What's the biggest mistake you've made at work? And what was the outcome?
Posted by -WelshCelt-@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 99 comments
I've had a rubbish week, I think I've badly budgeted a project and it's spiraling. Help me Dee better while I rewrite my CV.
JavaRuby2000@reddit
I had to travel to Portugal. I didn't use the office printer much. I sent my ticket to the wrong printer. ended up sending it to a wall mural printer and printed a 3 metre tall ticket.
-WelshCelt-@reddit (OP)
Sorry, but that is hilarious! Was there any blow back?
Mazzerboi@reddit
One of my mates told me today someone on a call with 20+ people wasn’t on mute and said ‘fuck sake could have been an email’ and really embarrassed, so theres that
JavaRuby2000@reddit
At least 19 people on that call agreed with your mate.
-TheHumorousOne-@reddit
I saw on a Reddit comment once a person needed to rip one out. So clicked mute mic, farted, and then mute mic again. However their mic was already muted.
So in fact it looked like someone unmuted their mic just so the team could hear them fart. 😂
GlitteringEbb7363@reddit
To be fair, who hasn't ever thought that in a call with 20+ people?
-WelshCelt-@reddit (OP)
Oh damn! That is embarrassing!
h_424@reddit
2 big mistakes
Being loyal to a company and literally dropping everything to cover shifts
Showing my full potential which leads to them having high expectations and being overworked.
The first mistake they found a replacement because they could pay the person cheaper. And I was literally dropped.
The second mistake was I always expected to have a quick turnaround rate and ended up doing work which I was not paid for.
Key_Plum_99a@reddit
Honestly this wasn’t me, but someone uploaded the November payroll AND December’s payroll to the Bank’s BACs payment system in December, someone else approved the double BACs payment and so everyone (17k people) got paid double on 24th December. It was the CFO’s birthday to boot and was on the front of the Daily Mirror.
I once miss calculated some capital allowances by £1M, but my boss caught it before any harm was caused.
Ordinary_Barber_6260@reddit
Similar vain I once claimed c.£100k capital allowances twice, took a year to notice, and i once claimed a higher amount as an AIA when only standard pool was allowed, HMRC noticed that one.
Not bad for nearly 30 years!
YchYFi@reddit
I sent the wrong orders to the wrong people. Expensive pallet orders.
DownrightDrewski@reddit
One of my colleagues recently shipped 30k of material incorrectly... luckily we're able to arrange collection so it's only costing us transit.
h00dman@reddit
I sent £10k to the wrong client.
It triggered a legal case where we had to spend time and money getting it back.
I thought I was getting fired for certain, so I decided to save my arse by writing a step by step process document highlighting where I went wrong and how others can avoid making my mistake.
It worked and I was saved, but it was only after all that when I discovered what an absolutely tiny amount of money £10k is in the world of finance...
Gullible_fool_99@reddit
In a previosu role I was customer service person for a manufacturing firm. We were in dispute with one of our customers about something and I wrote a very very strongly worded response to one of the customers emails and then sent it to my boss for him to review before sending to the customer. Except I had done a "reply to all" instead of a "forward" so I actually sent my response, expletives and calling in to question the customers parentage and all, to the customer.
My boss called me and told me what I had done and then said "well, I suppose they know our position now so we will see what they come back with".
The customer actually backed down and admitted that we were correct with our stance as well.
BeardSam@reddit
I had an extremely abusive colleague. Like, the sort of person whose funeral you’d attend, to make sure he’s definitely gone rather than mourn. I spoke to our team’s manager to gently bring up how he treated both me and many others in our team Our managers attitude towards me changed overnight and I was let go within a month. Potentially not the optimistic ending you’re hoping for though!
MeltingChocolateAhh@reddit
Sounds like a blessing, not a mistake. You would have been out one way or another.
BeardSam@reddit
In the long term, sure. In the medium term, it took me over a year to get another (non-minimum wage) job and I had to leave the city I love
I think the best scenario for me at the time would've been a rotation into another team (which my then-manager had promised he'd give me). That other team was run by a significantly better manager and had no megalomaniacs
MeltingChocolateAhh@reddit
You're right. That would have been best. But, I see this time and time again. People see the other team, and think life would be better over there because better management etc. But, their own manager will either manage them out of the company (like with you), or they will move to that other team and the management changes again, so now that is no longer the dream team. I could have foresaw this before. I rarely see people move teams in a company and stay happy long enough to make it a worthwhile transition. I think you got saved, despite your employment situation. Everyone has to take on a survival job once in a while.
Superb-Pudding-6532@reddit
About 30 years ago I had a job in an office. Had a old skool PC, with a tower harddrive under my desk. One night I left the fan heater on underneath my desk. Thankfully I didn't burn the office down but I did manage to melt the front of that harddrive with a disc stuck in it. Lost a week's worth of data, my boss was actually really good about it. I always back up my files every night now!
Oh I also saw a 18T truck in at a venue, forgot about the canopy over hang above..... Ripped the whole thing off 😬
-WelshCelt-@reddit (OP)
Trying to workout what costs more. A week of work, data and a new machine or a lorry?
Sleepy_Stupor@reddit
I deleted the database of votes for an international award for a specific industry. There were no backups.
They just made up the results, which is pretty much how most industry awards work anyway.
Many-Giraffe-2341@reddit
I had to do a report for a customer last minute for one of my manager. This involved taking a load of photos.
I didn't agree that I had to do it instead of others so I saved the photos in a 'bullshit' folder.
What I didn't realise, is that when embedding the images to the reports it highlighted that I had saved them in a bullshit folder.
And it was picked up by our customer...
It actually worked to my favour as it highlighted that I was the backstop for everything and I just got a light slap on the wrists 😝
DIY_at_the_Griffs@reddit
Just yesterday I was back to back meetings and double booked. Decided to sack off the group quarterly comms for my project meeting that I was next up. When my previous meeting overran I sent a quick teams message to my next one saying ‘I’ll be 2 mins, overrunning.’ But sent it to group comms with 400+ participants instead of my 5 member project team.
Fortunately I deleted it within a few seconds, called myself out in the overrunning meting and joked about it in the next.
No biggie. Bonus of getting older is fewer fucks given. I’d have been mortified if I did that 10 years ago.
GeoAnchoa@reddit
Doesn’t seem like a large mistake what so ever
DIY_at_the_Griffs@reddit
Yea it wasn’t, just fresh in my mind and having read some of the other responses it’s a bit of a light hearted anecdote.
MintBerryFondue@reddit
I worked in the warehouse and made a rookie mistake by overloading a hand truck trolley until the wheels could barely move. When I stopped, an entire paint container had toppled over and spilled everywhere. My manager was visibly upset because it was a busy day. We were already short staffed for the summer season and the mess created an additional problem we didn’t need. That 10L of paint was meant to be sent out to a contractor that had special ordered it days ago. Out of the 6 that was suppose to be dispatched, we were only able to sent out 4. Nothing happened, but my manager was pissed that week and didn't speak to me.
There was another time where I made a mistake during order fulfillment (pick and pack) work and accidentally included an extra downlight in a customer’s order. I wasn't aware of this error until my manager had flagged it in the database during a stock count. The item was reported as missing, which led the company to suspect a possible internal theft and dispatched a private investigator. Fortunately for me, this turned out to be a one time error. The investigator was unable to find any evidence of theft or negligence and ultimately classified the missing stock as “lost in transit".
bopeepsheep@reddit
An accountant friend of mine mislaid £12m. She said "it's there somewhere" so tried not to be bothered, but then gave up a long weekend and a lot of sleep to locate it by forensic examination of the figures... initially found £4m the first night, but then discovered that was a mistake and they were now looking for £16m! They did find it eventually and before anyone important found out.
I have never been tempted into any job vaguely accounts-like, mostly as a result of this story.
PeeJ_90@reddit
IT here- 5 years ago, I was doing a migration and had to delete all the existing accounts from the new software we are migrating to… I didn’t know people were going to be blasted by an automated email from the vendor saying that their accounts got deleted (the documented process I had shows when the vendor sends out emails, but for this one they didn’t). The issue is we have the same software on prem and I was working on the cloud one… this caused major panic people thought the on prem accounts got deleted, the director got called over the weekend about it. On Sunday morning, I get a text from a colleague asking me to join a call with the senior manager... they took the blame with me so I don’t get fired.
Yesterday, I brought down Dev and didn’t realize it. Today I was OOO and got a call from a colleague telling me what I did and that they fixed it. It took the team a while to figure out what happened and a lot of people got involved, including the vendor. The manager is pissed. So I will see what happens when I am back on Monday. I feel shitty about it, but it is what it is.
BigGreenMeeples@reddit
I used to work at a Boots pharmacy, in one of the bigger stores which sells basically everything. Some old lady came in to return and baby clothes. I scanned them as usual and issued the refund, but when I went to put them out on the rack found out from my colleague that these clothes had not been made in 5 years! The cheek of the old lady, but also she was impressively lucky that the till still rang it through.
ThatNiceDrShipman@reddit
I once set every 'county' value in a customer database to the same value. Over a million records.
I spent the next three hours repairing the damage as best I could (and lecturing myself on backup processes, though this was 20 years ago when it was a little more difficult).
I knew what I had done immediately, as the SQL command that should have taken less than a second just kept on running, and running...
https://community.veeam.com/discussion-boards-66/fun-friday-58-the-onosecond-ohnosecond-4041
NoPair4650@reddit
I pressed the sounds alarm button rather than the accept button on the fire panel and woke up 500 students
Retiredandrelaxed@reddit
Well, it was 2pm and they should have been studying…
NoPair4650@reddit
Luckily it was 5am and there was only me and one other member of staff in
Maleficent_Day_3869@reddit
i work in a nursery. in my first job i had no training and didnt know i couldn’t speak about other children to parents
a kid got bitten and i told the parent ‘daniel bit him’. the parent proceeded to find daniel’s mother and start a fight with him. i cried in the managers office that day
venuscans@reddit
This is absolutely hilarious.
ArtisticWatch@reddit
This one still haunts me
I used to do the tanoy system on a customer service desk at a supermarket. This was my first real job out of college and they gave you 0 training.
A customer came up to me frantically with a crying child saying she had lost her parents and I put on the Tanoy "Could parents of XXXX please come to the service desk"
My manager came storming over that I couldn't say that as someone could come and steal the child claiming them as their own.
I got a bollocking and a warning but kept my job. Honestly the role wasn't for me and paid crap but it kept me afloat until I found a new job.
sgehall21@reddit
I don't particularly see the problem with this, when adult shows up, the staff can just ask the child to confirm that this is in fact their parent before letting them take them away
DIY_at_the_Griffs@reddit
‘Mike Hunt’ please report to ‘Hugh Janus’
Cactus-Cat1@reddit
Smoking out the call centre window as was on my own at 10pm at night. (I was a stupid immature 19 year old at the time)... My manager checked the cameras... bye bye job.
Just_A_some1@reddit
Sending ambulances when they should have gone for validation, or not sending ambulances when they didn’t need validating (the later was always resolved within a minute or two). So far no bad outcomes as far as I know!
Formal-Proposal7850@reddit
Once entered a very large sale into the system with two more zeroes at the end of the agreed purchase price; they caught it when the client reached out to accounts receivable and asked them to remake the invoice. Nbd.
But not before the sales’ guy’s commission had been calculated, also with an extra zero on it. And he had quit …
NorthernMonkey71@reddit
I was demoted after being accused of hacking the the new work system that was being put in place.
It was back in 1991/2 and a company called Wang (no lie!) were called in to update the direct debit systems, at a cost of around £1-2M.
I was just an admin clerk in a new, small DD department, but managed to increase production using simple spreadsheet macro's on Lotus 123, and got a few nice bonuses.
Because the Wang system kept on crashing, an investigation showed that I'd been accessing the back end of the software. Because I was the computer savvy office person, the blame spotlight shone on me. I had no defense because I had access, and did have the odd look at what was happening, but didn't change anything because I had no idea what was going on, I was just curious.
Yeah, I was demoted.
I went off sick for 3 months (paid) and then quit.
The company folded a few years later and the Wang system was never implemented.
I'm not at all bitter.
MeltingChocolateAhh@reddit
Retail. Someone wanted to return something while buying something else with a gift card. I ended up putting money onto his gift card, and I noticed I did it before he even left the till. I don't remember exactly how I did it because it was so long ago. I got the manager over. My shift happened to be ending anyway. The manager hated me so I was certain I was going out of the door for the last time but she was actually alright about it, and just said it was an error on my part. I didn't try to avoid the issue, and I apologised for any drama caused.
Forward_Opposite_789@reddit
I was once breaking out the concrete floor in a bathroom for a shower tray and went through the mains power to the flat. This was Friday afternoon, anyway the electrician was called and I went home for the weekend. On Monday morning I found out the electrician drilled through the main water to the whole block of flats and flooded a few floors. As you can imagine the tenant of the flat wasn't happy and didn't want us back in the flat.
MeltingChocolateAhh@reddit
Once years ago, my mum reported a toilet that hadn't been bolted down properly to the housing association. They sent someone out who just banged in the biggest bolt he could find. Went through a pipe. Ruined our ceiling downstairs. His colleagues came out and fixed the pipe (and the toilet again). My mum was not one bit mad at the guy, and joked about it when his boss and colleagues came over, and even asked for them not to have a go at him or anything. Hopefully he didn't get in too much trouble!
BigSkyFace@reddit
I'm sure I've done worse in my time, but knocking a full glass washer tray of glasses onto the floor at my first job felt world ending at the time. It happened primarily because someone else balanced the tray on top of another tray, but everyone went quiet about that part and just pinned the blame solely on me for it. For the rest of the shift all my colleagues were giving me so much shit about it and talking about the cost getting docked from my wages. 17 year old me was panicking about how much money I was about to lose, but thankfully my boss just laughed it off and told me he wasn't expecting me to pay for it.
OwineeniwO@reddit
At least 4 hours of about 12 people's work all ruined because of the incorrect ingredient.
uncertain_expert@reddit
I invalidated a $1M pharmaceutical batch by not having the data collection running whilst it was being made up. The batch was good, but no documentation means no sale.
Eisenhorn_UK@reddit
Meth is a heck of an industry.
lilmel0n@reddit
Accidentally wrote my birthday instead of the days date when signing an MG11... Tbf it was September and my birthday, also in September, was only a week later
Fun-Swimmer2998@reddit
My mum ordered 300 bottles of shampoo in stead of 30.
ThePodd222@reddit
Why was she ordering 30?
Fun-Swimmer2998@reddit
She worked at a psychiatric hospital. 😀
5h0D10n@reddit
My biggest work mistake is accepting a job in software QA 18 years ago
Plus_Pangolin_8924@reddit
Same here. I do one worse: Salesforce QA. It’s if someone went you know what would make a bread and butter sandwich better? Sand. Lots and lots of sand. Trapped in this hell forever more.
Less_Pie_7218@reddit
As a fellow qa I understand!!
-WelshCelt-@reddit (OP)
Might be a dull question. What is Software QA?
5h0D10n@reddit
Software Quality Assurance, software testing, testing products to ensure they meet customer requir…….fuck me I’m even bored writing this 😂
-WelshCelt-@reddit (OP)
Well. Sounds pretty interesting to me. But I didn't even know what it was haha! I've been in my job 12 years I feel the same telling people though
5h0D10n@reddit
What do you do?
-WelshCelt-@reddit (OP)
I'm project manager for a media company. I’m a professional wrangler of schedules, budgets, and egos
5h0D10n@reddit
Ah your the bells who keep shortening our timescales and moaning at us for not getting releases out quick enough! 😂
-WelshCelt-@reddit (OP)
You got me! I'm sorry. If it's any consolation, I hate it.
5h0D10n@reddit
😂 best of luck with your next steps
EvilTaffyapple@reddit
In the first 2 week of working in a bank I gave away £22k to a fraudster.
It was so bad I had to be investigated as they thought it was an inside job (it wasn’t).
Turns out I followed the correct process but he has fake ID for the name on the account. He was just good and happened to target the new guy.
Educational_Corgi809@reddit
Many years ago I watched a fraudster talk my boss out of £100, the guy was so confidentand smooth. About 5 min after he left my boss went i think have just be conned. Still chuckle about it when I bump into him
Zephinism@reddit
Someone had reported that one floor of one of our offices in Hatfield was having WiFi issues so I decided to restart the network. Somehow I restarted the network at every single regional office, at Head Office and at over 500 sites across the country.
I got a bollocking for inconveniencing the CEO and I had to write the procedure on how to correctly restart part of a mesh network.
DIY_at_the_Griffs@reddit
My mate put down the site distribution list email address instead of his supervisors email address for a job reference, so everyone got a request for reference for him 😂 including the General Manager 🤣
SamVimesBootTheory@reddit
It was on a work placement so not paid but at a hotel once I once accidentally smashed 20 something pieces of crockery
I was bussing the cart back into the kitchen and didn't push the door hard enough so it swung back and the kickplate hit the cart and a bunch of stuff got smashed, didn't get into trouble for it somehow.,
OhMyEnglishTeaBags@reddit
I work in IT and I took out the Internet briefly for 1500 users. It was so quick, about 20 seconds that nobody even noticed.
Realistic-Muffin-165@reddit
Something similar happened at my old place in slightly less security conscious times. The pen tester took out production and then wouldn't tell us what he did.
Our server people were a lot more vigilant about patching after that.
tmr89@reddit
smoulderstoat@reddit
I sent an email to a lot of senior management that said "Good morning, here is the latest count." At least, it was meant to say that, in fact I missed out a crucial letter.
smoulderstoat@reddit
Then there was the time I put a customer on hold, called switchboard and said "Can you put this incredibly annoying man through to Europe Sales, please?"
It was at this point I discovered I had not, in fact, put him on hold.
smoulderstoat@reddit
Then there was the time when I was a train conductor and there was a bit of disruption. A complex plan was put into place to recover part of the service which involved having a train stopped out of course so I could get off and pick up the remainder of my job. All I had to do was remember to get off. I forgot to get off.
It was around this time I was offered my first job in management.
smoulderstoat@reddit
Oh, and I once set fire to myself on a fire safety course.
flyingokapis@reddit
This is the best one!
nonoanddefinitelyno@reddit
I sent the previous issue of a magazine to print.
72,000 copies of a 112pp magazine.
Client unhappy.
yossanator@reddit
Ooh, that's a doozy. What was the outcome?
tmr89@reddit
Fired, surely
-WelshCelt-@reddit (OP)
Lotta people suffered from déjà vu
Embarrassed-Zebra224@reddit
Ahaha
berbakay@reddit
I brought down production today so I’m feeling pretty shitty too!
purple_yui@reddit
In my last job, I didn't expand an email from a Sales rep with order amendments for their customer fully. I released the whole large order instead when the customer was actually requesting it on a delivery schedule. 🙈
hp17nw@reddit
Charged a customer a further £2000 rather than refunding them £2000 by mistake. I had to call and explain my error, luckily they were lovely about it but I felt sick due to the amount and thinking that could well have been all of someone’s money and they’d have been stuck for a few days waiting for the refunds to process.
MrMikeylad@reddit
Got caught slacking off my remote job for a few hours now and again. Think I’ll get the sack, applying already
WeeklyPermission239@reddit
How badly did you slack off and how did they catch you?
P121SJK@reddit
Not me but my old manager… pierced an IBC of chemicals hospitalising the whole working team at that time with chemical burns. Oncoming shifts for the next 6 weeks had to work in full face masks.
Kindly_Buy_1891@reddit
This makes me forgetting to book a room for an extra person for a conference mild. I used to be in charge of designing & printing a catalogue with a huge print run for a significant event. One year it got delivered on time but locked in a room. No one knew… I knew it was there but no one else did. Another time the printer said it wouldn’t be ready on time. Sales Director went nuts. It happened!
Disastrous-Place-846@reddit
Wrote a lorry off.
-WelshCelt-@reddit (OP)
Accident or something mechanical?
Disastrous-Place-846@reddit
Pulled out at a roundabout without checking properly. Oh, I also wrote off the car of the person who I collided with
Adventurous-Idea1473@reddit
fucked up some contract admin and cost the business 100k+ worth of work and 10k in legal advice
TheLightStalker@reddit
Accidentally defrosted £4,000 worth of products.
-WelshCelt-@reddit (OP)
Awwtch! What happened?
TheLightStalker@reddit
Put them in the lift and sent them up assuming as planned that a colleague would put them away. They did not as agreed put them away. It was a supervisor who dumped the blame on me.
They opened up in the morning a called the lift and it was full of.. oh dear.
RhubarbImmediate7007@reddit
I stopped granny from breathing during her grand daughter’s wedding by giving her a bit too much morphine..
HamsterEagle@reddit
I wrote a,script to check that all of a customers orders had been written to their accounting package. Somewhere I had an equals when it should have been a does not equal, or vice versa. I managed to put their accounts out by £500k. I spent the whole bank holiday weekend reversing the transactions. No real repercussions other than being punished by still having to work in IT 10 to 15 years later.
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