A thread on another message board (about a completely different topic, by the way) gradually turned into a discussion of people's most embarrassing mistakes they've made on the job. I thought it was pretty funny, so thought I'd carry the discussion over here.
Anyone have any work fuckups you'd care to share? I'll start:
I help manage a server lab that has servers used for testing by tech support. One of the things we have is a cluster server running a buttload of virtual computers. During my third month on the job, I was doing a Linux installation and somehow managed to install it to one of the drives on the cluster. BAM - 30 virtual machines wiped out. All of them were being used as test systems by a tech support team. All gone. My boss still jokes about it once in a great while, then he says "oh, too soon?" Asshole .
Anyone else?
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The biggest mistake I ever made... In the late 90's and early 2000's, I had a website design and hosting company. I did a site for an investor relations firm, and mistakenly entered a wrong paragraph in the disclaimer. Even though it was small on my part, it resulted in my client being fined over $1,000 per day that it was up. The SEC auditors are like hawks, come to find out. I ended up removing $2,000 from my invoice to make it good with my client.
BWAHAHAHA!
I did the same thing with a RH5 install.
Blake NWR wrote:A thread on another message board (about a completely different topic, by the way) gradually turned into a discussion of people's most embarrassing mistakes they've made on the job. I thought it was pretty funny, so thought I'd carry the discussion over here.
Anyone have any work fuckups you'd care to share? I'll start:
I help manage a server lab that has servers used for testing by tech support. One of the things we have is a cluster server running a buttload of virtual computers. During my third month on the job, I was doing a Linux installation and somehow managed to install it to one of the drives on the cluster. BAM - 30 virtual machines wiped out. All of them were being used as test systems by a tech support team. All gone. My boss still jokes about it once in a great while, then he says "oh, too soon?" Asshole .
In my first month after I started in the carpentry trade I was told to take apart this temporary box built around a large plumbing assembly. It was constructed out of full 4'x8' sheets of plywood and 2x4s. There really wasn't much to it but I wasn't paying attention to what I was unscrewing and with my back turned one of the sides came free and damn near fell on one of the tapers. Thankfully it just missed him as well as a few other workers in the room. Even though nobody was hurt I felt like an absolute ASS. It did teach me that you really have to be attentive to what you're doing and what is happening around you. In this business little mistakes can seriously injure or even kill someone.
$8200 chunk of stainless steel. Thats a round bar 18 inches in diameter and about 20 feet long.
On the last day I was cutting on that bitch, I finished out one of the bearing sections .005/inch undersized. Nobody noticed untill they tried to install the shaft on a boat in Anchorage a month later. That doesn't sound like much, but when the new bearing they're installing rattles around on the shaft, it tends to really irritate the customer. I spent three weeks carving on that motherfucker. Taper, three threaded sections, five bearing surfaces, and four keyways.
Oops.
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Project Undead Vish wrote:Back in 2001, when I was 19 or 20 years old, I got caught snorting oxycontin on the copy machine... I was fired.
That reminds me... My other big workplace mistake was just plain stupidity and irresponsibility on my part. I worked at a grocery store in 1989 when I was 16. Part of my job was to keep the beer cooler shelves stocked. My fellow "box-boys", as were called, and I drank as much as we could fit in our bellies every time we were back there. We just hid the empties in the cardboard that we hauled out of there. To avoid having to walk across the store to the restroom (where a manager might see us and make us work), we used to just pee in the nearby walk-in freezer. The stainless steel walls were so cold that piss would just stick to it when it hit. Fun times.
Anyhoo... One day my shift ended at 9:00 PM. I came stumbling out into the store at 11:00 PM as they were closing, but I thought it was still 8:00 or so.... Because I PASSED OUT for 3 hours and had no idea that I had been out when I woke up. The manager was not happy with me, but I lied my way out of getting fired. But then, a mere two weeks later, The same manager looked out his office window to see me and another guy smoking weed out in my car. THEN I was fired. :-)
Back when I was a teenager, one of my first jobs was working at a gas station. This was when stations still worked on cars and LONG before it was legal to pump your own gas. I mainly pumped gas & checked the oil, mounted & balanced a few tires, and closed the place up at 10:00 pm.
As a pump jockey (and idiot teenager) I was not allowed to use the car hoists in the garage bays without adult supervision, but one night a guy came in with a pickup & camper and offered me ten bucks on the side to run it up on the hoist and change the oil. It was about 9:30 pm and I figured "hey, what could go wrong", so I rolled up the door and had him drive in. I managed to get everything line up and started running the hoist up, but neglected to take into account the height of the camper shell and the height of the ceiling. I ran the guy's camper smack into the rolled-up door, breaking a bunch of the window panes and knocking it off the track.
It was a shitty job anyway. I think I made $1.65 an hour.
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My first three weeks as a buyer for a sheetmetal company I was swamped with P.O.s. I saw there was a week old order for some kind of software resubscription. I figured since it was for $10,000 I better hurry and do it.
The next day it hit me that I had already re-up'd and it was too late to get the money back.
Bye-bye $10,000. (not fun to have to explain to ALL the people above me)
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If everyone just chilled out a bit and listened to some rock&roll with their titties out, the scene would be a happier healthier place to be. -Deathboy- 2/28/08
Where to begin! I'm pretty sure fucking up is in my job description.
Lemme see, I crashed the company car, a brand new explorer into a loading dock while changing the radio station...knocked the bleeder valve off the compressor (that hadn't been drained in like 6 months...big flood!) with a pallet jack, worst was probably the time I had 7 or 8 cases of black shirts under my work bench, I accidentally knocked a bottle of bleach over, which ran down the back of the bench, onto the shirts, effectively ruining most of them. The fact that I'm still employed is nothing short of miraculous!
The only "investment" with a guaranteed high rate of return is EDUCATION. Go rent a cheap shack and get your asses back to college or trade school. Don't come out until you're not stupid anymore~ Pat the Wise!
Many years ago I worked at Mackie. We got an email from HR telling us about an upcoming Christmas party. The parties years before were awesome and this one didn't sound awesome. I replied to my friend with that email, calling it a ghetto xmas party, talking about how the management squandered all our extra money so now were's stuck with shitty events, and shitty people. I accidentally hit "reply to all" and couldn't take it back. It went to Greg Mackie, it went to the CFO, CEO, HR executive, all management, all engineering and every other employee.
My punishment was to sit in the CFO's office for an hour while he yelled at me and then I got assigned to the "Pary Planning Committee" with the girls in the office.
Sucked. But I got a lot of pats on the back from the other employees.
haha, i worked in engineering for a group of radio stations here and this was when everyone was preparing for Y2K. So we had to show up at night and I can't remember exactly what we were doing that night, I think we were switching UPSes or rebooting something. Anyway, as usual we got a bunch of beers and pizza and basically partied like crazy in the building. Well we were doing something on the roof with one of the transmitters or some shit and when we took the elevator down, I thought it would be funny to open the door and watch the floors pass. Well let me tell you, once you open that door about 2 or 2 inches the elevator stops where it is and does not move or do anything. At that point you have to call the elevator company and they have to send a tech out to get you out. Mind you, this is around 12:30AM and we are all pretty buzzed. Me and the guy stuck in there with me had drank a ton of beers and while we waited we had get one of the guys from the outside to pry it open with a stick and give us cups to pee in. So like an hour and a half later the guy shows up we greet him both holding two paper coffee cups of warm piss. He was pissed as well. We got in a little trouble, had to talk to the head engineer at the time a few days later, but he thought that the elevator dude was a dick, which he was. He was trying to charge some enormous rate and ended up not getting it in the end I think.
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This happened years ago when I was a tech for Frederick Cadillac...
I was filling out paperwork at my toolbox for the car I was working on. Tech comes up behind me and asks me to add some more air to the tires to another vehicle he had pulled in my stall. I told him to hold on a sec while I finish writing my 'story' on the current RO. He walked away and told me to bring the car to the drive after I was done. I began to lower the vehicle I was working on when I hear a very loud crunch. What the idiot had done was park the car UNDER the one I was working on that was up in the air. Ended up replacing the hood and the front bumper.
There are more but thats the only one I can think of at the moment. Plus Im horrible at story telling.
One of the first jobs I was on as an electrician was at the Medical Dental Building downtown. One day I managed to shut down power to a dentists office during surgeries by sawing through a conduit and another day I was demoing some old junction boxes and managed to trip a breaker... that powered an entire sub-panel. And we couldn't find the breaker for about half an hour. Somebody's UPS ran out of battery power.
I don't think I can match alot of these stories though. I like Vish's story the best.
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Okay... I think the statute of limitations has run out on this, so I feel safe in telling this story.
My first job out of high school was working security at a hotel in Spokane. One of their properties was right next to the freeway. Well, one night I got really REALLY stoned off some weed we confiscated off some kids we kicked out for being disruptive and bothering other guests, and another security guy and I went up on the roof with about 10 cans of tennis balls. We smoked a few more bowls and proceeded to smack these tennis balls out onto the freeway from the roof of the hotel. It was kind of funny to see people lock up their brakes at 60+ mph! Well... it was funny THEN.
Hey - I was 19, for Christ's sake! FUCK OFF!:rolleyes:
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