15 Horrible Mistakes People Made At Work That Their Coworkers Never Forgot
Article created by: Ieva Pečiulytė
Most days at work are pretty mundane. You know exactly what to expect, and you can probably complete the bulk of your tasks without having to think too hard. This may sound boring, but sometimes the days filled with excitement are actually the worst days. Because anything out of the ordinary might mean that somebody has made a terrible mistake.
Recently, Reddit users have been spilling about the worst mistakes they’ve ever witnessed someone make at work, and I’ll warn you right now, pandas, these stories are painful. From losing huge amounts of money to losing limbs, strap in and put on your safety helmets because this list is full of it all. Keep reading to also find a conversation we were lucky enough to have with Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle, to hear his thoughts on the importance of safety in the workplace.
Be sure to upvote the stories that you cannot believe occurred in the workplace, and feel free to share about any horrible mistakes you’ve ever witnessed while on the job in the comments section. Then, if you’re interested in reading even more cringe-worthy stories that happened while on the clock, check out this Bored Panda article next!
I used to work as a maid in a motel and our usual supervisor was out sick. The person who took her place that day mixed ammonia and bleach in a window cleaner bottle and poisoned me with ammonia chloride gas fumes when I sprayed the bathroom mirror. If the maintenance man hadn’t come by and found me unconscious,it could have killed me. For several months after I had respiratory problems,vision issues and a lingering burn in my nose and throat.
Working at a car dealership. Last deal of the night, after closing time. Our check verification system was down and the customer has a personal check for $50,000 USD. Manager said to take the check because he wanted to go home. Finance guy took the check. Customer left with a new car.
Check bounced. Customer didn’t return calls. Dealership went to his listed address, it was an abandoned house. They called his listed employer, they claimed to have never heard of him.
“Just take it so we can go home” cost them $50k
Taught preschool for 8 years before the pandemic. It’s protocol to count the children before moving from one room to another to make sure no one gets left behind. Had a coworker on her phone, didn’t count kids, and had left behind a child in the toy closet. Kid was 2 years old and trapped, screaming and crying in a dark toy closet for 20 minutes before a teacher passing by the empty classroom heard her.
My coworker didn’t even get a slap on the wrist and management never told parents.
This same coworker forced her class of 2 year olds to “get dressed themselves” for outside play in the winter so one time a little girl ended up playing outside in the Minnesota snow without boots on for ten minutes before my coworker noticed.
Update: The biggest question is “Where/what company is this?” This was over 22 years ago in Asia. I apologize for not remembering the name, but they went under shortly after.
Plant manager let the safety guy go because they didn’t believe safety was a full time job and wanted to cut back on company spending and decided the supervisors could do all the safety audits, training, keep the building up to code.
Not even a week later 2 guys got their arms cut off working on a machine that they weren’t trained/certified on and the back building caught fire due to pallets and cardboard boxes being stacked in the wrong area near the furnace.
A lady in our sales department sent a racial message bashing foreigners and how cheap they all are to another coworker using our company email…which tagged the entire company. The CEO is also foreign.
I’m a healthy human subject for medical research studies. I did a study with special dietary restriction groups of zero carbs, no carbs, and a regular diet. I was in the zero-carb group and our breakfast consisted of a large stack of Canadian bacon and a drink. I read on the side of the can that it had 18 grams of carbs. I mentioned this to the doctor in charge and he said, “Well, umm, it’s hard to get zero carbs.” I thought to myself, “In a drink? No, it’s not!”
Three days later they realized that I was right and they had to stop our study and send us home. The doctor had been in charge of the clinic but I noticed he was no longer in charge when I was invited back to the next cohort of the same study. So instead of earning $7,000, I earned $4000 initially and $7,000 for a total of $11,000. So his mistake earned me more money.
One time a member of my dev team was given a task to cancel a few credit cards (less than 10) directly in the database.
They cancelled 17 million, the mistake was only caught when the company helpline started to receive millions of calls the next day from all over the country with people asking why their cards were not working.
I had a girl that worked for me that one day had a guy try to pay with a $100 bill. We all knew that we did not take any bill over a $20 but she didn’t listen sometimes. This time she took the bill and when she was cashing out her draw the smart safe didn’t take the $100 bill. I asked if she checked it and she of course said yes. I looked at the bill and noticed it said “Movie Prop” on the bill. She somehow missed it.
Someone managed to CC the entire enterprise, consisting of 6 figures of employees.
Then the follow up idiots all hit reply all “I don’t think this is for me”
In a matter of minutes there’s were probably hundreds of millions of emails produced as a bunch of idiots piggy backed off the first idiot and hitting reply all.
Email Servers crashed and weren’t restored until the next day.
IT quickly fixed that too so people could only mass CC within their own department unless IT approved it.
An IT worker once sent an advisory to the entire company about an email several people had received with a malware link. She did so by forwarding the actual email with the link.
Dude gave the signal that he was done working on a forge. Then he put his arm in to check something.
His robot arm is pretty cool though.
I heard there was this guy who had to clean a load of paella pans by tying them down and letting the tide of the sea do the work (was a beach restaurant in spain) apparently he forgot to tie them and almost everyone of them floated away. Sounds funnier when he tells it though.
Once, I served drinks to a little girl and her mom.
I accidentally got them mixed up. The mom ordered a mixed drink with bourbon and the daughter said her drink tasted funny.
A girl on the till had a guy come up and buy a $2 pack of gum with a $100 note saying sorry he didn’t have anything smaller. She gave him his $98 change and he left. He came back in a few minutes later and said “hey I found a $2 coin in my car can I have my $100 back?”. So she did it. It was a small shop so it was a tough scam to fall for. She also managed to lock herself out of her own car while it was running but parked in a way that no one could get in or out of the car park
