Workplace B*lls-Up...

CHRISNOIR

With the new that eight thousand copies of Jonathan Franzen’snew novel are to be pulped is the thought that someone, somewhere has made their worst workplace f*ck-up. Which made me think of mine…

At my previous job I had to put examination papers for students into some kind of legible format and include instructions (“Answer three questions from this section” etc). For multiple choice questions we had a system whereby, to discourage random guessing, a fraction of a mark was deducted for every incorrect answer given. This was explained on a sheet at the front of the exam paper.

However, I forgot to include this sheet and as such nearly five hundred students sat a virtually un-failable exam. It turns out that the course had remained oversubscribed for three years as there had been minimal ‘wastage’ (i.e failures) in the first year. I still shudder at the glee that sprang from the students answer sheets – some had actually written ‘Please note there is no loss of marks indicated on this exam paper’. Bastards… There was then the long, slow realisation that I had done the same in about three other examinations. I believe questions were asked at the highest possible level…

Confess your workplace f*ck-ups here - someone must have done far worse!

rick_chasey

The lonely horror of realising you've made a really massive c0ck-up

Limburger

Knocked a tub of industrial catalyst on the floor once when weighing out. Half a kilo of Pd/C worth about 7 grand.
Bought the lab a cake to make up for it hough.

Anonymous

Almost took out 4 yank trucks on the ring road round Kuwait city. We were fcuking about on a big trailer mounted AA gun and I uttered the immortal, "whats this pedal for ?" I think I sent 15 or so rounds of HE above the trucks which then detonated on the embankment on the other side. We were about 1.5km from them which meant we ran away and got away but not before we watched as 4 truckloads of yank troops flew out the trucks screaming and flapping around.

Happy days......

Frank the tank

Not one of mine personally but at Derby they once dropped a Trent 900 off a test rig and combined with the damage to the instrumentation the cost was in the region of £9,000,000.

Anonymous

Frank the tank wrote:

Not one of mine personally but at Derby they once dropped a Trent 900 off a test rig and combined with the damage to the instrumentation the cost was in the region of £9,000,000.

£9 million, 5hit the bed, thats mental. :shock:

Stewie Griffin

As I spend your money on housing the Homeless I would rather not admit any of my balls ups on here thanks much

I used to valet cars when I was much younger, I was polishing a car and went through the paint on the bonnet and we had to paint half of the car to get it to blend in properly as it was a 30+ year old Jag :oops:

Ben6899

ALMOST sent out a report to the client. Report was titled "... Traffic Counts...", but the 'o' was always dodgy on my keyboard.

It was sat in the out tray when my mate spotted it. Bought him a pint.

morstar

I work with a cantankerous old bastard at work!

I once forwarded him a business relevant E-mail chain that much further down the chain included a mail from my boss that alluded to him being a cantankerous old bastard.

I was also once rather uncomplimentary about our accounts team in a mail that I cc'd our accounts team on.

Most of my gaffes revolve around me inadvertently upsetting people by E-mail.

Let's be honest, I'm a walking gaffe in that respect but people who know me realise most of it is actually humorous but that's not to say some haven't been hugely embarrassing c*ck ups.

rick_chasey

The fear of e-mails going wrong leaves me awake at night...

It's so easily done and can be so bad!

Ands

I worked for a large training organisation and I'd written several course manuals, which were then sent off for print in bulk quantities, to be used throughout the UK. As we had changed the front cover, I provided the printer with the new details/layout to go on the inside of the front cover. This included the phone number for technical support.

A few weeks later I was in the middle of delivering a course and I glanced down at the manual, only to realise that the number I had provided for technical support was in fact my home phone number. :oops: I felt sick at the thought of how many manuals had been printed....

MichaelW

When I worked at the COOP retrieving trolleys from the car park, one of my other duties was to take out-of-date produce to the dump and every few days, burn it.
I dumped 2 boxes of condensed milk cans on a roaring fire. I was really surprised when they started to explode and launch themselves to land on cars all over the car park.

Most expensive mistake, I sent a bit of digital Hollywood film to be printed onto 35mm film stock with all my settings but forgot to copy someone else's settings onto my form. Wasted a whole day of expensive time. BUT the form was stupid and the error has a name, its a transcription error where you copy something down incorrectly.

I think the mother of all workplace errors was probably the Hubble Telescope mirror, measured in inches in the USA but the calibration machine was measured in mm. It required an additional Space Shuttle mission to fix.

Ben6899

MichaelW wrote:

WMost expensive mistake, I sent a bit of digital Hollywood film to be printed onto 35mm film stock with all my settings but forgot to copy someone else's settings onto my form. Wasted a whole day of expensive time. BUT the form was stupid and the error has a name, its a transcription error where you copy something down incorrectly.

We've all done that, mate.

mrushton

MichaelW wrote:

I think the mother of all workplace errors was probably the Hubble Telescope mirror, measured in inches in the USA but the calibration machine was measured in mm. It required an additional Space Shuttle mission to fix.

Didn't we build an aircraft carrier or other ship with the French that involved us using Imperial measurements and the French using metric?

zanes

MichaelW wrote:

I think the mother of all workplace errors was probably the Hubble Telescope mirror, measured in inches in the USA but the calibration machine was measured in mm. It required an additional Space Shuttle mission to fix.

Not quite true; the MCO fiasco was a result of metric/imperial confusion: Newtons vs. pounds force which meant that it entered the atmosphere of mars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Clima ... its_mix-up

The HST was a result of the main optics contractor refusing to believe the master null corrector had a flaw and continuing to refuse to believe that the two other null correctors were in fact correct.

Interestingly the back up or flight spare mirror for the HST was correctly figured.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Spa ... wed_mirror

ConsciousPilot

Only thing that springs to mind was not checking a stores requisition order where the "cook" had requested half a kilo of saffron. One item came to $1000. Managed to hide it with some creative accounting.

ademort

While working in the offshore industry we have our fare share of bloopers. Would love to tell all but it would cost me my job. The cost however would be mindblowing for most out there??
Ademort

robert-sb

Was implementing a new IT system to take DDs. To cut a long story short I asked a member of staff to run some test DDs - didn't ask them to check properly that it was in the test environment and she sent it in live ! It only amounted to about £14m across about 4000 customers !

We had to send all of the money back by same day transfer causing a huge amount of work for one of my teams.

Pross

ademort wrote:

While working in the offshore industry we have our fare share of bloopers. Would love to tell all but it would cost me my job. The cost however would be mindblowing for most out there??
Ademort

I assume you work for "British Petroleum" as they are the only ones who make mistakes

must-tri-harder

These make me feel way better about some of the balls-ups i've seen here at work.

The worst one i've been involved in was £6K of made to measure handrail in ruby red rather than burgundy, 'they look similar to me' was not an adequate defence. I've kepr the colour card on my desk as a constant reminder for the past 4 years.

Other than that, several houses which got built about 600mm too high due to an architect getting a dimension wrong on planning drawings springs to mind.. didnt cost us anything but that must have cost someone rather a lot of money. Oopsy daisy.

Cleat Eastwood

Once designed a website for a woman and on the contact page put as teh header "I'm lonely, cum talk to me sexy boy". thought it had been removed but it went live....took 4 days before anyone found out.

HonestAl

I'm sure I recall reading somewhere that the famous 18" Stonhenge in Spinal Tap was based on a true life c0ck up in some rock band's stageshow? Who can enlighten me?

qwerty1982

Hehehe some proper funny ones there people!!

Mine cost no money, just a tad shameful.
I work for the police, taking 999 calls. The sytem we use you type it onto it but once you have hit enter you can not go back and change it as it could be used in court etc etc

Any way, the amount of times I have written things like
Shit gun instead of shot gun never ceases to amaze me!!
Also wrote 'he was banging his balls agasint the wall' i meant his football!

Ben6899

One of our young technicians, fed up with work, wanting to move abroad etc had two emails open. One from the gaffer and one from his mate.

He sent 5 AutoCAD drawings to his mate and a single sentence "F***ing BORED!!!!!" to the gaffer. He only realised his mistake when his mate replied asking what the drawings were for.

He was too busy to be bored for about 2 weeks after that.

Not seen him in a while (moved abroad), but he MTBs so might be on here. If he is, he'll know I'm on about him!

Aggieboy

Thanks for allowing me to get this off my chest.

Best wishes,

Harry Redknapp.

Aggieboy

Deleted.

Aggieboy

Deleted

qwerty1982

You really wanted to get that off your chest.... 3 times! lol

Stone Glider

One I still remember fondly is the block of flats over garages that we built with the upper stories the wrong way round. Oddly, the block looked better and more "right" than the other, similar blocks on the site. The block was set opposite the hut used by our clerk-of-works who had a close-up view of it all day.

I had to stop the architect from knocking it down and starting again, we simply re-ran the rainwater downpipes and said nothing.

CHRISNOIR

HonestAl wrote:

I'm sure I recall reading somewhere that the famous 18" Stonhenge in Spinal Tap was based on a true life c0ck up in some rock band's stageshow? Who can enlighten me?

I can, I think. It wasBlack Sabbath. Although theirs was actually too big.

mrushton

The University I work at spent a lot of money having an anechoic chamber built. Since it's a test area there are strict specs for these facilities in order for their results to be correct. The chamber is a room within a room and there has to be nothing but nothing in the wall cavity except air and the wall surfaces/foundation. The chamber got built but the tests showed wierd readings. it turned out that the cavity had builders rubble,coke cans,crisp packets etc in it. So that inner wall ad to be opened up, all the debris removed and the wall closed up and the facility retested