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.

@HaudMaDug I don't know why but repeatedly calling your boss dad has me in stitches.

I forgot to set my messenger to "presenting" while running a presentation during from my laptop and one of my friends sent me a very rude IM, about someone else. Unfortunately it popped up on the huge projector screen in front of half the office.

Needless to say, our line manager called us into a meeting about inappropriate messaging over the work chat.

A colleague was demonstrating the recovery position in front of a secondary school assembly.

She said and you pull them towards you until they come into your lap

The whole school erupted but she couldn't work out why.

Many years ago as a reporter I vomited (from excessive drinking) in front of an extremely high profile and senior man who I had to interview. Thankfully not the same evening . It wasn't a career-enhancing move.

Bumped a work van of a fence and didn’t admit it to anyone. They never suspected me and assumed a customer had done it and someone had missed it :/.

Another company, booked an event for the wrong day. So customer said he wanted the event for a Wednesday, I got mixed up and booked him for the Tuesday. Waltzed into work at 9am to an email from the customer saying ‘see you tomorrow’ I.e Wednesday, NOT Tuesday. I was sacked by 10am 🤦‍♀️

Accidentally refunded a customer 14boxes of wine instead of 14 bottles which she had returned (after a party). We only realised about 3 weeks later at stock take and I had to call her to explain and see if she'd pay the money back (thankfully she did)...

@Zug2 no. Fortunately my manager realised it was unlikely and we checked the barcodes on the blood forms that I’d processed against the samples until we found it.
The consultant had been contacted though. I still feel sick at the distress I could have caused.

Was assessing a student on a first aid course. We were talking about what you might do if a foreign body is preventing a casualty from breathing.

He said I'd try some pelvic thrusts.

I had to take every effort to keep a straight face whilst I explained it's abdominal thrusts.

@Zug2 it must have been scary for you. My nephew has aml so I know how serious it is.

I was a waitress for a year, not a very good one. I poured gravy all down a Wedding guest. It was very hot. Thankfully no serious damage to him. Boss was awful about it and I got a huge telling off.
Not my mistake but someone on a mailbase for my profession accidentally sent a bitchy email to the entire mailbase about a senior member. There were some phone calls later between the two apparently.

Accidentally activated an Ansul fire suppression system in a busy high street fast food restaurant (on a Saturday lunchtime two weeks before Xmas!) - we had to close to customers for the rest of the day!

For those asking....

She had kept her maiden name at work and he didn’t wear a ring. Everyone found out and after she left (both him and the job) about 6 years before I did, it was the tongue in cheek joke of the work place.
I maintain that as I didn’t know and I wasn’t breaking any marriage vows, he should be the one feeling ashamed, not me.
I still don’t get why she stayed so long really, I felt sorry for her. Luckily our paths rarely crossed.

He still regularly messages me now and I ignore him.

Don’t shag your boss!!!

I worked dilligently on a tender for weeks, only to completely forget to submit it on the deadline day. Realised about two hours past the close. I rang the client and begged, even cried (I was young) but it was public sector and they wouldn't budge.

Contract would've been worth about £20m.

Years ago when you could smoke at work I put my cigarette in the bin and hadn't put it out properly and the bin went on fire.

A wee bit outing, I worked in retail and lost the safe key, did everything correctly but said to my LP I have just moved house, my partner's dad had just died, I am working here every hour I can, give me a week to see if I can find it.

A week later, he comes in and suspends me for not following the rules. I was really pissed at that and looking back I was managed out and kicking myself for not having the conversation in writing. Found the key 3 years later and posted it back to him.

@Merryoldgoat you’re very welcome to get a job at my place

Nothing too horrific although I once sent an email to a very important client which included reference to a county court judgment. Except I missed the ‘o’ out of county 😖 looked like I was just passing my own strong comment on the judgement!! Fortunately he saw the funny side but it was a horrible few minutes when I realised what I’d done.

I worked for a regional daily newspaper many years ago in the classifieds department. We took ads and family announcements over the phone. I took an in memoriam from someone for their friend who had passed away. Was to read "Will be sadly missed, Margaret and Stan". Read it back, spelled the names phonetically and processed it. We were given a copy of the first edition and used to quickly scan anything we'd booked. Saw that I had actually put "Will be sadly missed, Margaret and Satan".

I was waitressing at a corporate event, had a massive tray with many bottles of wine. When I took the second to last bottle off the tray tipped the last bottle of red down a man's back. He was surprised, I was horrified! I didn't know what to do, considered chucking the bottle of white on him but realised that wasn't going to go down well. Worst I was getting paid less for the whole evening than the bottle cost, let alone his likely cleaning bill. Luckily they were an understanding bunch but I will never live that down.

Pressing print on a powerpoint and realising with horror that I'd done a class worth of prints of a 40 page powerpoint on page per slide. That's a lot of precious ink and a lot of precious paper.

I couldn't evenreuse it as scrap as it was about STDs

I have accidentally clicked on K W's name instead of K W***'s when issuing a detention. Annoyingly there was no way on the software to fully remove it from the record even after it was cancelled. So easily done at the end of a long day.

Years ago pre Cloud computing.

Repaired the CEO’s laptop, went to give it to him in it’s bag. Had forgotten to zip up the bag. Swung it round, laptop flew out of the bag, hit him with it, bounced off him onto the floor where it shattered into lots of bits

He was ever so nice about it thankfully.

@Abouttoblow. I’m laughing so hard at this.

Gosh be here all day.

1. Junior nurse night staff done obs anyways she hadnt handed it over and I saw a line and presumed without been very thorough basically gave someone all anti hypertensive when chaps BP was only 90/ 50 and been low all night (lesson learned dont trust others and check own obs but it was the done thing at that hosp) he crashed resuscitated him

I emailed my DH saying ‘pick up a bottle of wine and some beers and nibbles’ and sent it to a client in error. Mortifyingly, it took me ages to realise and clarify that I wasn’t actually expecting them to go shopping for me.

@Coffeecak3, I got the results on Friday at midday and then told on Tuesday am that it was a mistake, I often think of the poor patient who was told the opposite to me.

Ironically, several years later, I was diagnosed with cancer, but not a blood cancer.

As a student, I had a holiday job in a well known retailer that while it primarily sells trinkets, did also require handling of an ear piercing gun...

I was doing a lady's cartilidge and it went really well until I attempted to move my hand and realised that I couldn't... I have very small hands and had pierced through the spare centimetres at the end of the latex glove and was now attached to the new piercing and needed to be cut free.
She took it very well!