Biggest Mess Ups in Work

titan18 · 07-09-2015 05:55PM #1

I'll assume everyone has messed up once, but what was your biggest mistake. Today I overwrote 4 years of data and don't have a backup. Anyone else have anything spectacular?

donutheadhomer · 07-09-2015 06:13PM

titan18 wrote: »

I'll assume everyone has messed up once, but what was your biggest mistake. Today I overwrote 4 years of data and don't have a backup. Anyone else have anything spectacular?

I sent 4 x 40ft containers to collect 4 x 5kg boxes once. Tied up the whole street in London for hours. It was a genuine error

Same job but not my error - guy in the warehouse read the part number on a pallet and sent the whole pallet to someone. They were to get a single graphics card.

alpha_a · 07-09-2015 06:14PM

titan18 wrote: »

I'll assume everyone has messed up once, but what was your biggest mistake. Today I overwrote 4 years of data and don't have a backup. Anyone else have anything spectacular?

Nightmare. Lose your job?

Ruu · 07-09-2015 06:15PM

Summer job on a farm. Was washing the top of a cooler full of meat, some water spilled down the side and onto the power switch/electrical/cooling components. It made a loud buzzing for a while and I tried to dry it off but gave me a bit of a shock. I turned off the power and I legged it home and hoped for the best.

Next morning, the owner said she nearly lost a few hundred pounds worth of meat because the power was turned off but luckily all was okay!

Stheno · 07-09-2015 06:15PM

My team accidentally deleted every user account in the company

titan18 · 07-09-2015 06:16PM

alpha_a wrote: »

Nightmare. Lose your job?

Well, I hope not.

titan18 · 07-09-2015 06:17PM

Stheno wrote: »

My team accidentally deleted every user account in the company

I could see myself do that

Mint Sauce · 07-09-2015 06:20PM

Awaits Dav.

Peregrine · 07-09-2015 06:30PM

I only have an almost mess up. I scanned a barcode while manually inputting the price for something else. It took the code as the price and I nearly made a ~€160,000 sale in a small shop.

I do hope there was an upper limit for transactions in case I hadn't realised my mistake.

The_Valeyard · 07-09-2015 06:32PM

Once a mutated radioactive spider got loose and bit a kid. Hopefully he is okay.

Yurt · 07-09-2015 06:45PM

Was working in the billing section of a well known electricity provider on my college placement and I had to manually put in the rates of electricity when billing a commercial account.The rate should have been something like 0.0087 and it was a long day and somehow i managed to put in 10.0087 and the bill that should have went out for a few hundred went out for a few million.Luckily the system noticed something fishy and didn't apply it but the paper bill still went out.

dodderangler · 07-09-2015 06:46PM

Took an engine out of a 08 audi but took engine out of the wrong car and car I took engine out of was only in service
Both audi were 08s black and a4
Customer wasn't too happy

actuar90 · 07-09-2015 06:47PM

One time i accidently dated a file 11/12/15 rather than 12/11/15, mortified i was

gramar · 07-09-2015 06:48PM

It wasn't the biggest mess up but I had to order mirrors once for a clothing store.
I ordered them in cm's but they took the measurements to be in mm.
I went to collect them and got three mirrors handed to me the size of a match box.

littleteapot · 07-09-2015 06:57PM

I accidentally deleted the entire database for the shop i was working in when I tried to add a new employee to the till system. We had to close the shop for an hour because we couldn't process sales. Eventually we had to gear up all the staff with calculators, receipt books and open till drawers while the IT department tried to fix the database. To make matters worse, it was a Sunday so all the IT staff were off, and they were based in Dublin while the shop was in Galway, so they had to send someone the whole way down to Galway that day. I really thought I was going to get the sack but I didn't.

ThisRegard · 07-09-2015 07:34PM

titan18 wrote: »

I'll assume everyone has messed up once, but what was your biggest mistake. Today I overwrote 4 years of data and don't have a backup. Anyone else have anything spectacular?

The biggest mistake here was made by your sys and DB admins, unless you're also that person?

Icaras · 07-09-2015 07:44PM

Ordered some equipement (with the suppliers sales rep) for £8000 - was the wrong size and didnt fit the machine, sent them back to be resized at cost because the sales rep had a hand in the order which was about another £2000, still didnt f#cking fit. Had to get an other company to come in and do some work to make them fit, another £1000 give or take.

I walked with a limp for the next few months.

KERSPLAT! · 07-09-2015 07:45PM

Working as a sparks and we were pulling in Cat V cables, they're numbered on each end so you know what cable has gone where and what it'll be used for etc.

Well it was my first week and I had just bought a new snips. After pulling in about 150/200 cables I thought to myself, wouldn't it be a great idea to cut all those cables to the same length, to tidy them up like... ended up cutting all the numbers off one end and had to spend hours belling them out and figuring out which was which. Told the boss I hadn't a clue what happened

Buona Fortuna · 07-09-2015 08:01PM

Not me but someone who used to work for me back in the day.

The chap was sending a confidential report (like really holy sh1t confidential) by e-mail. I know not the greatest plan. To make matters worse we were all on dial up and had Lotus Notes as the e-mail agent.

The guy looks up the HR guy who should have had the report, and for some reason he added @Company. The result was that this thing went to everyone.

He phoned me as he'd realised there was a problem because he put a reciept on it. After the first 1200 he realised he wasn't going just bluff it out. He then got all the replies from people saying why have I got this.

I phoned my boss, who thankfully went to voicemail and pointed out that we may have caused him a little embarrassment. He left me a rather caustic voicemail too.

But as they say "Ya can't put the sh1t back in the donkey".

banquo · 07-09-2015 08:04PM

Part of my Newsagent job in college was to refill the Slush Puppy machine in the morning. Like Ribena etc, you had a big jug of concentrate you'd add water to. We kept it under the sink.

One day we had a new, green jug of concentrate under the sink. Long story short, I accidentally made a full Slush Puppy mix based on Flash Floor Cleaner.

Nobody died. Thank Christ.

Stheno · 07-09-2015 08:06PM

Buona Fortuna wrote: »

Not me but someone who used to work for me back in the day.

The chap was sending a confidential report (like really holy sh1t confidential) by e-mail. I know not the greatest plan. To make matters worse we were all on dial up and had Lotus Notes as the e-mail agent.

The guy looks up the HR guy who should have had the report, and for some reason he added @Company. The result was that this thing went to everyone.

He phoned me as he'd realised there was a problem because he put a reciept on it. After the first 1200 he realised he wasn't going just bluff it out. He then got all the replies from people saying why have I got this.

I phoned my boss, who thankfully went to voicemail and pointed out that we may have caused him a little embarrassment. He left me a rather caustic voicemail too.

But as they say "Ya can't put the sh1t back in the donkey".

Ha that reminds me one place I worked in the head of infrastructure decided to move across to development

A few months later there was a big infrastructure outage and I sent an update email to the entire company

The now developer decided to reply saying "that wouldn't have happened when I was head " but instead of sending it to me he hit reply all lol

Stheno · 07-09-2015 08:07PM

banquo wrote: »

Part of my Newsagent job in college was to refill the Slush Puppy machine in the morning. Like Ribena etc, you had a big jug of concentrate you'd add water to. We kept it under the sink.

One day we had a new, green jug of concentrate under the sink. Long story short, I accidentally made a full Slush Puppy mix based on Flash Floor Cleaner.

Nobody died. Thank Christ.

Did you accidentally sell some?

banquo · 07-09-2015 08:08PM

Another one. I once almost deleted all of a very well known tabloid newspaper hours before it was due to go to print. Few DB admins were able to come in and save the day.

5W30 · 07-09-2015 08:15PM

I needed to print 40 An Post shipping labels and ended up printing the exact same label 40 times (same tracking code, etc).

Robsweezie · 07-09-2015 08:28PM

nudes on the office computers

Sofa King Great · 07-09-2015 08:40PM

Hit a wrong button and sent a batch of letters for automatic print and distribution to 17,000 customers. The emails weren't supposed to be in use as they were contrary to various consumer codes and this particular place had been told not to use them by the ombudsman.

Luckily the guys stuffing envelopes looked in to it when their daily workload increased to 34 times its usual amount.

My excuse was that it highlighted a system issue as I shouldn't have been able to do it

tomwaterford · 07-09-2015 08:42PM

Seen a lad putting the forks of a forklift through a full 1000litre drum of oil one day

Worst I did myself years ago when I doing apprenticeship dumped e500 worth of parts-taught it was rubbish :O

Wanderer78 · 07-09-2015 08:52PM

scraped a couple of grands worth of product in one go. nice! fook it they can afford it

dellas1979 · 07-09-2015 08:53PM

Biggest mistake?

Hooking up with people from the office.

Elessar · 07-09-2015 08:58PM

Worked in an internet cafe (remember those!) when I was a naive 18 year old . This german chap came in one evening to send a 12 page fax to Germany. Not knowing how to properly charge him I charged him the full 2 euro per page. He nearly dropped dead but paid up anyway.

10 mins later he storms back in saying his mate received the fax - but all the pages were blank. I put them in the wrong way! I thought he was going to go ape**** but he just calmly asked for his money back then left.

I still cringe whenever I think about it

eeguy · 07-09-2015 08:58PM

I worked in a chip van when I was younger.

At a particularly busy gig I was working at full tilt and accidentally knocked a large knife into the fryer.

I thought nothing of it until I noticed globs of melted black plastic stuck to the chips as they came out.
The knife handle melted.

We were so busy I couldn't stop cooking, so I just did my best to pick the large globs off the chips and hoped people thought the smaller bits were crispy chips.

No one said anything...

Biggest Mess Ups in Work

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