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.

Stepped outside for a cigarette and an IED exploded within 50 ft of me

This incident rings a bell! Where were you working? 😂

😂😂😂😂

I've been laughing all afternoon 😂😂😂

I've dropped a few patients 😆

@TheHobbitMum the lemonade had me in tears 🤣🤣

@Mangofandangoo it was mortifying, old chap just stood there while this lemonade was was drenching him That lemonade went everywhere! It managed to spray over 2 aisles and we were all impressed at how far it went 😂

Not the worst thing I've done but I called one of my male team members 'darling' on a department teams call the other day. I dont even call my DP darling. I think it's from hanging around my 3 year old each day

I told a horrible boss to fuck off. I was crawling under my desk - again - to fix a plug that kept going and the it guys room was behind me (a dead end). He would pop up behind me and make me jump when I was crawling under the desk )he though it was funny).

We did get on and so when someone shouted boo! Behind me and I whacked my head... ‘oh just fuck off’.

Nasty boss laughed and smirked. I only ever saw him laugh when he was being mean about someone.

@sweetheartyparty

You calling your team mate darling has reminded me of my DC sitting on my knees during a teams meeting and for reasons known only to a toddler, excitedly pointing and waving at my boss shouting 'DADDY!'

My children's actual father was in the other room at the time on his own call... Luckily my boss (and the 40 other people on the call) laughed

On my first week in my first job out of university, managed to catch the cuff of my lab coat on the door handle and threw a full mug of hot coffee all up my new boss.

Oh God, those have just reminded me of another one. My pal is one of those really loud, bubbly, arm waving, enthusiastic people (I think she was a Labrador puppy in the previous life) and she calls absolutely everyone darling, sweetheart, doll, honey, sugarpuff, my angel, lamb chop, etc etc. If you manage to get through a conversation without at least 20 endearments then you've had a lucky escape. (she's absolutely lovely, by the way!)

Anyway, she'd phoned me at work for a chat one day, and just after I came off the phone, the most senior manager of the Accounts department walked in. He was the dullest, greyest, most serious man ever, and I don't think I'd ever seen him smile.

My brain was still obviously clinging on to the conversation with my pal, and I turned round with a big smile and said "hi honey bun, I'll be with you in a second!"

He actually smiled back, and said "no problem", and from that day onwards I always got a big smile from him, bless him. Even typing this still makes me cringe a bit though, and it was over 20 years ago!

I had a job compiling, proofreading and sending out catalogues. I was good at managing the copywriters. I was a brilliant proofreader. I was less than competent at databases.

I fucked up the mailmerge.

I sent out £3k worth of catalogues to a man called Donald Strubaker who lived in Plymouth.

He literally received two thousand catalogues to his house.

I sent out £3k worth of catalogues to a man called Donald Strubaker who lived in Plymouth.

Not my balls up but one I managed to stop.

We get sales enquires via email from dodgy types, it’s always a massive company We have never dealt with before wants to order £££ of stuff from us. I usually report as spam and then delete.

I went on leave for a week and came back to my team very excited about a large order they were processing for a huge organisation. It took me less than a minute to prove it was fake (imagine Richard Branson emailing from a hotmail account to order for £100k of stuff for Virgan Media to be sent to a post office box). It’s marginally more sophisticated than the Nigerian prince. It was so obvious I couldn't believe anyone would fall for it.

If I’d been on 2 weeks leave we would have been about £50k down.

Ds jumped in on a video call I was on a few weeks ago to let me know he’d done a poo. The person I was talking to laughed. She has 4 year old triplets and a live in nanny and au pair so said she knew the wfh struggle.

I work in a jewellers and before going on mat leave, I was handing over my job to My friend at work and teaching her how to do the ordering. While I was on my mat leave, She didn’t read the quantities and ordered over 40,000 of one type of box and 100,000 of another instead of 4K and 10k. Worse part was the person she sent it to in our European head office was also new and didn’t realise the quantities were not right and processed it. 3.5 years later we are still making our way through those boxes!

I was known (still am) for having a really untidy desk. I'm incredibly organised but really naturally untidy.

Our latest print job of 4000 catalogues was sitting in five or six cardboard boxes by my desk. My manager had hinted a couple of times I should move them to the stock room, but I hadn't got round to it.

That night, the cleaners came, removed all my boxes and sent them to secure disposal of waste to be incinerated. I spent a day on the phone to various parts of the waste chain trying to track them down to no avail.

Not my finest hour.

Some of these are brilliant and I've been in hysterics! Femfresh, oiiiii noiiiiii and the naked migraine. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

I'm a long time lurker but had to cast off my cloak of mystery to applaud this thread and suggest, if I may - that it be nominated for Classics!

Please keep them coming, this has given me the best laugh I've had in weeks!

My own contribution. I was giving a presentation behind a lecturn. All went fine! Then the next speaker came up, I was introducing him but simultaneously trying to unplug my laptop from one of those cables that had pins and allsorts in them that took ages. Anyway a load of the sales guys in the audience were smirking at me, some of them outright sniggering. I had no idea why. Until they told me - that because of the angle of the lecturn and my vigorous unplugging of laptop - it looked like I was wanking the next speaker off …..

Apparently I've killed the thread! Bah!

@Sauvignonismysaviour

Apparently I've killed the thread! Bah!

I think people are probably just all at work and trying to concentrate and not make mistakes .

I once sent £325,000 to the wrong solicitor to complete someone’s house purchase. Had to call them ask to have it back and send it to the correct one. Never looked like such a twat in my life, it was excruciating

Oh it was you was it! Our solicitor made this mistake. We knew the money had come in from our purchasers as our share had made it into my bank account.

The money due to our vendors though didn't get there and I was camped out at the estate agents with 2 cats and 3 van loads of furniture waiting for the confirmation of completion. It was nearly 4pm by the time they confessed to their error and we only just made completion that day.

When I worked in A&E I managed to superglue my glove to a kids head, when trying to close his wound. His dad didn’t keep him still enough and I daren’t let go after applying the glue or we’d probably have had to stitch it.

So I removed my hand from the glove and trimmed it, so sent him home looking like a rubbery rooster...

I sent some stock out to 120 UK stores which was unsuitable for sale in the UK and which cost the company about £30k to recall. In another job I signed off the wording in a Christmas card which said 'Merry Chistmas'. Nobody noticed the second one for weeks and we had no customer returns. Surprisingly I'm still in gainful employment.