I'm sure everyone had made mistakes at their workplace before, but how serious did you get and any consequences for your mistakes?? Does it make much of a difference if you have been working there for long time and maintain good relationships with everyone?
What's The Most Serious Mistake/Accident You've Made That Got You in Hot Water during Your Job?
lifehacker on 24/03/2016 - 22:00
Comments
I called a freckly girl a freckle face and I got reprimanded. I got my ass hauled over the coals for that :(
I 'tested' the laughing gas :P
…then I had to go and check again…and again… :Dnot reporting fraudulent activity
Brought a major network down for 3 hours instead of the planned 30 minutes. It affected about 3 sites nationwide including a factory. Repressions? None. 2nd month in the job too ;)
You don't happen to work for Telstra do you? :P lol
Funny you should say that…
You tripped over the cable again? didn't you!
Not allowed to tell. Just lucky it didn't make headline news, would have been a major problem for a large organisation.
The boss secretary accidentally fell onto my lap.
…headfirst?
You know it
Questioning the motives of the CEO in reply all to an all staff email
Total cost of my "mistakes": > 1 billion dollars
All of the following occurred 35 to 45 years ago when knowledge and environmental sensitivity were much less than now. I worked in a large organisation with many layers of management above me who reviewed and approved what I had designed so I wasn't completely to blame. However, first item was all my own work (in my first year out of Uni).
- Approved large subdivision in area with existing 100mm water supply main. It turned out that main was dedicated supply line to factory with connections not permitted.
Cost to rectify: We had to build 500m of water main at our expense.
Fortunately, the same developer applied for approval to subdivide next block of land along. We were able to recoup cost by applying headworks charge.
- Designed expansion of existing harbour in area with basalt base. Required very expensive blasting and dredging. Found out afterwards that during ice ages when sea level was 150m lower the nearby creek had carved a gorge through basalt. It was sand all the way down.
Unnecessary cost: probably several hundred million dollars
- Designed fishing boat harbour in mouth of creek (because of above). Cyclone caused flood that filled harbour with sand and mud.
Cost for dredging: several million dollars
My next fishing boat harbour built in creek mouth had diversion walls for creek!
- Designed boat launching facility with breakwater with concrete skirt on piles with gap at bottom to allow sand to pass underneath. Wave rider buoy and computer wave refraction modelling indicated maximum 12 second period waves that would be stopped by structure. Gap allowed 14 second period waves to pass through structure causing huge surges on boat launching ramps.
Cost to rectify: several million dollars to dump limestone rubble to seal gap at bottom of skirt.
- Designed fishing boat harbour on coast with very deep water close to shore so cost of breakwaters was excessive. Found area nearby with coral reef close to shore so we built breakwaters on coral reef.
Cost to environment: Priceless, but I did save the cost of building the structure in deep water.
- Designed boat launching facility in area with nearby reef with deep holes that were "best fishing area on whole coast". Sand build up behind breakwater filled holes.
Cost to local recreational fishermen: Immeasurable.
In my defense after the structure was built they could launch their boats safely.
As a side issue the structure was designed during transition from Imperial to metric units. Structure is 30m wide. Whenever I see vast empty area I wonder if it should have been 30 feet wide. Actual reason it was designed to be so wide is because there were plans to build fishing industry support buildings on land. It turned out that there weren't sufficient fish stocks to support industry so buildings were never built.
Unnecessary cost: probably several million dollars
- Investigated coastal movements in area where we had built river mouth groynes that had extended coastline 500m offshore. Local land owner / developer / MP from original settler family who were granted land 100+ years previously had title that said he owned land between two survey lines that extended out to sea as far as high water mark. My report that showed where HWM had been when land was granted was discounted by judge who awarded land to owner.
Cost: The land is now the site of billions of dollars of hotels, apartments and marinas.
It's probably best that I switched to IT 30 years ago. I still had a few expensive oops moments but nowhere near the scale of my previous efforts.
Look at it this way - lots of people owe their riches to you
Employer vehicles damaged / destroyed: 4
During flooding pulled off road with pools along both sides to allow vehicle to pass in opposite direction. Dropped vehicle into roadside drain. Engine destroyed. Vehicle written off.
Lost back end of Holden panel van on gravel road in pine plantation and sideswiped tree.
After cyclone, pulled off road to go around fallen tree. Dropped car (Sunbird) into ditch filled with blown leaves. Looked solid. It wasn't. Front end of car came up through front mudguards. While being pulled out of ditch by front end loader the driver backed into branch of fallen tree that went through radiator.
Hit kangaroo at night while listening on radio to HK being handed back to China (1997?). Right headlight and mudguard and both right side doors were damaged. Managed to limp into destination town where I had to present training session next day. Had to fly home.
IT Incidents
Dropped power connector on mother board of $4000 evaluation PC and blew CPU.
Took evaluation model of $2000 first digital camera home. Pet pink and grey galah ate it. Hard to have to tell the company rep what had happened.
Attending work seminar. I had washed my hands just before going to front of room to deliver talk to 100 staff members. Pulled my laptop out of bag. Due to wet hands lost grip at waist height. PC executed parabolic arc and "exploded" on impact. Received round of applause.
Had "portable sewing machine" sized PC on back seat of car. Stopped to put newspapers in recycling bin. Closed back door with bum because hands full. Fast pullout into traffic. Back door flew open and PC landed on road and "exploded".
A few days later I had replacement PC on my desk. Colleague walked past and got his foot caught in power cord and pulled it off desk. It never worked again.
Standing on power adjustable height desk at front of training room to adjust giant 3 lens data projector. Chain broke and I pulled data projector off roof. PC and screen on desk were destroyed. Received round of applause. Asked if I did this at all training sessions.
I don't know what to say. This reads like a Reddit comment.
You are a wreck. Did you design the Opera House? ;)
Told a colleague about the shady dealings of the CFO at a previous job he had held.
I downloaded about 5gb of music whilst on night shift, got told by my manager when I returned to day shift that the general manager will be coming to the unit to see me, absolutely shitting bricks but she was actually nice about it. I thought she was suitably impressed by my efforts when she said 'did you listen to all those songs,' to which I replied no. She let me know about it policies etc and asked me to keep the downloading to a minimum. Anyways, two weeks later they implemented a time restriction on internet usage to an hour a day. Maybe she wasn't impressed and my colleagues weren't impressed either.
To top it off a year or so later I was asked to send a email to the same general manager by a colleague using her email address. It was a request for leave without pay, I decided to sign off on the email with hugs and kisses (and then colleagues name). Never got a official slap on the wrist but got a please explain when I met her at our Christmas party.
Good times
Someone at my work said she could smell something really strong and nobody else could smell a thing so I asked if she was, and I quote… 'preggaz'.
Spilt coffee on my boss's computer. Resulted in a damaged hard drive, motherboard, ect. Damage, at my expense, was a total of $3 800, around $2 000 for the computer and $1 800 to recover the hard drive. Before the lols start I was also fired.
Fired for what though? What reason did they officially give? Poor performance? But don't you need warnings?
Gave the tinfoil hat wearing hippy at work a serve in the staffroom after years of putting up with their BS. Felt great, well worth the month of being put through the ringer by HR.
2 new employees were struggling with a large transaction, I took over to rectify their mistakes, high profile client, was under a lot of pressure. Got banker clearance for 119k but did not record it.
Got marked for 'potential loss to the business', which turned out not to be one, duh.
I know a lawyer who was in a trial for a potential partnership and screwed that up. He wasn't fired but realised afterwards what it was and ended up quitting 2 months later realising he would now never be promoted beyond his position.
Accidentally filled an emergency services van with diesel instead of petrol.
Lucky i was not going to an emergency and the van actually drove about 6 metres before diesel got to the spark plugs and it ground to a halt.
I got laughed out of the office.
Luckily our mechanic fixed it fairly easily by draining everything.
Why did i do it?
Well i maintain that the bloody fuel depot swapped the pumps around and i did not notice…
We did not have a boss in town [this happened in the bush] but he laughed when he found out…
Explosives Technician, cut the wrong wire…. game over