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?

Only a few months ago I spotted a bargain pair of bootie slippers on sale online in Studio. I ordered a size 7. There was also a 'S' on the form and I couldn't figure out what it meant so just left it thinking it was their code or something.
Yup, 'S' actually stood for small as I found out when 7 pairs of booties turned up all at once!

I still can't believe that I did this but I actually walked into a waiting room and called out for Miss Take. I was very stressed that day and had just glanced at the post it note stuck to the front of the notes which happened to be over the name.

When I was a student nurse I was carrying a bowl of warm water to a patient so that he could wash and shave in bed. I slipped and threw the lot over him. When his wife found out she put in a formal complaint but he and the other three men in that bay thought it was hilarious.

That's brilliant! How could the DH not have questioned it?! That's a lot of bread!

My (then) little daughter was going to the shops with her grandad when I was cooking dinner and I asked them to get me some fresh garlic.

They came back and proudly placed one onion on the worktop!

iris65 I was in a hospital waiting room with my Mum once and a nurse came out called for a patient. She said the name See-anne Osh-ear. As he stood up he said 'My name is Sean O'Shea'.

Set the photocopier to do over 9000 copies of something instead of just one copy as I was absentmindedly typing in my personal print code... luckily I had not wandered away to do something else at the same time and was able to cancel after several copies came flying out!

I still use an umbrella that a former colleague order 3000 of instead of 300. Makes me smile everytime I use it.

My Italian friend's sister worked for a big bank in Italy at the time of the changes pre currency conversion to euro. She had to authorise a newly opened mortgage in the system on a Friday afternoon and was insuch a hurry to leave the office that didn't realise the new screens were up and running and, even when they still had 6 months or so until everything was euro-denominated, the first currency shown was now euro, and then, below that, lira.
So she opened a 200 million euro (£ 175 m) mortgage instead of a 200 million ITL (£ 90k) and left the office in high spirits.
She got a call later in the afternoon from HQs... Was it a shopping mall? How was it that they did not know anything about the deal?
The transaction was reversed on the following Monday...
She is still embarrassed about it, 17 years later. Although she was promoted a few months later and still works for them.

Oh Iris I've done that with a lovely clean bed , had just finished tidying the sheets and then knocked the table and dropped a jug of icy cold water over it . Thankfully the patient wasn't in bed. Colleague had a good shout at me for wasting time bevause obviously I did it deliberately.

My old boss once rang our switchboard and asked in a very efficient voice if he could speak to Mr Tigerboss. The receptionist deserved a medal for keeping a straight face when she said: "Er, I think you are Mr Tigerboss."

Young woman found that the fancy-pants printer which punches and staples was doing neither. I told her she could get some staple wire from the Stores. She went down there and asked for staple wire and holes . . .

Colleague ordered bubble wrap and got the best deal - a huge roll of it! We don't even use it that often.

First time in my grown up job using a spider/conference phone - couldn't find the button for ending the bit where i said my name, panicked and said 'where the fuck is the square button' to a friendly colleague in the room with me - so signed into a 25 strong conference call with 'F83mx......(pause) ..... where the fuck is the square button' has joined the call. Luckily people were laughing. gahhh.

My first day working in a care home I was sent to get a kylie.

I didn't want to appear stupid so looked through the cds, nope no Kylie so took another cd, only to be looked at like Then I was shown one, it was a padded bed protector, when I was training people I did make a point of explaining what it was I wanted.

tigerdriverII I don't understand?

Commis chef putting away fruit and veg delivery......happily popping iceberg lettuce in the freezer..........

Vlad if I understand it, Mr Hubert Hoppleberry (or whatever) telephoned the switchboard and demanded to speak to himself

tiger what was he trying to do?!

VladmirsPoutine. He rang the switchboard and asked to be put through to himself.

QuimReaper

No idea. He's a good sport so told the story himself for many years

I understand now, I was baffled as I too couldn't work out what exactly he was trying to do

When I was a junior doctor we used pagers which would beep loudly and appear with the extension number you needed to phone for whoever wanted you.

I was going to a dull meeting, had loads of work to do and asked one of my friends to page me out of the meeting and promptly forgot about it.

I got a page from 80085

This was a new number for me, and it didn't work. I was so worried that I was missing out on some urgent call that I phoned switchboard to ask where this number connected to, and when they couldn't help me - and offended me by all weirdly sniggering- I went round asking the consultants in the room.

It took a while to sink in when one of them said, very gently, "did you never play any silly games with calculators while you were at school....?"

I didn't even get to leave the meeting!

3 years on the trot I ordered the wrong exercise books, always ended up with half lined and half graph paper. First year we laughed it off, second year I begged them to change them and they did but we had to pay to get them sent back, third year I made a colleague do it with me and we still buggered up the code. My fourth year came with promotion so I delegated that job to someone else. I was seething when she got it right! (I wasn't really, was nice to not have every class ask why they had graph paper.)

Thank you everyone for making my pen order mistake not seem so bad!