Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
then open in external browser
and click "Open in External Browser" 
Have you ever made a mistake at work that makes you cringe to this day? It’s happened to the best of us. Even if we’re all very good at our jobs, human beings are prone to making mistakes. All we need to do is step up and take responsibility for our actions.
So when user sspecZ asked fellow members of the r/AksReddit community to share how they massively messed up at work, thousands of people admitted their worst workplace errors. From accidentally deleting all of the needed files to spilling tens of liters of melted chocolate over the restaurant floor, the answers in this thread are both painful and hilarious.
While many of the mistakes are unpleasant, the overall morale of these stories is that they do happen. And even though they make us seem unprofessional, we can still let out a few laughs. So keep scrolling and upvote your favorite ones!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I was washing a dairy cow named Laverne before showing her at a county fair. She didn’t like having her tail washed. She kicked the bucket of soapy water over onto my rubber boots and took off running. I grabbed both sides of her halter but my boots were slick and she basically ran around the washing area in circles with me hanging on to her head while my tractionless boots acted like water skiis. Of course this happened in front of crowds of people who started laughing. Finally I lost my grip and sat down in a puddle while Laverne ran toward a little boy holding a scone. He dropped the scone and ran, and Laverne ate his scone.
Brian Bennett 3 years ago
I bet some people would like to thank you for the memory!
Load More Replies...
Mary Rose Kent 3 years ago
I was thinking of this as a skit, but now I want to see it in two different cartoon time zones...The Flintstones and The Jetsons!
Load More Replies...
Beth L 3 years ago
Yeah, I feel like it isn't opening day of the fair unless there's at least one animal on the loose. I had a draft pony colt just get mad at the show halter and lean back against it until it snapped and he was off. Only thing that kept him off the highway was a 4-horse Belgian team coming in the gate he was thinking about leaving through. No one in the show ring even noticed the commotion in the practice ring/staging area.
Load More Replies...
Upstaged75 3 years ago
That's hysterical! I had a wonderful horse when I was a young adult and I taught her how to drink from a bottle/can. She was a goofball who loved people, and I liked to share Gatorade with her when we were at competitions. Everyone always thought it was cute and funny. And it was - right up until the moment when I was riding her towards the show ring and she decided to swipe some guy's soda can right out out of his hand as we passed by. She chugged what she could and dropped it on the ground before I could even react. His face was hilarious. I guess he didn't expect to get mugged by a horse that day. :) Of course I apologized and bought him a new drink, at which point he started to see the humor in the situation. After that I had to watch her around beverages or she was likely to grab whatever drink was in her reach. She was a character who was always doing wacky things, and despite the fact that she was often a massive pain in the butt everyone loved her. I was very lucky to have her.
RELATED:
#2
Lol I used to work for a company that designed online banking software in early 2000's and sold it to banks.
We had one customer - a bank president - complaining that our product didn't work on AOL. Like, the s**tty browser associated with the s**tty dial up internet. "You've Got Mail!"
Dude starts ranting that there are still millions of customers who use the product.
I thought I muted him, and said "well millions of people eat McDonald's every day, that don't make it a good f**kin idea"
Only, I forgot to mute!
Everyone stared at me in terror. After the longest pause in the world, he shouts "EXCUSE ME???!!"
Then he started asking which browsers we supported. Then he said he was going to call our VP. Then he did. And proceeded to tell the VP I was the only honest one at the entire firm. So I got stuck managing his account.
Cactus McCoy 3 years ago
Good. Do not brown nose, do not hold back the truth. A good customer wants results, not his own opinion in a mirror.
Roxy Eastland 3 years ago
Probably don't use swear words or sarcastic comments, but yes, be honest with customers
Load More Replies...
Sareaesque 3 years ago
As a web developer, our biggest bane is clients who still insist on using IE5 and then wonder why they can't use the resources we built for them.
Yort 3 years ago
But they said this was the early 2000s. Your choices were aol or Netscape, pretty much, and lots of people only had aol as a way to access the Internet period. If this story had happened a month ago, okay sure, millions of people still use aol and dial-up because they have no other choice. But in the early 2000s? Why is everyone rooting for this insulting jerk who thinks it’s ridiculous that people were using aol 20 years ago?
Load More Replies...
Linda Adessi 3 years ago
i had a similar situation on a conference call with sales staff and VP's. Not one word was said to me. my reasoning was that i said what everyone else was thinking!
Kim Blizzard 3 years ago
Glad this worked out well for you, but can't help but note the irony of now having to work with the very idiot that you called out.
MyOpinionHasBeenServed 3 years ago
You got so f****n' lucky. If it were any other call centre management would have thrown you out regardless.
#3
A very important and very big customer placed an order for some chemical bulk to be delivered early Jan. Our contract with them stated that every day we were late we would be fined millions.
The bulk plant finished on time and just needed the drums to pour the bulk into.
Warehouse come up to my office (I was the purchaser responsible for buying the drums) where are the 250 litre drums!? Bulk plant need them. It's fine I thought, I placed the order before Christmas, I remember doing it. Looks at SAP why is the supplier late.....they're never late... checks my order mouth goes instantly dry and I start to sweat. I had placed the order, but I forgot that for this particular supplier I needed to email them the PO. We had just changed the system to allow SAP to auto email the supplier after we placed an order, but not for this 1 supplier. I knew this, but must have forgotten.
These drums had a 2 week lead time from the supplier so I knew I was dead. Not only would we have had millions of pounds of fines, but the production plant would have been put on hold having to store tons of bulk with no where to put it.
I went and told my boss and just told him I had funked up. Being an awesome guy and boss he thanked me for being honest and told me it's going to be ok. He called the supplier, sweet talked them, and because we were a good customer they allowed us to take another customers order. The drums were delivered next day. That was about 9 years ago and I still think about it
Seanette Blaylock 3 years ago
Now that's a good boss. Has his employee's back, solves the problem rationally.
Cactus McCoy 3 years ago
More often than not people realize it's everybody's a$$ on the line.
Load More Replies... Susie Elle 3 years ago
I still feel that if one person's brain is the only buffer between everything going smooth and everything potentially going to absolute s**t, another buffer must be put in place :')
Roxy Eastland 3 years ago
I once read a similar story and when the employee went and confessed to the boss they asked if they were fired. "Why would I fire you?" the boss replied "it took a million dollars to educate you". I thought that was such a sensible attitude. This is one employee that is going to double check for years to come.
Ben Steinberg 3 years ago
This strikes me as an example of a poor system design. If your company could be on the hook for millions a day, I would think you'd harden your procedures to the point where human mistakes (and yes, they happen) are minimized to the maximum. Yes, OP messed up, but given a poorly designed procedure, anyone can.
Chucky Cheezburger 3 years ago
That's one of the number one rules where I work...If you funk up, let the boss know and fix it, or let the boss know so it can be fixed.Own your mistakes.
Naesil 3 years ago
Yeah if you drop the ball bad then its always better to immediately inform your boss so people can start to minimize the damage.
Load More Replies...
Cavern Gill-Vernon 3 years ago
I broke an emerald whilst restoring a ring once that cos £22,500 trade without Vat. For a few days, everytime I went into work, I expected to be fired. The boss didn't even mention it. In the end, I asked whether I was still employed the next week to be informed that 4 craftsmen above me (including the boss) had refused to do the job. I was the only one brave enough to tackle it. Yes, I messed up but they took the hit on the chin and covered the loss (we were a very small business) I was told I didn't get into trouble because they didn't want to scare me for future jobs like that. Emeralds still scare me but I still set them...
They say that to err is human—it’s only natural for us to slip up, and our workplace is no exception. As of this day, sspecZ’s thread has amassed more than 38.6K upvotes and almost 8.7K comments. And reading through so many nightmarish work stories certainly helps many to feel a bit better about their own. After all, mistakes are learning opportunities, even the most cringy ones.
Still, depending on the error and the impact it may have on the company, you might feel that your career is at risk. Maybe you’re terrified of your manager. Perhaps you’re afraid to admit to doing something wrong and looking unprofessional. Or maybe you’re the breadwinner of your household and simply cannot afford to lose this position.
Whatever the reason, we can still recover from such unfortunate situations and take certain steps to regain trust and minimize damage. Dina Smith, an executive coach and consultant, wrote that mistakes do not have to be career-limiting and shared a few strategies on how to react after making one.
#4
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 recommended me for the job got in s**t because his back ups didn't catch the files and my direct supervisor worked for 21 days straight to help redo all the animation.
The studio and everyone involved were way nicer to me about it than i expected, i kept my job and i brought in donuts for the whole crew for a week after. But it was an awful start!
Kesam 3 years ago
That sounds painful. But it sounds like they need to improve their backup routines. Things like that shouldn't even be possible.
Samantha Lomb 3 years ago
And yet Pixar deleted almost 90 percent of Toy Story 2 and was lucky and employee had a home backup
Load More Replies... 
Eiram 3 years ago (edited)
Files like animation ones are very delicate, and in the deletion process the data is reallocated so any data being used for any program will overwrite pieces of it and make the whole file corrupted.
Load More Replies... 
Timothy Leung 3 years ago
I was taught never to cut-and-paste, only to copy-and-paste, and delete the source files after I confirmed their presence at the intended destination.
Craig Reynolds 3 years ago
How TF is digital anything heavy? Also, bandwidth is bandwidth, so without compression first, copy/paste is no faster than moving them. Next point: deleted or not, they were still in the trash unless you emptied it. Point 2: Unless you deleted the originals and the copies you moved to the wrong location, one copy still existed somewhere and probably still does. All you had to do is remember one single file name or its extension and do a search and it would have turned up in a folder/directory that you could then browse easily by date as ALL the pasted files would have the same date. How TF am I not a 6 figure IT God somewhere?
#5
This was my first real job out of uni, so I was early twenties. I had been working at a pharma company for a few months and a guy, Andy, set me up on a system that the whole company (100k+) used to catalogue documents and updates on drugs we sold. My only job was to go though and find old drugs that we didn’t sell anymore and change their settings to that they were invisible to everyone, just to make everything a bit tidier.
I had been doing this for two days when, somehow, I managed to set it so that the entire database was locked out, to everyone in the company, and I was the only person with access.
Within minutes I was getting calls from people all over the world. All very polite - ‘hi there, I’m trying to add a record to Drug A and I cant make changes. I can see you’re the admin, can you give me access rights?’
I was frantically trying to add people on, one by one, whilst screening my calls and watching as emails started flooding my inbox. I was panicking so hard, and just as I realised this was not going to work I was added to a meeting about the system. It was literally me, Andy, and three senior managers.
I was FREAKING OUT.
I decided to just ignore the call. Stupid I know, but I was like 21 and terrified. About three minutes in, Andy arrives at my desk. ‘Grey, we’re in a call! Did you see my invite?’ I act dumb and tell him I’m just dialling in, but he was very chipper, which made me suspicious.
Anyway, I dial in, and the head of tech is monologuing about how he has been saying for months that this software is overloaded, and how any minute it’s going to implode on itself etc, and Andy is agreeing with them; that this is the very reason he asked me to remove the listings in the first place. I listen quietly, and it turns out that they are all convinced the software did this to itself, and the only people who still have access rights are the people who were logged in at the time it ‘freaked out.’ (As opposed to it being just me and the people I had manually added in.)
As time goes on, it becomes apparent that they all think I’m some kind of specialist on the system. Andy keeps mentioning that I was working on a project for him, and they keep saying ‘grey can take care of this bit’ ‘we’ll flag this for grey’. Fortunately for me, I knew what they meant each time; it was like I was listening to a foreign language, and then just when they spoke English they assigned that ‘bit’ to me.
Three days later, they had fixed the system, and in that time I had removed old users and finished removing the unused drugs, which they were still convinced was the reason it shut down to begin with. As a result, I got a BONUS, I got a mention on the CEO email for assisting on the crisis, and at my end of year meeting they added the fact that I was an ‘expert’ in this system to my job description.
Not bad for a 21 year old who was too dumb to process that clicking ‘yes’ on a box marked ‘do you want to remove all access rights for 100+ users?’ was a terrible idea.
Indra Servo 3 years ago
The real question is how insecure is your system that a rookie can accidentally do that
Robert T 3 years ago (edited)
Not so much insecure, as not having sufficient levels of admin rights, so that you don't have to give full blown super-user access to the rookie.
Load More Replies... Cactus McCoy 3 years ago (edited)
"Being prime confident while at the same don't know what the flubb is going on" is a very important skill. :D Bonus if you can actually deliver when the brown hits the fan.
M 3 years ago
Fake it till you make it is basically the theme of my entire career
Load More Replies... Oopsydaisy 3 years ago
I would have bought a lottery ticket in the strength of that one. Nonetheless it was still a pretty bad system if they didn't at least have a check in whether the user wanted to carry out the somewhat drastic action, so I think you did them a favour.
Poultry Geist 3 years ago
Since they didn’t know how they locked everyone out isn’t it possible the system actually did it ?
Micah 3 years ago
It says at the end that they clicked 'yes' on a box (assuming it's a dialog box) that removed everyone.
Load More Replies... 
BlackPearltheSeaWing/NightWing 3 years ago
It was just a mistake and some confusion. They shouldn't be guilty for any of that.
Load More Replies...
#6
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.
Adrian 3 years ago
Well, if his boss started foaming at the mouth it certainly wouldn't be good.
Itstheoneandonlydave 3 years ago
Snort through nose.... that actually hurt lol
Load More Replies...
Nathaniel 3 years ago
It sounds like the rabies turned him into an accountant. Just when you thought rabies was horrific enough....
Susie Elle 3 years ago
If it's pseudorabies then it's a porcine strain of the rabies virus. Not harmless at all, but not the same as rabies which can infect humans.
Kiwii Stone 3 years ago
I love it - "he's an accountant now". Like to be an accountant, you need to have contracted pseudorabies!
Not Proud British 3 years ago
Imagine someone in a lab testing the corona strain of viruses and accidently leaking it..... good job that never happened!
Annamagelic 3 years ago
Yeah, but anyone working in a lab with rabies would be vaccinated before starting work.
Load More Replies...
First, take charge of the circumstances. The moment you understand you made an error—try to get in front of the situation before it spirals out of control. "Being proactive about addressing whatever took place demonstrates your awareness of the problem and relieves others from the potential discomfort of bringing it to your attention," the coach explained.
Next, acknowledge your mistake and offer an honest and humble apology to your colleague, manager, or the whole team. Smith advised not to be defensive: "For instance, suppose a colleague tells you that they were offended by a comment you made. Don’t respond by saying, 'Well, I would never offend anyone on purpose!' or 'I am sorry if you feel that way.'"
She continued: "Using the word 'if' in your apology implies the other person is being irrational or overly sensitive. It does not show any ownership of your wrongdoing." So it’s best to fully own your mistake.
#7
I was a bartender. I knocked down the entire top shelf. Thousands of dollars in liquor.
I didn't get in trouble- the boss just built a stronger shelf. He found it HILARIOUS that the only thing I saved was a $6 bottle of Sloe Gin that happened to be on the wrong shelf.
Paul C. 3 years ago
Pub I used to go into had a new, expensive Neon light put up behind the bar. First night, Curly, the clumsiest man/barman I've ever met, walked straight into it, even though it was tucked away out of danger. It never worked again.
Mary Rose Kent 3 years ago
So, only a relative handful of people can reminisce about that magical night!
Load More Replies... Samantha Lomb 3 years ago
He's lucky he didn't get sued. If the op was injured he could have been
Id row 3 years ago
And that bottle of sloe gin had been there since the 90's. I was a bartender for 9 years and don't think I ever served enough to ever empty a bottle.
#8
Mistakingly believed HR when they said an anonymous employee satisfaction survey was anonymous. Especially since my feedback was about HR.
Chris365 3 years ago
HR often isn’t to the aid of the employee or the company, they play one side against the other, stoking problems to look and feel important and have something to do. If it leans either way to the company or the employee, it is s**t, even at its best it creates more problems than it fixes.
Load More Replies...
Mattewis88 3 years ago
HR is there to cover the company, not you - although that's what they tell you.
Andy Acceber 3 years ago
About a year ago, I started working more HR tasks at my current job. We're a small nonprofit, and our only HR employee is in her 70s. I'm glad this is where I'm learning HR. I hear horror stories from workers about HR in other companies in other industries. Maybe it's because we're small or a nonprofit, but I really want to help the staff as a member of HR. I do everything I can to make policy changes while absolutely protecting the confidentiality of the staff. I love feedback -- even when it's not great.
Chucky Cheezburger 3 years ago (edited)
It's NEVER anonymous...EVER! And HR is there to keep the COMPANY from being sued. If that mean getting rid of you, they will do it.
#9
I was a nanny. A little 2 year old I was watching fell down and hit the back of her head on the concrete. I rushed over to her but she didn't move or blink, just laid on her back motionless. I tried to check for breathing and pulse and pretty much blanked on everything I'd ever learned in CPR/first aid training in my panic.
She seriously looked dead. I screamed for help, the neighbors came running, I told them to call an ambulance. The police, fire department, ambulance showed up within minutes. She was rushed to the hospital and a million tests were run.
Turns out she barely even had a bruise, no concussion, no seizure, no injury, nothing. The doctor said she probably just got scared and froze, for just long enough for me to lose my s**t. Her parents were charged 5,000 dollars to tell them their child got surprised.
Julie C Rose 3 years ago
As always, the real bad guy was the US healthcare system. 5,000 f*****g dollars.
Oopsydaisy 3 years ago
Even if she reacted straight away and seemed alright, you still would have had to take her to hospital,, or at least you should. Any knock to the head needs to be looked at
Leonardo Colle 3 years ago
thats costly, but this person did everything to "save" the kid. Sounds like a nanny you can trust to watch your child
Katie Lutesinger 3 years ago
Definitely did the right thing - head injuries are not to be underestimated and sometimes the full effects don't kick in until hours later. I remember someone telling me about this kid who copped a piece of sports equipment to the head during PE, and the teacher stupidly brushed the incident off because he seemed okay. In fact he had a brain bleed, and by the time someone figured that out he had been left permanently affected. The parents sued the school's a**e off, of course.
Roxy Eastland 3 years ago
OMG, every time I forget that in America this sort of thing costs huge amounts of money. If you priced up what it would have cost the NHS it wouldn't come close to $5K
Upstaged75 3 years ago
Yeah, it's seriously a crime. Hospitals are some of the worst offenders. Many people avoid medical care just for that reason. Ridiculous right?
Load More Replies... Susie Elle 3 years ago
Yeah, well, it might as well HAVE been a bad concussion or whatever and then it would've been a life or death situation, so you did the right thing.
"Instead say, 'I appreciate you telling me that. I am sorry that what I said was offensive and hurtful to you. I’ll be more mindful.'" Then, work hard to rebuild your trust because your apology will seem worthless if your behavior won’t change.
Sadly, people tend to remember the negative things better than the positive, so "it’s essential to take action and not shrink back after making a mistake" and remind people of your strengths. "Find ways to position yourself in front of people and demonstrate progress on the issue to rebuild trust and shift perceptions," Smith suggested.
#10
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 can’t believe I ask the same simple question three times and this is what I get in reply.”
Except I didn’t send that email to my boss. I sent it to the customer!
I was in a panic when I realized what I had done. Went to my boss to let him know what happened and he thought it was hilarious but that I should write a brief apology to her for an “outburst”.
Was dreading the reply the next morning but to my astonishment our customer actually apologized to me for not paying attention. Felt like I got away easy.
Cactus McCoy 3 years ago
Yeah, this is what's happening among professionals.
Load More Replies...
Kate Fei 3 years ago
Something very similar happened to me as well. I think this happens to a lot of people.
Upstaged75 3 years ago
Yup - I was sending a message to my boss about issues with this guy I supervised. Except that I accidentally sent it to the guy I was talking about. I didn't realize my mistake until he responded to my email. I just about died.
Load More Replies...
AndThenICommented 3 years ago
This happened to me, but I was the customer. I played it off as a joke but gave a serious explanation for why we needed the info we needed (to choose a contractor in a very shallow pool). He didn’t avoid my calls after that (we would be a huge account).
Helen Haley 3 years ago
I have a ten-minute delay on my outbox. Usually, enough times for me to mentally go over the email obsessively (I'd do that with or without the delay) and catch anything major.
Spock's Socks 3 years ago
I like that even though OP complained about the customer, they did not resort to insults, swearing, name-calling or shaming, just stated their frustration with the lack of forthcoming information. I can guess if they have a partner, that partner is very lucky if the same consideration is shown during disagreements.
#11
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 got that screw and definitely deserved his half a dozen of croissants the next morning.
Kesam 3 years ago
Good you didn't drop the croissants into the engine. But then again, don't TGVs run on croissants?
Sébastien Pommier 3 years ago
Aaaaaand next morning, train drivers were on strike. (in France, they are specialists)
Laugh or not 3 years ago
It is very common in France to bring croissants and other pastries to your workplace (for a birthday, a meeting, to thank someone or just as a nice gesture). In one company I worked at, if you forgot to lock your computer when leaving your desk, someone would use ot to then an email to say you would bring croissant for the entire open space the next day. It was a joke between colleagues about security measures and a delicious one at that.
Load More Replies...
#12
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
L. Murphy 3 years ago
Totally understandable. I could never work around olives. Olive them too much.
KatHat 3 years ago
So many Captain Literals here! "I ate thousands" is a slang way of saying "very many".
Big Blue Cat 3 years ago
Yeah, most of BP readers think this is a serious news site where everything is supposed to be 100 % literally true.
Load More Replies...
Queserasera423 3 years ago
It was a pizza place, right? It HAD to be sliced olives.
Load More Replies... Id row 3 years ago
This is bullsh*t. It's not possible to eat thousands of olives in a few hours. And wouldn't the manager know without seeing it on camera when all of the olives mysteriously vanish?
AzKhaleesi 3 years ago
I too love olives. I'm not mad at you. It takes every ounce of will power I have to walk past the "gourmet" olive section at the grocery store without taking one.
Kevin 'Santa' Scott 3 years ago
Impossible. Olives cost more than roast beef. No restaurant is going to have "Thousands" to be eaten
Needless to say, don’t be too self-critical. Always remembering and blaming yourself for your past mistakes isn’t helpful and can damage your confidence. "When you unintentionally err, treat yourself as you would a friend in a similar situation," the coach wrote. "Among its many proven benefits, practicing self-compassion will support you in regaining clarity and confidence, and moving forward productively from a setback."
#13
Worked for a politician who was terrible with names so I had them saved in his phone as the nicknames he gave them. One of them was “That crazy, hot b**ch” so I had her saved as “Melissa - crazy hot b**ch.”
One day the other staffer asked for her number so I sent it to him but accidentally sent the contact card to her instead. She kept ringing and messaging demanding to know what was going on and I spent all night dreading the scandal (we were mid election). The next day my boss dropped dead in the office and to this day I feel terrible that one off my first thoughts was “well I guess I got away with that”
Kesam 3 years ago
Sounds like he wasn't just terrible with names but terrible in general. "That crazy hot b***h" - seriously??
Roxy Eastland 3 years ago
I am severely judging the OP for treating speaking about a woman like that as normal and acceptable. That said, the whole story does rather read like a scene from a sitcom.
Load More Replies...
MyOpinionHasBeenServed 3 years ago
I think the misogynistic politician is the one that f****d up and got away with it.
B-b-bird 3 years ago
i wonder if "that crazy hot b..." came ti his funeral or skipped the even entirely
Troux 3 years ago
I was wondering if she caused it. From what I hear, she's crazy.
Load More Replies... 
Rachael Sampson 3 years ago
He was a misogynist ass. There's nothing funny about it
Load More Replies... 
Anne Edwards 3 years ago
Sadly, it could be either or any of the parties in numerous countries. UK, Canada, Australia are just three of the options
Load More Replies...
#14
put a 600$ crystal bowl through the dishwasher with the pots and pans
Adrian 3 years ago
Not good, especially if lead crystal. The alkaline detergent reacts with the lead and the whole thing goes milky.
Very Bored Panda 3 years ago
Hey, the bowl that was on this table, do you know where it is. Yeah I put it in the dish washer. YOU WHAT?!?
Brian Bennett 3 years ago
Now where would one work that you would be loading a dishwasher , and a $600 lead crystal bowl would be in the proximity of said dishwasher ?
Question everything 3 years ago
Any upscale place with catering. Crystal needs to be washed too. In the sink though, not in the dishwasher. You know, pick up the crystal bowl from the middle of the large round table and take it to where it's gonna get washed.
Load More Replies... 
#15
I almost died of hypothermia. I was a bartender and we kept a lot of drinks the guests wanted ice cold in a walk-in freezer. So I went inside the first freezer, drinks aren’t there. Then from that first freezer you walk in the second one. I forgot to put a stopper so the door won’t close. I was freaking out, getting colder by the minute. I screamed but no one could hear me. A co-worker came in to check on me, he thankfully knew where I was.
Andy Acceber 3 years ago
Every industrial freezer I've ever been in has a handle to exit from the inside. They're different shapes and in different places, but I can't imagine one without it. 'Seems like an unnecessarily dangerous product design.
Cactus McCoy 3 years ago
I used to work in a morgue, and even there every door had a handle on the inside.
Beth L 3 years ago
My UG college had converted an old cadaver lab into a computer room and even it still had that feature. But also a giant deadbolt on the outside, because apparently that was state law at some point...
Load More Replies...
Oopsydaisy 3 years ago
There was a person who died like this where I live in Australia. Unbelievably, no handle in the inside of the freezer. That is not on you, OP.
Katie Lutesinger 3 years ago
And then there was that drunk teenager in the US who wandered into one of those things in a daze and also froze to death (I'm not sure if there was no handle or if she was just too wasted to open the door. Poor bloody kid).
Load More Replies...
Susie Elle 3 years ago
This one is for sure on your employer or whatever manufacturer made the freezer, as all freezerrooms should be able to open from the inside as well.
Skitty 3 years ago
At my old job, one time I opened the freezer door, and there was a server in there yelling about how the line cook deliberately closed him in, and he could’ve died. He was not mollified by my explanation that the instructions for how to open the door from the inside were literally glued to the wall 3 inches from the latch.
Gabytza C. Oana 3 years ago
We have an emergency handle and it glows in the dark so u can see it if there is no light
Brian Bennett 3 years ago
Worked in an ice cream plant could not be in there for more than 15 min, even with appropriate clothing or someone would look for you!
Rosalind Robinson 3 years ago
Most you can open from the inside even if locked and the handle is glow in the dark also
#16
Stabbed myself in the nose with a screwdriver.
I was 19 and it was my first day at work as a dishwasher. They gave me the grill, which was entirely encrusted in nasty burned on carbon, and told me to take it out back and clean it.
For about an hour I chiseled the carbon off it with a screwdriver and a butterknife. I was almost done, but there was one bit stuck in the corner, and because I'm an idiot I tried to get it out by chipping upwards with the screwdriver.
Screwdriver slipped, and continued upwards right into the tip of my nose.
So I run back into the kitchen, completely filthy and bleeding profusely from the face, and yell "I'M SORRY PLEASE DON'T FIRE ME!"
They were very understanding and did not fire me. And once I got cleaned up and stopped the bleeding it turned out I didn't even need stitches. I ended up working there for several summers and eventually made it up to line cook.
Kanuli 3 years ago
Weird. Don’t know industrial grills. But we have this spray. Wait 10 min, rinse with water: all gone.
Summer Mason 3 years ago
I'm hoping this post was from someone from years ago. Not now. That's a horrible way to clean a grill. They have cleaners and scrub brushes.
Load More Replies...
Bob D. Lin Quint 3 years ago
They gave you a screwdriver and a butter knife to clean a grill? You could have sued their asses off for not providing you with proper equipment. But eh. I wouldn't have known when I was 19. Pretty sure I heard about it on tv
Phill Healey 3 years ago
They didn't fire you because they just had you doing some outside the rules s**t
Stannous Flouride 3 years ago
We always just turned them over on top of the burners and crank up the fire until it burns off. Restaurant vents, assuming they're well maintained, can deal with the flames with no problem. And then you can just brush off the ashes. I still use a similar technique when I want to get my steel strainer clean.
Kishibe Angelo 3 years ago
i like when the bosses are understanding because then that is a healthy working place
#17
One of the managers where I work had the junior IT guy add a vacation auto-responder to his email and the confirmation window had a checkbox "Apply to inbox". The manager never cleans his inbox and the IT guy decided to check that box.
Something like 10,000 emails were sent that day. Important clients (who he would have been conversing more often with) were getting multiple hundreds of vacation notifications. Nothing bad came from it and most of the clients were good-hearted about it. He was getting replies like "Frank, please stop. We KNOW you're on vacation!"
Robert T 3 years ago
Wait, are you saying that it sent an "I'm on vacation" email to every email address that had sent email to his inbox? What kind of pointless system does that? Normal auto repsonders just send an email the first time one is received when it is set, subsequent emails from the same person don't get a response. They are highly insecure things, as they will respond to mailing lists, thus telling me to come and burgle your house.
The Starsong Princess 3 years ago
Back in the day, a lot of email systems had problems like this. It was the Wild West. Auto reply was a killer.
Load More Replies...
James016 3 years ago
One of the departments at work implemented a policy to put on the out of office every day saying that working hours are 9am to 5.30pm so your request will be dealt with on the next business day. The manager decided to change it so that staff had to set up an auto responder. For one person this caused their mailbox to hang as their auto responder was sending to an external email that also had an auto responder. Hello mail loop. The person had to wait 2 hours while all the messages were processed. Manger demanded to know why this happened. I told him and he reverted the policy back. TL:DR Out Of Office only sends one email per recipient per day to avoid mail loops.
SobyKay 3 years ago
Funny, something similar happened to my boss in the organization I work for, just a year or two before I joined. Every time it gets close to holidays she gives everyone a link to fail-safe instructions on out-of-office replies and says, "Trust me, do NOT do it any other way!" lol
#18
Accepted 20 fake $100 bills because I hadn't been taught how to spot fakes.
troufaki13 3 years ago
Scammer "whew that was easier than I thought! Wait! Why was it so easy? Did I give him the fake ones? Or the real ones? Should I go back and check? Am I the stupid one?"
MyOpinionHasBeenServed 3 years ago (edited)
I got in trouble once for charging an undercover cop a coffee (police get free coffee at Tim Hortons). I was told to not charge the undercovers. I asked how I would know. All the manager said is "You'll know." No. No I did not. Some managers are not good trainers.
Anne Edwards 3 years ago
You are not supposed to know and I remember years ago when those undercover officers were spending a lot of time working in several of those donut shops. The white powder wasn't powdered sugar.
Load More Replies... Robert T 3 years ago
To some degree that's on the employer. But surely when you get to high denomination notes like that, you would call your supervisor to check them if you don't know how to do it yourself.
Seanette Blaylock 3 years ago
My most recent cashier job had that rule. At one point, I was a lead, so was the one checking the big bills.
Load More Replies... Seanette Blaylock 3 years ago
That's on the employer who didn't properly train, but still expected the employee to somehow just know. No intelligent employer would put someone on register without making sure (such as by providing TRAINING) that employee has the knowledge they need to do it right.
KMill 3 years ago
Assuming this is a young person new to a job - I wasn’t born knowing about counterfeit bills. In my first job before I was trained to spot fakes, I honestly didn’t know people did such things.
Load More Replies...
Hollie Marie 3 years ago
When I was a Cashier we used UV to check them but anything big the supervisor checked
Tim 3 years ago
I've been a cashier before and they gave us those markers. If the mark is black, which it like always was, the bill was supposed to be fake, so I just accepted all of them, and so did everyone else. Also, today, they change the bill designs so often that how is someone supposed to remember what a bill from five years ago lol like?
#19
Years ago in undergrad, I worked in a lab & had an incident. I was there at 2AM on a Saturday morning, fixing & staining cells (prepping them for viewing under a microscope). Part of the process involves utilizing sodium azide. I put the NaN3 into a buffer solution in too small of a conical & screwed-on the cap, without thinking. hydrogen gas evolved, the conical exploded, my clothes caught fire, & EHS wasn’t very happy. The PI of the lab couldn’t stop laughing. The only serious damage was to my ego.
Kristin Ingersoll 3 years ago
In high school, Advanced Chem, the teacher handed out tiny bits of sodium hydroxide (I'm pretty sure) and said, very forcefully, to absolutely NOT get it wet. Of course, some of the boys took that as a challenge. One spit on it and BOOM! It exploded and caught this girl's hair on fire. She had the loveliest long, thick, blonde hair. And it was te 80s, so it was full of hairspray. And WHOOSH! It went up in flames. Other than a disaster of a hairdo, she wasn' hurt. Eight years later, my brother was in that class. Same teacher. Same experiment. Again, the teacher told them not to get it wet. Only this time, he pointed to the burn marks over their heads and told the story of what happened in my class. My brother knew exactly which girl lost her hair!
Katchen 3 years ago
I never learned that dissolving NaOH in water is an exothermic reaction. After college, I was working in a lab and had to mix a new stock solution of NaOH for pHing buffers, so I added solid sodium hydroxide pellets to a glass bottle of water. No explosion at all, but the bottle got so hot, so fast, that I nearly burned my hands. Once it was all dissolved I used the stock solution without a problem.
Load More Replies...
Pungent Sauce 3 years ago
“There was a chemist, who is no more, for what he thought was H2O, was H2SO4”
Hutt'nKloas 3 years ago
yeh, should read the labels properly before continuing the experiment 😉
Load More Replies... Brian Bennett 3 years ago
Labs and chemicals are weird things to be involved with you have to be alert 24/7 Glad it was only your ego damaged!
#20
Mixed bleach and ammonia. Had to evacuate the restaurant
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.
Alexandru Bucur 3 years ago
Yup, chlorine gas. What people were throwing at each other circa 1915.
Load More Replies...
Roxy Eastland 3 years ago
Training fail there. Any job should give you the minimal training to keep yourself and others safe. Working with hazard substances has a few very simple rules, one of which is Do Not Mix Different Substances Together unless directed to do so by the manufacturer. This story is a perfect example of why such basic training is necessary. Not everything straight forward is obvious to everyone all the time.
Bob D. Lin Quint 3 years ago
This is why King of the Hill should be added to schools curriculums
Paul Beebe 3 years ago
Working in a group home, cooking dinner, accidentally spilled a bunch of black pepper on the burner.....gassed the entire house
tuzdayschild 3 years ago
Been there, done that. I did it in mop water but same results though.
Nic Werecat 3 years ago
Shout-out to my stepdad who decided it would be a good idea to pee in a freshly bleach-cleaned toilet.
AzKhaleesi 3 years ago
Omg that brings back a horrible memory. I was probably 9 or 10 and was instructed to clean my bathroom when I got home from school. I was never told not to mix ammonia and bleach and I wanted my parents to be super proud of the good job I did. So I poured the bleach in the toilet to let it sit (like my momma had always done) I went to grab the comet for the sinks and tub and saw the ammonia and thought "why not? Two is better than one" and poured that in the toilet too. I learned Chemistry that day real quick. I flushed and flushed and flushed. Opened all the windows and sat in the back yard for a while.
#21
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 test!
Trophy Husband 3 years ago
I once got even with a company that wouldn't stop spamming me. Outlook used to let you set a rule to forward a message based on certain keywords to a series of emails, and it would individually send it to each one. I put the company's CEO of something similar in there over 1000 times. Every message they sent me, he got 1000 times with a message explaining how to make it stop!
Naesil 3 years ago (edited)
The customer Im working with, someone set up some email group so they could send the information to necessary people, but they somehow managed to make it so it send the email to whole company, and whenever someone responded to it even without "reply all" it would send it to everyone again.. now there was a two day period when we were just laughing when people didnt understand to just stop replying and let them fix it, there were hundreds of emails of people asking to get removed from the delivery group, few people started trolling those oblivious people by replying with memes so I actually opened every single one just to have a laugh.
#22
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 girl was upset. I had 10 minutes til lunch service started. I have no idea how I'm still alive.
Bettie-Jean Neal 3 years ago
While working at Brasserie Perrier for Chris Scarduzio, my novice husband accidentally mixed the veal and lamb stocks together. He got in trouble, but thankfully not fired, and they called it vlamstock.
MelonCloud 3 years ago
Nice that they called it vlamstock! Was it just for that one batch? Or did people like it and did they add the mix to the menu?
Load More Replies...
Norman Woelk 3 years ago
Forgot 2 whole prime rib roasts in the oven and went home for the day. Chef was livid the next morning and had put 4 timers on my work station. Had to turn them into the most expensive BBQ beef sandwiches ever made.
Colin Leamon 3 years ago
Boil up some stock, do that thing with egg whites and call it consume
#23
My first day working at a coffee 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.
Nadja Lambacher 3 years ago
Same reason some people put weird stuff in the fridge... handling several items at once and brain fart.
Load More Replies... Roxy Eastland 3 years ago
"Left" it in the oven???? Why on earth did a Sharpie need to be put in the oven to start with? I'm not even sure why someone working in a coffee shop would need a Sharpie
Terry Tobias 3 years ago
Probably to write customers' names on the to-go cups.
Load More Replies...
#24
I overpaid my restaurant team around £33k in service charge over a period of 8 weeks because of some corrupt Excel formulas that weren't double checked before submission.
When the company discovered what happened they wanted the money back, and I had to break that news to the team in a 1 on 40 meeting early one morning before service.
I then had to have a 1 on 1 meeting with each employee to set up a repayment scheme with them based on how much they owed.
As an aside, I had only just moved in to the role and the overpayments had started a few weeks before my appointment, but I was still responsible at the time. Some of the guys owed around £1800. It was the worst 4 months in my career to date.
Samantha Lomb 3 years ago
I'm sorry but the employer should just have to eat the loss if they make a mistake like that
Péter Rózsahegyi 3 years ago
There's a law in my country for this situation. You have to pay back every penny you received from your employer, bank, etc. without being entitled to it. You get back your money the same way if you overpaid your internet supplier or the like. I think it's quite fair.
Load More Replies...
Chucky Cheezburger 3 years ago
And you know if the company underpaid the staff and they didn't catch it, the company would have buried that knowledge.
Cavern Gill-Vernon 3 years ago
Yeh, company I worked for hired a family friend to do the accounts and wages. She stuffed up and hadn't been taking the right amount of tax from all of the staff for a year. It was caught 11 months in and they didn't tell us until after they deducted what was owed from everyone's monthly wage packet in one hit. We were incandescent with rage. But they refused to take it back in installments. I don't miss working for them
Laura Capshaw 3 years ago
Had I been overpaid, too bad for the employer. I would have accepted my pay in good faith.
Frannie Kaplan 3 years ago
Yhe employees were not liable. It's not like the IRS. I wonder how many of them quit
The Cute Cat 3 years ago
what a crappy company only use excell sheet for such important task??
Just saying 3 years ago
You'll notice that this is a UK company so paying under minimum wage is illegal, and that in this case, service of 12-20% is automatically added to the bill and distributed to staff, which is where the error came in.
Load More Replies... #25
Worked at an egg farm and was carrying 12 flats of eggs. Didn’t see the pallet someone left in the walkway. Tripped on the pallet and hundreds of eggs go flying and splattered all over the floor. Meanwhile, I fell and dislocated my wrist and shoulder.
#26
I at least partially blame my employer for this but they fully blamed me so - I briefly worked for the city zoo. We used "carts" that were basically an ATV with a dumpable bed on them for cleaning enclosures. Zoos are large so we also used them just as transport. We had one with a known wonky parking brake. Maintenance had refused to replace it for months. One day I had to park it on an incline. I kicked it after parking, didn't budge. I turned around at least 3 times as I walked away to make sure it was still not going anywhere. 5 mins later, I come back to hysteria. Naturally as soon as I was gone, it had rolled down the hill and taken out half the fence to the camel ride area. Knocked some lady over (she was fine, I think she had just been knocked off balance versus full on hit by it). My manager wasn't mad at all, maintenance finally gave us a new cart, but I still got written up because protocol.
T. D. Bostick 3 years ago
Then that wasn't a very effective lion enclosure.
Load More Replies... Susie Elle 3 years ago
Responsibility is on your employer for giving you faulty equipment to work with, however - if you knew it had a wonky brake, why park it on an incline?
Uber Mensch 3 years ago
I think I'd have appealed that one - I'm not willing to take the "hit" because a cart with a KNOWN BAD brake that *Maintenance wouldn't fix* wandered off.
James Doe 3 years ago
Thats why it's advisable to always maximally turn the steering wheel in one direction when parking on a steep incline. Then a brake malfunction doesn't lead to a car gaining massive momentum. Isn't disobeying that rule even an offense you can get fined for in san francisco ?
Nikki Sevven 3 years ago
The protocol should be to use wheel blocks, especially in areas where the public will be.
Jing Yi Xu 3 years ago
If she wasn't ok, or anything bad had happened out of it, it would have been very sue-able against the zoo.
#27
Slammed a forklift into a camaro.
Yoga Kitty 3 years ago
No joke. In the >20 years I am with the same company we had at least two gruesome accidents with forklifts. One time a guy was pinned to the wall by the fork - he did not make it. Another time a cleaning lady lost a leg. The drivers transport large, heavy objects - it is really no good idea to "just quickly rush past them"... Everybody knows that, but sometimes people make really stupid decisions.
Load More Replies...
Luther von Wolfen 3 years ago
I ran into a guy with a pallet-jack - sort of like a forklift, but smaller - and broke a bone in his foot. He had gotten me high like ten minutes earlier. I felt kind of bad about it.
#28
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.
King Joffrey 3 years ago
I understood the words but not sure if I got the meaning... other than the machine wasn't programmed right.
Ti Wa 3 years ago
That's pretty much how all electronics fail. Someone makes a tiny little mistake that nobody notices. And after some time the mistake gets worse and worse and starts causing collateral. But the machine still continues working, while it's insides are slowly ripping itself apart. And then in a split second the point of no return is passed and everything fails spectacularly.
Load More Replies... #29
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.
Robert T 3 years ago
I imagine you were mortified. A colleague did worse - we were testing a new database change deployment system which would execute roll up and roll back SQL scripts automatically - it worked a little too well and picked up script from the wrong path called 'delete_all_tables.sql', which did exactly what it said on the tin. It was a development database and we had no backup, so he had to recreate the database manually. The code got some safeguards to make sure it didn't do that again!
Flabuless-Jaye 3 years ago
Having worked with SQL for more years than I care to admit, this has given me the most anxiety of any BP story ever!!
Load More Replies...
Adam C 3 years ago (edited)
Atleast you had a WHERE. first month at new job I deleted a table. Took a week to recover everthing.
Flabuless-Jaye 3 years ago
I had a pathological dread of this happening, so any delete clause, always started life as a select clause.
Load More Replies...
Tom Hanlin 3 years ago
Umm... the heck is that? A modernized version of COBOL? This is horrible, but hilarious.
purple zebra 3 years ago
The dead don’t usually complain. If you haven’t been haunted yet, then you’re good
#30
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.
Robert T 3 years ago
So the guy was running on a unbacked up laptop with 10 years stuff that he couldn't afford to use. The same would have happened if he had dropped it, it just wouldn't have been your fault. The real culprit here is the policy of allowing used to keep important data on their own machines without backups.
Printerman 3 years ago
This right here. Anyone in the last 20 years should know to back their "stuff" up if they don't want to lose it. Hard drives, even SSD's, do go bad and that "stuff" can be lost to the digital gods forever.
Load More Replies...
Nikki Sevven 3 years ago
Actually, the user lost his own files by not backing up his hard drive on the regular.
LuckyL 3 years ago
A friend of mine wanted me to clear her phone of all data because she wanted to sell it. I asked her 3 times if she really got everything of the phone. probably more than 3 times.Yes, shes absolutly sure. The moment I clicked the last step of resetting it she asks "What about my adressbook?" -> all gone
Seanette Blaylock 3 years ago
On one call center job I had (close to 20 years ago now), I was providing tech support for UPS, both website and the WorldShip software smaller shippers used at that time. One day, I heard the guy next to me muttering "crackhead" (thank God his Mute was apparently working correctly). I knew he was on a call, so really got curious. Once my neighbor was off the call, I asked what had happened. Turned out his caller had formatted his hard drive, then could NOT understand why his data files were gone. Had to agree with my teammate about the caller's mental function.
Load More Replies... James016 3 years ago
Had a similar thing when I first started my old job. A manager was getting a new laptop so I copied everything from his Documents, Downloads etc on to his network drive and then transferred it to the new laptop. I took his old laptop and kept it aside for a couple of weeks. After that I email him to say I am going to wipe his laptop and re-assign it and to check that he has all his documents. He says he does so I wipe it and re-assign. A week later he calls me screaming that his most important document is missing. I replied that you said you had everything. It was stored somewhere else on the laptop. He emailed my boss, he came to me and I showed him the email chain. He replied to this manager basically saying tough s**t. My boss also asked him what would happen if the laptop broke or got lost/stolen especially as he put out an email to everyone saying don't keep files on the laptop but on the network drives.
#31
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.
Toni Epple 3 years ago
As a student I worked as a Barkeeper in a very popular restaurant (lots of politicians and TV actors went there). On my first day I had a large group of around 30 people who ordered "Sorbetto" as Aperitif. This drink was made with a Hamilton Beach Mixer with Lemon Sorbet and you could only prepare two at a time, so it took forever to prepare them, and all the glasses had to have a sugar rim. The sugar bowl we used for the rim was hidden behind a machine under the bar and since I was new, I didn't know there was also an identical looking salt bowl for Margaritas. The funniest thing was it took quite a while until someone complained. We took back all the drinks and I made new ones. Fortunately the bosses were very laid back and the only thing that happened was, that the other barkeepers had a good laugh. It was a great time and a great place to work.
Hugh Cookson 3 years ago
Good call - Sprinkle Demerara sugar ( not a lot) onto a steak before chucking it on to the griddle, once that side is done turn over and splatter the other side with Sriracha sauce - bloody delicious. If you cook this until it's medium rare it's perfect.
Load More Replies... Oopsydaisy 3 years ago
I find this very difficult to believe, unless the storage containers for both were similar, which they are usually not.
Roxy Eastland 3 years ago
Yeah, salt and sugar don't actually look the same when you are handling both a lot.
Load More Replies... #32
Chemistry teacher here, on my first day of teaching I set my classroom on fire after some unfortunate incidents involving sodium, water and a glass tank. The problem was that the glass tank was too big, so the hydrogen gas got to build up to a decent amount. Then suddenly kaboom! The glass tank exploded, there was shattered glass everywhere and hit the students, who were all wearing safety glasses. A column of water grew from the glass tank to the ceiling and the ceiling started to burn. After a few moments the fire died out and the fire alarm was loud and I had to make sure all of the students were ok. Which they were. It ended up being one of my funniest classes to teach for many years. The students absolutely loved it, I was a bit of a nervous wreck for a few hours. The worst thing in hindsight is all of the comments saying things like “you started your career with a bang” and stuff like that.
Péter Rózsahegyi 3 years ago
'A column of water grew from the glass tank to the ceiling and the ceiling started to burn.'. It's too far when I learned chemistry the last time so could somebody pls. explain the process how the water sets anything into fire?
KittyMommy 3 years ago
I'm guessing the water acted to carry the gasses up to the ceiling and when it started to fall back the gasses combined and ignited
Load More Replies... 
#33
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.
#34
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 engine control room, where the computer was located, and laid out the disks: disk 1, disk 2, disk 3, disk 4, disk 6. Disk 5 was still on my desk in Ottawa.
Tim Douglass 3 years ago
I did software installs back in that era that sometimes, with their associated data, could take close to 100 disks. (for reference, I could copy onto the disks, drive across town to our nearest client, install the software, check the install, and drive back before a ftp transfer got half-way through the files) When I did out-of-town installs I would put one set (always two copies of each disk) of disks in my checked luggage and carry another set in my carry-on bag. We would frequently also overnight a third set. You can get real paranoid when things really, really need to go right!
Cactus McCoy 3 years ago
I had to check half of the words in this post. I demand more Canada content!
#35
I used to work as an explosive ordnance clearance engineer. This card comes round the office for Tony. I write ‘happy birthday mate, from Dave’. Lady who gave me the card looks on in horror. ‘What?’ I say. ‘You can’t write that!’ ‘Why not?’ ‘He’s just had his leg blown off by a landmine.’ I had to try and change it to best wishes. But it was pretty obvious what I did. My boss comes round later, ex major royal engineers, ‘I heard what you did Burns.....he’s going to be hopping mad when he sees you.’
Very Bored Panda 3 years ago
Didn't you know? People saying happy birthday on your birthday is what makes it happy. You just ruined his birthday. Plus it can still be a happy day with or without his leg. Say he won 1000000 on a scratch card. It would be a happy day
Nadja Lambacher 3 years ago
I assume he just thought it was a birthday card when in fact it was a get well soon card.
Load More Replies...
#36
My coworker was trying to take down a pallet but he had the forklift to close to the racking. He accidentally pushed the support beam above the pallet he was going for so far up that the pins busted and both pallets (2L coke bottles) on that top rack tipped. Luckily, nobody got hurt, the pallets were wrapped, and neither one fell completely. But they were hanging so far over the edge that most of the contents ending up falling anyway. That entire end of the warehouse was flooded with Coca Cola. There were so many bottles on the floor that we couldn’t drive equipment through and we were wading through the sea of coke, squeegeeing it out the loading dock door. Four months later, we could still feel the stickiness.
Cactus McCoy 3 years ago
In a place I used to work a fork lift driver tipped over his FL while loading a pallet of glass ash trays about 6m above ground, dropping it on a different pallet containing a bunch of cigarette dispenser made of plastic. Ash tray won, nobody got hurt.
Upstaged75 3 years ago
A friend of mine sadly lost her father when his forklift tipped over - I think most people don't realize how dangerous they can be.
Load More Replies...
#38
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.
Chucky Cheezburger 3 years ago
Yep. When I worked as a machinist, I mis measured by 0.025 of an inch and damn near scrapped a $7000 piece of material...
Load More Replies... 
#39
I worked at a retail store when two women walked by me and said “tell (coworker) that she gave us excellent service” on their way out of the store. I told my coworker about it afterward and she said “who were they?” And for some reason my dumbass said “umm I’m not sure but they were two heavy-set women” then described what they were wearing. And my coworker said “oh that was my mom and my aunt.” I have never been more embarrassed in my life.
Scagsy 3 years ago (edited)
When I was a football coach my mum happened to be passing the ground that I was going to be coaching at so she offered me a lift. I gratefully accepted so off we went. We had the right of way approaching a junction so carried on through. There was a car waiting to pull out at the junction and the driver wasn't happy that my mum had not yielded. I could read his lips as he said 'F*****g fat b***h'. So I got to the venue and this car pulls up and it's the guy from earlier, and it turns out that he is our 'star' midfielder. Since I pick the team, I decided that today was a good day to give someone else a chance in midfield. It's a shame that he wasn't bright enough to put two and two together as I reckon it would have served as a good life lesson for him. Dumbass.
Cold Contagious 3 years ago
It seems that often people like that miss out on life's little lessons. It is good though that you were rewarded with some sweet justice, if only for you to know.
Load More Replies...
#40
Not me but a friend got a job at a fancy dessert restaurant, the kind with a big-ass chocolate fountain in the middle of the room. 1 week into the job and he's carrying a tray of glasses to be polished when he loses control, drops the tray and glasses onto the rim of the fountain and smashes it spilling 10's of litres of melted chocolate over the floor in front of everyone.
He was promptly unhired.
The Cute Cat 3 years ago
I think FB service job is toxic environment because so easy to replace a worker..
#41
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 because that stores posted policy is that they cannot leave unwrapped pallets unless it is being worked.
Jo Choto 3 years ago
It's a rude nickname for Walmart. Mal = bad. Wart = a wart.
Load More Replies...
#42
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 age 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 hit "reply to all" instead of "reply" and sent it out to the entire office. almost s**t my pants. luckily no one brought it up except 1-2 coworkers i'm on good terms with who found it funny, but god i wanted to die
Yoga Kitty 3 years ago
Why? It is embarrassing, yrs, however, in the end you are paid to do your work and not to express enthusiasm.
Load More Replies...
#43
Switched work laptops and while I was syncing our shared drive, accidentally deleted every single document from the last three years. Thankfully someone figured out how to restore it about a week later
Robert T 3 years ago (edited)
Well there must have been if they restored it a week later.
Load More Replies... #44
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 customers and got rushed into the back to wash my eye out.
Kishibe Angelo 3 years ago
imagine the kids after that they be like "mommy i f*****g hate this movie" or "this tatse like s**t"
#45
A manager at a pizza place I worked at years ago took a catering order of 50 or so pizzas for the next week. Well Monday at noon we got a call asking where the order was, turns out the manager out the order down for Tuesday instead of Monday. They got the order for free, and surprisingly that manager didn't get fired. He did however end up in jail several weeks later.
Seanette Blaylock 3 years ago
Yeah, I think we'd all like to know that. :)
Load More Replies... #46
I’m a hairdresser. I had a very wealthy woman as a client, who had a LOT of thick hair, and wanted to balayage (painted on highlights) her hair and make it a vivid color. Cool. So, we went through the process, and I’m noticing that her hair is really dry and delicate despite it being really long and thick, so I make sure to rinse her bleach out a little earlier than planned...except the mass of hair kept the water from getting to the highlights on the very bottom. I start blowing her out, and I notice there’s an entire section where it matters if you have long hair and like to put it up, ie the section at the very bottom, that has broken off to shoulder length (her hair was to her waist). I was sweating bullets, watching this short hair flapping in the wind, and nearly cried when I had to tell her what happened. She got a small undercut at her request and was really nice about it, but it scarred me for a while.
Oopsydaisy 3 years ago
As the owner of a lot of thick hair, if there's one thing we thick haired people know - the bloody stuff grows back. Usually a week after you've had a really stylish haircut.
M 3 years ago (edited)
Plus nobody ever notices when you get a haircut. There is enough hair on the salon floor to make wigs for 3 people but when you get home everyone is like "I thought you were cutting your hair?"
Load More Replies... #47
I had an important meeting that could eventually lead me into a huge promotion. I kid you not, I zipped my zipper onto my d**k after taking a piss in the bathroom and it hurt like hell. Not as bad as that Ben Stiller movie, but trust me, it was not a good situation. I actually went to a local pharmacy to grab some Advil to hopefully ease some of the pain just to get through the meeting.
Cold Contagious 3 years ago
I would have asked the pharmacist for something with a numbing agent in it to use. Anything, orajel, or something with benzocaine, anything at all within the possibility of helping.
Load More Replies...
#48
I had a temporary moment of insanity and jumped out of my Boss' work van while he was driving it. Smashed my head on the road, nearly bled out, ambulence drove me to the hospital. We're still good friends. Basically what caused the temporary insanity is that it was really cold out, and he had the heat up insanely high in the van to the point where the air quality was s**t and hot and I basically couldn't breathe. We were both wearing heavy coats too. I wanted to open the windows to get some fresh air and he wouldn't let me. I told him I needed to get out of the van, and he didn't give a s**t, he told me we're heading to the job site. I warned him 3 times that if he didn't park the van, I was going to jump out. He continued to refuse to park. So I kept my word and I jumped.
Oopsydaisy 3 years ago
Heat exhaustion is really dangerous. Also I wonder if there were carbon monoxide fumes.
#49
Was promoted to terminal manager and I was a dumb 25 year old idealist. We had an essential employee--a mechanic--who kept our fleet of trucks running. At least that was his job description. Less than a month on the job, it came to my attention that he was a working alcoholic and his work on our fleet was underwhelming. My boss told me to fire him once we had a new mechanic ready to come in. I told the old mechanic that he should probably start looking for new work if he couldn't do the job. Word got back to him through the pipeline that he was going to be fired. I went to a bar with my assistant manager after working 40 days straight and lo and behold the mechanic showed up. Long story short, the mechanic attempted to abduct me with his adult son and dump my body in a frozen lake. The whole thing became a large dramatic bull**it event that put me in the hospital for a few hours and we both lost our jobs.
Anne Kilpatrick 3 years ago
From the Reddit thread: level 2 M-S-S · 1 yr. ago They didn't want to deal with it. It's an At-Will employment state.
#50
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”
#51
I forgot to put water in my instant macaroni and it caught on fire in the microwave. Orange smoke was everywhere and the fire alarm went off. I pretended that it wasn’t me and then secretly cleaned it up when everyone had went home.
#52
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
Vetus Vespertilio 3 years ago
I’d be surprised if this happened. I’ve managed McDonald’s stores. We’d have apologized for the lack of ice, sent someone to the store to buy some, and kept right on truckin’. Probably would have had the counter folks point out that the customer was getting additional soda at no charge because they were filling the cups to the same level.
Lillukka79 3 years ago
Would have liked your comment, if not for the last line. The machine spits out x ammount of soda, ice or not.
Load More Replies... #53
Project manager at a pharmaceuticals trader. Ticked the 15-25°c box on a form to the temperature controlled van driver... the goods were 2-8°c €1.5 million of vaccines had to be destroyed
troufaki13 3 years ago
Hmm... how can we be sure you were not an anti-vaxxer spy who infiltrated the enemy to destroy the vaccines?
#54
I worked in a small company, ~8 employees. Not one of them had a forklift licence, and neither did I. Anyway, I was the one that they made drive the forklift if we needed to unload a delivery etc. I hated it, but really had no choice, it was that or get fired (At least I thought at the time). So, I get in the forklift at 4:10pm (We close at 5) and back it up, straight into the brand new shutter door that was only partially open. I sheepishly go and tell the boss, who is seething. He said he's calling the door repair company and 'Of course you'll wait with me until they arrive'. Excellent. No ETA was even given by the repair company and we're in a relatively rural area so response time was s**tty anyway. Anyway, it gets to 6:20pm and I've had enough. It was winter, so dark out, I had an hour's drive home and still no ETA on the arrival on the repairman. Now, things at this place have not been great for a while, I has multiple grievances about the way the place was run. I ask if I'm done and can leave. The boss says no. I then go on a rant, brining up everything the place does incorrectly, and even illegally, and then he bursts out with 'YOU CAN EITHER STAY, OR..' And before he finished I say 'Or I can leave? Goodbye.' That was that.
#55
I work in a heavily regulated, incredibly high pressure field. You can get blackballed by the industry if you slip up because at a certain level everyone knows everyone. I reached a position where I had a lot of responsibility. I was the face of very valuable projects. I beefed the stats on one of the most valuable...ever. I had been lied to, but one of my responsibilities was to ensure no one lied about studies. It was ugly enough that I was convinced I was done. Like, "in the industry" done. I envisioned everything collapsing around me. I was already battling mental illness. This sent me to the hospital with suicidal ideations. I stayed for a week. I missed a month's worth of work, which was torture because I was used to having complete control over everything and never missed a day/often lost vacation. I got back and found that news of my mistake had hardly traveled. A few engineers had rendered the project f**ked up beyond all reason. It literally could not proceed because of what they'd done. I went back to the hospital for therapy pretty regularly for a while. I saw three other people from my company paying visits and wondered if they saw me.
Oopsydaisy 3 years ago
Jesus. It sounds like the OP would be a lot better off without that job.
Susie Elle 3 years ago
This sounds like a lot more bad stuff was going on to begin with than just this mistake
Victor Botha 3 years ago
I am so confused by this post, I don't understand anything apart from the OP ending up in hospital
M 3 years ago
OP f****d up by reporting better numbers than they should have which could have led to them losing their job but while they were in the hospital someone else on the project f****d up worse so the project tanked and nobody cared about the numbers anymore
Load More Replies... #56
I worked at a car detailing place. We had enormous buckets with taps on the end of them for all of the chemicals we would use to clean the cars. One day before we closed up for the weekend, i decided to do an acid wash on my car to get all of the tar off of my bumper and wheels and such. Turns out when i came in on Monday I forgot to turn the tap off to the acid. Everyone had to wear a mask in the place for a couple days because of the smell. With the hole in the ground I evaporated and the cost of all of the acid I wasted took a few paychecks to replace.
#57
I used to work prep at a fairly large chain restaurant. One day, nearing lunch, I decided it would be funny to play a prank on the line cook who was by himself for the next thirty minutes. I set all five of our microwaves to go off at the same time. Only problem is they were empty, and i set them all for a minute each. They all caught fire. It was first of the month Saturday.
Splash Bach 3 years ago
What kind of microwaves set fire after 1 min ? Must have been really cheap
Terry Tobias 3 years ago
Kitchens aren't the best places to pull pranks. Too much dangerous stuff in there to fool around.
#58
I used to work at a phone store and we dealt with a lot of contracts. A part of the process was an ID check and a collegue of mine forgot to do it; he gave the lady two brand new iphones 7's (they just came out that week) it turned out to be fraud. He got in a lot of trouble but they let him off with a disciplinary.
#59
I crashed a hospital multimillion computer charting system after entering in the number π Back story I was a charge nurse at my local hospital and I recently just watched the movie “Life of Pi” I remembered the scene where the kid wrote out π on the chalk board. One night at work I copied and pasted the number π into one of the “virtual test patients” in our computer charting system. (Just to make it look like I also knew all the numbers to Pi like the movie) I crashed the system for 4 hours, had to call in emergency IT team at 4am. End result I got in-trouble, but not fired. I’d like to think having a good standing with the hospital and managers saved my job. I still work for this hospital (22yrs later).
Robert T 3 years ago
I'm calling BS. Pi is an irrational number. You can't type in Pi. And if you can crash a computer system by entering more digits in a field than are allowed, then that system is so fundamentally flawed that you should be asking for compensation from the company that built it!
Tuesday Next 3 years ago
Also Life of Pi wasn't out 22 years ago and I'm pretty sure it didn't involve anyone writing pi on a chalkboard
Load More Replies...
MommyRN 3 years ago (edited)
Also, "Life of Pi" came out 10 years ago...not 22 years ago...and as a nurse, anything you do in a "virtual test patient" doesn't effect the rest of the computer system. It's literally the point of having a "virtual playground"...you can practice and mess up without actually screwing anything up
The Cute Cat 3 years ago
Actually, that is not merely your fault. Each application should be tested using every possible scenario. Clearly the system not tested enough. The app is just too easy to break.
#60
I work at a jail. We have things called “keep a parts” to keep people away from each other since they may have conflicts on the street or otherwise. I accidentally let these two guys go into the same room together. Guy #1 is F**KING massive. Guy #2 is small and (allegedly) killed Guy #1s friend. Guy #2 doesn’t know Guy #1 but Guy #1 knows who he is and what he (allegedly) did. So, they go into this room with about 30 other people and after about 20 minutes Guy #1 casually walks over to Guy #2 and beats the ever loving s**t out of him. Easily could’ve killed him. Luckily we stopped it before it got worse. But I still f**ked up massively. Not related but Guy #1 was recently killed by his friend when they were drunk and his friend “accidentally” shot him in the head. Now Guy #1s friend is in jail for murder.
#61
I gave my log in information to a phishing scam because I didn't notice the email domain was slightly different than our actual ones. I decided to worry about it the next day because I already left work, but then I got paranoid and decided to go back and change my password just in case someone tried to use my account for something. The problem was that I take the train home and have to walk about 15 minutes to get to the station, so by the time I got back to the office it was almost empty and my face was really red because of how hot it was when I was walking. Of course my supervisor still happened to be there and he was pretty surprised to see me back that late.
Explore more of these tags
What do you think ?
Not Proud British 3 years ago (edited)
I was serving at a 21st for a rich woman's daughter. It was my job to clear tables and make sure the food was replenished at the self serving buffet. Once the hot food was gone I was instructed to get all the desserts out of the kitchen. I look in the fridge and see the usual black forest gateau, cheesecake, etc and what looks like creme brulee. I take it all out and position myself ready to serve. A couple come and coo over the creme brulee asking if it's home made. Turns out they are food critics for a living and are very impressed that the hostess has made creme brulee. I serve them both a scoopful of it and think nothing more of it. Then the hostess comes along and looks at the creme brulee in horror. Turns out it's beef dripping. At the end of the shift I see the 'creme brulee' I had served the couple left in the bowls. It was evident they had eaten a spoonful before realising....
Jo Choto 3 years ago
This kind of fits. I was working as an extra in a movie in my teens. Small town in Africa. I wasn't working till the afternoon, so I thought I would just head downtown and get a soda or something. As I'm coming along side street to the main crossroads of town, I see this guy I really, really like just leaning in a doorway. So I just make a beeline straight over to him, trying to be all cute and sexy. He's smiling at me. I'm smiling at him. I get all the way over to him and his grin is just getting bigger and bigger. He kind of does a head nod behind me. I turn around and there is an entire film crew filming a scene, including the stars of the movie, and a crowd of people watching. I just walked into the scene in the background and ruined the whole thing, and everybody just watched me in silence. Then they all laughed their heads off at me. God, I was so freaking humiliated. But apparently not enough to swear off being in movies, which I continued to do!
RatherLoopy 3 years ago
Gosh, so many faux pas in my past. How ''bout the time I wrote a VERY explicit erotic short story on my computer at work, then accidentally printed it out on another department's printer instead of the one by my desk? Does that qualify?
Andy Acceber 3 years ago
The top several items on this list actually make me feel really good. The bosses are all kind and understanding. It makes me fear failure a little less and recognize that we're all just people trying our best.
Robert T 3 years ago (edited)
I have two particularly good IT ones from different jobs. One was a documentation tool that scanned C++ code and produced documentation from the comments (similar to javadoc or doxygen, but years earlier). I was responsible for the master copy of the distribution configs and it very nearly shipped with settings that would have overwritten the user's code, wiping it out. We delayed the release and fixed the code so that could never happen again! The second I had a little accident deleting the backup I had made of some of the startup configs for a Sun workstation. You guessed it, I deleted the original. No backups as it was only a demo system, which we were due to demonstrate the next day. Fortunately it had an ISDN connection, as did our office, and I was able to dial in and copy the configs off our sever, and no-one was any the wiser, but it was a brown-trousered moment when it happened. Worse still, the system would have run fine until it was rebooted, so good job I realised!
LynzCatastrophe 3 years ago
During a slow day I had gotten bored and decided to wipe down all the shelves in the fine dinnerware section of the store I worked in. I really wish I picked something else to do. Knocked my head against a shelf containing 5 sets of champagne flutes by Waterford. I'm still amazed I still had a job AND it wasn't taken off my paycheck.
Valentina Cupido 3 years ago
I worked in a supermarket for three months one summer. I was assigned to cashier and shelves refurbishment. I had been given a brand new box cutter, really sharp. I open the very first box without realizing the middle finger of my other hand was right in the way! I cut the top part of my finger and had to go to hospital. I live in Italy and from such a place of work you have to wait for an ambulance because of insurance and such. I was given 3 weeks of paid leave to recover. One or two days after I was back I was out partying with some friends, was in a car and my friend slammed the car head first into a tree. I broke a part of my knee and was out for the rest of my contract. Still a paid leave here so I basically worked less than half the time I was supposed to. I wasn't so surprised when I wasn't called back but I can't really say they were wrong! I probably wouldn’t have survived another month like that!
MyOpinionHasBeenServed 3 years ago (edited)
I worked for a research company. There are laws on when we had to stop calling people. There was some sort of glitch or oversight one evening where it was already 9am CST but we were still calling AST. It is absolutely against the law to be calling people after 11pm and can result in the company getting fined or sued. I alerted the Team Leader in charge of the project. He actually said "Okay, I'll look into it. Keep dialing on it." Ummm..... what? It's illegal, I reminded him. "And I'm your manager. You'll do what I tell you." No, I will not be part of breaking the law. I went and took a loooong washroom break.
Not Proud British 3 years ago (edited)
I was serving at a 21st for a rich woman's daughter. It was my job to clear tables and make sure the food was replenished at the self serving buffet. Once the hot food was gone I was instructed to get all the desserts out of the kitchen. I look in the fridge and see the usual black forest gateau, cheesecake, etc and what looks like creme brulee. I take it all out and position myself ready to serve. A couple come and coo over the creme brulee asking if it's home made. Turns out they are food critics for a living and are very impressed that the hostess has made creme brulee. I serve them both a scoopful of it and think nothing more of it. Then the hostess comes along and looks at the creme brulee in horror. Turns out it's beef dripping. At the end of the shift I see the 'creme brulee' I had served the couple left in the bowls. It was evident they had eaten a spoonful before realising....
Jo Choto 3 years ago
This kind of fits. I was working as an extra in a movie in my teens. Small town in Africa. I wasn't working till the afternoon, so I thought I would just head downtown and get a soda or something. As I'm coming along side street to the main crossroads of town, I see this guy I really, really like just leaning in a doorway. So I just make a beeline straight over to him, trying to be all cute and sexy. He's smiling at me. I'm smiling at him. I get all the way over to him and his grin is just getting bigger and bigger. He kind of does a head nod behind me. I turn around and there is an entire film crew filming a scene, including the stars of the movie, and a crowd of people watching. I just walked into the scene in the background and ruined the whole thing, and everybody just watched me in silence. Then they all laughed their heads off at me. God, I was so freaking humiliated. But apparently not enough to swear off being in movies, which I continued to do!
RatherLoopy 3 years ago
Gosh, so many faux pas in my past. How ''bout the time I wrote a VERY explicit erotic short story on my computer at work, then accidentally printed it out on another department's printer instead of the one by my desk? Does that qualify?
Andy Acceber 3 years ago
The top several items on this list actually make me feel really good. The bosses are all kind and understanding. It makes me fear failure a little less and recognize that we're all just people trying our best.
Robert T 3 years ago (edited)
I have two particularly good IT ones from different jobs. One was a documentation tool that scanned C++ code and produced documentation from the comments (similar to javadoc or doxygen, but years earlier). I was responsible for the master copy of the distribution configs and it very nearly shipped with settings that would have overwritten the user's code, wiping it out. We delayed the release and fixed the code so that could never happen again! The second I had a little accident deleting the backup I had made of some of the startup configs for a Sun workstation. You guessed it, I deleted the original. No backups as it was only a demo system, which we were due to demonstrate the next day. Fortunately it had an ISDN connection, as did our office, and I was able to dial in and copy the configs off our sever, and no-one was any the wiser, but it was a brown-trousered moment when it happened. Worse still, the system would have run fine until it was rebooted, so good job I realised!
LynzCatastrophe 3 years ago
During a slow day I had gotten bored and decided to wipe down all the shelves in the fine dinnerware section of the store I worked in. I really wish I picked something else to do. Knocked my head against a shelf containing 5 sets of champagne flutes by Waterford. I'm still amazed I still had a job AND it wasn't taken off my paycheck.
Valentina Cupido 3 years ago
I worked in a supermarket for three months one summer. I was assigned to cashier and shelves refurbishment. I had been given a brand new box cutter, really sharp. I open the very first box without realizing the middle finger of my other hand was right in the way! I cut the top part of my finger and had to go to hospital. I live in Italy and from such a place of work you have to wait for an ambulance because of insurance and such. I was given 3 weeks of paid leave to recover. One or two days after I was back I was out partying with some friends, was in a car and my friend slammed the car head first into a tree. I broke a part of my knee and was out for the rest of my contract. Still a paid leave here so I basically worked less than half the time I was supposed to. I wasn't so surprised when I wasn't called back but I can't really say they were wrong! I probably wouldn’t have survived another month like that!
MyOpinionHasBeenServed 3 years ago (edited)
I worked for a research company. There are laws on when we had to stop calling people. There was some sort of glitch or oversight one evening where it was already 9am CST but we were still calling AST. It is absolutely against the law to be calling people after 11pm and can result in the company getting fined or sued. I alerted the Team Leader in charge of the project. He actually said "Okay, I'll look into it. Keep dialing on it." Ummm..... what? It's illegal, I reminded him. "And I'm your manager. You'll do what I tell you." No, I will not be part of breaking the law. I went and took a loooong washroom break.
You May Like 50 AI Art Fails That Are Both Horrifying And Hilarious 40 Internet Know-It-Alls Who Embarrassed Themselves By Correcting Others Incorrectly 40 Times Secret Santa Became A Workplace Horror Story
Eglė Bliabaitė
Justinas Keturka
Eglė Bliabaitė
Related on Bored Panda
