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?

I mean they put their finger between my bum cheeks and touch my anus.

Copy-paste fail

Did wonder

Someone I worked with decided to clean the medicines fridge, put all the expensive vaccines and insulins back in and then forgot to put the plug back in! Very expensive mistake.

I've turned up to the airport on the wrong day. In my defence my husband booked the flights. We had overslept somehow and rushed to the airport. We were stood at the check in and the man gave a very French shrug and said "mistake?" My husband practically had steam coming out of his ears.

alcibiades, it looks like the same thing caused the recent British Airways IT disaster. Except power wasn't returned in a controlled, staged manner...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40159202

(Names changed to protect the guilty).

We had a new member of staff joining, let's call him William Inkle (not his actual name but along those lines). At our workplace, the email addresses are first inital and last name @workplace.com, meaning his email address was going to be winkle*@workplace*.com.

We were told his name a week or so before he started, and we referred to him as Winkle whenever we spoke about him. It wasn't to be unkind to him at all, it was just out of amusement at our stupid email address system.

Fast forward a week, and it's William's first day. We've all said hello and he is an utterly lovely chap, although obviously nervous about meeting his new workmates. My colleague offered him a cup of tea, but instead of addressing him as William, he addresses him as Winkle...

(My apologies if there's a MNer called 'workplace' that I've accidentally just triggered an email to ).

Thanks HeartsTrumpDiamonds. I'm actually in one of them right now.

Like the helper being helped to the loo, my collegue - a serious looking chap with a beanie hat - turned up to a client wearing an over-sized overcoat and carrying his files in 2 carrier bags. He also has a big beard and a strange stature - think Oddjob from Carry On Screaming. He asked to see the FD and they told him to wait before booking him in - he thought it odd that they wanted so much detail and he eventually twigged that they were trying to book him into the half way house for homeless people with mental issues that he supposed to be auditing ....

MackerelOfFact

I spent some time at a client where the network protocol was that your username had the first 2 letters of your first name and then as much of the surname that they could get in

Anthony Alcock used to phone up IT every day to compain about it

Quimreaper sorry but that really made me laugh.

A woman in work was asked to photocopy 10 pages of a workbook. The teacher wanted 10 copies of each page.
After half an hour he phoned the office to see if she was alright, she said she was but it was taking a bit longer than anticipated. After another 45 minutes someone went to see what was going on. She was surrounded by paper and had photocopied over 1000 sheets and was still going.
We have no idea what the hell she was doing.

I made a call to my colleague who usually sits next to me but was working out of another room but still.on his normal extension. As I rang his number the phone next to me started to ring and after a few moments I picked his line up while waiting for him to answer my call, introduced myself and said he wasn't there.
So there I was sitting with a phone to each ear wondering why I could hear my own voice.
Honestly took me a moment to register what I had done. My 2 other colleagues were pishing themselves with laughter.

I've heard of an elevated swimming pool being designed for a uni sports centre, they got as far as building the supporting pillars when someone belatedly realised they'd forgotten the weight of water. Maybe this was apocryphal but there really was a set of short pillars doing nowt...

FortyFacedFuckers Omg! Did they get to keep the 282x their salary??

Have told this before but my first job as a nanny back in the day I went for an informal chat with the mother and went into full Mary Poppins mode with the three kids to get them on side. Swung the 20 month old up onto my shoulders which she loved, then proceeded to walk through the door in the style of a large lorry going through a low bridge... Luckily she didn't have to go to hospital and the mother saw the funny side. I got the job, God knows how, and am still in touch with them 25 years later!

One pancake day many years ago, the pancakes were being piled onto a plate when it was realised there was no Jif lemon. My friend was swiftly sent out to get some from the local shop - everyone's faces were a picture when she came back with Jif (now re-named Cif ) lemon.............

I used to work in a jewellers and was sitting in the staff room one day when I noticed a thick layer of dust on the top of a small black box on the wall. I idly ran my finger across the top of it exclaiming to colleagues about how dusty it was, when part of the box sort of depressed. I thought I'd broken it, but no-one else seemed bothered so I went out into the shop without giving it another thought. A few minutes later, half of the local constabulary came running in. Yep, it was the emergency silent alarm button that basically tells the police station we're being raided! Red faces all round. I put up a pretty good defence that not a single one of us knew what this box was, and the manager had the good grace to forgive me and make sure that was part of the induction for all newcomers after that.

Ahh - mange tout

@WhatToDoAboutThis2017 no they didn't! Luckily I noticed what happened and contacted the bank to recall the money meaning they got payslips saying they were getting millions of pounds but in reality they got nothing!!! I had to pull an all nighter doing the full payroll again and processing same day payments to thousands of staff! It definitely wasn't a great impression to make in my new job!!

FortyFacedFuckers Well that's lucky on your part! But not so much yours

Sorry I meant to say "not so much THEIRS"!

SDGT I wonder if it's the same hospital where the door to inpatients X-ray room wasn't made wide enough for beds to go through ?

When I was nursing some years ago I was late shift on Christmas day. The nurse on the early shift was just coming back from sick leave so hadn't been in the ward all week (it was an MH ward, we only had one trained nurse per shift).

While my colleague was off, one of our patients had been prescribed insulin by injection, starting off on a very low dose of only units. The morning nurse had been reminded by the patient about the insulin and had trotted off to read the prescription list but unfortunately read the handwritten instruction '6iu' as '61u'.

The Doctors were supposed to only write 'u' for units but this particular chap was a bit old-school and had written 'iu' for insulin units instead. The nurse could be forgiven that, but we had no syringes in stock that would hold 61 units so she had used two and got one of the Nursing Assistants to check it with her. It wasn't until 6 hrs later that I came on shift and mentioned the insulin that the overdose came to light. There was a lot of rushing around for appropriate treatment on Christmas afternoon but the patient was ok.

I don't think so, @CondensedMilkSarnie - so, worryingly, there's more than one inept hospital designer around!

In fact, there may be three. Some of the lifts at the brand, spanking new Queen Elizabeth University Hospital won't take the trolleys from A&E - I was in there with a friend, and the staff took her, on her trolley, to the main bank of lifts but couldn't get in, so we had to go to a different set.