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 purchased 1000 of the wrong style shoe..still gives me nightmares

I wasn't wearing my glasses at work one day but could vaguely see some people in the office across the road waving at us. Initially waved back (why not?) but when they carried on concluded that they were just pissing about so shut the blind and got on with my work.

About 15 mins later the fire alarm goes off and we get downstairs to find several fire engines. Turns out the building was on fire and they were trying to warn us 🙃

Sent an email (mailmerge) to the parents of 8 of my students to say how hugely impressed I was at their dedication to their studies that half term, how proud I was that they had gone over and above with their work at home and how I was sure if they continued to work as well as they were, they would reap the rewards in their upcoming GCSE exam. I have still no idea how, as I’ve managed it successfully many many times before and since, but it sent to the parent of EVERY STUDENT IN THE SCHOOL, yep, including those I’d emailed previously that week to say their child hadn’t completed their homework again that week for the 3rd week running and I was worried they wouldn’t achieve the grade they deserved if they continued, and hundreds I didn’t even teach! Cue lots of ‘oh how wonderful, thank you for letting us know’, ‘wow, takeaway for X tonight!’ type emails…🙈 I nearly died when I realised what I’d done and had to backpeddle pretty quickly with an apology email. Most saw the funny side, lots shared their own work errors in sympathy, and I still laugh about it now when I see some of them regarding younger siblings etc, but one parent was not understanding at all…😩🙈 It still pains me to think about it now, years on…

I used to be a veterinary nurse and left a thermometer up a cats arse and sent it home.

I got a very irate phone call not long afterwards.

I can see the funny side now it's been about 20 years. Also not the reason I left the profession!

🙄

I once made a typo with the word 'county' when sending an email to the head of the county's council.
So instead of " xxxx shire county council"
I wrote and sent "xxxxshire cunty council"

Still would argue I was probably quite correct in my typo vocab

Aw OP, my heart goes out to you. In just a few days I promise you will feel so much better!

Before Xmas I managed to send the wrong version of a document to some very important external stakeholders, with all our internal comments still in it including things they weren't supposed to see. Rapidly recalled and sent another but I think someone must have opened it! I then followed it up the same day, by leaving some v v bigwig people off a copy list for an important email later, and people in the chain replied adding them in. Cringe!!! It was my first few days in a new team as well so I was convinced they all thought me incompetent and I cried all evening.

But you only have to look at all these examples where people lost the employer money and they still have a job. Mistakes happen, it's ok. Learn from it, think about how you could avoid it next time and that's it.

Oh wow 🤣🤣🤣

Was a District Nurse thirty years ago, knocked on door of a house I'd not been to before. Bloke let's me in. I go through to the lounge where two young lads in pyjamas watching Breakfast News look at me puzzled. I ask where I can wash my hands and was directed to the kitchen. On returning to the lounge they informed me that no, Mr Smith who was awaiting his insulin injection didn't live there. I was at number 55 instead of 155.

I made a mistake yesterday too. Might cost the client a few more thousand pounds but I owed up to it to my boss and it will get sorted. I won’t lie -I was worried but I reason that I won’t lie on my deathbed thinking about it and will have forgotten about it soon enough.

I love this 😂

@Bilsonate my team are the best in the area because they trust me. I believe it's because they can see I'm a simpleton and don't want to be unkind 😂

@FknOmniShambles Poor guy! Was there a loo? My first thought is...did he have to piss in the vestibule thing? I wouldn't be able to go 5pm til the next day without going for a wee.

Back in the late 1990’s I was working for an American/Anglo/French company in the UK.
I had an invoice that needed paying for US$ 5 million. However the supplier we were paying was in a country that the USA didn’t like & there was an embargo on any US$ payments via US banks to that country.
I should have converted the value of the invoice & made the payment in GB Sterling through a British bank, (no British embargo). I didn’t & the 5 mil USD was stopped & held by the USA for months before being returned. And we still had to pay the original supplier this time in GBP for their services.
I did get my knuckles rapped & felt mortified & sick at the time but I wasn’t fired & in the following 10 years of employment my error was occasionally remarked on within the office banter as an example of what not to do.🙄

I sent out a completely blank cheque for
£10,000 in the post which miraculously ended up in the right hands!

I also forgot to call a customer's insurer to renew the temporary policy on our hire car. 15 minutes past the cut off the customer launched the car over a hedge, across a playground and into someone's garden and it had to be claimed on our company's insurance to the tune of 123k. I was terrified but my attitude and the fact that I confessed immediately went in my favour and my boss didn't fire me!

I work in retail & we use a security device called a spider tag on high value boxed items. (It's like a wire that goes around the product with a plastic alarm in the middle).
Sometimes these break & malfunction & make a sort of ticking noise & the lights flash constantly.
A manager found the ticking from the broken device 'annoying' so wrapped it up in cardboard & shoved it under his desk.
The following day another manager came in & could hear the ticking & obviously looked under the desk to find a cardboard package containing wires & flashing light plus ticking .....

The whole department store, shopping centre & an 100m area was evacuated by police & the suspicious device was removed by a bomb squad

He didn't lose his job as it wasn't deliberate or a malicious hoax it was poor decision making & poor communication.

Whenever I make a mistake I think of that incident. Whatever it is you did it cannot be that stupid.

Not me but a colleague (during Covid) who in every Teams meeting angled the camera up their nostrils or at the ceiling. Most frequently, she didn’t notice, occasionally she would mutter about why she couldn’t be seen and what was wrong with her desk set-up? 😂 . Sometimes people let her know or suggested that she turned the camera off. Most of us gave up trying to help. It was great, I always looked forward to those meetings.

I know someone who worked pubs (this is ages ago) who has a lock in with loads of ppl, got stinking drunk, and left their full pub set of keys in the door . To be found the next morning by the delivery guy!

Not me but a colleague opened her personal emails at work (we have to use them to log into the annual leave system as no work email addresses). She clicked a random email, system slowed down and then froze her computer. She then logged on again at another computer, same thing happened. About 20 minutes later we get a call from IT to say we have a virus. We spent nearly 3 weeks on the emergency server and ended up needing to get q brand new server as apparently the virus kept coming back every time IT thought they got rid of it. Cost the company about £20k, but the original server was on it way out....

😂😂

Someone I worked with sent out the Scottish A level results too early (meaning the Scottish students knew their unis and could plan for clearing etc ahead of England and Wales).

He was reading the comments on a news article about it and someone had put something like, "Bet the guy responsible wasn't paying attention" and he was like, "well, I was eating pizza at the time"

When I was a student nurse,many moons ago,I worked on a ward that had brand new,wall to wall pale green carpet (an experiment I believe). On my first day I put an old lady on a commode by her bed and forgot to put the bed pan under the seat. There was wee and shit everywhere. Sister wasn't happy.
Having been well bollocked I made myself scarce and helped another old lady with her mouth care. Promptly dropped the whole bottle of gentian violet all over said carpet.
Needless to say I didn't stay in nursing very long.

I am the most introverted awkward person you’ll ever meet, but I needed a job urgently and accepted the first one who got back to me - a waitress in a pub/restaurant. It was pretty fancy and I was flustered the entire time, messing up all over the place. Well, one night I was cleaning up this one table which had about 3 large candles on. I was running short for time so I put them on a tray and didn’t think to blow them out before I started to walk off. I kind of tripped over the table leg whilst trying to turn out, the candles went slow motion and fell into me. Luckily I wasn’t hurt, but it literally fell all over my hands and up my arms and HARDENED. This was in front of customers on a busy Friday night. I was trying to scrub this hard wax from my body and it would not come off. full on wax covering my entire hands and arms. I was so humiliated. I think I lasted one more shift before I quit. I was happy to be skint than take the humiliation of dealing with a job like that any longer.

We do Highers in Scotland and the results have never come out at the same time as English A levels. I believe a very small number of pupils in Scottish private schools sit A levels but I can’t imagine it makes a difference when they get their results given that all the Highers results are already out.

Oh God, I'm laughing loudly here! 😂😂😂