To ask about your worst mistakes at work to make me feel better about my own?

[WhereverElse2019]

Hi all. Messed up royally at work yesterday, found out today. Can't say too much as it's quite a niche role so potentially outing, but needless to say it can be fixed but will likely cost the company money, and also impacts another company who apparently are not happy.

I am relatively new to this job (been here since June) and it's a very complicated job with a high level of responsibility. I am just so annoyed and upset with myself. I'd convinced myself I was going to be sacked. I broke down and cried in front of my manager (so embarrassing and not professional I know!) and he was great about it, reassured me it's absolutely fine and not to worry. But I cannot stop ruminating about it.

What're the biggest mistakes you've made at work? Please say I'm not the only one who's messed up royally 😅

I work in tech at director level (information systems).

I was having some trouble with a DMARC change in relation to a system integration, so took some advice from Microsoft.

BIG MISTAKE: all of our remote servers were out for about 12 hours while the amended change reconfigured.

I still get cold sweats thinking about it and fuck you, Microsoft.

A colleague (Eastern European, so English wasn't first language) was asked to send an email with Seasons Greetings to clients and staff. Unfortunately she realised her typo after sending it
"Mary Christmas" 🤣

Went on an online date, got drunk, overslept by a mile and missed an extremely important meeting I was due to chair. Still feel it now!

I confidently sent an email to someone important and external, directing them to ‘cunty hall’ instead of county hall. Marvellous.

I dropped £50,000 ,in brand new £10 notes all over the floor of the banking hall on my way out to refill the ATM. It was literally raining down like something out of a cartoon. Luckily we were closed to the public at the time.

Issued a payment of £4200 to a customer instead of £1200 - luckily he was very honest and paid it back!

Set off all the alarms in the building by arriving too early one day (I was new and no one told me we were closed until later that day). Security, my boss and the buildings manager all got a call to arrive in 2 hours earlier than they needed to and I had to fill out a load of incident reports in front of them

Slipped while carrying a heavy box and fell against a glass door, I wasn't hurt but it shattered. That boss absolutely went through me over it, he was an arsehole.

A friend of mine broke a piece of kit worth £35K in work before and kept his job!

I worked at a Sainsburys once, a small once with those high tills you have to stand at? Well I dropped a 6pt bottle of milk off the side, it exploded like a bomb went off completely drenching the customer (businessman, smart suit.)

I will never forget the stare he gave me as I tried to spit out an apology while there was milk literally dripping from his chin.

Scratched all down the side of the work car on a gate post. A few weeks later, set fire to the kitchen. Still employed 🙈

Used to regularly fax blank pages to court when working as a paralegal

I think youll be fine. Not me but colleagues I’ve worked with have a) crashed a work car by going wrong way down a one way street and not breaking in time b) filled work car with wrong fuel then drove it and had to be recovered…..car was a week old c) set fire to kitchen twice. Same person. On 2nd occasion fire brigade turned up. Massive fine incredibly awks. None of them were fired

I sent a message about someone who was shagging our MD who was about 40 years her senior saying she was a disgusting slut and the whole thing made my skin crawl direct to her

This is absolute gold 😂😂😂😂

Not me, a reverse in fact. A client emailed and asked me for to quote for some work that we didn't actually do. I explained we didn't do that but she wasn't very happy, about three minutes later, into my inbox pops an email from her which she had meant to send to her business partner absolutely slagging me off. I took great pleasure in emailing her back with "don't think this was meant for me

Not me but it was at my workplace.
They hired a young temp for the summer. Asked her to drive the brand new SUV over to their other site a few miles away to drop off something. She crashed the car, it was a write off. Turns out she didn't have a valid drivers license so insurance was invalidated. $40,000 down the drain...hard to stomach for a small business. She did not keep her job..

I was a cashier for a Bank a long time ago and was the queen of cash errors - it was in the customers favour as I always gave them more money than I should so my till was short. Once was £500 - I knew exactly which customer it was and my manager rung him and he denied all knowledge - he was a regular who didn’t come back in after that! I left that job as I just wasn’t very good at it.

Have you ever read The Secrets Sisters Keep by Sinead Moriarty? Wendy makes a major work mistake in that, emailing the wrong person.

Paid someone their entire annual salary in a month.

😳

Also, fucking the MD.

The first time I worked behind the bar at a local social club, and no one had thought to explain that some of the spirits were already measured into singles and others into doubles.

I'm not much of a drinker so didn't notice the difference. I ended up giving one regular customer about 18 shots of Napoleon Brandy with Coca Cola, completely unaware that the measurement attached to that particular bottle decanted doubles. Needless to say he fell through a fire exit and passed out, and had to be carried home. We didn't see him for several nights after that!

I have some of my own, but too identifiable based on my industry, so here's two from acquaintances:

I know someone who designs book covers for a publisher. One of the covers that he signed off had the word 'grammar' spelled as 'grammer'. By the time the error was noticed, it had already been printed. They had to scrap the whole first batch and print them again.

A colleague once used a mail merge to notify recipients that they had been successful in achieving an important award (including a financial component), but accidentally sent it to all applicants, not only winners. She spent the next few hours contacting those who did not actually win, with a correction and apology. Everyone was remarkably understanding!

Back in the days of floppy disks, I worked in the finance dept of a local authority. I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to backup my disk while the payroll and payment system was doing its weekly run. Oops. The system crashed and we ended up manually typing hundreds of cheques. They never knew it was me 😇

First day at a new job some women in the office were chatting about Marti Pellow. I chimed in about him having had an addiction to heroin but overcoming it in later life. They looked at me in disbelief and I said confidently it was in the papers. The conversation moved on. Found out later they were talking about a senior colleague whose name is similar to, but not the same as, Marti Pellow. What a wally I am.

Oh god… where do I start?

first job out of high school as a waitress. Wasn’t given much training. Was given a drinks tray loaded with about 12 glasses of port. Proceeded to tip the tray full of drinks over the guest of honour at a dinner for one of their best customers. Did get fired a few months later because I hated the job and was terrible at it (not helped by lack of training when I was on a traineeship).

next job, was being dumb and speeding in a work car. Proceeded to lose control, slammed on the brakes. Left huge skid marks on the only road off the work site. Tyres were wrecked and car was wobbly. Did not tell anyone. Was called into the office managers office the next day to explain. Made up a bullshit story about an animal running in front of me and cried. Did not lose that job.

Parked my boyfriend’s car right outside the demountable office (so 2 metres from the door). Bosses car was parked not directly behind me but slightly off to the side. Inevitably reversed boyfriend’s car into bosses car. Walked back into the office to tell my boss. Said “you’ll never guess what I did”. His response was I think I can take a guess. He clearly heard it. I was in charge of getting both cars repaired. He did admit that he had a seconds pause when parking there whether it was a bad idea but didn’t move. Did not get fired.

Ran a project to replace the system for submitting credit card claims. Tested, all seemed good. Had a moments pause and thought I should get someone else to check. Then thought, no it’s fine. Instructed someone to send company wide email saying project was live and everyone could log into new system, also sent a self-congratulatory style email to management about successful go-live. Turns out the vendor did something wrong and only the specified users named for testing could log into new system, not everyone. Had to get emails sent to all 3000+ staff members and comms on intranet saying it was not working, madly work with vendor to get fixed then send comms again the next day that it was working. Did not get fired, but was completely mortified.

Ran another project for the same employer and almost needed a rollback. Caused multiple people, including heads of department to work all weekend to fix it. Vendors managed to fix the issue. Ironically, I think I gained a lot of respect from that one for how I handled getting it resolved.

Anyway… can I retire yet?

Forgetting to turn a hose pipe off at the wall after watering indoor plants, causing the pressure to build and it exploding overnight, flooding the entire indoor area at a garden centre

Years ago I worked somewhere where the brand new payroll manager paid several employees their entire annual salary in a month. She didn't last long enough in the job to get the opportunity to fuck the MD though.