Let's face it, we all make mistakes in the workplace.
Even those of us who've maintained high positions or veterans of a specific business have at one time made an innocent slip-up after the repetition of a task became ingrained in our bodies.
But then there are the kinds of gaffes that are too embarrassing to mention.
Fortunately, the anonymity of Reddit allowed us to alleviate the burden when Redditor Midtown-Furidtown-Fur asked:
"What is the dumbest mistake you've made at work?"
Redditors'll never make these mistakes again.
Going Nowhere Fast
"Drove a semi truck full of mail from Providence to Boston with the trailer door open."
– shawnwarnerwrites
"So how's your new life in Boston going? Because if I made that big of mistake I'm just leaving the truck and completely starting my life over in Boston."
– KingPinfanatic
Momentary Pause
"Was giving a presentation to 300+ people and rested my arm on top of the podium in a spot where there was a button that turned the entire system off, taking ~10 minutes to reboot and get my presentation back up. 2 minutes into talking again, I did it again.
– redmooncat15
Nasty Mistake
"This one makes me laugh when I think about it:"
"I was sixteen pushing grocery carts outside a grocery store. 'Lot attendant' was my title, and my job was to make sure chaos didn’t break out in the parking lot. But I also had some other duties, like taking out trash, emptying ashtrays, and doing a few other little odd jobs around the store."
"One day a woman taps me on the shoulder in the store and says 'I’m sorry, but my kid just threw up over that display.' ”
"She points at this display of Entenmann’s snack cake that was freestanding in between some aisles. And I can see that this toddler had clearly projectile vomited all over it. There was some on most of the boxes."
"And I think 'I’ll handle this.' ”
"So I scoop up all the boxes, take them out to the dumpster, and throw them all away. And as I’m dusting my hands off and congratulating myself on being so helpful, a manager was like 'what did you just do?' "
"And I said 'I cleaned up a big mess, a kid threw up on everything.' ”
"And he said 'yea but you can’t just throw a whole display away. There’s a process. Inventory. We have to report these losses.' ”
"I said 'I push shopping carts man. I don’t know anything about any of that.' ”
"And he let out a long sigh and said, 'this isn’t going to be fun for either of us.' ”
"Then he lowered me by my ankles back into the dumpster and I had to fish out all the snack cake boxes covered in child vomit and then learn how to scan them through some kind of computer."
"And in case you’re wondering, I haven’t eaten an Entenmanns snack cake since."
– DryTown
This is what happens when your brain checks out.
The Snark
"Brand new manager trainee. Had to sit through death by 90’s OSHA videos. All stuff I had seen before and I was incredibly bored of it. At the end of the video there was a random guy in our office I assumed was a customer and I sarcastically said 'well that was an hour I’ll never get back.'"
"He goes 'did you not enjoy it?' I said 'yeah I didn’t at all but like, I get it, safety comes first so it’s necessary but the videos are so common sense it hurts. Anyway can I help you real quick? I have a meeting to get to, big guy from corporate merchandising team several states away is gonna be here in an hour or two.' "
"He goes 'I’m filling in for big guy from corporate, I’m the North American safety director. Let’s have a chat about your vision of safety at our workplace since you have that all figured out.' ”
– FormerStuff
Tough Lesson Learned
"Long ago, was in IT and was moving data volumes on and offline. Misread and 8 for a 0 and took the Airline’s reservation system down for 30 minutes."
"At 2 million per hour, oops. I immediately reported what I did, and it was fixed, The you know what you did, and I know it won’t ever happen again. Yup. Sorry. Okay, carry on. I Went on to a long career in IT. Clearly never forgetting that lesson and response."
– retiredhawaii
Costly Mixup
"Working for an investment manager, he gave me an order to sell 80,000 dollars of Microsoft in a client account. Wasn’t thinking and entered a sell of 80,000 shares. MSFT was selling at $100+ per share at the time."
"Crapping bricks as I got the brokerage firm’s trading desk on the phone and waited on hold to hear if they could bust the trade..."
– MissSnuggelsxz
The Boss' Request
"Was on vacation and my boss told me to push a script another employee wrote before he quit. I was at Disneyland and didn't bother looking at it and just pushed it."
"Needless to say the former employee locked all our computers, 25000 of them. They tried to pin it on me, but in the end, my boss got in trouble for forcing me to work while I was on vacation and without any time to prepare."
– Kimchi_Cowboy
Closed But Open For Business
"Forgot to turn the sign to open. The coworker found out after he came out, asked why the place was empty, and watched five people come to the door, stop, turn, and walk away. I was hungover and stood at the counter like a zombie for an hour and a half having watched many people walk up and away."
"Coworkers greeted me until I resigned with 'Are we open?' "
– skummelgutt
Ouch
"Put an adrenaline needle through my thumb. I was basically messing around with returned stock at a pharmacy whilst destroying old medication. Our old fashioned pharmacist/owner would always prime the adrenaline injectors and stab them into the wall to get rid of the liquid before disposing of it."
"I stupidly tried doing this myself one day but I squeezed the wrong end as I tried to prime it, and it ended up going right through my thumb and out the other side popping through my thumb nail."
"Felt like such an idiot. The needle wasn’t actually used, it was just out of date stock that a patient had returned. I still think about what could have happened quite often nearly 15 years later."
– ruobrah
The damages here were irreversible.
Brainwave Malfunction
"I needed to cut a 2 inch rubber hose. There wasn't a table nearby so I put the hose on my knee and pushed the box cutter through the hose, directly into my knee. Sometimes the brain just doesn't work."
– IcedT_NoLemon
Chill Boss Ever
"I'm an assistant. My second week on the job I took my boss's $2000 personal computer to get repaired. When I was bringing it back to his house, I dropped it and cracked the screen."
"Thank God it was a small crack and my boss is the chillest person on the planet, I genuinely thought I was going to get fired but instead he just happily started using it again and said it was no big deal since it still worked."
– CaptainFartHole
Wrong Power Voltage
"Large printer, one of those office units…. Well, it had a manual switch to go between 220 and 110 voltage. Half way around the world and coworker forgot to change the switch to the correct voltage and fried the power supply."
"It’s going to take a week to get a replacement unit but my coworker need to depart to go to his wedding. So a week later, I fly out to finish this guys job and install the new unit. I forget to check the voltage and fry it again. Ooops."
"A lady at work replied to a promotion notice with, 'this b*tch don’t work at all, just takes credit for our work.' Sent it as reply all."
– SaltyDogBill
Irretrievable Files
"I accidentally deleted the entire project directory for my company, thinking I was deleting a folder called proposals. We lost about two-thirds of the directory before I was able to cancel the deletion."
"The data was gone as the folder was too big to fit in the trashcan, so it permanently deleted files."
– Twinchad
Free Money
"Work in payroll so have $5-10k+ mistakes aren’t uncommon. Was testing out a new warning/deduction code on a new account and had entered $5k as a test check and forgot to delete it before processing, to a terminated employee, who promptly emptied his bank account so we couldn’t pull it back."
"Much worse, a coworker rerouted something like 15-20 direct deposits to her own account. It’s all super traceable with username/time stamp records of every single change so she was promptly fired and I believe arrested."
– Familiar_Cow_5501
Don't get too comfortable at work.
The mundanity of your job can prevent your brain from firing on all cylinders, causing you to punch in the wrong number for a data entry task, or worse, cause injury to yourself.
