What's the biggest mistake you've made at work?

Talliesin

Didn't acknowledge that the degree to which I was sick meant that there was zero chance of a project getting completed. Kept struggling to get it done anyway. Hence made very little progress on the project and made myself much more sick.
Client lost money, I lost client and was too ill to do more work for a long time, hence losing me more money.

Rb

I've never made a mistake in any job I've had, not once.

netwhizkid

eamoss wrote:

Ah at the taught of sounding stupid ah what does she do? Does she s.hit her self?

No it is not the Girl in the corner, but from the looks of it a dopey plumber or hot tub maintenance fellow who sent either dirty water or sewage up the pipes into the Hot Tub. Note she says at the start, "Is thing going to take long" ? How terrible for her as it floods into the tub.

matrim

I was working in a call center, the phone rang and I looked at the number. Thinking it was one of my friends, I answered the phone "Alright sh1thead". It turns out it wasn't and was a manager of a different department looking for help. I was lucky that your man say the funny side and didn't report it to my boss or I would have been in big trouble.

Another time I was got a job in a kitchen in a hotel in Germany. I don't speak german and only 2 of the chefs speak english. On my second day, the chef told me to throw something out. I threw it in the bin and kept working.
A couple of hours later, he asked me where it was and when I told him he went mental and started screaming at me in German. Then told me I was fired. When I was leaving the other chef came up to me and told me that what I had thrown out was 500 euro worth of some special pate and I was only meant to put it away. The first chef had said it wrong because his english wasn't great.

Reaver772

Luckly i wasn't the one who did it but about two years ago one of the managers wrote down the wrong number on the paperwork (a 4 became a -25) and didn't notice it until the next day, approximately ten tonnes of computer parts were turned into ice cubes.

gary the great

matrim wrote:

I was working in a call center, the phone rang and I looked at the number. Thinking it was one of my friends, I answered the phone "Alright sh1thead". It turns out it wasn't and was a manager of a different department looking for help. I was lucky that your man say the funny side and didn't report it to my boss or I would have been in big trouble.
QUOTE]



SAme thing happended me, was working in an office and one of my mates sent me a text askin was it ok to ring me on my work phone (cos its cheaper than ringing a mobile), i said ye work away. 2 seconds later the phone rings and i answer "hello youve reached gay sex chat, how may i be of serivce" in a really gay voice and then start laughing, but quickly realised it wasnt my mate but the voice of our biggest client! I hung up straight away and pretended nothing happended. A few seconds later she rang back and she asked did i just answer the phone, of course i said "no, you must of dialled a wrong number"

NUTLEY BOY

Two patients in the same hospital with the same names who both die around the same time.

Yes, you've guessed it. Each set of undertakers was given the wrong body. It gets worse, one of the bodies was buried before the mistake was realised. Good job they had no opted for cremation...

No, I didn't do it but I think I know who did....Tut Tut:)

angeldelight

Nothing too major but when I was working in a call centre doing market research over the summer I kept forgetting what survey I was on :

"hi my name's Stella and i'm calling from .... we're just doing a survey on mobile phones today and I was wondering if you'd have a few minutes?" then they say yes and I go forward on the system, look at the screen and "actually really sorry about this but it's about the garage where you bought your new car recently... would you still be interested in taking part?".

people usually presumed I was taking the piss and hung up so I'd just code it as "engaged" and let someone else call them back!

Or the surveys where it's important not to let people know who is doing the survey as the company don't want to be identified and my intro was hi we're doing a survey on behalf of XYZ would you be interested in taking part? Erm no just a survey on mobile phones actually, in general, sort of..."

Mr Magnolia

Crashed the boss's new car - €5k damage.

ekevosu

Sparks400 wrote:

Crashed the boss's new car - €5k damage.

A good few years back when I was a first year in college I was working on a building site during the summer. My boss needed beams transported to a different part of the site so he asked me could I drive? I had recently started and was on a provisional so I said I could. On the way over I went in to a big pothole and heard a bump but thought nothing of it as it was a normal pothole bump. It was at the end of the day and my brother was waiting to pick me up so I parked the car, ran to where the boss was and handed him the keys before driving away with the brother. It was only the next day that I discovered I'd destroyed the bumper off the front of the car and it looked liked I'd ran withut telling him. All I got was a mumble from him. He was fairly screwing me in wages anyway.........

Dimitri

I rolled over two belfast sinks with a forklift in front of my manager! they were bought at e550 each but a retail price had not been put on them yet!!

delop

Not mine,

But 2 year's I was Sailing in the MED, and I met the head of Police of Paris and his wife, we got talking and he said he was speaking at a conference a few Yrs ago in Dublin about the North, the Big Wiggs from The Met in London the PSNI in the North and of course our own boys the Gardai...

Now you must understand his English is ok, but his still french and so when he took the podium to speak he started off by saying ' Im delighted to he here in friendly free ireland' ( Of course he ment Rep of). There was a Gasp in the room, Some red faced PSNI guys and A couple of Gardai giggling in the Front...

Classic...

Siogfinsceal

Few years ago before I was driving I used to have to get lifts from my boss. She had just spent a lot on a brand new jeep and stopped at the petrol station- I was going into the shop so she gave me money and asked me to fill it up. Diesel jeep - I filled it with petrol.

When I was about 16 I worked in a shop. the bosses son was my manager and he and his friends were always prank calling me in the shop. One day a guy phoned with a dodgy oriental accent complaining about food we had delivered and coming out with strange phrases - after about 5 minutes I yelled 'look do you really think I am going to fall for it again man I dont think so now f*ck off and stop annoying me you twat'.

few minutes later the phone rang again, the boss answered it and said he was very interested to knoe what exactly I had said to one of his customers - the owner of the local chinese..........

ast

Missing the mute button on my phone when telling a college to f**k off. I continued the phone conversation with the customer as if nothing happened. I really don’t know what the customer made of it because they said nothing about it.

Other than that nothing memorable.

danger_mouse_tm

reading these posts reminds me of more job bloopers i have done!

First job i had was an assistant to a landscape gardner on a big posh estate. It was that big, that instead of a wheelbarrow i had a dumptruck. While the boss was away one of the farm girls asked me if she could have a go driving it. I put it into 1st gear for her and let her roll it forward. when she ran out of road ai pushed the stick out of gear and let her put it into reverse herself. She imediately slammed on the gas and sent the truck up onto a big beautiful rose bush - and destroyed it!

While working in a warehouse, i got a delivery in 5 minutes before quitting time. big 40 foot trailer with 20 pallets of cardboard. Was in no mood to start pulling these off the back of the truck with a hand pallet truck - so i went and grabbed the fork lift and drove onto the back of the trailer, and dropped the forklift out through the floor of the trailer - two hours later we had the forklift out of the trailer!

dr strangelove

Many years ago i was working for a small engineering company in the UK. One of the directors was going away to Kenya for a month, and as the project we were working on was pretty much going to be put on hold for the month he was away, i decided to take three weeks holiday as well.
He asked me to drop him off and pick him up from the airport and in return i could have his car - a top of the range Ford Grenada - while he was away.
So, having a decent car now, i decided my holiday would be a driving tour of Scotland with the missus, which was great.
About 6 months later i overheard the company secretary having a shouting match with aforementioned director asking him to explain an additional 2000 miles on the car, which he couldn't.
Thank jebus he never figured out where those extra miles came from.

lafors

Worst 2 were in no particluar order

1. Broke a part for our tool worth $250k (bloody thing is only about 8"x6"..but its made of quartz glass with a chrome pattern and very high quality lenses embedded in it, high precision to say the least)......Not a popular thing to do.

2. Broke a customers master wafer and a robot arm in the process. That was just under $50k for the wafer and $14k for the arm....Nice.

As I said, why worry, its not like I killed someone.

RoyalMarine

bit fo a stupid one really, but i was working in a call centre in waterford, and while talking to a customer, i was playing a game at the same time,...
the customer was a pretty important customer, and had a big reputation...

i told him i need to put him on hold as he was a bit irate over the phone convo with the last agent, who was from india and didnt really help him apart from fobbing him off for an hour or 2...

so i hit the hold button, and sat back in the chair... bored out of my mind, i sent a pm to the coach, who came over. told him what was going on,and he told me what we needed to do.. took about 30 mins to get it sorted... so i un muted him and told him whats going on... he said he would wait, and i refused. telling him to ring back.. he refused because he told me that he didnt want to talk to any more indians...

so i agreed... back on hold!!

sitting in the chair, i got a few pm's from a few m8's telling me whats wrong etc?? and whats going on...
so i told them... basically they were sitting in the training room, and listening into the call....
now, oblivious to my knowledge, the customer was on the line, while it was on hold, cursing more than ive heard in my life!!

apparently they were listening to a random call, for training reasons, and picked mine! so there's me, swivilling in my chair, the training lads listening in to my call, laughing their heads off, so i took him off hold and had a bit of fun...
he went balistic when i told him we need to transfer his call to the indian call centre for technical reasons...
after i calmed him down, he was apologetic and calmed down and had a chat while we waited... 10 mins later the fire alarm went off for a fire drill, and we all got the message to tell the customers on the line we really had to transfer them all to the indian call centre due to a fire drill....

*gulp* so i told him.... he kind of understood as he could hear the fire alarm....
so he hung up... with a curse on his breath...


the day went on fine.... about 10 mins before my shift ended, i answered the phone....
LOW ANBD BEHOLD HIM AGAIN!!!
this time he had his lawyer on the phone with him telling me that he wants to sue for time wasting him etc....
after about an hour more we setteled on sending a rep to his house to sort out his problem with the business....

how was i to know he was recording the convo, and could hear me taking the piss out of him.... also he knew i was lying about transfering him to the indian call centre....
i was dragged into the boss office, and they played the whole convo in front of me....
i was fair red faced when i really heard what i was saying and doing on the phone!!!!

WHOOPS!

Hail 2 Da Chimp

lafors wrote:

2. Broke a customers master wafer and a robot arm in the process. That was just under $50k for the wafer and $14k for the arm....Nice.

Im guessing someone works in Intel...

While on work placement I caused about 9 wafers to be scrapped which cost about €25k each... D'oh! Nothing was said as I wasnt trained to look for this particular defect...

freewing

Many years ago when I was a lad I got a job in a car dealers . Mainly I was just sweeping up and that sort of thing but the boss told me to give one of the brand new cars a going over with the pressure washer. At the time new cars had a coating on them to stop sea-salt getting into the paintwork while in transit and I was told to mix some detergent called Dewax and use it through the pressure washer. So I mixed it with water at a ratio of about 50:50 ( the correct mix would be 100 parts water to 1 part Dewax) , Anyway I stripped the paint off the car down to the bare metal but I didnt notice til I was about half way through.
Needless to say I wasn't invited to the christmas party.
I also mistakingly put a car into reverse instead of first and shot backwards into a wall .The owner of the Jag wasn't too impressed

SystemError

I booked 2 seperate people on the same tour and charged them different amounts by mistake. By the time I realised they had already gone. They met whilst on the trip and found out.

Also forgot to advise about flight time changes, left a group of 50 clients in Italy !

Took the wrong amout off a clients credit card, instead of 500 I added an extra 0 and took 5000 !

Tobias Greeshman

SystemError wrote:

I booked 2 seperate people on the same tour and charged them different amounts by mistake. By the time I realised they had already gone. They met whilst on the trip and found out.

Also forgot to advise about flight time changes, left a group of 50 clients in Italy !

Took the wrong amout off a clients credit card, instead of 500 I added an extra 0 and took 5000 !

ha!! very fitting username though

h2s

dr strangelove wrote:

Many years ago i was working for a small engineering company in the UK. One of the directors was going away to Kenya for a month, and as the project we were working on was pretty much going to be put on hold for the month he was away, i decided to take three weeks holiday as well.
He asked me to drop him off and pick him up from the airport and in return i could have his car - a top of the range Ford Grenada - while he was away.
So, having a decent car now, i decided my holiday would be a driving tour of Scotland with the missus, which was great.
About 6 months later i overheard the company secretary having a shouting match with aforementioned director asking him to explain an additional 2000 miles on the car, which he couldn't.
Thank jebus he never figured out where those extra miles came from.

LOL - Class