Work Mistakes

[Durlston]

Machine operator in a warehouse.

I put the wrong magazines inside their plastic covers that got sent all over the UK. It took me two hours to realise my mistake. To say I was p1ssed off would be an understatement. I couldn't apologise enough to the boss who knew I didn't usually balls things up but a whole mornings work messed up and put me behind with the following-on jobs. I still got paid although I didn't listen properly because I was a bit hungover.

 

[Ninja Elephant]

I have never made ANY mistakes, in my current job. Ever.

This from me as well to be fair.

But in a former job, my cashier paid out £1,400 to a guy collecting £500odd. There were two CLEALRY marked bundles and she got it wrong. Badly wrong. Deffinitely not a complicit act, just stupidity. She then went to her inevitable disciplinary drunk and high.

She was NOT sacked.

 

[Billy the Fish]

Working at a Uni in London on the first day of clearing (which they didn't tell me about) I went to change a bit of hardware on their phone system without checking it's config properly first, it took the whole lot down for 3 hours, they weren't very happy

 

[Durlston]

This from me as well to be fair.

But in a former job, my cashier paid out £1,400 to a guy collecting £500odd. There were two CLEALRY marked bundles and she got it wrong. Badly wrong. Deffinitely not a complicit act, just stupidity. She then went to her inevitable disciplinary drunk and high.

She was NOT sacked.

I got paid out on a horse as a winner (which it was) although instead of the each-way part, he thought I'd put my whole stake on it coming first. I realised there'd been a mistake but didn't say anything with my extra fifty quid - does that make me a bad person?

 

[BlockDpete]

One of my first jobs was at Sainsburys in Crawley town centre.

I used to work on the 'till, back in days before barcodes, so all the items had to be entered manually into the till.

I used to be ok with this, but one Saturday morning I was busy cashing up one customers shopping, I got the end of their shopping, about the give them the price, but then got distracted by a boss I think. The next customer must have picked up the "next customer" bar, as for some reason I then started entering their shopping, onto the first customers bill. Both customers watched me do this ,before one of the them told me of my error. Think I managed to sort it out, but it was a right mess.....

Got away with it though

 

[Jimmy Grimble]

This from me as well to be fair.

But in a former job, my cashier paid out £1,400 to a guy collecting £500odd. There were two CLEALRY marked bundles and she got it wrong. Badly wrong. Deffinitely not a complicit act, just stupidity. She then went to her inevitable disciplinary drunk and high.

She was NOT sacked.

Out of interest what's the protocol in terms of tracking down the customer in a situation like that?

Does the extra £900odd legally become the guys who incorrectly got given it? Or will he be tracked via CCTV and asked to give the money back? Or is it written off as a mistake by the employee and a lucky day for the £900odd-better-off punter?

 

[jakarta]

I was going to put mine here.

Might save it for Simon Mayo's confessions though. Anonymity and all that

Was it in your current job?

If so did you mistakenly assume it was on Safety?

 

[Bodian]

About two minutes after getting an 'all users' e-mail telling us that there was only one ream of headed letterpaper left, I accidentally chose the headed letterpaper tray for 50 copies of a long report - thereby using nearly all our remaining stock. And having to throw it in the recycling because it was useless for the purposes, not being a letter. Needless to say I took it home to my personal recycling - not work's. Just in case someone looked to see where it had all gone.

There was a bit of a to do around the offices - but I just kept quiet......

No-one could send any letters for a week or so.

 

[spongy]

I made a cock up last week.

I run CNC Lasers and had a job to cut 1500 splines that go into racing gear boxes, all high tech stuff with really really tight tolerances, I made them all within tolerance, great cut quality, cleaned them up, oil dipped them, packaged them, and sent them to the despatch dept for shipping. In a record time of 10 hours.

Had a call this morning from the not very happy customer asking why we had made them out of 0.9mm mild steel rather than 1.0mm mild steel!!!!!

Doesn't sound like a lot but in f1 gearboxes it matters. A LOT!!!!

The conservative estimate is that it's cost us about 8k. It is my fault, but a colleague checked my first off, and my boss also checked several on the CMM to make sure all was ok.

It's just all of us forgot to check the thickness, so even though I'm well and truly in the doghouse I'm not shouldering all the blame thank god!!!!

I still can't believe I didn't check, it's the first thing we do when cutting something and only Christ knows why I didn't.Typical it's on a big high profile job!!!!

 

[melias shoes]

When working in the NOC at American Express, was learning to play Sax, and practiced in the back room of the NOC on nightshifts. .where all the drives, tapes, master console was, and managed to hit the stop button on the master console with the bell of the sax, taking down American express's entire data network...Realised something bad had happened when my shift colleague flew throught the door with the look of a hunted cat...was never mentioned funnily enough....

A good mate of mine is very high up at American Express ........my silence will cost you.

 

[Noldi]

One mistake I will never forget. I was an apprentice in a engineering shop so basically we got all the boring big quantity work so to help one of the skilled blokes was a big thing to get something interesting to do. This day the welder said can you hold the door panel while I tack the hinge in place, sounds easy enough but the door was hanging bit like a cat flap so I had to hold the door in a open position so he could get his head in the hole to tack weld, the last words he said to me before putting his head in was make sure you don't let go, see this scar on my forehead well that's from the last time when the helper let the door go and it hit me. Well he started welding and I stood there holding this door when I thought wonder how this welding is done and bent down to have a look, the rest is history he now has two scars in very similar places. I did finish my apprentiship but no welding.

Noldi

 

[Beach Hut]

We had a supplier that made batteries for us and they sent us 1,000 batteries manufactured to the wrong size to fit in the chargers. Fair enough we recalled what was sent out and 4-weeks later they supplied a new batch exactly the same and not fitting the chargers.

Needless to say someone was sacked.

 

[TSB]

I sent a load of letters to customers detailing their options now that they had left their employer, just as we always do when schemes wind down.
Except in this case they hadn't left their employer. They'd just stopped contributing to their policies.
Cue hundreds of phone calls to their HR department demanding to know whether they were being let go.

The MD of the employer called me personally 'for a chat'.

Bugger.

 

[Surrey Phil]

A long time ago I was asked to copy some files on the Financial Directors PC and save them onto a disk. I had to format the disk first but stupidly choose the C drive and wiped his entire hard drive!! You should have seen his face when he came in the next day - cue P45!

 

[Bognor Bystander]

As the new computer operator at a local County Council I was left alone in the machine room and noticed large volumes of cheques were being printed on a printer which then stopped. I looked in and saw another large box of blank cheques underneath so without engaging my brain and thinking cheque printing was just the same as piano paper printing I reached down, overlaid the first blank cheque on the last printed one and hit Start - off it went and sure enough the lineup was perfect... maybe an hour after the job finished the Shift leader was asked to visit the managers office. Obviously there was a blank cheque part way through the run and the whole job and thousands of cheques had to be re-run as the pre-determined numbers didn't match. Had to do the re-run myself and be shown the 'special' tape used to join boxes of cheques together. Luckily was only warned as to my future conduct and stayed there two years.

 

[surrey jim]

Working at Threshers off licence and made a mistake on my first order. As we sold beer by the can I assumed that it was ordered in the same way.

Therefore I set to order 240 cans (10 cases) of this and that and the other, I soon found out that when ordering beer it was ordered by the case. Where I had thought I was ordering 240 cans of a particular beer, 240 cases turned up.

The manager was not impressed. We however did not need to order anything more in for weeks,

 

[upthealbion1970]

Had a mk 3 chavalier on 4 post ramp at national tyres in hassocks so I could replace short assembly (middle & rear exhaust sections), its handbrake cable had snapped so left it in 2nd gear as you do. Just after fitting it my assistant manager being helpful reached through the drivers window as I'm lowering it and turns the key just as I'm about to tell him not to! Car starts still in gear with ramp about 3.5 feet up, moves forward and balances with front wheels past the end if the ramp and back wheels in the air. Gravity then pulls the front of the car down and front wheels grip the floor and pull the car off of the ramp, across the forecourt towards the main road.... I chased it and leaning through the drivers window turn the key off. Car stopped3 feet from the pavement....

I then drove the car back into the workshop as the assistant manager and myself grab a handful of cable ties and tin of underseal to cover up some damage underneath the car

 

[Birdie Boy]

When working in the NOC at American Express, was learning to play Sax, and practiced in the back room of the NOC on nightshifts. .where all the drives, tapes, master console was, and managed to hit the stop button on the master console with the bell of the sax, taking down American express's entire data network...Realised something bad had happened when my shift colleague flew throught the door with the look of a hunted cat...was never mentioned funnily enough....

Oh, how long ago was this? I have worked of and on in the Amex network team since 97, maybe we know each other. And no, I won't grass you up!

 

[itszamora]

Used to work in TV subtitling and had a few unfortunate cases where the computer you speak into when subtitling live didn't quite get things right. Two that spring to mind are "amateur astronomers will go anywhere for lovely skies" becoming "lovely guys" and a Syrian government lackey trying to blame a massacre of women and children on terrorists, saying "we abhor this heinous and terrible crime" unfortunately coming out as "we abhor his penis and terrible crime." Ouch.

 

[greyseagull]

Can't believe I'm going to admit this. This happened several years ago.

I work in PR, and a colleague emailed me and asked for a list of contacts of which she would approach with and email a press release. I copied about 250 contacts (let's bear in mind this included national news and business editors) into the email rather than attach it in it's current form (an Excel doc) or paste it into the body of an email. So when I replied to her "just send it to these chumps", I copied in the 250 journalists...

You know when you instantly realise what you've done and you go all hot and get the empty feeling in your stomach. Multiply that by 10 and you'll get what I felt at that point. To know that 250 journalists had just received an email from me saying "just send it these chumps...". ****ing hell.

It wasn't long before the emails started to come in ripping it out of me and some national journalists can be quite precious and therefore quite spiteful. Joel Hills, high profile in my line of works on Sky News, commented on Twitter about how annoying my email was and got a lot of reaction from other journalists. A lot, I might add, were quite sympathetic towards me and told him to stop complaining. The problem was I think some of them thought I was a junior exec who was there on his first day when, in reality, I had actually just won a significant industry award and was doing ok'ish! In the end, I emailed them all individually and apologised unequivocally for my mistake. I must admit a lot of them came back and said it put a smile on their face and some even said that the journalists complaining "are just morons".

Needless to say I won't be doing that again.