Social In honor of Crowdstrike, what was your biggest work screwup?

great question TS because there are so many ways to answer it

1- Boring financial mistake. Worked for a very large very cheap company, re-use the post it notes and count the paper clips kinda place.

I Did a major telephone system upgrade that included free maintenance for a year but missed it when the initial invoice included the maintenance charge as did the subsequent 9 or 10 before i caught it.

Recovered the money eventually but we had outlaid 10's of thousands of dollars we didn't need to and had to go back and forth with the vendor for months to get repaid

2- Careerwise- Quit a well paying job that I used to love and still loved the people but had evolved into me having nothing to do because of a corporate takeover....Could've just sat there for years playing mine sweeper and getting paid but hated having nothing to do every day....Quit right before a recession hit...timing is everything.

3- Relationship with boss-wise. this is at Company in #2 and I was near the end when the IT department went from not monitoring internet usage to monitoring it.

I was close with IT guy's but they did not warn me until after the first sweep revealed my best worker was watching a ton of porn as he did his job.

My boss came to me to tell me I they were planning on firing him, as i had worked on every employees computer in the company multiple times, I said well if you fire him you have to take out her high level friends ______ & ______ & especially ________ who once took down our entire e-mail system trying to download porn videos.

This did not go over well. We eventually agreed that my guy could stay as long as he never went to porn sites again at work and I would not narc out the bigwigs I knew about. After that my relationship with boss was terrible until I left

4- careerwise #2- believed everything a non-profit claimed they did for the good of humanity and took a job with them wanting to do good too. turned out they might have started out real but had mission creep to the point that by the time I was there it was now just a scam to enrich the founder. Had to stay until scandal broke and most of us were laid off about 6 months in. never happier to leave a place behind than that place.

5- funny. Was trying to fix a lady's room door that had been installed wrong with the jam blocking the outside of the handle and the hinges on the inside. The only window in the bathroom was 3/4's blocked by the fire escape and the window was rusted shut so if someone got stuck, this is pre cell phone, they might have had to spend a weekend in there. A high level male co-worker was passing by when I thought I had completed it so I asked him to go inside the ladies room and see it if worked. he of course got locked in with no tools inside. Couldn't take it off the hinges, couldn't pry it open, crowd is now gathering to go pee and wondering why male co-worker is shouting "let me out of here"

Screws on the cheap knob I was putting on stripped and wouldn't come back out. I had to take about six running kicks and shoulder blocks to knock the damn thing open. Had a huge crowd gathered at that point and got a small ovation once male co-worker was freed. he came out and took a bow and was good about it but it was a pretty awkward half hour or so.
 
Back during my first stint in radio, I also worked a couple of other jobs as well.

One of which was printing microfiche - this job led to a lot of 'free time' to get into other trouble...
I used to listen to the station I worked for when off the clock, and one of the features that the 7 to Midnight jock had was called "Blow it out your fax". This was at the height of the fax machine revolution, and people would fax in their requests as opposed to calling them in (this was 'blow it out your mouth')

Well, me and my buddy being the knuckleheads we were decided to use the copy machine at my microfiche printing job to make copies of our asses and nut sacks before faxing them off to Bob C. We wrote clever things on it like "You kick ass!" and "Blow this out of your fax"
Needless to say, Bob was mildly amused but even more mortified that a couple of dudes faxed "their hairy asses and balls" to him. My buddy and I were more than pleased with ourselves, and I was even more pleased when I saw Bob again during a shift change at the station and informed him that it was in fact *me* that sent him that nonsense.

Where does my fuck up come into play?

6 months later at a performance/personnel review (at my microfiche job) They pulled out my file and lo and behold was the original copy of the ass copies that we had made.
Apparently I had failed to properly discard of the evidence and it was discovered by the secretary who came in the next day.
They held on to that shit for several months and long after I had forgot about it before it came up in conversation.
 
Fresh out of college got a job as at a big ad agency in Chicago. Entry level copy writer making next to nothing. I liked the job alot still to this day most fun i ever had at work. I had to quit as the money was so terrible after a year . I had no patience back then and been kicking myself ever since.

Late 90s had a wife and a new born . I couldn't make 9.50 an hour an live so turned in my dress work clothes for construction. :(
 
this one really isn't my fault, but the story is pretty good. i used to work at a one-hour photo when i was in high school. it was in a large supermarket, one of those all-in-one places. this was in the mid-90's, and back then some of the photo machines weren't automatic where the machine would print the photos for you. in those times you had to literally go through each frame on the roll of film, and judge on your own whether to lighten or darken the photo, or to add cyan, magenta, etc. it was actually a pretty interesting process. learned a decent amount about film there.

ok, so to what took place. before even getting to the printing process, you have to develop the film through all the chemicals. this place was really old and had equipment that was top-notch in the 70's. for the 90's it was ancient. an older woman came in one day to develop film. she dropped off two rolls of film. the first roll goes through and comes out perfectly fine. i print out the photos, all good. while i put in the second roll for chemical processing, i go to take a piss. when i'm walking back, i can hear a loud cranking sound from my area. i can see some of the supermarket staff standing around looking and then i briskly walk and see that the roll of film is stuck in the machine causing the sound.

i unplug the machine, and everyone goes back to what they were doing. i knew instantly that those photos were gone. the film was stuck in the machine, and only way to clear it was to expose the film to light. i clear the blockage, and prepare myself to tell the woman that one of her rolls of film is a gonner. now the one roll of film that came out fine seemed to be of family. lots of family photos, old people, etc. family reunion or vacation or something. she walks in and is happy with the photos of the first roll. then i tell her that the second film was unfortunately destroyed by the machine as it became stuck. she then gives me this deer in the headlights look and goes, "what!?!" and i repeat, "yes ma'am, i'm sorry for the loss of your photos". she was on the verge of tears. i felt bad, and could only offer her a $10 coupon for free film processing, and i think that pissed her off even more haha.

oh well, shit happens. but it does suck when people lose memories like that.
 
Went to sample a spherical dryer at a pharma company I worked at. Had to attach this sampling port which is supposed to lock into place. Well the lock was broke for awhile, but they kept going with it since you could still get a sample that way. When you put it on, you had to take a mallet and tap above the port because the product would get gummed up around the valve.

I did that and nothing was coming out. Checked to make sure i broke vacuum, valves open, and all that. It was good. 10 minutes I'm messing with this thing and nothing. So I gave it a solid whack and the whole assembly comes down. Product pouring all over the floor, and I'm trying to shut the valve as fast as I can, but it's a small wheel valve that takes 100 turns or so to shut.

Had to be at least 100kgs on the floor by the time I got it shut. Told my boss and he came over and was laughing. I started laughing too because at that point, what can ya do? Got suspended for it, and then fired. The part that pissed me off was they cited my immature behavior after it happened, which came from the same asshole who was joking about it in the 1st place. Was glad to get canned from that dump.
 
jefferz said:
You can replace just the shafts on those. It's getting harder to find someone that will do it, but it can be done.
Click to expand...
We do it in-house sometimes. I can't remember what we did with that particular one though.
 
I once deployed software to an entire division that broke one of their finance applications, and had no way to roll it back.
 
Not me but my uncles’ old coworker used to work at a mill as an electrician who did most of the programming. He got paid a shit ton for call ins so he wrote something in the program to trigger an error when he was home that sounded bad so he would get called in. He’d come in, reset it and go home and make a bunch of cash.

Well he forgot to take it out when he left the job and the next guy found it. He obviously didn’t get in trouble because he didn’t work there anymore but everybody found out about his little secret. My uncle was an apprentice there then. They were much stricter after that.
 
SSgt Dickweed said:
Not one thing per se even if I had many, many screw ups. It's that overall my resume looks like a mess. I have gaps in employment and hopped from one job to another.

Some technical mistakes I did include long SQL queries that take forever that either the DBA or CTO called me out for. My first software job wasn't that hard but because I was aloof and a poor communicator, I wasn't promoted even if it was easy to be.
Click to expand...
I did a similar transaction with rollback, but the script was bad and nearly took down a production server…….
 
I had an awesome job in college working for the Navy. My job was to receive sale items in the warehouse and then display them in the store and help sell them. A circular would be sent out to military personnel...like TVs, VCRS, camcorders, sports equipment etc. I would take in merch with a forklift and then bring it over to main store and set up displays and shelves of the merch. One day I left the lift too high and took out a rolling door that cost 3k. I blamed it on the security woman for not securing the rolling door with the chain properly and said it rolled down as I was driving through. "I could have been killed!" I felt bad but she was a bitch.
 
IIIIIIII said:
this one really isn't my fault, but the story is pretty good. i used to work at a one-hour photo when i was in high school. it was in a large supermarket, one of those all-in-one places. this was in the mid-90's, and back then some of the photo machines weren't automatic where the machine would print the photos for you. in those times you had to literally go through each frame on the roll of film, and judge on your own whether to lighten or darken the photo, or to add cyan, magenta, etc. it was actually a pretty interesting process. learned a decent amount about film there.

ok, so to what took place. before even getting to the printing process, you have to develop the film through all the chemicals. this place was really old and had equipment that was top-notch in the 70's. for the 90's it was ancient. an older woman came in one day to develop film. she dropped off two rolls of film. the first roll goes through and comes out perfectly fine. i print out the photos, all good. while i put in the second roll for chemical processing, i go to take a piss. when i'm walking back, i can hear a loud cranking sound from my area. i can see some of the supermarket staff standing around looking and then i briskly walk and see that the roll of film is stuck in the machine causing the sound.

i unplug the machine, and everyone goes back to what they were doing. i knew instantly that those photos were gone. the film was stuck in the machine, and only way to clear it was to expose the film to light. i clear the blockage, and prepare myself to tell the woman that one of her rolls of film is a gonner. now the one roll of film that came out fine seemed to be of family. lots of family photos, old people, etc. family reunion or vacation or something. she walks in and is happy with the photos of the first roll. then i tell her that the second film was unfortunately destroyed by the machine as it became stuck. she then gives me this deer in the headlights look and goes, "what!?!" and i repeat, "yes ma'am, i'm sorry for the loss of your photos". she was on the verge of tears. i felt bad, and could only offer her a $10 coupon for free film processing, and i think that pissed her off even more haha.

oh well, shit happens. but it does suck when people lose memories like that.
Click to expand...
My mom has worked as a photographer for most of her life and for a brief period I worked at one of her labs full time as well. I can definitely sympathize with you in regards to the chem tanks of the developer going to shit. (Ive seen it happen)

This post took me back to the days of when the local sherrifs office used to bring in their crime scene photos to be developed. Always 'hush hush' and strictly confidential and priority. We pretty much had one person who was responsible for printing these pics, and fuck man.... People can be pretty reprehensible.

Oh, and the occasional :eek::eek::eek::eek: was never fun times either. :/
Fuck that job man. I don't know how she did it for so many years.
 
Mine wasn't totally my fault, but my division caused a whole lot of push ups for a bunch of other groups.

I had just taken a new job in the business and operations division head for one of the groups where I work. Every year the fiscal budget is set through execution guidance and funds are appropriated across all of the various projects teams. We had just set execution guidance on the year and literally the next day one of the project teams i was responsible for was like "this line item for refurb seems low, it looks like it's for 1 instead of 24".

Sure enough the line item was for a single item rather than he 24 needed and project was now under budget by 3 mil one day into the fiscal year. Oopsies.

My boss was a nice guy and said it wasn't my fault, but I got a lot of dirty looks from the other div heads to move funding around the rest of the command to cover the budget shortfall.
 
Joe Mama said:
My mom has worked as a photographer for most of her life and for a brief period I worked at one of her labs full time as well. I can definitely sympathize with you in regards to the chem tanks of the developer going to shit. (Ive seen it happen)

This post took me back to the days of when the local sherrifs office used to bring in their crime scene photos to be developed. Always 'hush hush' and strictly confidential and priority. We pretty much had one person who was responsible for printing these pics, and fuck man.... People can be pretty reprehensible.

Oh, and the occasional :eek::eek::eek::eek: was never fun times either. :/
Fuck that job man. I don't know how she did it for so many years.
Click to expand...

haha, oh man that's a funny coincidence. it wasn't at this one-hour photo, but once i left this gig i found another one-hour photo job closer to my college since i had graduated high school and needed to find something close to college. so at this new one-hour photo gig it was the same thing! the local police department would bring in their rolls of film. before i started, they told me about this and whether i was okay with seeing extreme gore and violence. i didn't tell them that i listened to death and black metal, but probably didn't need to mention that haha, i accepted and did the job.

i don't know if you experienced this, but the police department who dropped their stuff off to us always had to shittiest film. it was either costco, walgreens, or even worse, the disposable cameras that make photos on the level of potatoes. it was never the nice kodak or fuji film. i was actually glad the film was bad, because seeing the photos grainy was enough for me.

the worst ones were always the domestic violence photos. those i absolutely hated. oh, and i saw one where a girl with dreadlocks was ran over by an 18-wheeler. oh man, i'm gonna stop thinking about it now lol.
 
IIIIIIII said:
haha, oh man that's a funny coincidence. it wasn't at this one-hour photo, but once i left this gig i found another one-hour photo job closer to my college since i had graduated high school and needed to find something close to college. so at this new one-hour photo gig it was the same thing! the local police department would bring in their rolls of film. before i started, they told me about this and whether i was okay with seeing extreme gore and violence. i didn't tell them that i listened to death and black metal, but probably didn't need to mention that haha, i accepted and did the job.

i don't know if you experienced this, but the police department who dropped their stuff off to us always had to shittiest film. it was either costco, walgreens, or even worse, the disposable cameras that make photos on the level of potatoes. it was never the nice kodak or fuji film. i was actually glad the film was bad, because seeing the photos grainy was enough for me.

the worst ones were always the domestic violence photos. those i absolutely hated. oh, and i saw one where a girl with dreadlocks was ran over by an 18-wheeler. oh man, i'm gonna stop thinking about it now lol.
Click to expand...

LOL Truth...

Rotten before rotten was rotten ;)
 
I destroyed a new module from Boeing with a screwdriver, trying to follow my instructions and impress a small button for reset but I went to far and drove the screw driver into a major computer chip on the inside. It sounds ridiculous, but it was seriously made that vulnerable

It was also 30,000 dollars

My supervisor referred to me as "Mr retard" after

:(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Fedorgasm
I accidentally said "racist" things at work
3 4 5
Replies
85
Views
2K
RoastBeast
R

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
1,280,499
Messages
58,289,924
Members
175,996
Latest member
blainepsychiatry

Share this page

Back
Top