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“I Did It Again”: 22 Of The Most Colossal Mess-Ups People Have Made At Work
Article created by: Kotryna Br
Bigger or smaller in scale and absurdity, mistakes are often inevitable. They can happen anywhere: at home, in school, or, of course, at work, usually making for one unfortunate—or funny if you’re just a spectator—story.
Stories about mistakes at work, some funnier than others, were recently shared on the ‘Ask Reddit’ subreddit, where the user ‘Midtown-Fur’ asked people to share the dumbest instances of workplace blunders. Covering all sorts of situations, from unexpected to so cringy it hurts, they add up to one colorful collection of mishaps, so if you’re curious to see what they entail, wait no longer and scroll down to find netizens’ answers on the list below.
Upon scrolling down, you will also find Bored Panda’s interviews with the OP themself, as well as the Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Dr. Lizabeth Roemer, who were kind enough to answer a few of our questions on making mistakes.
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#1
I asked the Prince of Monaco to step out of the way because we were expecting a VIP to arrive any second. He was the VIP.
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#2
I needed to cut a 2 inch rubber hose. There wasn't a table nearby so I put the hose on my knee and pushed the box cutter through the hose, directly into my knee. Sometimes the brain just doesn't work.
#3
This one makes me laugh when I think about it:
I was sixteen pushing grocery carts outside a grocery store. “Lot attendant” was my title, and my job was to make sure chaos didn’t break out in the parking lot. But I also had some other duties, like taking out trash, emptying ashtrays, and doing a few other little odd jobs around the store. One day a woman taps me on the shoulder in the store and says “I’m sorry, but my kid just threw up over that display.” She points at this display of Entenmann’s snack cake that was freestanding in between some aisles. And I can see that this toddler had clearly projectile vomited all over it. There was some on most of the boxes. And I think “I’ll handle this.”
So I scoop up all the boxes, take them out to the dumpster, and throw them all away. And as I’m dusting my hands off and congratulating myself on being so helpful, a manager was like “what did you just do?” And I said “I cleaned up a big mess, a kid threw up on everything.” And he said “yea but you can’t just throw a whole display away. There’s a process. Inventory. We have to report these losses.” I said “I push shopping carts man. I don’t know anything about any of that.” And he let out a long sigh and said, “this isn’t going to be fun for either of us.”
Then he lowered me by my ankles back into the dumpster and I had to fish out all the snack cake boxes covered in child vomit and then learn how to scan them through some kind of computer. And in case you’re wondering, I haven’t eaten an Entenmanns snack cake since.
#4
I delivered funeral flowers to a hospital room where the person was very much alive. Didn't realize it until I was about to deliver the get well soon flowers to the wake.
#5
My boss charged me with carefully depositing our cash earnings from the week at the bank down the road.
I walked out to my car, set the bag on top of the car, and happily drove off 🤪.
#6
I'm an assistant. My second week on the job I took my boss's $2000 personal computer to get repaired. When I was bringing it back to his house, I dropped it and cracked the screen.
Thank God it was a small crack and my boss is the chillest person on the planet, I genuinely thought I was going to get fired but instead he just happily started using it again and said it was no big deal since it still worked.
#9
One of my first jobs in 1989, I was doing typesetting and artwork and did a menu for a restaurant round the corner. I did the Wine List on the back page and accidentally typed 'Whine List', the spell checker didn't pick it up and no one else picked up on it until two weeks later when the owner brought them back saying: "Oi, look what you did!".
#10
Was giving a presentation to 300+ people and rested my arm on top of the podium in a spot where there was a button that turned the entire system off, taking ~10 minutes to reboot and get my presentation back up. 2 minutes into talking again, I did it again.
#11
Forgot to turn the sign to open. Coworker found out after he came out, asked why the place was empty and watched five people come to the door, stop, turn and walk away. I was hungover and stood at the counter like a zombie for an hour and a half having watched many people walk up and away.
Coworkers greeted me until I resigned with "Are we open?".
#13
Was on vacation and my boss told me to push a script another employee wrote before he quit. I was at Disneyland and didn't bother looking at it and just pushed it. Needless to say the former employee locked all our computers, 25000 of them. They tried to pin it on me but in the end my boss got in trouble for forcing me to work while I was on vacation and without anytime to prepare.
#14
I accidentally deleted the entire project directory for my company thinking i was deleting a folder called proposals. We lost about 2/3 of the directory before i was able to cancel the deletion. The data was gone as the folder was too big to fit in the trashcan so it was permanently deleting files as it went along.
#15
Worked in a mental hospital as a janitor. Been there for about a week when someone said I needed to clean a part I've never cleaned. It was a wing that had a security desk, and locked door. Halfway though mopping the floor the entire place locks down because one of the violent patients got out since I didn't know I had to lock the door, and the security guy was out to lunch. That ward was an isolation Ward for violent people who were there on court order or sentenced there. Thankfully the guy who got out just went to the day room, and turned on the TV. When the nurses said he had to go back he did.
The janitor that did that ward was off sick, and I've never even been to that side of the hospital before. Wasn't told of any special rules or anything.
#16
Sent the wrong door sizes to the framing company, every since door was 1 inch too short. It was on a 212 unit apartment building. I think each unit had between 7-10 doors. It’s amazing how expensive 1 inch can be.
#17
Was filling a paint drum and left to use the bathroom then proceeded to go on break and midway through a snack realized and ran all the way back to paint everywhere.
#18
I renamed all customers last names to the same last name. I don't remember why I was doing an update, but forgot to include the where clause. Thankfully i had a way to restore them, but that sucked.
#19
My biggest mistake was that I had this delusional that if I work hard, never slack off and never called in unless really sick, somehow I would move up in the company. It's really about who you know in higher positions that gets you moved up, I've also noticed they don't want to lose good workers by moving them up in positions.
#20
Well, many years ago while in my early days of military life I was in charge of ordering supplies for my division. I was trying to order D batteries for mag lights. I wanted to order about 38 cases which was 380 batteries. I misread how they came. I thought it was ordered by each, so I ordered 380 batteries. That was the first mistake. For the second mistake I actually fat fingered it and ordered 3800. To compound the error the unit of issue was by the case…. I ended up with 3800 cases of D batteries while at sea on an aircraft carrier. It sucked so bad.
#21
Long ago, was in IT and was moving data volumes on and offline. Misread and 8 for a 0 and took the Airline’s reservation system down for 30 minutes. At 2 million per hour, oops. Immediately reported what I did, it was fixed, mgr said you know what you did and I know it won’t ever happen again. Yup. Sorry. Okay, carry on. I Went on to a long career in IT. Clearly never forgetting that lesson and response.
#22
Put an adrenaline needle through my thumb. I was basically messing around with returned stock at a pharmacy whilst destroying old medication. Our old fashioned pharmacist/owner would always prime the adrenaline injectors and stab them into the wall to get rid of the liquid before disposing of it. I stupidly tried doing this myself one day but I squeezed the wrong end as I tried to prime it, and it ended up going right through my thumb and out the other side popping through my thumb nail. Felt like such an idiot. The needle wasn’t actually used, it was just out of date stock that a patient had returned. I still think about what could have happened quite often nearly 15 years later.
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