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.

Included my gas bill in a mammoth volume of papers to do with a school reorganisation in Croydon (it was in the middle of the numerous consultation responses). No-one noticed, as you can guess, but I had a few sleepless nights beforehand and weighed up fessing up.

My manager did that, but she was the Director so she got off easily

The Deputy CEO at my old work (again, back in the old, old days) sent us an email with a massive graphic attached (it must have been 10MB!). It didn't send, due to the size, so she sent it again. Our entire email system gradually ground to a halt and they had to go in and manually delete them all.

Meanwhile, a peon did something similar a couple of weeks later, and was issued with a final written warning.

working as bar staff at a wedding and pouring the champagne for the toasts. The brides family were adamant that no one could have the dregs of a bottle even if you had a full bottle in the other hand to finish topping up the glass up. So we had loads of bottles with an inch or two left in the bottom. Closed the doors to the room whilst they were doing the speeches and started setting the bar up for the evening do, whilst swigging the champagne dregs from the bottles... For some reason the father of the bride left the room during speeches, came in to bar and caught us in the act. Apparently this is not considered professional.

Caught snogging a colleague on the managers' desk.

In mitigation this was at the annual Christmas party and not in work time!

I was the victim of this mistake. I had a PA a few years ago who was supposed to book me a hotel in Frankfurt for a business trip. When I got there it had murals of nude women on the balconies and was a brothel. Not sure whether it was a genuine mistake or she didn’t like me and did it on purpose but I found it pretty funny. After a while, anyway.

I accidentally booked flights for Illinois for someone once. They were going to Texas. (After tagging the flights on to Texas, rather than them going to Illinois direct, it saved the company thousands, and added hours on to the journey for a complete tosser, who everyone took great pleasure in his inconvenience, so it worked out quite well.)

I went to work with a massive hangover I think I was still drunk and fell asleep. Making an error of a few thousand but luckily found where it went.

I was once really pissed off with my boss and sent a scathing text about her to my friend..........then realised I’d actually sent it to my boss!!

@ArgumentativeAardvaark oops, yes, of course, I meant they had been made up with horizontal stripes!

@ThePenIsBlue

🤦‍♀️ I got drunk and flashed my tits after being there for 2 weeks. First ever “proper” job, they extended my probation but kept me for 3 years until I was made redundant. Definitely a lesson learnt 😁 totally just outed myself....

Brilliant!!

Typed up a letter for my boss to her boss. Her name was Cynthia. I typed Cunthia instead. Fortunately, she had a very good sense of humour and laughed it off.

I was given control over grant money meant to assist people with certain medical procedures. I was fairly lax about the distribution and pretty much gave money to anyone who asked. Turns out I had approved $17,000 in grants in a one month period. Did not lose my job but was never allowed to deal with clinic money again. Probably for the best.

Many years ago, I worked in an office that had branches throughout the UK, and I had to visit some of them occasionally. I was well known for my absolutely completely non-existent sense of direction, coupled with a misplaced faith in myself which often led me to enthusiastically leap on to the wrong train at airports etc and go in the wrong direction entirely.

After a few episodes of having to find a phone box to call the office I was visiting to get directions (I could never find a taxi either) I used to arrange for someone from the branch to meet me. Bear in mind these were all people that I knew fairly well, so technically there was no excuse for jumping in to the wrong silver Sierra outside a train station, kissing the driver on the cheek and saying "Brian, lovely to see you again!"...

(nope, it was not Brian, but a very confused stranger who was waiting for his wife. I then heard a "beep beep" and saw Brian, in his silver Sierra, about 3 cars further back!). I'm still laughing about that as I'm typing it, it took me a looooong time to live that down!

Disclosing my mental health condition 😞

One Valentine’s Day many many moons ago I sent my then boyfriend a text saying

‘Roses are red
Violets are blue
I’ve got a knife now get in the van’

And sent it to my boss by mistake

He said it was the only one he had received and seen the funny side of it 🥴

As a student on a holiday job decades ago, I left a door open at a medical research institute when I went for lunch and a large number of armadillos with leprosy escaped and ran off across the surrounding countryside. This was rapidly escalated from the institute to various higher powers locally and nationally, and within the hour the army were mobilised with heat-seeking equipment and helicopters, before the press got wind of it. The armadillos were all successfully found.

And for anyone horrified, armadillos are only minimally affected by leprosy on their skin, but have been amazing for developing effective treatments in humans.

Anyone else made a mistake so bad that the Prime Minister was involved and the army mobilised? No? Just me then.

When I was 18 I worked in a newsagents, and tried to charge someone £6,100 for two newspapers, instead of 61p.

@shergar - um, I think you might just win!

You do have three people collapsing in helpless laughter and awe at your mistake. When you cock it up, do you normally do it to such epic proportions?!

Been there and got the teeshirt! 😂

@shergar - That's priceless! And I now have the Dime bar / Armadillo thing going on in my head......

When I was 15 and worked on a pub/restaurant there was a table of 8 in for meals, I took their drinks order which included 4 cokes but when I said it back I said ‘4 cocks’ 😬🤣🤣🤣

I sent exam results (mine) to a client once by accident.

And also to the same client a printed out copy of a jamie oliver chilli beef recipe.

@mbosnz Why yes, I do usually cock up gloriously. I have many tales, but the leprous armadillos is the most far-reaching in consequence

What happened to them? Did you give them leprosy? We’re they leaving a wee trail of legs and tails? We’re they contagious? Did you catch them? Is there a super breed of armadillos? Were they indigenous? So many questions...

@PaulinePetrovaPosey that's my worst nightmare.

@MollyMinniesMum That would be mine too. I hope you are OK. Sending love.