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Original poster

Tell me your hideous workplace errors

265 replies

BordelDeMerde · 20/09/2021 22:35

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.

OP posts:
goodwinter · 21/09/2021 07:49

I was in a new-ish role as a project manager and being mentored by a lovely woman in my team. I was running a call and things got very technical and complicated, so I messaged her saying "help! I have no idea what to do". Then someone on the call kindly pointed out I was screen sharing 😬

Luckily everyone laughed about it and we moved on. But it still haunts me sometimes.

ColitisSucks · 21/09/2021 07:59

I submitted information for and approved a packaging print run with a spelling mistake on it. It cost £40,000. Twice my salary at the time.

I also pulled a ridiculous gurning face at a colleagues back when she was being difficult for the sake of it. Just as she remembered something else and turned back around.

Burgerqueenbee · 21/09/2021 08:18

I once put a 500-odd page document in to a confidential waste bin after scanning it in....only to find the scan failed and I had to dig through a huge sack of waste paper to piece it together again Blush Never repeated the mistake mind you, and I didn't get in trouble for it but I was mortified.

dannydyerismydad · 21/09/2021 08:20

On my first day at my first proper job I managed to catch the bum of my trousers on a nail in the office, creating a huge flap of fabric which exposed both my cheeks to all my new colleagues.

The boss did send me home with cash to buy a new pair of trousers.

gannett · 21/09/2021 08:22

During an ill-fated stint as an office manager I had to order blinds for the office. They were the wrong size. Shoved them under my desk in lieu of resolving the problem in any way. They were still there when I left the job a few months later.

StCharlotte · 21/09/2021 08:23

@behindlings

Also - it'll be okay in the end. Horrible work mistakes happen. In ten years you won't think about this.
I did the same but with a client. Believe me, 15 years on it can still bring on a cold sweat!
HopingForOurRainbowBaby · 21/09/2021 08:36

@HottestSpotNorthOfHavana

I was changing a man's catheter and missed the bin when disposing of the old one. It ricocheted into my face and I got urine in my mouth.
Yep did that emptying a commode and urine in my eye. Spent hours sat at the hospital only to be told urine is sterile and I'd be ok. Rinsing a commode with 💩 inside it I scrubbed a bit too vigorously and shot a load straight into my face and yep also my eye again. Thankfully I had my face mask on otherwise I'd have got a mouthful too
SantanaBinLorry · 21/09/2021 08:54

Served a table of 24 people having a family christmas meal... Apple pie and cheese sauce. Looked exactly the same as custard in the unlabled tub in the fridge. I've no idea how/why I didnt smell it when plating up or how/why none of the 3 wait staff didnt notice either. It was a very busy night!
thankfully the family were all pissed up and totally saw the funny side. Knocked pudding off their bill and gave them a couple of bottles of fizz - everyone was happy!

DressBitch · 21/09/2021 09:05

Dropped an entire tray of champagne all over a guest at a wedding.

I was helping a friend out as her usual wait staff weren't available at the last minute. I only helped out twice...

WhatATimeToBeAlive · 21/09/2021 09:15

I was late in arranging a regular shipment of tobacco to a customer in West Africa, and it then got delayed due to a strike in the port - perfect storm. Production stopped at the factory so the company had to airfreight a container load of tobacco (heavy stuff) at a cost of £10,000 - that was 30 years ago so was a lot of money then. I didn't eat for 2 days I was so mortified.

Dasher789 · 21/09/2021 09:48

@gannett that made me laugh out loudGrin

Dasher789 · 21/09/2021 09:56

I knew I wouldn't be able to get time off for a weekend away with friends so I decided to call in sick. We were in a mini bus on the way to the airport and phoned the local radio station for a shout out. Instead of the presenter saying here is a shout out for x party, he played my phone call, where I was screeching down the phone like an excited loon. I worked for a construction firm at the time and the local station was played through built in speakers all around the work shop. Got a text a few mins later from my boss asking if I was feeling any better. I replied that I wasn't and stuck to my story forever. I still cringe now Blush

sashh · 21/09/2021 09:57

@BordelDeMerde
Was that in the US?

When I worked in cath labs (many years ago now) all drugs had to be checked by another person of a certain rank.

SpeckledlyHen · 21/09/2021 10:03

A long long time ago I managed to delete the contents of a client's hard drive on their main server.. They were a firm of solicitors.. I know exactly how I did it (by mistake) and blame the old Subst command in dos.. It can still bring me out in a cold sweat when I think about it. I remember phoning my boss from the phone box on clapham junction station to tell him the bad news. Amazingly I didn't get fired and the client was sympathetic!

PinkPlantCase · 21/09/2021 10:10

I opened an attachment that downloaded ransomware and took out our whole server.

Small business, no IT department, boss on holiday at the time.

Thankfully I was also in charge of the off site back up that wasn’t scrambled so we didn’t loose too much work.

But it was all together quite horrific 🙈

SturminsterNewton · 21/09/2021 10:17

And accidentally wrote a rude word on a presentation slide being displayed as the backdrop at a huge conference.

That made me laugh Grin

ScaredOfDinosaurs · 21/09/2021 10:31

I sent a fax to the wrong number causing a very expensive shipment of perishable goods to be delayed and it cost the firm over £50,000. This was in 2010. In my defence I was in my 20s, had never seen a fax machine before and had no idea how to check that it had gone to the right place!

My boss defended me, I was not in any trouble and they upgraded to email notifications soon after.

SturminsterNewton · 21/09/2021 10:34

It must have been jet propelled mustard to have reached the ceiling.

BonnyandPoppy · 21/09/2021 10:35

Ordered 10of something when I should have ordered one! Cost of each one was over £300 so was over £3000 total bill and we couldn't return them.

JesusInTheCabbageVan · 21/09/2021 10:38

@SturminsterNewton

It must have been jet propelled mustard to have reached the ceiling.
Cue everyone re-reading for the mustard story Grin wrong thread I'm guessing, but also very much fits in here.
PermanentTemporary · 21/09/2021 10:47

Oh my God so many. It's absolutely incredible that I've never been sacked or even had a formal warning. Yet. If you own it, go in and make amends and apologies as early and as best you can, plus showing what you've learned, people move on. Unfortunately you have to live with this stuff but it does improve you if you let it.

On our busiest month ever in one hospital (3 x average referrals) i rushed an assessment and probably contributed to someone's death. The investigation decided it hadn't contributed but in my heart I think it did - I think he probably would have died anyway but not perhaps that day. I can say it made me a completely different clinician afterwards.

Letters sent to wrong patients- I've certainly done that more than once. The worst was to a bloke who lived with his dad - so same address, also identical first middle and surnames, same birth day and month. Obviously different birth year.

Sundancerintherain · 21/09/2021 10:59

I have 2 - first one I sent a text to my mum saying how unsupportive my LM was being ( I was undergoing investigations into breast cancer - hr aware and so was LM. HR has privately advised me to take sick.leave as my LM was known to be a bit of a cunt) LM was predictably being a cunt. Except I had texted my LM not my mum. Nothing awful, just saying that she had made me work through my break and lunch on non urgent work and I was going to contact hr and take the offered sick leave. LM went nuts, screaming, crying. It was awful.

2nd one I was transferring a call on my last day, from a manager of another division to my manager. I was just telling my colleague what a pain in the arse the other division manager was when I noticed that 1) the call hadn't transferred 2) I still had the phone up to my mouth.
My own Divisional manager thought it was hilarious & emailed me to agree with my views on other Divisional manager Grin

TheChild · 21/09/2021 11:17

I worked in a florist as a teen every Saturday.

We got phone orders for flowers that we wrote the cards out for. So the message would read "Happy Birthday, lots of love Paul x" but the person who took the order wrote it as "H B, LOL Paul x" to save time. They obviously knew what the abbreviations stood for.

One day they asked me to write some cards out for the orders, and I didn't know about the abbreviations. I did question it in my head, but instead of just asking someone, I literally wrote the card as "H B, LOL Paul x" thinking it was some secret language the flower receiver would understand.

The florist got a very angry call from the flower receiver, and the flower gifter 😳

Stovetopespresso · 21/09/2021 11:20

@MydogWillow

Document about to be sent to customer which should have read Captain Hunt. Corrected it just in time.....
that's a great one - phew!!
Skatastic · 21/09/2021 11:22

Long time ago sent a lot of redundancy letters out in the post which my MD had spent a long time writing. Only I forgot to put any postage on them didn't I. Cried my eyes out telling him.