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 office stationary order got dumped on me and while I did my best with it it was easy to make mistakes. The best one was ordering twenty boxes of specially printed (expensive)forms specific to that office when I'd meant to order twenty in total as it wasn't something we needed very often. Can still remember my horror as the things just kept coming

I kind of scattered the boxes nonchalantly round the stationary cupboard and kept very schtum until I left left a few months later.

I did a paid summer placement at an estate agents whilst at college about 10 years ago. Every month they sent out a newsletter with properties for sale/let to all the potential buyers/vendors on their contacts list. I printed, enveloped, addressed and franked the entire batch using the previous months newsletter instead of the current months. It was printed on that expensive thick glossy type paper in colour, the printing alone was to the value of about £600, let alone the postage costs after they had all been franked and the time taken for me to stuff and address envelopes.

My Dad runs a country store selling stuff for farmers, horsey people, pets, gardeners etc. One of his employees was asked to order 18 25kg bags of peanuts (for bird feeders). They ordered 18 pallets. Each pallet load equates to 1 tonne of peanuts, i.e. 40 x 25kg bags. 720 bags of peanuts to shift before they start going mouldy and aren't fit for sale.

This thread is great - I am remembering more and more as I read (and procrastinate).

As a teenager I worked in the coffee shop of a very large and well known garden attraction. A colleague was sweeping the floor and when she was finished she leant the broom handle against the upright freezer which displayed those little tubs of ice cream with the plastic spoon in the lid. She accidently leant the broom handle against the off button and all of the ice cream started to defrost. We all took home a bin bag each of different flavours of ice cream which we shoved in our own freezers and were pretty much ok, but obviously couldn't have been sold to the public. Great day for us, not so great for her the next day.

I love the one from@NoSquirrels. Can you wipe your bum with a bap?

I once worked in a restaurant and decided to water the plants.
They were plastic. I realised when there was a puddle on the floor.

cakes the Olympic pool in Leeds met the same fate too!
It's been demolished now but what a waste!

I used to work in a petrol garage on days, I switched to nights for a while to help some one out but on my first night shift I locked myself outside...

2 police men tried to break in for me particularly the younger one who seemed to want to outdo the older guy

I was out there for 3 hours turning away taxis and suh before I managed to get hold of my managers husband to let me in.

My friend, solicitor, once emailed back one of the most important heads of the firm, 'OK, I will give you anal in the morning' instead of 'OK I will give you a call in the morning' Give the guy his due he said nothing, she avoided him for weeks!

Work in an accountancy firm. Asked a junior colleague to file a set of accounts (meaning file them with company's house.) she filed them in a filing cabinet and we didn't realise until client got a penalty letter!

Kid's Company ordered 14 kilos of spaghetti for one of their residential homes. Or possibly 140, I'm not sure. What they got was 14 pallets. I know this because the friend who delivered spent 4 hours unloading it by hand. They had to go to Travis Perkins Catford to buy a DPM to cover it so it didn't get wet.

A colleague mixed up the measurements for the design of a new bakery shop - he used cm rather than m..... He ended up designing the worlds biggest pasty shop!

He went through various stages & iterations of the design quite oblivious. Thankfully it was caught just before it went out to tender.

Cheshire yours reminds me of when I worked in the food industry. We had a new Head Chef whom I'd never met before, but I needed to email about some problem with our duck. I took more care over it than I normally would given that we'd never met, wrote a very formal email introducing myself, and entitled it "Aromatic Crispy Fuck"

I hear some spectacular mispronunciation of names at work.

"Percy-fone" (Persephone)
"Moisten" (Mostyn)
"Sy-Ann" (Sian)

I swear half the people I work with are barely literate.

@QueenMortificado yours is the best!!!!

@MaxPepsi I was going to say I thought it was Leeds that did that re the pool

@TheBadgersMadeMeDoIt

Unless you know how to say those names, they are impossible to pronounce correctly.

I used to work at Halfords.

2 incidents....

I didnt adjust the measurement on the paint machine and instead of mixing 100ml of paint with different colours, I had the quantities for 1L. Only realised when i said to a colleague - "The cup is full, how do I mix the rest of it" Its ok, said colleague must have taken a shine to me as he's now my husband

Changing a wiper blade. Left wiper arm up whilst gettign new wiper out of box. Spring of wiper sprung into action. Right back onto customer's windscreen.

I worked briefly a a car dealership. Took a customer out for a test drive. Managed to catch the whole driverside of the car on the stupidly narrow bollards existing the car park.

As a student engineer I made a few, managed to order to little concrete for a garage floor on a Friday afternoon, wasn't too bad, and somehow set steel for a roof a two different levels, meaning there would have been a lovely slope on the interior ceiling, thankfully one of the foremen spotted it before it was installed!

Not a mistake but definitely not appreciated - I was in charge of booking tickets for colleagues and I to go to Bratislava for a meeting. I hate flying so I booked us on the train (we are in Italy but it was still an overnight journey). Thought everybody would be fine with it but they weren't!

Messed up a stock count at my old job. Basically told the computer we only had 1/2 of the amount of something than we actually had. Was bricking it.
Supervisor just went on and altered the figure manually. She said she was glad I was honest about it as in the past they'd had things like someone booking in the same delivery three times or ordering 10 times the volume of something and trying to hide it.
Pales into insignificance compared to the time someone at head office deleted half the product lines off the system.
Was a frenetic two days until it was fixed, half the products wouldn't scan at the till.

I work as a PA. I decided I wanted to look for another job and started sneakily typing my CV up whilst printing and preparing a report for my boss, somehow I got the pages mixed up when they printed and my CV ended up in the middle of a client report which I then sent to them without checking it.

Needless to say my boss did not see the funny side when he had to attend a meeting with the client to discuss the

The tannoy ones remind me of a woman in my first job, she was a bit of a gossip and worked on reception. One day over the tannoy in Pauline's gleeful conspiratorial tone came " well apparently, according to Viv ..." I have never seen a woman sprint to reception faster than Viv did that afternoon. Good old Pauline, Viv was a cow.

Accidentally cancelled someone's first class flights to Australia two days before Christmas. No other seats left anywhere, flights had been paid for, they had the tickets was rather costly. BUT I tried to fix the situation myself and not tell my manager. Was a nightmare when I did eventually tell him 24 hours later. Was a really costly mistake and I've never covered anything up ever. Complete transparency moving forward!

Adding to that it wasn't just one persons it was a family of 4 and I still inwardly cringe thinking about it now.