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?

The best day was when she moved the whole Judaism section to martial arts.

I accidentally logged an assault on myself How do you do that?!?

MrsKoala I left a shopping list for my ex to do once whilst i was at work. He called me to say he couldn't get something on the list. He had been to 4 shops and asked everyone and no one knew what man get out was. first i was confused then the penny dropped and i think i actually fell off my chair laughing. I don't get it

Mange tout I imagine.

First bar job aged 18 - older couple (probably only in their 50s but to me very old!!) ordered a pint of bitter and she said "I'll have a gin and bitter lemon". Eeeuuggh thought I but merrily proceeded to pour the gin and empty a bottle of bitter lemon into it. They paid and I went to serve next customer.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw her speak to the pub owner - she wanted gin and a bit o' lemon!!! Forever after that I never poured mixers into drinks but plonked the bottle next to the glass for the customer to do it themselves

I love this thread. Have nominated for Classics! (Shame if it dies after 90 days).

Working in Asda as a student and a fellow (hungover) student marked down all the Thomas the Tank Engine figures to 10% of their original price instead of 10% off! Parents couldn't believe they were only 70p and I was putting through 10 at a time on my till 😄 All those happy little kids though, I'll never forget them!

Blobby10

Gin and bitter lemon is my go-to summer drink!

spinassienne The guy who designed the Toronto university library forgot to take the weight of the books into account. cue five floors of very expensive unusable library.

Which library?

Blah I also love gin and bitter lemon!

The architect who designed the maternity ward at my local hospital in Essex decided that the beds on the Labour ward would be directly opposite the doors of the labour rooms, and then out plain glass (and no blinds) in the windows in the doors! This was only noticed when they let the midwives onto the wards, who pointed out that women giving birth would probably not want any passer by to be able to look in, straight up their fanjos!!

In the hospital where I trained, they built a beautiful new Theatre suite. Each theatre had a hatch out onto the 'dirty' corridor, so at the end of each case, you wrapped up the instruments on the tray they had come on, bunged it through onto the dirty corridor, and it was collected, washed, repacked and resterilised.

Sadly the architects and the people specifying the equipment didn't bother to coordinate, because the instrument trays in the General theatre were too big to fit through the hatch!

@NoSquirrels that was my DP I came on to tell that story!

Yay - we've hit Classics!

@FortyFacedFuckers sorry to steal your thunder! Is the original thread anywhere? It's always stuck with me - so funny!

That's ok

I have one of my own to add!

First week in a new job I used a code from my old job in error, resulting in the full company being paid 282 X their salary i.e. Instead of being paid £4000 people were paid £1.1 million
14 years later I still feel sick when I think about it!

And DP still gets that brought up any time he gets sent to the shop!!

Sometimes when I've agreed a meeting with someone I'll put it in my outlook diary as "9am Dudsville". I never notice this until the day arrives, whereupon I sit and wait and see which surprise person I'm actually due to meet with.

In my first full time job. GM rang Reception and asked for 20 Marlborough for the Conference room where he was in a meeting with all of the Companies other GM. Told me to use the money in Petty Cash. I duly went over to cigarette machine and ran out of cash after 18 packets! (At The time they were £2 per pack) you can just imagine the hilarity when I entered the room with 18 packets of 20 per box😂My excuse was that I had never smoked so how wild i know that they came in packs of 20?😳

My fil used to work in a well known supermarket doing the Internet shop orders and has loads of howlers about his colleagues creative ideas for substitution items ranging from cherries instead of cherry tomatoes to an iron instead of iron tablets !!

@Thirtyrock39 - I remember reading a story on here from a MNer who ordered white wine, and got white grapes as a substitute! As she said, "I wasn't planning DIY wine!"

loo rolls = 100 rolls is one of the most memorable things I've read on here. Always makes me smile :)

I worked in a call centre for a few years and my friend who I sat next too had a proper knob head customer on the phone called Mr Minchin. Because he was such a knob we changed his name on his account to Mr Minge-chin and sent about 20 letters to his house with this name on. We thought we were hilarious

spinassienne and Andylion

It's actually Carleton Umiversity in Ottawa but I'm pretty sure it's apocryphal

Sinking libraries

The libraries sinking may well be apocryphal, but for real life structural failures where people making mistakes did cause issues I can thoroughly recommend the fabulous book "Why Buildings Fall Down". There are a couple in there where the engineer (architects don't determine loading, so it wouldn't be their mistake anyway) missed out loading, often snow, and it caused failure.

Only last year, my mother booked flights and accommodation for her, my dad, me, DSis and three grandkids to go to the Algarve for a fortnight in August. It was all booked in early January and we looked forward to it for months.

What none of us noticed, despite reading the booking emails several times each, checking in online and printing boarding passes out , was that whilst our villa was booked in the Algarve - our flights had been booked to Alicante!

My mum must have changed around the times/dates when booking flights, and not noticed that the page defaulted back to the first destination on the list (Alicante) when it refreshed...

That was a very expensive credit card bill after we realised at check in that we were flying to the wrong country and had to buy 7 new fights at no notice. In August.

I was at Lancaster uni in the mid 90s. We had a massive extension built onto the library, which definitely could not be used as planned at first as the floors couldn't hold the weight of the bookshelves and books. I may even have some actual photos of the signs that were put up, warning us not to walk on the new floor sections yet. So it definitely happened here!

They also build new student accommodation which had loos which flushed with red hot water, due to plumbing errors. That smelled lovely, til it was fixed. And radiators that were stuck on, at full blast, 24/7, for a long time until they got fixed too. This was in June & July.

Come to think of it, the x ray department in my local hospital seems to be the only bit which is down a steep slope. I've wondered why before, maybe I know the answer now

United Utilities spent months and millions of pounds digging up and replacing loads of water pipes which unfortunately were mostly under the local ring road system. The only way in and out of the town, due to rivers etc, so it was a real ball ache and caused massive delays for everyone getting to work and school nearby for months and months. A week or two after it was all finished and traffic back to (still hellish but) - normal, we all got a letter through our doors. United Utilities regretted very much to inform us that an extremely expensive unique digger had accidentally been left behind and buried underground when they'd filled the roads back in again. So now they had to close it all off and dig it all up and re lay it again to get the machine out!