To ask for your stories of fucking up on your first day at a new job?

[SussexMedley]

Started a new job today (it's funny hours that include weekends). Fucked up. I'm smarter than my anxiety disorder has me appear sometimes, but anyway I fucked up on my very first day of a job I really really want.

Please tell me your tales of fucking up on your first day. Happy endings or shit endings, I don't mind. They'll make me feel better either way.

Thank you.

This is VERY outing if anyone I work reads this but I don’t care!

I work in a 4 walled holiday home and on my first day I mistook the panic button for some weird kind of light switch and pressed it. Cue a warble on the radio of “general alarm”, my colleague frozen in horror and 16 prison officers jumping in to the meeting room.

After a stern word from the governor I always tell new recruits what the box on the wall is

My first day running a large project around a community centre. Based in it was a day centre for older people which various organisations used, but I hadn't met them all yet or found out what they all did.

Hadn't been there long and an older man approached and asked where the door to get out was. I showed him. Walked back in to find staff from the day centre walking about in a panic. Apparently it was the day for people with Alzheimer's - which I hadn't known yet - and I'd just showed a man with fairly advanced Alzheimer's how to escape!

Luckily they caught him quickly. Super embarrassing and could have been really bad.

The scary managing director loudly ordered me to write some notes on the whiteboard on the wall. So I did. I quickly grabbed the first marker pen I found. Well, nobody had told me that you had to use either red, blue, green or orange pens, so I used a black one. After I'd done it, it dawned on me that the black one wasn't a wipe-offable whiteboard marker but an indelible one. I was only temping for a week and the notes were still up there when I left

As a teenager in the olden days before bar codes I worked for 1 day in an overpriced gallery / furniture shop.

A woman came in and bought a load of stuff. I rang it up on the till which I didn't really know how to use and didn't think to add double zeros to the amounts thus charging her 100 pennies for objects that were 100 pounds. She paid me the measly sum I asked her for and quickly scarpered. She was off by the time I realised what I'd done.

I was fired.

My friend’s first day - we worked in a bank and I was taking him round the branch. We got to the secure area by the cashiers and I turned to him and said “You know the code to get in, don’t you?” He said “yes, it’s 1234”. We got to the other side of the door and he said “I wasn’t supposed to answer that, was I?”

Needless to say, the codes were changed and it took him a long time to live it down.

(He said within earshot of a queue of customers)

Not me but a friend. She threw up in an interview (illness not alcohol) but got offered the job. Now married to the interviewer, three kids.

I hurt myself and fainted. I wasn’t feeling good so some person I’d never met had to drive me home, she had to stop her car so I could throw up out of the door 🤢

On a check out and you had to weigh pick and mix before packing it with the rest of the shopping, I kept realising it was still on the scales way after they’d left 🙈

I left police training college, started at my new station a few days later, nervously drove into the staff car park...straight into one of the marked Police vans. I had to introduce myself to my new Sergeant..."hi, I'm the new recruit, I've just damaged the public order van ".

Trying to be helpful on my first day in the kitchen of a pub, I threw the black bin liner of rubbish, that was on the draining board, in the bin.
Turns out it wasn’t rubbish. It was the entire seafood order.
The pub specialty was seafood.
Bugger.

First day at new job. Logged in to emails to see what I thought was a good luck message from boyfriend.
It was a Dear John letter. Dumped by email on my first day.
I couldn't stop the tears.
Worse still, I was a PA to just one boss. Only two of us in the office.
I was the weird new secretary who tried to cry quietly while I typed up letters.
Boss took me out for lunch, gave me lots of wine and told me I'd be glad of it one day.
I am.
Met my husband a few years later, moved jobs after DC. Still friends with my brother as though!

realised halfway to the office on my first day that i had left my shoes at home (drove in trainers). that awful sinking feeling and i had to call and say i’d be late. 25 minutes late.

not impressive. i did manage 10 years there though.

Not me but someone I hired got hit by a bus during his lunch break on his first day. Was on paid sick leave for his first 6 weeks.

Very first day of very first saturday job. My mum decided I needed a job (because everyone else had one) to cure my crippling social anxiety due to a facial birth defect. Social anxiety so bad it caused panic attacks and total shutdown. Said job was waiting in a cafe, customer facing. I cried the night before I pleaded and cried before going I cried and begged on the way. She marched me to the cafe and presented me to the owner who took me, still crying to wash pots. I washed pots and cried all morning and cleared tables all afternoon. I was asked not to come back the next week. My mother rang them to check I wasn't lying. Then shouted at me about how embarrassing I was.

First day of temping after uni. I fell off a chair whilst rolling a cigarette. I was asked by the agency not to go again. My mother demanded the real reason for my sacking and when I wouldn't tell her she called the agency herself. They told her and she shouted at me about how embarrasaing I was.

First day of my first ever job...

Worked in the swanky hospitality section of a football club. I was walking with a tray of drinks in a busy room, bumped into a man and spilled the drinks all over his nice suit. He was very nice about it but I still had a good cry in the bathroom about it

First day driving a bus. Couldn't remember the route. Went left where should have gone right. Regular passengers soon realised - they were quite nice about it actually - but where to turn round?
There was a roundabout, but it was quite a small roundabout, and I was driving quite a long bus...
Well, we got there, and I didn't make the same mistake again.

It came with a work car. Boss and I went out in it. I drove the car into a gate.

On the first day of my student job in a fast food restaurant the handle of the milk shake machine came off in my hand during a very busy Saturday lunch time.

I kept filling cup after cup whilst very politely asking my colleagues (who completely ignored me) to call someone who knew how to switch it off.

It was like the story of the ‘magic porridge pot’. It wasn’t until I ran out of cups and milk shake started pouring all over the floor and someone slipped in it and landed flat on their back that anyone paid any attention to me.

Still mortifying 20 years later!

First day in retail age almost 16. First customer and my mind went completely blank. Instead of saying 'that's £13.20 please' or whatever, I actually said 'can I have some money?' still cringe at that one now!

I fainted. (Hospital ward)

6 graduates started same day.
Boss said you've all done unix right.
I said no.

He said Its on your cv, i wouldn't have hired you if I'd known you hadn't done unix.
I was shunted into a different lower grade role for 3 years.
Turns out the 'shell scripting' on my cv means unix.
I had done it, just didn't know what system it was on. Probably cos I'd never gone to the lectures

Fell asleep sat up, next to the person showing me how to use the computer system.

Started a new social work post. Interviewed at the department, got and accepted the job, then there was a couple of months working notice in old job.
Turned up for my first day at the department. And found the building locked and abandoned. They had only moved premises several weeks previously and failed to inform me (as I found out several hours later and after several anxious phone calls trying to track the department down!). They were very apologetic, to be fair.

On my first day in my new job as a secretary I signed off nearly all the day's letters I'd typed with my previous firm's name.

They must have seen the funny side, I've been there 18 years.