Tell me your hideous workplace errors

[BordelDeMerde]

Today I was bitching about a colleague and accidentally sent him the messages I meant to send to the colleague I was bitching with. I referred to him as a 'mofo' in the messages.
Yes, it was incredibly childish and unprofessional and I'm mortified. I know, there's no need to tell me. I'm also very worried about the consequences.

I can't sleep because of it, so please cheer me up with your embarrassing work stories.
I promise I'm not the daily fail in poor disguise.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I know someone who instead of ordering 6 ukuleles for a school ordered 60!

Also (same school) a teacher kept their students' coursework in black bin bags to take home.... Yes you can guess the rest!

@BlackCountryWench2

Not me, thankfully, but a sub-editor on a sister title in our newspaper group. The paper had had a 15 year old work experience chap in and had been out with a reporter, the photographer, even written a couple of court reports which were published. On this particular day, he was in with the sub-editor, who was showing him the basics of the job - correcting errors, writing headlines, checking the same article didn’t appear twice etc. The sub-editor impresses upon this lad how important it is not to rely on spellcheck and then unbelievably, let’s him proofread the paper! In this particular edition, a local gastropub had taken out a half page ad, half page editorial to mark their reopening after an extensive refurb, complete with a photograph of the new chef. The photograph caption was supposed to say something along the lines of, “Tom King, new chef at the Royal Oak, guaranteed to tickle your tastebuds.” This work experience lad sits there, attempting to proof, and obviously thinks sod it and just uses the Mac spellcheck. The paper went to print and the next day the gastropub owner called, absolutely livid. The caption actually read: “Tom King, new chef at the Royal Oak, guaranteed to tickle your testicles.”

The newspaper group put a blanket ban on work experience after that.

Would have thought a blanket ban on that sub editor might have been the better course of action

I love how you mention 'The Daily Fail'...

They appear to have ignored that bit but reported the story anyway!

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10016887/Worst-work-mistakes-shared-Mumsnet.html

Copied and pasted a letter to our best customer, a very important man (everyone kissed his arse daily) forgetting to change the "Dear Madam" part.
He was a bully, an angry little man, who loved shouting down receptionists/female staff and took great pleasure in terrifying them, (myself included). After initially shitting myself, then NOT getting fired, the thought of his screwed up face getting redder and redder reading it gave me huge satisfaction

When working as a carer gave a client all his night meds in the morning by mistake. He took a lot of benzodiazepine at night and spent the whole day drowsy.

Working as a waitress at a private fancy dinner party dropped a whole tray of champagne and glasses which smashed on the expensive floor and over the expensive dress.

Not me but a colleague accidentally sent a bitchy comment on Skype to the person he was bitching about.

I heard on the radio that someone from the FCDO hadn't closed the call after speaking to a distressed British passport holder in Afghanistan the other week, when it was all kicking off.

They apparently took the piss/good luck with that to their colleagues - that kind of thing.

The person on the other end heard and complained to their MP who brought it up with BJ in PMQs!

I write a letter about a patient to a GP, saying I'd given him a rubdown.
I meant rundown 😂

@gettingolderbutcooler

I write a letter about a patient to a GP, saying I'd given him a rubdown. I meant rundown 😂

Ive just remembered one, this was a sister of a work colleague and not her fault.

The sister was a holiday rep, I think in Greece, but where doesn't matter.

Two young men were involved n a serious RTI on holiday, A died, B was badly hurt.

Rep was sent to pick up both sets of parents from the airport when they arrived.

But someone at head office had made a mistake, they had told the parents of A he was alive and the parents of B he had died.

It puts into perspective sending emails or pulling faces.

@Thesandmanishere

Once transferred £150,000 to the wrong bank account.

Ooo! That has reminded me…. Many years ago I was working for an international company in their U.K. head office. We paid invoices worldwide in multiple currencies, we had bank accounts in the U.K. and USA and other countries. One day I prepared a payment of one invoice from a Middle Eastern country for USD 5,000,000.00 (Yep, five million US dollars). I had prepped it to pay out of a US bank account when it should have been converted to equivalent GBP to be paid out of a UK bank. Payment was approved by 2 managers (so I didn’t get into trouble, but still felt very sick about it). At the time the USA had an embargo with said Middle Eastern country and stopped the payment going through and even withheld the monies for 7-8 months before returning it to my company. The next day I made the payment again, this time in the correct currency 🙄

Many, many years ago when I was 18 I started work in an Nursing Home. My supervisor asked me if I would go round the rooms and clean all the false teeth. I found a washing up bowl and went round the rooms and collected all the teeth and put then in the bowl. I thought I was using my initiative and it was such a great idea. No sure what I was thinking as it took weeks to sort out with the correct set of teeth. Thankfully it was sorted and my supervisor found the funny side. I kept my job and it was a lovely place to work for many years with a great team but I was never allowed to go near any sets of false teeth and it became a bit of a joke with everyone.

@cringina

When working as a carer gave a client all his night meds in the morning by mistake. He took a lot of benzodiazepine at night and spent the whole day drowsy.

Working as a waitress at a private fancy dinner party dropped a whole tray of champagne and glasses which smashed on the expensive floor and over the expensive dress.

In my last job I was responsible for training and assessing all new careworkers before they were allowed to administer meds without supervision. One of the things I always told them about was the importance of ensuring they gave the meds at the correct time of day because of diuretics, sleeping tablets etc

You wouldn’t believe the number of incident reports I got from other staff members to say evening meds had been given but morning ones were still there (and the meds charts had a description of each tablet on the chart to aid identification). It’s more common than you’d think!!