day at work ( almost unheard of) myself and another doctor colleague used a hospital computer for a couple of hours to look for holidays. We hadn’t realised another member of staff was logged onto that computer at the time. After finding a holiday that suited us we booked and paid later that day on one of our own laptops. We didn’t realise that computer use was audited and the IT department flagged up “inappropriate use” on our colleagues log in. Collegue obviously had no idea what it was about and said so, and it was obvious who the culprits were as we were away sunning ourselves. We never had any repercussions but it resulted in a hospital wide email reminding people of inappropriate use of a computer at work and a block on nearly all none work-essential websites that is still in place to this day.

I work in the fashion industry.
I uploaded a new product on the website, it was a duck egg blue coat.

We had an email in from a customer a few days later saying there's a rude word on our website. I wrote fuck egg blue.

I was taking payments for invoices due. Literally copying and pasting details such as account number and payment amount. For some reason after I'd added the account number, I failed to copy the amount and pasted in the 6 figure account number into the amount section. I pressed process and noticed my error.

I suddenly went clammy and felt nauseous and those seconds that it took to process felt like a day. The transaction declined, but those moments were horrible, and I didn't do it again.

Many, many years ago I was handling a spreadsheet with lots of data in it. I can't quite remember all the details, because it was about 20 years ago. I know that I sorted incorrectly, which meant all the data was out of sync, and then saved. I'd only worked in that role for about 2 weeks. I kept my job.

I used to work in a hippy retail shop, in my younger and scattier days. Someone found a pair of dirty, grey pants on the floor. They were mine, as they'd been rolled up in one trouser leg from the day before and I'd reworn the trousers. Without me realising, they'd worked their way down and out. I acted agast when they were found, but of course recognised them. Pretty sure the people working there had strong suspicions that they were mine, as not many people on per shift😳Treated myself to some new and nicer underwear not long after. Pants on floor of work are always bad. But yucky, grey pants are worse.

Working very late, I replied to an email advising the senior colleague that what they proposed sending to that person was absolutely illegal and I strongly recommended a re-think before putting the entire organisation at risk, as it would only take a moment for the recipient to check this and we would have no defence whatsoever if they then took the matter further with x, y and z.

Sat back and something was nagging away at the back of my mind about it, so I reopened the email, read it again and then read my unequivocal reaction.

I hadn't been asked what I thought in advance with another colleague called janesmith@ company name&town - I'd been copied into it going out to somebody whose name (and email address) was along the lines of jaynesmythe@ town&company they owned.

So I'd just informed the person that what we had just sent them was illegal and these are the organisations to contact to report it.

I did the only thing possible - recalled the internal email so the person who had acted illegally didn't know I'd told the recipient. I had a couple of slightly nervous weeks waiting to see if the recipient would use it as an ace up their sleeve, but I think they must have decided not to drop me in the shit and kept my part quiet.

Seeing as my only response could have been 'it wasn't me doing the illegal thing, you know', I'm rather glad about that.

Back in the day when Police control room were based in police stations (yes I'm that old) we had the switchboard in the room. When we were night shift towards the end of the shift about 5 or 6am the local news would phone and ask if we had anything for them

Rules were strict under no circumstances did we discuss incidents. We could tell them about road closures etc but always said 'due to a police incident' when they inevitably asked the reason

One morning I answered the phone. Told the guy from the local (very large) radio station that there was a road closure between A St & B St. As expected he asked why & i in my tired fuzzy headed
state said 'a man was stabbed & were waiting for SOCO' No sooner were the words out my mouth I realised what I'd done.

I went home reassuring myself no harm done really was there. Turned into my street as the news came on. What was the lead story?? Oh only that a man had been stabbed in the city centre this morning & police and forensic teams had closed A Rd and B Rd

I nearly died!! Thankfully there were no repercussions but I felt sick for days wondering if I was about to get blasted for it

20 odd years ago & I still remember that feeling of horror

😂😂😭

Accidentally bought robux with work credit card. Didn't realise until it was raised at a meeting, then had to confess.

Got a job working at a local chain bookshop, very early 90s. Been a frequent customer for years, so most of staff knew me by sight quite well.

First morning, manager tells me that I was actually 2nd choice for the role, the 1st choice had turned it down when offered. Bit taken aback at being told that...she shows me around the upstairs staff rooms, mentions that one room has to be kept locked at all times, but the key to the lock was a bit dodgy, so to be careful when locking/unlocking. First time I go to unlock it, I snap the key off in the lock...

Turned out all the staff hated the manager (she was...peculiar) and one of the male staff members was a bit too friendly and nosy...thank goodness social media wasn't a thing back then, he was definitely a wannabe stalker! I lasted about 4 days and decided it wasn't for me, the way the manager reacted you would have sworn I'd slept with her husband! She took it very personally. Was told that by another member of staff that 1st choice had actually started the job, and left after a week. I never went back to that shop, used to walk on the other side of the road when I had to go past...long closed now, must admit I was a bit relieved when it did!

Omg!

Actually AT the party?? 😱 please tell me it wasn’t “in public?”

** we had a similar thing happen at our works party… they were at it in the car - that was parked right outside the hotel front doors, well lit up, in full view of everyone….

I brought a local authority website down for a few hours by deleting their home page.

Also got loads of magazines printed for head teachers with a huge spelling mistake on the front page. Luckily they hadn't been sent out.

Also sent a voice mail to my accountant suggesting we meet up for a drink sometime (which he never answered and I didn't either) - I thought he someone else with a same first name on my phone.
Not sure which is worst.

As a newly qualified solicitor, one of my peers had the same name as the managing partner of my firm, think “John Smith”. Email was still relatively new, and there was lots of shenanigans with colleagues manipulating the “from” box to imitate local courts, the solicitors’ regulator, the pope, spouses, etc.

When sharing such hilarious content, I was always careful to select the “correct” John Smith, not the managing partner one (or so I thought). So when I received an email which stated “I do not think this was intended for me. Moreover, this is not an appropriate use of the firm’s time or equipment”, I doubled-down and replied “oh fuck off John, I know it’s you really!” It was not.

Ooops.

😂😂😂

I need to know what happened next 😂 Did he respond after that?

I accidentally emailed a really important internal briefing, on something that was both confidential and controversial, to a journalist on a national newspaper who had a similar name to our Chief Executive at the time.

I sent out all the press invitations to a photocall for a major event I was working on, but somehow failed to include the actual date of the photocall and basically we had to deal with about 150 confused and irritable phone calls from national media asking what was going on.

I went into the furthest away interview room in the building without putting the panic button we always wore in interviews around my neck. I then compounded the error by letting the client sit between me and the door which was an absolute no no. Luckily when he kicked off he put his fist through the glass panel beside the door rather than me which gave me a chance to get past him. He apologised afterwards for frightening me!

Ctrl Alt Del would just terminate a hung application, reset a machine or get you to a login prompt, not wipe a PC.

Enjoying all of these, but this is my favourite because of the happy ending :)

🤣🤣🤣

I was on holiday when a couple of my team mates managed to remove all our customers websites which we hosted. We didn't have any backups so just told customers they should have their own backups and could upload them again by themselves.

They were suppost to be adding extra hard drive capacity, but instead they set the total capacity to the size of the extra disks, thereby corrupting it. They blamed each other and no one got fired.

We lost a lot of customers, but it wasn't a particularly profitable part of the business so management didn't care

Yes, actually AT the Christmas party. At a clubby restaurant type place. The male and female toilets had a big shared foyer kind of area. We snagged there in what we though was a quiet corner. It was not. We were very much seen 😬

Probation?

Absolutely howling at this one

Yes indeed. I once wiped the entire contents of a law firms server. In was in the old days where you went into DOS and used the SUBST command to create a new network drive off the C: drive. Instead of creating a new folder off C: and creating a new drive from the folder, I substituted the C drive at the root. Then I realised this was wrong I deleted the new drive which in turn deleted the lot.

thankfully an IT expert recovered it. This was years ago before mobile phones and I remember going to the phone box on clapham station and ringing my boss to tell him.

When I was early 20's I sent a text to my manager (same name as DH)
"I bet you wish you were at home getting a BJ instead of being stuck at work"
My lovely manager walked over to my desk phone in hand and said "definitely but I didn't realise it was that obvious,please do check before you text again, it could have been a customer, now lets never speak of this again"