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 have definitely lost my company money before!!!! But so has my boss. I bet your boss has too!

We have a spoken company policy of never taking the blame for anything. It's brilliant.

Write a self reflective piece about what happened, why, if you know, and what you have learnt.

Helps stop the ruminating!!

I didn't make the mistake, but it ended up showing on my shared screen.

During lockdown, we ended up with both Teams and Skype for Business installed. I usually shut down Skype, but on this occasion didn't.

Was in a contentious call with a client who had done something wrong and wouldn't have it, so through Teams started a screen share. Colleague that was on with my sent sent Skype message saying "God he is such a prick." Which popped up on the bottom right of my screen. I stumbled a bit, but quickly shut the notification and waited for the fallout. Fortunately it didn't come.

I always think about the nhs staff that sent a reply all on outlook and sent it to every single staff member in the uk who worked for the nhs,
Then people started reply all to the email and the entire outlook service for the nhs crashed.

I also once watched in horror as a junior
Member of staff in an operating theatre poured the dry ice down that came in a box
Of medication down the sluice sink and added water to 'wash it away' and dry ice cascaded out of the plug hole and all over the floor then the sink exploded from the ice.

Same member of staff was carrying a gallon bucket of formaldehyde (patient with big tumour booked in to be removed) dropped it in the operating room and we had to call the firebrigade to decontaminate the department and closed off the room for 7 days.

both accidents happened before the patient was asleep and in theatre thank God

I also was doing a shift in A&E and wasn't feeling too hot so put a mask on and cracked on.

Could feel my nose dripping but whatever! Went o see a patient to put a cannula in and she looked at me utterly horrified and started screaming for help. All my colleagues rush in and look at me absolutely stunned and as I looked down there was blood everywhere, all down my neck, my chest, all over my scrubs and the floor.

I had a massive nosebleed without realising 😬, bas to go see ent for that one as it just wouldnt stop! First time being in resus as a patient, it was like a tap just gushing everywhere,
But I'll never forget traumatising a poor little old lady 😳

A colleague of mine gave the wrong patient bowel prep before his surgery and he took it all despite needing to have foot surgery.

I was entering blood tests onto the haematology system many years ago.
I transposed an NHS number without realising and replaced a known leukaemia patient’s details with those of a young woman.
A while later a biochemist says she’s found a new leukaemia patient and needs to ring the consultant asap.
Fortunately a senior manager decided to dig out the original blood form and realised my error.
I quite rightly got a very stern talk about being more careful.
I think the systems are more foolproof now.

I missed a zero off a cheque once. There were a lot of zeros, so it was quite embarrassing. Still, better that than one too many.

I think the people who Reply All to be taken off the email chain are worse than the original emailer. Just delete it!

A colleague ordered a huge lunch for a big team meeting, for the wrong day.
We all ate it anyway and ordered some more food for the right day.
Manager was fine about it.

In my role I am the recipient of all external emails into the business, which means I get lots of spam and bot chat and whatever else the internet invents to fill up my inbox. I REGULARLY (as in twice a year) end up clicking suspicious links and have to call IT to sort it out and then spend half a day on the Internet Security training.
IT say don’t click stuff if you don’t know the sender etc but my job is communicating with people I don’t know so………….

I did similar to this - when I was a student in the 80s working a summer job in the bank, I put £2million into the wrong account ! Luckily it was picked up by my boss and corrected

I'm a primary school teacher and have accidentally sworn in front of (NOT at!) children before.

Mine weren't too bad: one 'bloody' and one 'arse' (both in front of the whole class), but one friend said 'shit' in front of a couple of kids and another managed a 'fuck' in earshot of several children!

This is an EXCELLENT mistake to make!

NHS by any chance? In 2017 someone did this but it was to nearly 1 million people. Basically the entire global email system. It took out NHS mail for over a week with idiots responding "please can people stop replying all" and then replying all themselves. Generated half a billion emails!!

www.theregister.com/2017/01/31/nhs_reply_all_email_fail_half_billion_messages/

I hope she got you fired for that. I wonder why she, and not the MD, attracted your ire?

Out of work hours but I sent a chat message to a mate I was popping round to see 'make us a brew cunty' but sent it to the MD of the company I worked for.
Luckily they saw the amusing side.

Nb...joke use of cunty and an in joke between us, I wasn't being blatantly rude.

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

Regardless of what she was doing, I'd have had your arse up the road for that.

Oh I've just remembered two more! Neither was me (genuinely!).

My wife scraped her boss's car, DIDN'T NOTICE (???) and went home. The next day she overheard two senior managers discussing how upset the boss was that someone had scraped her car and not let her know (it was a staff car park, so she knew it was one of her employees). My wife immediately went and confessed and apologised profusely. Her boss was lovely about it and refused to let her pay for repairs. I was NOT lovely about it when she told me what she'd done!

When I was training to teach, another student teacher synced her Google calender with the Google calender of the school she had a placement at. Which meant that, until it was brought to her attention, 'bikini wax appointment' appeared in the school's Google calender.

Worked in a hospital lab. Testing kits for a particular blood test were in VERY short supply, and the manufacturer was temporarily getting users to share between them. Each kit did 150 years and it was absolutely critical these tests were done. We'd given our spare stock to a hospital elsewhere in the country, and then it came time when we'd run out and needed more. The manufacturer flew the last box of test kits into the UK from Germany for our specific use, and it was me working in that particular section that day. Opened the box, took the lids off the bottles, and tipped the wrong bottle into the wrong diluent. Last test kits in the whole world ruined in one fell swoop and no more stock coming off the production line for another week. 😬

Wrong person lost their job here.

Where was the process for checking the driving licence was valid. A young temp probably didn't feel comfortable in saying no, particularly in an organisation where processes are not nailed down and management are quick to dismiss

Surely it's illegal to drive without a valid licence? The temp committed a crime using company property.

Training as a nurse in the early 80s when mercury thermometers were still used.
They were collected daily and put in a glass box with a cleaning solution.
I dropped the glass box.
About 30 mercury filled thermometers and the glass box filled with liquid shattered on the tiled floor. WHAT A MESS!
Nowadays the cleaning company would be called but then it was all down to me.
I just remember balls of mercury rolling everywhere.

Most people have fucked up royally at work. I have a few times. Once or twice though, I would argue that it was not entirely my fault. For example, in one of the situations, if a member of the team had communicated they had been running into the issue, it may not have happened as I could have taken precautions. Never the less it happened, and I felt awful. I'm totally over it now. Lost my confidence for a bit though. You'll be ok OP

About a month into my new job, I accidentally paid myself £2.5k in credit card expenses instead of going direct to the credit card company 🙈 I let my manager know straight away and it was all ok in the end but I’ll never forget it!