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.

@EKGEMS

I worked with another RN in ICU (20+years ago) and they kept a lot of our commonly used IV fluids in our pharmacy room unlocked but in neat piles-she meant to grab a bag of IV fluids to help expand blood quickly called HESPAN but grabbed a bag of blood thinner called HEPARIN and infused it rapidly to bring up the patient's blood pressure-unfortunately it caused catastrophic hemorrhaging and the patient died. This happened about a month before I started working there.I think she kept her license and job because there was obviously fault with how the hospital stored the fluids and they took steps to prevent such a tragedy from happening ever again. Thankfully now you have barcodes on IV fluids and nearly all medications and every patient wears a unique,barcoded ID bracelet and computerized software programs keep track of all medications administered. Also IV fluids are kept securely and clearly labeled. Safety first.

Not sure about the barcode etc keeping track. Simone I know was given penicillin twice recently despite being allergic.

I transferred £34000.00 instead of £3400.00 to a supplier a little while ago.

They sent it straight back luckily but it was a very stressful half an hour while we were sorting it out.

Not a huge fuck up, but I worked in a lab and had to do a routine procedure that involved filling a 10L container with trickling water. Normally I put the container in the sink so that any overflow would just drain away, but on this occasion I didn't and left it on the work bench. As it was going to take ages I obviously went off to do other stuff in the meantime. Four hours later, I remembered I hadn't turned the tap off...

For some reason, one of the big bosses - who wouldn't normally be in that area at all - opened the door to find me standing in two inches of water, splashing a completely saturated and obviously ineffective mop around the floor. I smiled brightly at her and said "Good morning!" in my most cheerful voice. She looked slightly bemused and said "Er, hello", and left without further comment

Years and years ago I worked in an admin/customer service job. We had a small number of clients who would sometimes email me queries or requests.

I once replied to what I thought was a female Lindsay with the line "oh the things us women do eh!" (Or similar). Not realising at the time that Lindsay was a uni-sex name. They replied nicely but probably a bit annoyed with "thanks but I'm a man".

To make matters worse I completely forgot this conversation and referred to them as a woman AGAIN just a few months later... 🤦‍♀️

Thank you all, I am cheered (except for the one where someone died, which was not very cheery).
I actually did manage to get to sleep last night after unburdening myself here and I've been very busy all day fixing Mofo colleague's fuck-up, so didn't get a chance to read them all until now. (Not heard a squeak from or about Mofo either.)
Thank you all for sharing your hideous errors!

Volunteering on a ward during my university holidays I was asked to move a patient to the other side of the ward. I spoke to a lovely lady aged 85 and told her I had come to take her to the ‘other side’ will it be quick she asked? Will it hurt? No no no I said and answered her other questions then it dawned on me she had thought I was dr death come to get her - she was quite pleased with my mistaken use of English at that point and not cross at all - I however could of died

I knocked something over, caused damage costing 5 figures and blamed it on a rogue animal climbing through the window. My boss believed it. I shakily went to do some photocopying to get away from it and managed to send 500 copies of the thing I was copying to every printer in the building. Nothing sensitive but still wasted SO much paper and time. The worst thing was my name was on every copy- so there was no avoiding that one.

I told the same boss's wife I wouldn't tell anyone that I'd walked in on them shagging in his office, only to find out it wasn't the wife he was shagging, his assistant looked very similar from behind. Couldn't get out of that one, but worked there for another 6 months and got to see the entire breakdown of his marriage.

OP what you wrote about a colleague was done to myself and it's quite upsetting. The email was sent to myself in error.

Do not send emails like that in the workplace as they can be tracked anyway, lesson learnt

Agree with the others users- don't worry OP lesson learnt. It will pass just don't think about it too much and take day by day now.

@WishingYouAMerryChristmasToo

Volunteering on a ward during my university holidays I was asked to move a patient to the other side of the ward. I spoke to a lovely lady aged 85 and told her I had come to take her to the ‘other side’ will it be quick she asked? Will it hurt? No no no I said and answered her other questions then it dawned on me she had thought I was dr death come to get her - she was quite pleased with my mistaken use of English at that point and not cross at all - I however could of died

I am wheezing wihh laughter

Sorted a single column in excel rather than the entire worksheet. The worksheet listed sites where my company was due to do work, and about 2 weeks worth of work was done by dozens of people in the wrong places as a result. Fortunately I noticed the mistake in time for it to be corrected (at a cost of about £50k) otherwise we would have probably lost £millions worth of future contracts.

And bear to think of any that I have done. But I often wonder about the worst "bad say at the office..." and it has got to be this:

Imagine you work in a lab and you make a mistake. Imagine more specifically that you work in a lab which investigates coronaviruses....and you accidentally make a mistake and release the virus into the town you live in.... which makes people ill...and then ultimately causes a worldwide pandemic!!! Now that is one bad day at the office!

@Thesandmanishere

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

I once worked for a large insurance company that ran company pension schemes. We had to make a multi-million pound transfer payment from one scheme to another (a whole company was being sold). My boss input the wrong account number so instead of being paid from the correct scheme account, it was paid from what was in effect a petty cash account. The mistake was only realised when the bank rang our Finance Director and asked if he knew the company was overdrawn!

It was a very unpleasant afternoon for all concerned, but nobody lost their jobs and my boss was even promoted (eventually).

Ringing the IT help desk as my cursor wasn’t moving (1st day of new job) they took over remotely usual advice log out and back in restart desktop etc. To realise I was using the mouse to control my laptop! (Mouse plugged into desktop) claimed they fixed it, thanked them graciously and let them believe it was an it error ☺️😁

@Pugmumm

OP what you wrote about a colleague was done to myself and it's quite upsetting. The email was sent to myself in error.

Do not send emails like that in the workplace as they can be tracked anyway, lesson learnt

I'm sorry that happened to you and you were upset.

Just for background, though, this guy failed to do his job properly because he couldn't be arsed, which would have had a massive negative impact on my work had I not spotted it. He then tried to blame me for his failings. I was absolutely furious with him and still am. I was /this close/ to reporting everything to his manager, which would have got him in serious shit.
The lesson I have learned is not to bitch about someone to someone else in writing. The next time, I'll just call him a complete fucking arsehole to his face. *

*I might not use those particular words though because professionalism.

Not me but a colleague.. Failed to notice that the syllabus had changed and taught the wrong Shakespeare text to an A level class. It only came to light when they walked into the exam and the questions were on a text they hadn't studied 😩 the exam board only awarded something like 5% extra marks and several of the students missed out on uni places because of their awful English grade. He kept his job...

@WhereTheFuck

Not me but a colleague.. Failed to notice that the syllabus had changed and taught the wrong Shakespeare text to an A level class. It only came to light when they walked into the exam and the questions were on a text they hadn't studied 😩 the exam board only awarded something like 5% extra marks and several of the students missed out on uni places because of their awful English grade. He kept his job...

Wow. That is awful!

I almost had to re-do one of my A-level exams after the school had held the exam at the wrong time (later than it was supposed to be) which meant we could have potentially cheated if we had been in contact with students at other schools who had sat the same exam a few hours before us. I was absolutely livid with the school. Thankfully we didn't have to re-sit it!

[quote EKGEMS]@JackOfGentleman Oh for sure they were or the hospital settled before reaching court! Coworker went through some sort of safety retraining and the state board of nursing was involved and she probably got put on probation of some sort (kind of fuzzy on all those details) [/quote]
I was a student nurse for a while, a very long time ago, and I seem to remember that if you were changing an IV bag you had to double check the bag, contents and expiry date, with another nurse. I was told off once for not doing it properly.

Not me, but a friend worked in the composing room of a print newspaper in the early 1990's when they typeset a death notice, a very routine job. Cue horror when someone noticed (after the papers were out for distribution) that the obit ended in sadly pissed rather than missed.

The editor sent a fulsome apology but the family were fine, said that's how he spent his life so was perfect for his death notice

Two that springs to mind. Worked in McDonalds as a 16 yo and spent over a year not putting in the drinks for the happy meals, no one had told me so lots of people got very cheap Happy Meals, not sure how no one noticed the till didn't add up but wasn't even told off

Next one, one of my first "proper" jobs as a receptionist/admin/runner for a solicitors firm. We had some weird internal post service where you had to run lots of documents between two local offices. I had the trolly but hadn't secured the all important docs so when crossing the road, lots of papers flew everywhere all over the road in heavy traffic! Still not sure if I got them all in my embarrassment

I worked in a branch of the civil service for a few years. The building had one of those deck style balconies around each floor.

One day we were on our best behaviour as one of the top bods from head office (who had made no secret of the fact that he thought our department was a waste of resource and should be disbanded because we didn't do any real work - it was sort of community PR) was visiting to undertake a review.

My boss had left his window open and a gust of wind blew some of his papers onto the balcony. He wasn't there as had been summoned to the boardroom by head honcho. I went out into balcony to retrieve papers and noticed my colleague working a few weeks along hadn't noticed me go out, so I decided to creep along the balcony and leap up at his window blowing a raspberry and pulling a stupid face. Just as I did so, head honcho and boss walked into the office and got a full on view of me clearly doing the opposite of working.

The department limped on for another year or so but was then no more. I think the writing was already on the wall but my little performance didn't help matters much I am sure.

Argh, a few DESKS along, not weeks.

I hate those words that spellcheck doesn't pick up because they are, erm, words.

kind retards is one of them

Because I'm dyslexic I have software that picks up this kind of thing, thankfully.

@sashh

I hate those words that spellcheck doesn't pick up because they are, erm, words.

kind retards is one of them

Because I'm dyslexic I have software that picks up this kind of thing, thankfully.

Dead as well. As in

"Dead David,

Retarding your earlier correspondence...."

@honeylulu

I worked in a branch of the civil service for a few years. The building had one of those deck style balconies around each floor.

One day we were on our best behaviour as one of the top bods from head office (who had made no secret of the fact that he thought our department was a waste of resource and should be disbanded because we didn't do any real work - it was sort of community PR) was visiting to undertake a review.

My boss had left his window open and a gust of wind blew some of his papers onto the balcony. He wasn't there as had been summoned to the boardroom by head honcho. I went out into balcony to retrieve papers and noticed my colleague working a few weeks along hadn't noticed me go out, so I decided to creep along the balcony and leap up at his window blowing a raspberry and pulling a stupid face. Just as I did so, head honcho and boss walked into the office and got a full on view of me clearly doing the opposite of working.

The department limped on for another year or so but was then no more. I think the writing was already on the wall but my little performance didn't help matters much I am sure.

This is hilarious!