To ask the biggest mistake you’ve made at work

[aibutohavethisusername]

Just wondering that really.

We received sample products from two companies, x and y. These were commercially sensitive and they went to great lengths to make sure that their competitors didn't know what they were producing. I had to return the samples after a while. Except I somehow returned x's samples to y and y's samples to x.

Far, far worse - in my volunteer job - my actions have inadvertently caused the death of kittens and cats. I have saved many thousands, but the fuck ups will haunt me forever.

TCN oh stop it - how dare you beat yourself up for a small number of inevitable mistakes when you've saved so many cats. Mine included. Cats don't do guilt and neither should you.

As you were, everyone else.

I franked 100s of letters at (say) £4.50 each (the last value used on the machine) rather than bog standard 2nd class at (say) 45p. Cost quite a lot for the small company but it got me out of that job in future!

At 16 I worked every Saturday in a hair dressers, one day I was asked to wash out a perm. I had washed this ladies hair a few times but normally for a wash and blow dry. So I shampooed her hair, it was only when I went to do the second shampoo that one of the hair dressers whispered too me not to shampoo only use conditioner, no one had noticed I used it the first time. But the lady got her hair permed often so not doubt she realised, she still gave me my weekly €5 tip though.

In another company I was tendering for a job, after the tender was submitted I realised I had made a mistake on the tender, it had been checked by commercial manager, directors etc and never noticed. They won the job, I left before they got the acceptance letter (due to other reasons though).

Not my feck up but it happened to me; I was in hospital one day, I was woken up and given meds, after I took them I asked the nurse was it xyz. And she said no, I told her that was good as I was allergic to it and its generic forms, she looked at my file, went pale white and went out of my cubicle. I had allergic reactions and side effects for the next 3 days because of it.

Accidentally stamped 'COPY' on an original deed instead of the copy. I was a trainee at the time and it took me ages to forgive myself

I used to work for a bank - this isnt me ... we merged offices and the other office had a massive backlog of complaints queries and they couldnt be bothered to do them. So they put them all in a mail sack, and lobbed them over London Bridge and they hit a barge, who of course returned them Hillarious at the time, mind you, you'd end up on a gross misconduct now but those were the early 90's when you could get away with blue murder.

Me? long liquid lunches, frequently fucked up money transfers, still no one died and it all came back eventually I hated cashiering, absolutely abhored it. Only lasted 6 weeks before moving to back office - and I quote the branch manager 'to you just throw handfuls of cash at customers or what?' ... meh! Books never balanced at end of day.

I swore in a play I was in that was put on for children. It was only the S word but it didn't go down well.

I was temping at a crappy job (local government) and on my last day I realised there was loads of work I hadn’t done so I just shredded it. Actually, I’ve done that quite a few times when I’ve left a job and just can’t be bothered.

I told the wrong family their father had died 🙈 I brought up the details on the system, they both had the same first name and almost the same surname. LUCKILY the daughter I phoned was actually sat with their dad at the time and saw the funny side of it but omg if she hadn't have been there it would have been such a different conversation!!

I worked for a government funded organisation helping long term unemployed people back into work. Many had issues such as addiction, homelessness, SEN, disabilities etc. We often engaged 3rd party specialist providers for support.

Sent an email to the Senior Manager of a specialist training provider regarding some customers with learning difficulties.

Signed off the email 'Regards' - except I missed out the 'g'....

Fucked up on an excel spreadsheet meaning 2 students got a £5k grant each

Some of these are frigging GOLD

I meant to say missed the 'g' and hit the 't' !!

Missed off a charge when quoting a client. Only realised at final reconciliation time and had to swallow the £10k cost.

As a lawyer there is just so much that can and does go wrong. No matter how conscientious and thorough you are, there'll be some new legislation you've missed, some client instruction you've misinterpreted, etc. You just have to put systems in place to have it all checked and idiot-proofed as much as possible.

I've made so many mistakes over the decades. One or two were genuine howlers, but looking back at them I honestly can't get upset. They were honest mistakes and I learned from them.

The mistake I regret was staying in a shit job with an abusive boss way too long.

Oh I’ve made deliberate mistakes. I left one job and deleted my nasty ex-bosses calendar appointments and inbox. Oops.

Many years ago I was one of the keyholders at a bank that I worked at. I lost the keys which resulted in the police and the locksmith being called out on a cold winters evening and cost the bank thousands to have every single lock changed in the building.
Not happy with that, I also managed to bleach a massive area of scarlet coloured carpet right outside the manager's office door when I decided to fill my waste bin with bleach water and leave it to soak overnight. My desk was right beside his office door and I didn't realise that my bin had a small crack in the bottom of it.

Not me, but my colleague was loading tickets onto the booking system for a major West End Show. He forgot a zero, and all the premium £150 seats were priced at £15. Word went round on twitter and the website eventually crashed, but not before a few thousand were sold. I hope some MNers got lucky with that one!

getting to close to snakes

I've had a few howlers over the years, one of them being incorrectly processing a cheque and credit for £1000 instead of £100 while working for a bank. It came to light 3 days later when the cheque cleared. Our customer had managed to withdraw and spend the whole lot within just a couple of hours, but acknowledged that she was in the wrong.

The branch had to give her a loan so she could repay us. I was so upset with myself then and have still been beating myself up about this and other mistakes since. I know they were just honest oversights and now, having read some of the posts here, I don't feel as bad as I did.

Shamelessly place marking but I'll add mine.

Newish job, had to book a manager flights to a European city for a week's time, was feeling pretty good about it and sent the itinerary to said manager...he phoned me back a few days later, I'd booked flights the wrong way around ( I still try to convince myself there was a cock up on the website rather than human error..........) I couldn't change the flights either as only the passenger can, he ended up having to do it all himself anyway and it cost a few hundred
I always try to double check everything now but I'm quite renown at work for getting dates wrong; we have one client who always phones me to 'check you haven't made a mistake this time' arsehole

On the till and there were some perfumes on there reduced because of damaged packaging.

Very nice man comes in, talks to me and buys a bottle of water.

Alarms go off as he walks out but they regularly malfunction so thought nothing of it.

Went back to the till...to discover the perfumes had been taken.

The manager chewed strips off me for that.

Forgot to have a dead body collected , poor old dear stayed in situ for 24 hours

Not me.....but someone I knew was in charge of those trucks that move planes from one place to another....he was reversing one into place and hit another plane....now that was a bad day at the office!