Thursday, October 1, 2020

Times People Really Screwed Up at Work


Humans aren't perfect, so naturally we're bound to make mistakes at work. It's when we're using expensive tools, or facing ten angry customers that a really big screw-up can have some extreme consequences. In the right field of work, one misplaced screw or faulty measurement can turn into literally millions of dollars of losses. We try not to think about those.

1.

Text - khendron 91 points · 3 hours ago I love telling this story... Back in the floppy disk, pre-Internet days of computers I was tasked by my job to do a software installation onboard a coast guard ice breaker. I flew from Ottawa to Halifax. Then I caught a taxi to CFB Shearwater, from where a twin otter flew me 1000 km north to a little town on the border of Quebec and Labrador. From there I was flown by helicopter to do an at sea landing on the ice breaker. After landing I went down to the e

2.

Text - OfTheAtom 17.9k points · 9 hours ago · edited 8 hours ago Controls Engineer. Made a copy paste error while programming and a 2 was a 3. So one machine tagged at 3 was waiting for conditions of 2. So naturally the lift moved when it thought it should and crashed into another machine. Course I'm Having to stand there figuring out the issue while maintenance is up there replacing busted parts. But because I've made a thousand changes it didnt click fast enough and well... it happened again.

3.

Text - JPDLD 16.6k points · 8 hours ago · edited 4 hours ago I dropped a screw inside the engine (edit:motor) of a TGV train. Oh god. We spent half an hour trying to catch it by moving a magnetic stick inside the crankshaft, with oil spilling everywhere. The engine was new and about to be mounted on a train that was supposed to run later in the day, I was so terrified I would possibly cause quite a lot of trouble since no other train or engine was available. Shoutout to my manager who finally go

4.

Text - 1_art_please 11.4k points · 8 hours ago During the first week of my first job in animation after i graduated i had to move a bunch of scene files from one server to another. The files were heavy so i was told to just cut and paste them to make it faster. I accidentally put them in a wrong area and without thinking just deleted them, went back to move the files again..they werent there, i had forgotten i hadn't copied them. I lost 5 minutes of full animation, my long time friend who recomm

5.

Text - spaceduckcoast2coast 9.1k points · 8 hours ago Working the stock room at MalWart, grabbed a pepsi pallet with the forklift and didn't realize it was a short pallet. The forks came out the other side and through to the pallet of glass coke bottles it was up against. When I lifted the pepsi, the coke came up with it and dumped the entire unwrapped pallet of glass bottles spilling all that sticky soda on the floor. That mess was hell to clean up. However the vendor had to eat the cost becaus

6.

Text - Grande_Yarbles 8.4k points · 8 hours ago 2 Years ago I worked in an office and had a very cool boss who was the general manager. He and I were quite close and used to joke around all the time. I had been corresponding with a fairly important customer overseas about an issue they were having and I needed information from her to move forward. I asked for info a few times but she kept coming back with different details than what we needed. I sent an email to my boss saying something like, "I

7.

Text - themarmotreturns 5.1k points · 9 hours ago e 8 2 Extention ladder slipped out from under me. I was less than 6 feet off the floor. My left leg went into the rungs and snapped my femur.

8.

Text - anexistentialpeanut 4.8k points · 9 hours ago My first day working at a coffe shop I left my sharpie in the oven. Finally found it while trying to warm a sandwich and had to shut the whole thing down to be cleaned. It smelled like a chemical weapon.

9.

Text - thebirdbrain 172 points · 6 hours ago I worked in a nice steakhouse. First week, I accidentally put salt in the sugar bowls and sugar in the salt shakers. Customers started to complain about their sweet steaks and salty coffees. We had to pull all the salt and sugar from each table. My last day as a waiter.

10.

Text - veemon657 4.0k points · 10 hours ago Slammed a forklift into a camaro

11.

Text - Severedparadox 3.0k points · 10 hours ago · edited 2 hours ago Mixed bleach and ammonia. Had to evacuate the restaurant Edit: My first award! Thank you kind stranger. I never knew my first job fuck up would pay off like this. To clarify, we had a soaking agent for the silverware that didn't know was ammonia based, and I mixed it with bleach and water because I figured if I was bleaching the kitchen drains I might as well use something that'll foam up and take the mildew with it.

12.

Text - MikeRabsitch 2.8k points · 8 hours ago 3 2 I was new to SQL and accidentally mailed a list of people with deceased_date IS NOT NULL instead of IS NULL. So an entire marketing campaign was sent to dead people. That eventually led to our marketing tools being hard-coded not to mail dead people (which makes sense) but I was terrified when I found out.

13.

Text - ShadyAidyX 2.8k points · 5 hours ago Accidentally left out the "MoveNext" method on a loop that sent out an email broadcast, which meant it mailbombed the first recipient in the loop until we realised what was happening and killed the process. The CEO's email was the first email address in the loop. He was an arsehole anyway, and was absolutely incoherent with rage when his outlook crashed when downloading 15,000 emails inviting him to take a satisfaction survey. Good thing it was only a

14.

Text - cricketzzz 1.9k points · 8 hours ago i work as an apprentice in an IT & printer repair office, we had a tech apprentice last year who finished his education and sent out an email to everyone (around 20 people including management) saying that it was his last day and thank you to everyone. we got along pretty well, were around the same aqe and we both HATED our jobs and how we were treated so i replied with that "god i wish that were me" deviantart comment meme. realized an hour later i hi

15.

Text - TheMidnightScorpion 1.5k points · 10 hours ago Accepted 20 fake $100 bills because I hadn't been taught how to spot fakes.

16.

Text - Chazzyberry 1.3k points · 7 hours ago The chef was angry that day. I was advised by my coworkers to do whatever it takes to get on his good side. I thought, "eh, I'll just try to avoid him." He was standing in the cooler taking inventory. Beside him were the 5 gallon containers of prepped food. I sneaked in and tried to quickly grab the ranch container, but in my haste, I nudged another. It was the french onion soup. All 5 gallons of it. On his pants and shoes. Yes, he was upset. The prep

17.

Text - tinyhypernova 1.2k points · 8 hours ago Very first tech job as a youngin' and I forgot to verify of someone had backed up files before a clean OS install. Lost the guys Outlook Archive files with 10 years worth of conveniently stored and important email. Apologized and sheepishly turned the issue over to admins.

18.

Text - PintmasterPaul 988 points · 8 hours ago Not me but my dad. He used to be a microbiologist, and was working in a hospital with a tray of test tubes containing some kind of pseudorabies. He went arse over tit and spilt rabies everywhere. He's an accountant now.

19.

Text - LizardPossum 893 points · 7 hours ago I was a bartender. I knocked down the entire top shelf. Thousands of dollars in liquor.

20.

Text - bobofogochi 816 points · 9 hours ago Not me but I worked at a place that made wiring harnesses. Dudes 4thish day he's running the wire cutting machine. Suddenly says he's sick and leaves. Never came back. He absolutely messed up everything on the cut. What's sad is he wouldn't have been fired. Or even been in trouble. He didn't have to leave.

21.

Text - jcw10489 643 points · 8 hours ago I worked at a McDonald's and accidentally fell in the ice maker right at the beginning of my shift. They had to close the restaurant for the rest of the day to dump out and sanitize the machine

22.

Text - flannelsandjeans 572 points · 7 hours ago Concessions at a movie theater. I was making popcorn, but I had learned that if we used a bit more seasoning and oil, the popcorn tasted insanely better. What I didn't know was the popcorn machine had broken earlier, and wasnt stirring the popcorn anymore. So after I had made a new batch, and no popcorn coming out, I decided to check on the machine and a hot glob of oil flew into my eye. Started cussing and screaming in front of a whole bunch of c

23.

Text - RonSwansonsOldMan 469 points · 8 hours ago Measured something on a construction site off by a foot. It wasn't discovered until it cost 150,000 to remedy the mistake. Nothing happened to me because it was a 10 million dollar job.

24.

Text - mlorenzana12 239 points 5 hours ago I worked in a pizza place and they caught me eating olives on camera. It wasn't 2-3 olives, I could eat like a thousands in a shift, I really don't know why and it's a time in my life I want to forget

25.

Text - DanIsSwell 169 points · 8 hours ago Doing an impersonation of my boss, and the other employees were cracking up, because I was so good at it .Then, he was suddenly standing behind us. He never liked me after that, and 2 months later I was one of 4 people who got "laid off"

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Tagged: error , horrible , wtf , messes , job , work , lol , stories , mistake

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