To ask the biggest mistake you’ve made at work

[aibutohavethisusername]

Just wondering that really.

RandomMess Not a work one, but I did similar when doing a big takeaway order at uni for a group of friends. Apparently when you're ordering pineapple fritters, you order by the box rather than by the fritter.... We had 12 boxes

As the new girl in the office, I was having trouble fitting in, partly because the recently promoted ‘senior customer services executive’ used to date my boyfriend at the time. She’d left him for her former boss, now married to former boss, and she was pregnant with twins.
The staff were playing catch in the office with a squeezey toy (stress ball) which we’d been given the day before in a company meeting. Then a second squeezey toy was added... desperate to be included, I picked up mine and threw it. It sailed straight over the head of the sales director, and hit the CS Executive on the tip of her ear. She acted like she’d been murdered, stormed off crying for the rest of the day and returned the next day with a sick note from her GP. She was being put on maternity leave early due to stress. I got a written warning in only my second week, and as CS executive, I had to cover her workload as punishment. After three months, I resigned to go on my gap year as the idea of staying 2/3 years in a role I hated just for my CVs sake was soul destroying.

I often agonise over my work errors. Have been working a long time now so there's a few

Taking a memorial ad for a local paper and putting it in the paper the wrong day. The family were so upset with me 😢

Covering branch manager in a bank and on the day the actual manger came back, £5000 had gone missing. Still no idea where it went. We may never have received the money in the cash delivery but it had been signed for so we were liable.

Not realising I was being overpaid by a couple of hundred every month, for about 6 months , felt so guilty. (Still don't check my payslips properly, I've probably lost money in my bank jobs through not knowing what's what)

There was an utterly awesome thread on this in Reddit - made me laugh and gasp at the same time

Wrote around 30 landing pages for a company with the wrong information on them.

I'd taken the info from their existing website so assumed it was correct.

NOPE! Had to go back over them all and edit it out.

Printed a book with the wrong title. Twice. Not me, my boss, I spotted and fixed it before they went off on boats to all 5 continents.

It's incredibly easy to make this slip at printing stage, sneeze and you're 75,000 copies down. I just eyerolled.

About 25 years ago in the early days of computers I deleted everything on my computer and I mean everything I.e. documents, spreadsheet, every programme like word or the equivalent back then, excel - you name it and it was gone. They never did find out it was me. It's amazing what you can pull off when you are young and naive

Have stayed for two years too long. I’m looking to leave now but it’s scary

One of my friends knows the person who let this slip through the net

Mixed up my personal FB account and the Sky TV FB account during the Leveson Inquiry and publically slagged off Murdoch on the corporate account

Earlier on my career I was sent an email by a colleague who was asking for information about a Yr11 student who had quite possibly one of the most unpleasant, pushy and rude parents I had ever come across. She was blaming the school and individual teachers for her son's persistent failure to meet his target grades rather than the fact he was a disruptive, rude and a nasty bully. I pretty much gave quite a few home truths about this student as I had had enough of him destroying lesson after lesson and sent it back to my colleague..... and the boy's parent.
Holy fucking shit when I realised
Lesson learnt the hard way. 1) Always check who is in the 'Reply' 'CC'bar and 2) Always be professional.

Work as a Commercial manager and it’s scarily easy to make mistakes that cost the company £1000s

For me a lot of it’s seeing the red flags , not being listened to , and then million € deals are lost

I do t want to go in tomorrow 😖

Turned up at a venue to delivery behaviour management training, only to find it was First Aid. Thank fully only 30 minutes from home, so drive home to collect my Annie’s and started an hour later.

Turned up at a venue to deliver training only to find I was a day early. Then had to drive
1 1/2 hours to the correct venue.

In my defence I did have over 140 venues that I delivered to over 12 months, and different course each day. So two mistakes wasn’t bad!

I worked for a supplier of a product, and one day I ran off of over 200+ deliver notes to send out the HGV drivers.

when I came in to work the next day the whole office were running around answering calls and furiously tapping away on computers.

a manager came and very calmly explained that I had send all the lorries to chain shops head quarters, one chain had 15 lorries turn up and at their head quarters 🤷

Letting the 4 year old I was nannying go independent at 'soft' play. She fell on the wooden steps going up to the slides and cut her face. She still has the scar.

Inadvertently used a permanent marker on a whiteboard

Paid off the wrong persons mortgage with a death claim on life insurance. I was managing(or not) 2 claims with same life assurance company and the same surname. The family got MUCH more than they were due and spent it. My company had to cover it. I still shudder at the thought.

I missed a skin cancer diagnosis.

Staying in a job for as long as I did.
Getting up at 04:00 to drive to work in very wintery conditions.

I was nannying and took the girl I look after to legoland - they closed a motorway we needed so I thought I'd find a "new way" back to their house - ended up driving the wrong way on a different motorway and ended up over the other side of the country
When I rang and told the parents why we were going to be 3 hours late home they laughed and told us to stop and have dinner on them .... whoops!

Still employed by them now haha

I once accidentally used the wrong cell culture medium and killed a load of cells. We had to grovel to the academic who had supplied the cell line and ask for a replacement.

That actually doesn’t seem so bad compared to some of these.

I sent out 500 college enrolment letters with the wrong date on. Realised my mistake and had to send 500 grovelling correction letters out.

In my first job as a 16 year old I was defrosting the fridge freezer that all the animal vaccines were stored in. Accidentally put the knife I was using through the back of the fridge and all the gas came rushing out. Couldn't get another fridge sorted and all vaccines had to be destroyed. I never did find out how much the damage cost.

I once worked in a call centre ... I deleted an entire phone in one day, a phone line that was busy all the time. I have also told a woman to just fuck the fuck off when I thought I was on mute, thankfully she didn't take it further and I got away with it!

Not too bad but working in firm of about 40 people. Chief Exec walks over to me and asks me if I know where my colleague is.

I reply yes she's on the phone to Matthew then hang on no you are Matthew and she's not on the phone to you as you are here. 😱 She is on the phone to someone in management here whose name also begins with m and is also middle aged and male hmmm but I can't remember their name. 😳 It was a man I saw everyday for 2 years.