To ask you about the worst mistake you've made at work?

[800caloriesofwine]

Terrible, terrible day.
Please tell me the worst mistakes you've made in the workplace.
Mine were sending £6,000 of dental implants to the wrong dentist, two days before they were due to be placed in someone's mouth.
Also writing the wrong patient down as dead.

First proper job aged 17, had a regional boss who’s last name rhymed with Bstard and as it happened he was a bit of a Bstard thus was his nickname staff used to refer to him when he wasn’t around. During a meeting he had asked me if I knew some figures for the month of June only for me to reply yes Mr Bastard....he did not take it well and I got a good shouting at. I suspect he knew his nickname and thought I was just trying to be clever.

Different job, ran a site on my own, owner/boss was round dropping off new stock. Happened to be on the phone to DH, owner pops his head into my office to let me know he was leaving and instead of saying love you bye to my DH on the phone, I said it to my boss and blew him a fucking kiss too!!!! I have no idea where my brain was at, I don’t even blow kisses to people! I slammed the phone down on DH ran out the door after my boss to explain, it could not wait as he was definitely the sort to think his luck was in. Rang DH back to apologise and explain, he was in hysterics.

Drug error on a neonate. It was a twin baby, fortunately both twins were on same drugs and dose so no harm was done but it was still dreadful, I realised immediately and I’ll never forget that gut wrench, walls closing in on me feeling.

First day in a new job as a display artist/window dresser when I tripped & manage to knock a mannequin through a huge curved front window.👀

Bizarrely I kept the job

Started a new job I was very happy to be in. Very sleep deprived and brain mushified on account of my non-sleeping toddler keeping me awake all night. Was talking to the two immediate bosses and totally vagued out. Had to ask them to repeat their instructions as my head was up my own arse (why... just why). Said I’d be sure and pull it out now. So did my best mime of just that, complete with movements and loud squelchy vacuum noises - just like I was actually pulling a head out of an arse. I have no idea what came over me FFS. Have tried hard to repress that memory but no joy.

@Lillygolightly Was it Mean Mr Mustard?

Just thought of one that I luckily managed to avoid!

As a teen (19) I worked on a livery yard. I'd had a week off ill and came back to a couple of new horses. No problem until I came to make up the feeds.

They were posted on a whiteboard in the feed room and included any meds the horses needed. One was on bute, which is a painkiller, and another drug.

Went to check with my boss who dismissed me and told me to feed what was on the board. Made the feeds up as instructed and went to put them on the boxes when one of the long term livery owners came racing over to stop me.

The horse I was about to give the medicated feed to didn't need it and it could have caused all sorts of problems because he was a competition horse jumping at a decent level where it could have shown up in a drugs test/the owner could have been accused of doping.

The owner had swapped the boxes (so the old pony who did need the drugs was in box a and the showjumper in box b only it was the other way round on the feed chart).

All hell broke loose when the boss found out what had almost happened... I did point out that I'd tried to check with her and she'd chased me.

Gives me the shudders thinking about it!

Secondary teacher. One day I had to cover a lesson for absent colleague. Not a problem as absentee supposed to leave sick work to be accessed if they are absent. I drew the short straw and ended up with food tech. I was hoping for some health and safety in kitchen type of boring task designed to keep kids busy but no I had to let them cool raspberry buns. First some kids arrived without ingredients. I did not have key to store room to find them any. This was last lesson of day so I knew they must finish cooking 15 mins before end of lesson to wash up and clean kitchen before home time. Time was going to be very tight. I had to demonstrate first. Quick demo then got them started. Some groups quite good others aggggh. Bund in oven 20 mins before end of lesson so washing up. After 10 mins one clown had switched on microwave with nothing in it. It caught on fire. I asked why was he using microwave with nothing in it? Reply, to time his buns in oven miss. Fire ala went off. Caretaker rushed in squirting fire extinguisher. Everyone had to go out on to playground for fire a countability. This took 25 mins and kids late for school buses and taxis. Parents rushing to back playground to see their kid ok. Everyone dismissed and then I had to go back and wash up all groups dishes. Head not best pleased. Following week new rule if good tech teacher away kids must have work sheets. No cooking ever unless good tech teacher.

So many mistakes made, all of them in a large firm where I was employed as a secretary - cheques / emails / letters sent to the wrong people... documents lost.

To be fair, I had a horrible, aggressive boss who was demanding and impatient. He overloaded me with work and would get angry if I asked him to clarify one of his instructions - he often gave me vague instructions.

On one occasion, he asked me to send a sensitive document to "everybody" and got impatient and snappy when I asked him to confirm that he meant "everybody".

So, I emailed the doc to "All Staff".

Boss comes over, screaming with rage, because he actually meant the document to go to everyone in his department and not the whole company.

This sort of thing seemed to happen on a daily basis. I was so intimidated by this man that there were times when I literally lost the ability to speak.

I resigned after six months. It was a horrible company and I wasn't the only one who suffered.

This happened almost twenty years ago and I still shudder at the memory.

Telling a new starter they were in the wrong toilets. They were not.

@SlightyJaded

There were bottles in the storage worth even more than the one I opened and this was about 25 years ago and the boss in question now owns and runs a respected vineyard in New Zealand.

It's not Sam Neill is it?

Almost became one of those idiots who leaves classified government data lying around. Left a cafe to go to a meeting, leaving a USB filled with sensitive diplomatic information there. Luckily, it was a cafe frequented by my profession and the waiter ran after me.

I also once gave a friends child a toy plane from our office. Turns out it was a highly classified prototype of an upcoming new military plane. I haven’t owned up to that one.

Inexplicably mentioned I spoke Spanish to someone pitching to me in a meeting. They then decided to do the entire pitch in Spanish, which was a very technological thing, and I forgot all Spanish out of sheer fright. He made clear he thought I was an idiot.

Also a few about pretending to leave countries early so I didn’t have to go to dinners with people, and forgetting they could check my visa records

Honestly I promise I’m competent most of the time.

HeyMickey that is amazing

I shut down production of a major car manufacturer for two full weeks. I knew I was filling out the part forms incorrectly, because I had no idea what the customs numbers were supposed to be, but everyone was too busy to show the temp (I don't think they knew either), and it took 2 weeks for the production line to actually run out. By then, it was too late. I cost them tens of millions. They had no other way to get the lights apart from our factory, and our production was stuck in customs with gibberish on the forms.

I was paid 8.00 per hour, so I just asked the temp agency to send me somewhere else when things started getting tense. To their credit, they backed me totally and found me a great placement to move on to, but not before my manager got really weird and started with some sexualised bullying that was definitely vengeful rather than based on attraction. After that, I wasn't sorry. Fuck them.

@CorianderLord

I know someone who caused an international incident as an intern as she copied an American document out but edited into British English. So people thought the document was planted by Brits 😬😬😬

Me personally? Not much but I did get my sister fired when she was 21... I'd been covering her shifts when she was hungover (I was 17) and told a customer my real name. Oops.

Wasn't that the plot of a recent film?

Similar to @showgirl63, when I worked in supply chain for the Co-op, I over ordered on tuna by mistake.
I think ordered 30,000 outers instead of 3,000.
At first Princes wouldn't amend the order so I had to fess up to my manager who was amazing and persuaded them to do it.
My stomach was in my shoes!

Femfresh

The supermarket ones are the best!

A colleague of mine sent out the payroll list to our whole area. All employee’s were on different salaries depending on what they had negotiated. We used to check and sign off the payroll list and send it to accounts for all payments to be made each month. Colleague sent the excel sheet out to “area” email instead of “accounts”. Quickly tried to recall but most of them had already been read. Caused all kinds of problems And bad feeling once everyone found out that they weren’t all on the same salary (some were 1000’s of pounds lower than their colleagues). My colleague left shortly after (pushed) and they started password protecting everything that was sent via email after that.

I've shared this one before. Years ago I was was working for a big geopolitics publication, translating an interview with Hosni Mubarak who was then president of Egypt. Half way through a sentence the phone rang. I then picked up where I'd left off but I missed out a "not". The question was about Israel's nuclear defence policy and I basically made him say "yeah I'm a huge fan". Could have gone either way, world war three or the Nobel peace prize

I was 8 months pregnant and got food poisoning during the night. But the company I worked for were awful and I didn’t get paid any sick pay, so I dragged myself across London to meet a clients executive board in a small office in Covent Garden to run a training session. Felt the vomit coming up, dashed out of the room but only made it to reception where I threw up copiously all over the floor, then dashed to the bathroom where I blocked up the sink. I was so utterly mortified - luckily being huge and pregnant I think they took pity on me and sent me to hospital in a taxi. I left close to tears whilst they were mopping up my sick. It was one of those moments where you feel too poorly and ill to fully appreciate the mortification at the time.....

When I was 14 I was a waitress for a very very upmarket little hotel and worked the breakfast shift. Dropped the plate of breakfast into a very well dressed business lady's lap. She calmly picked it up, popped the food onto the plate and began eating.

When I was about 20 I worked in a very very upmarket little independent designer shop. I lost my keys to the shop. Got to the end of the day and panicked as I couldn't lock up. Spent an hour brainstorming with a colleague about not admitting my mistake and just popping out the next shift and copying her keys. Can't remember why but it wasn't doable so had to admit it to my boss. She was just a horrific boss, I was genuinely scared. She screamed at me down the phone (no exaggeration) about it and the risk I had put the shop at. I couldn't quite understand the angst as the keys didn't have the shop name on or anything.

Anyway, they organised for the locks to be changed. Obviously after the lock was changed a customer popped in with the shop keys. I had wrapped them up in their clothing parcel in the fancy tissue. So I had actually put the shop at huge risk!

I don't work in upmarket places anymore.

More recently I accidentally pushed panic alarm and 2 police officers turned up to work to check we were ok. We shd have called to tell them not to come but could not find a way to turn the alarm off for ages. I was pretty mortified

This wasn't me, but a few years ago DH went on a very fancy, all expenses paid trip to the Queens tennis as a work hospitality trip - posh hotel, first class travel, endless champagne etc. Only to arrive at Queens to find the 20 VIP tickets had been booked for the previous day.

I work in marketing and events and regularly tell new people at work the story to remind them how important it is to check, check and check again!

I once pushed an alarm button next to a door thinking it was the lock release button for the door. Thankfully there were no classes running at the time as the alarm went off and they had to evacuate us, what makes it more stupid is that the alarm button didn’t look at all like a door release one and had clear bold instructions not to be used unless in an emergency.

@CorianderLord

Is this your friend???
www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/how-my-work-mistake-caused-an-international-incident-1.4027449

I worked nights in a care home, I was doing the write up in the office one shift and there was a fly buzzing around. Really did my head in so I took the air freshener and sprayed it on the fly to kill it. Objective achieved. Only the fly was sitting on the smoke/fire detector box thing. And I sprayed half a tin full into it from a few cm away.
Fire alarm goes off and obviously I know there isn't a fire so I called 999 to say please don't come out - no fire. They came anyway to double check. Thank goodness they did as they had to disconnect that box off the fire alarm system as I destroyed it.
The look on the managers face in the morning when I told her what I did. The repair technician cost an arm and a leg on an emergency call out to fix it too

I took a new person out to a client with me to show him the ropes. It was a petrol station. We were standing in the office chatting to the client and the next thing we know a police car roars onto the forecourt with its blue lights going. New colleague had been leaning against the desk and had pushed the panic button !!