Can you beat my colleague's mistake?

[yaela123]

I work in a school and we were doing a cake decorating activity this afternoon, so at lunchtime I sent a colleague to the local shops to but some icing, decorations, etc.

On the list was sprinkles. (aka 100s and 1000s)

He comes back with... a sprinkler!

Yes, one of those things for watering the garden.

He said he was a bit confused, but could he really be that dim?

In his defence, there is a small garden. but everything else on the list was icing, chocolate chips, etc. And we don't send out the teachers to buy gardening equipment!

What silly mistakes like this have people around you (or even better you yourself!) made?

One of the guys was going to Tesco on the breakfast run. One of the supervisors asked for a roast chicken sandwich. The guy came back with an actual roast chicken...we don't even have a cooker at work. Lord knows what he was thinking.

I've made a few mistakes. I do all the purchasing and accidently ordered too much material (stainless steel) it cost in the region of £1500. The supplier wouldn't cancel the order. I could actually feel the colour drain from my face when I realised. I had phoned the order through and then phoned the exact same order through 5 minutes later.

Had an interview with a potential employe and asked them to come in for the 2 until 10 shift. She was a no show until 2mins to 10pm, aka closing time, gave her another shift and she worked out great.

Asked a new worked with us for 3 weeks colleague to fetch the hoist. She came back with an empty cardboard box that had once contained incontinence pads.

I once spent £2k on books for the students. Which is fine, I do that a lot. These were textbooks for English speakers on an course taught and examined in English.

Somehow I ordered the Finnish edition.

(mercifully a bright spark at the booksellers realised we probably didn't want them so I didn't end up with unusable stock!)

I was asked to order 20 pocket folders and ordered 20 boxes of them, with 100 per box. Years ago. They probably have still not run out of pocket folders.

When I was 16, I got my first job. The bosses were all visiting our office one day. One boss was called Mr Manning (in the days you referred to your boss as Mr).
Behind his back all the staff referred to him as Mr Mainwaring (from Dad's Army). I had no idea what all that was about having never watched an episode. I'd heard him referred to as Mr Mainwaring so many times when he asked me a question I replied "yes, Mr Mainwaring, I mean Manning!" I watched the colour drain from MY boss' face but thankfully Mr Manning saw the funny side.

I was once messing around with a colleague and changed the last name on my signature to the name of a very attractive lawyer at another firm. Then I emailed him without changing it.

Mortificado.

shitgibbon

I did this too once, except even worse. I was told to order a pack of 100 pens and accidentally ordered 100 boxes of 100 pens each, so 10000 pens!

Mortificado That's great!

I once ordered a million too many envelopes.

" The guy came back with an actual roast chicken...we don't even have a cooker at work"
Not detracting from his mistake but surely roast chicken is cooked already?

You can never have too many envelopes
😜

Misread a dimension, signed a drawing as correct. 8 weeks later, 24 steel floor beams arrive 90mm too short to fit between the columns that were already there. Cost a fortune in costs and delay time to fix 😳

StealthPolarBear I thought that too, then decided that as I'm vegetarian I didn't have the right to question it

I once added an extra zero to a print order, meaning we got ten times the amount we wanted.

Many , many times at work I've phoned someone and spent ages waiting for them to answer. Usually while waiting am writing notes or talking to someone else about why people don't answer the phone. When they do finally pick up the conversation inevitably goes as follows:

'Hello, CT scanning..'
'Hello, ward 12345 , shouldnt speaking, can I help you?'
'Sorry love , you called me ?'

Bleeps usually the same - 'Hello, Dr Doolittle, I was bleeped' .. 'Ah yes, can I help you ?'

It's a nightmare . My colleagues actually wait for me to do it.

Definitely was wasn't me who on her second week in a newly blagged PA job booked the boss flights on the wrong day. Immediately called customer service to change it which they kindly did. Hung up phone and realized newly changed flight was a different but equally wrong day. Rang back customer service. Got same agent. Agent restrained herself from calling me colleague a total twat. Should have career changed immediately.

I was just thinking about this this morning - I worked for a while at the front desk at a care home for the elderly. A bit of admin & lots of meet and greet and redirecting wanderers.

One day I went down the hall to fetch paperwork and the only route was via the common room. There was a huge platter of biscuits out, including small tea biscuits. There was a broken one and I took half of hat piece.

Got a hideous bollocking as, unbeknownst to me, they were for residents only. There must have been hundred biscuits.

Not the category of stupid mistakes, more "really? Someone told on me for that and I got a bollocking for it?"

I once ordered 420 chocolate bars, a particularly vile bar too. T'was lime and hemp seed. They were the worst selling line in the shop!

Too ashamed to admit it ... I bought them at staff discount gradually throughout the year and gave them to friends. As well as hiding them in gift hampers

Was 2 days into new job when fresh out of school working in butchers dept in Asda.
Was left alone pricing meat.
when I'd finished the mincemeat started pricing the fillet steak but forgot didn't know how to to change the price.
Sent s whole tray ( 150 packets) up onto shop floor at 1.99 when they should have been 10.99 at least

I also hired a girl in March, but she didn't start till December. I completely forgot her name on her first day and called her Emma for a month she never corrected me, I only corrected myself once I was processing her pay. I introduced her as Emma, got her name wrong on the rota, and her name tag.

I live in France and my parents were coming over for Christmas. I asked them to bring me some Christmas crackers over for the table as I couldn't get them here. You guessed it........my dad proudly gave me 3 packets of Jacobs crackers, very pleased with himself that they had made it without being crumbled

Lime and hemp seed? Ewwwww!

One of the most amusing things I have read on here was an OP wrote a shopping list for her DH, and sent him off to buy the weekly shop.

He returned with, amongst other more usual things, 100 bread rolls. No special occasion planned, no BBQs for the 5,000 or kids parties for 3 x classes. When OP questioned him, it turned out he had misread "loo rolls". So they had no toilet roll, but 100 bakery baps to make use of before they went off...

The school thing reminded me of one of my son's friends. They were doing Spag Bog and needed to bring in minced meat. His friend came in with a jar of mincemeat!!

My first job was in a restaurant in a pub
One night we had no customers
At locking up time I found out that I didn't need to lock up as I had never unlocked the door in the first place