I might have said on an application for an internship in Tajikistan for an NGO that I spoke Russian.
All I could really say was hello, goodbye, and yes.
I got found-out when I was asked to translate some documents for the UN DP to (or from) Russian and used Google Translate - which it turns out wasn't very good at Russian back in the day.
Got a proper dressing down.
Russian (and Japanese) language skills have both since been removed from my CV.
Someone used a Forklift to load a mould tool into the Autoclave when I worked at an F1 team, then proceeded to go on a break. Someone else came along and shut the door and ran the cure cycle with the Forklift still inside, so it was cooked along with the job...
Luckily it was a low temperature tooling cure rather than a hot one, but 55 degrees and 90psi wasn't in the design brief of the forklift I don't think!
Where I used to work... Ours would survive, I think
My team mate (only 2 of us on the job) was filling a casting machine with metal. Picture a huge ladle on a rotating forklift truck, kind of like a teapot pouring action, aiming for a 12"x12" target about 5 feet off the floor.
A hydraulic hose on the truck burst, the ladle instantly spun upside down. 800kg of molten aluminium @ 800c dumped on the floor. Metal floor plates buckled, concrete exploding, and the metal that found it's way to the maintenance sub floor, set light to the oil leaks that had been going on for years. It took the 5th fire engine to get the fire put out, they kept sending ones with water, which you can't use on molten aluminium.
The maintenance department got a good kicking for the hose bursting and the pools of oil under the machines
Back in the 90s we needed to urgently courier a tape from the London development centre to the Leeds call centre. We'd normally have sent it via internal post but it was really, really urgent. We got permission to use a motorcycle courier, he set off. A couple of hours later we got a call from him, he couldn't find the call centre. No surprise really, he'd gone to the quaint village Leeds in Kent not the large city Leeds in Yorkshire. 4 hours later he was at the correct address just off the M62.
The worst bit was that the bank's accounts department delayed his payment for more than 3 months, not because he'd cocked up, just because that's what big companies did to little companies in the 90s.
I might have said on an application for an internship in Tajikistan for an NGO that I spoke Russian.
All I could really say was hello, goodbye, and yes.
I got found-out when I was asked to translate some documents for the UN DP to (or from) Russian and used Google Translate - which it turns out wasn't very good at Russian back in the day.
Got a proper dressing down.
Russian (and Japanese) language skills have both since been removed from my CV.
All you need to do is learn the Japanese/Russian for:
"That would be an ecumenical matter"
A hydraulic hose on the truck burst, the ladle instantly spun upside down. 800kg of molten aluminium @ 800c dumped on the floor.
I worked in foundries for 10 years. A few times ladles went over full of cast iron. I saved a workmate once, he was looking the other way, the ladle was coming down the overhead rail toward him, it would normally have gone past him, but the catch wasnt on properly, so it tipped over, probably 6 foot away from him. Only 250kg at 1400 deg C, but it does spread out a lot and cause lots of ball bearing splashes to hit anything within 10 feet or so. Anyway, I saw it going, and pulled him away, just far enough to stop it going on his legs. We got a few small burns but nothing serious.
Another time the hand controlled crane wasnt working, so the crane driver was up on top of the crane in his cabin, with a limited view. We were pouring 200kg+ moulds. After 20 minutes or so, the weights can be removed from the top of the already poured moulds, and transferred to the next moulds to be poured. As I hooked the chains onto the crane, my overalls were directly above the flames coming out the side of the mould. I didnt know my back was on fire, - it is very hot close to the moulds anyway, and the smoke coming off them masked the burning on my back. The crane driver couldnt see, whereas he'd normally be at my side, and could stop immediately (catching fire wasnt too unusual, but it was normally caught within seconds). Only when I could smell burning hair did I know I was on fire. Luckily it was winter, I was wearing a donkey jacket under the overall, so the only burns I got was on my hands when throwing off my overalls, and of course, my badly singed hair. I ran to the nearest tap to get my hand under water, then realised my wages were in the pocket of the overalls, so I ran back with the extinguisher to rescue my wages. They were safe! At the time, we didnt think anything of it, if it happened now, there'd be a full scale inquiry.
A hydraulic hose on the truck burst,
Oh, remembered another one I was involved with
Mid 90s. My dad owned a plant hire company and I worked for him
We had some diggers on hire right in the centre of Glasgow when they were making Buchanan St all nice and putting cobbles down. Big fenced off section right down the middle of the pedestrianised street with work going on inside the fences, pedestrians and shops on the other side.
One hot sunny afternoon one of the hydraulic hoses on a big digger burst and every single pedestrian and shop window nearby got absolutely drenched in hydraulic oil.
Muggins here got sent up with a few barrels of soap, water and a big petrol powered pressure washer to clean up the mess🫣
A few years back some colleagues got a phishing email that used our boss' name. Most ignored but one now former colleague fell for it.
He was asked to buy apple vouchers and send the numbers to "the boss" he did this using his company credit card which was then frozen. Undettered, he then used his own credit card.
He was a relative of the founder of the company who had sold up & very rarely came to the office but had to come in to get his company credit card unfrozen. he had forgotten the DOB he'd given the credit card company & had to get help from another colleague.
Instead of admitting he had fallen for a scam, he fibbed that he didn't know why it had been frozen. HSBC ended the call twice as he couldn't pass the security checks, You could have heard a pin drop in the office while he was on the phone.
Muggins here got sent up with a few barrels of soap, water and a big petrol powered pressure washer to clean up the mess
Did they stand still while you hosed them down?
Cant remember how but I did screw up the passwords for about 10k people. It was a semi excusable mistake and my managers response was to claim the email resets was a security precaution.
Many moons ago, as a young tom I decided to park a land rover in and on an airfield crash gate.
A couple of reasons for this, I wasn't paying attention, I was speeding, and my beret had fallen into the passenger footwell. Driving along I recalled a briefing about people getting gripped for not wearing berets when driving green fleet, so panic ensued.
(Anyone whose had an OG 110 knows how slippy those bloody removable seats bases are.)
So as I leant over and down to retrieve it. The closed gate jumped out of nowhere, just as I sat back up. The impact happened at the perfect time for the useless seatbelt to be useless and for me to smash my face into the rigid steering wheel.
Said crash gate was not yet open as the Army aviation unit hadn't started flying for the day. So the main issue this caused was flying operations were delayed that day as the crash gate was also the closest one for the fire service to get to dispersals in case of an emergency. Took them a good few hours to un**** that particular ****up.
The land rover was fine after some work, those 110s were absolute tanks and the REME mechanics were miracle workers. The gate not so much, had to be fully replaced.
The boss of the aviation unit was fuming. He pushed hard for me to get hammered. Which in hindsight was fair enough, they had some important taskings that I kyboshed.
The MT (in charge of green fleet) boss was fuming as I'd taken a vehicle off the road.
My boss was fuming because I was a dick and everybody was shouting at him as a result.
I got 7 days in camp jail with the provos (Provost Staff - unit jailers) and £500 fine. Being charged in possession of a broken nose and black eyes still hurting was an added bonus.
Twas not my finest hour.
Compared to being shouted at a bit and maybe doing some pressups for not wearing a hat, sounds like you got off lightly 😉
Well a few years back we had this nasty virus and the boss decided the washing hands and British stoacism would stop it from spreading round the office despite our Italian and Chinese offices being ravaged with it, Then he decided to send all our elderly stafff into care homes without checking if they had the virus what harm could that do. Anyway we ran out of protective clothing it was OK as he knew someone who made knickers so she'd sorted us out and then he decided it was a good idea to pay us to go put for lunch in the middle of the out break because what a harm could that do. Anyway only a few folk died but in the end they sacked him but it was OK as they replaced him with this lady called Liz
While training as a meat inspector at Glasgow Abattoir, we'd a big bull in for emergency slaughter. Business concluded it was hung up and the lecturer started to expose the superficial cervical lymph node which is just behind the first rib. It was in i think because it was hit by a car or something. At 1- 1 1/2 tonnes, the car would have come off worst.
Brought the students in in a tight little circle around the animal. Where its head(originally) was was about shoulder height(hung up stretched out its about 11' long).
In goes the knife, the students lean forward to get a look and it is discovered at that point that there is a gigantic puss filled cavity, taking up most of the chest area and under a bit of pressure. Pretty much the last thing you want to shove a knife into.
Puss exploded out, and there was a lot of it hitting all as well as splashing over people shoes and clothes.
I was thankfully sitting on a table out the way so escaped. It was a foul smelling liquid indeed.
Compared to being shouted at a bit and maybe doing some pressups for not wearing a hat, sounds like you got off lightly 😉
Exactly what my mates all said. A week of getting beasted by provos was not fun. 😂
Cant remember how but I did screw up the passwords for about 10k people
I once asked my gym if they could change the day my direct debit was taken, but the guy dealing with it managed to cancel the direct debits of every single member instead 🫣😭😂
Many years ago, I was an electrician at a large office building. We had to undertake some planned HV maintenance that would mean loosing power to half the building. A couple of days before the work, notices were posted around the building warning of the power-outage.
I hadn’t realised that the gym would be one of the areas affected by the power works, so it wasn’t closed when the work started- the chap pounding away on the running machine sprinted into the wall!
Whilst working for a marquee firm we had a big agri' show or festival set-up job on which was all staff and vehicles and several hours from the yard.
On site and we are waiting for the van with all the main poles, ridges and side poles on board. It was the oldest and slowest van, so expected it to be a bit behind. Still no sign of it so we'll call the driver to find out where they are. Start trying to work out who was driving it and it gradually dawns on us that everyone is on site and the person that everyone thought was driving it had been in the back of the Discovery.
Boss was out on site visits so in the end his wife had to get a lift to the yard (boss was using her vehicle) to bring us the van with the many 25' poles on it.
Cock-up by the tape library and not picked up by a now sadly departed colleague, the mildly pornographic film ‘They’re Playing With Fire’ went to air at two o’clock in the afternoon instead of the cautionary tale of the pitfalls of actually ‘Playing With Fire’. He hadn’t noticed until the channel head phoned up and asked why there were tits on the telly!
Not me but I was working on an adjacent project at Stanstead Airport.
Stanstead Airport passenger terminal was built with an exit that was supposed to line up with the entrance and atrim to the new staff building which was supposed to be a short " straight" forward sheltered walk of approx 100m to the entrance of the building directly opposite.
However the foundations were put in for new staff building 90 degrees in the wrong direction. The construction of the building continued with it rotated 90 degree s from the original design.
So now staff have to exit the passenger terminal and turn walk around to the front doors and no overhead canopy.
The new atrim within this building makes this really apparent !
Ramming the side of a Royal Navy frigate and putting a dint in it in Oban. Our gear cable snapped as I put our ship into reverse, oops sorry.
Ramming the side of a Royal Navy frigate and putting a dint in it in Oban. Our gear cable snapped as I put our ship into reverse, oops sorry.
Allegedly we had a previous senior admiral who when he was the captain of a frigate went over-zone (this in the days where it was possible to spend too long in a given rank then be ineligible for promotion) and 'accidentally' hit something solid on the Thames. The resulting court martial and loss of seniority put him back in the promotion zone...
I notice no-one who works in healthcare has fessed up here and this is probably a good thing...
Ha we became minor legends in the pub for assaulting a naval ship. To be fair if you've never grounded or hit something in your craft you've had a pretty dull time afloat through taking no chances.
I was supposed to go train a new colleague ('across' if that helps out with the location).
He started, and was given his company car. But in the first few days of work, some odd stuff was happening. He'd given a colleague a lift home a couple of times, just around the corner from where he lived, but would leave the car parked outside her house rather than drive it home. He'd walk the remaining 300m by himself "for exercise" and pick it back up the following morning.
He was apparently a bit cagey about going out in it during the working day as well.
Turned out he didn't have a driving licence. Or had been banned, I can't remember. Company licence checks hadn't been completed due to the location.
I think he lasted 4 days before it all came to a head. Plenty of embarrassment all round on that one - as the company couldn't be sure it actually said the job spec meant he had to drive.
Current company One of the production guys didn’t follow a SOP, missing an ingredient… the compensation payout is currently +$300M
Current company One of the production guys didn’t follow a SOP, missing an ingredient
Depending on the finer details good chance I would be considering that a cock up by whoever designed the process. If you can cause that much damage then it shouldnt be for one person to follow a SOP but instead several sign offs.
When I was fresh out of my Apprenticeship the office didn't have any design work for me so I got sent to site to contract manage an office refurbishment.
Doing the takes offs for the lighting I 'some how' managed to miss an entire floor - that was an interesting conversation with the Client to say why he couldn't have the 8th floor for another 2 weeks.....
Funnily enough after that the design department needed an extra pair of hands lol
Not me, but a mate was working on the refurbishment of a large ex local government building in the centre of Birmingham. This building used to have it's own BT exchange in the basement. Which had allegedly been removed. He looked at the BT plans and there were no lines showing going into or out of the building with the reassurance that everything was dead.
Set the team to work removing the 'redundant' cables only to find they were live and took out half of Birmingham City Centres phone lines........
At least no-one on here has worked in a bridge-swinging extreme sports business and forgotten to rope up a tourist before throwing her over the edge...
Not me, but I was one of two FLT drivers in the Co-Op bonded drinks warehouse as a summer job at uni, I was running pallets of cheap booze from the trailer to the other driver who was putting in in bays on the night shift. He miscalculated where the beam was on 3rd/4th high slot and the whole pallet cascaded down through the bays. It took out maybe 5-6 pallets of various wines and spirits on it's way down.
As it was a bonded warehouse, they made us find every single cap and cork.
I remembered one. A new building very near Birmingham station (and well known if you're from around there) had new tenants moving into a couple of floors. I was running all the IT infrastructure, but there were so many contractors involved and the customer(s) were a nightmare. Anyway in desperation to hit the move in date, they rushed a whole load of 2nd fix stuff which meant some of the toilets were not connected to the soil pipes.
I'd moved on before the "incident" so only heard 2nd hand. But there had been complains from the first week about smells fro those toilets, but nothing was done (see customer being a **** etc) until one day trap 2 ran out space in the internal pipe and poo basically exploded into the crapper.
By all accounts it was spectacular. The poor staff member in said trap was traumatised by all accounts. They had to send quite a few people home and it cost a chunk to get it fixed. I feel the story may have grown a bit in translation but it did make the local paper 🙂
I notice no-one who works in healthcare has fessed up here and this is probably a good thing...My mistakes aren't funny.
No, mine neither.
Aye, I've got some fatal mistakes from training I could share.L, but it would absolutely bring the mood down.
My mate who lost a leg from stepping on the wrong spot in Iraq always describes the situation as "I zigged when I should have zagged". That's always made me laugh.
...
I notice no-one who works in healthcare has fessed up here and this is probably a good thing...
An acceptable one is when our new $1.8b hospital was built and the moving plans were being organised. It’s a pretty complex exercise I’m sure you can imagine. Forgetting to allocate space to an entire department who’s primary role is to look after patient safety was … unfortunate.
I'd moved on before the "incident" so only heard 2nd hand. But there had been complains from the first week about smells fro those toilets, but nothing was done (see customer being a **** etc) until one day trap 2 ran out space in the internal pipe and poo basically exploded into the crapper.A place i worked, briefly. Due to multiple changes to building layout, badly completed refurbs, structure and suchlike, one of the upper floor toilets in an office block had the large bore waste pipe clipped to the inside of the roof structure of an adjacent workshop space. 20-30 m long, inadequate drop. Usually not an issue as it was a sparsely staffed building. Until it wasn't when some internal moves happened.
Not sure on all the details, but eventually the pipe peeled itself off the roof trusses due to the weight, dropped about 7-8m and landed across all the equipment against that wall, exploded and propelled something like 150 gallons of well rotted and compacted waste product across the entire building, and the ~30 people in there. (Most of whom were running for the door...)
Took weeks to clean the place, several of the machines had to be scrapped, everyone in there got paid out. HSE had a field day. The new pipe is outside, and *much* closer to the floor, also has a proper drop on it...
The actual perpetrator of the cock up is not known. As the pipe had been in place for a decade when the disaster occurred.
Not me, but one guy set up a groundwater treatment system and literally emigrated to Australia that afternoon. His mate turned up to see "good to go" and thought that meant just press the green button, not follow the whole protocol of manually removing all the petrol from the borehole. So once the catalyst was up to 400C it starting pumping and the first thing out of the borehole is litres of unleaded sprayed straight onto a hot surface. ker-****in-boom was the sound it made, apparently.
When my father's first book was published, the thank you in the start read: Thank you to my wife for her proofreading and my son for teaching me how to use a work processor.
The one sentence he didn't get Mum to proofread 🙂
^^ I saw the forum overview and thought "Excellent, WCA has entered the chat, this'll be good"
Is disappoint.
A place I worked at (chemistry labs) had some new generators installed, unfortunately the only place to put them was out the back which necessitated lifting them over the single storey building with a big crane. The first one went over no problems. The second one, we were all watching as it got hoisted up over the (thankfully empty) second wing of the building, paused for a moment then fell out of the sling and clipped the edge of the building before crashing into the back yard.
That was apparently quite an expensive day for the contractors. At least it didn't go through the roof and into the newly built lab.
Ooooh, similar to Crazy-legs. A few years back I watched over the space of a few weeks as the 'temporary' accommodation for the mathematics department was constructed behind the lab I work in. It's basically just a pile of prefab huts piled one on top of each other. I was watching out the window as the top floor portacabin in the northern corner slipped out of the crane slings and smashed down onto the 3rd floor cabin about 3 metres below it. They just reattached the slings and quietly got on with it. Building's still here about 10yrs later, but I wouldn't go in there.
I set out all the piles and bases of a warehouse, the bases hit the groups of piles bang on so I was feeling quite chuffed with myself. We then got a set of drawings sent to site that the office had been sat on for weeks needless to say the new layout was rotated 15 degrees different to the current layout simple solution was to get the drawing updated to match the as built position. Happy days
A legengary tale from the world of proof reading was when Tesco published their annual report and accounts, a weighty tome which was distributed to all of their thousands of shareholders, the stock market, fund managers, the press, you get the picture.Adorning the front cover was a photo of their newly-opened flagship store featuring a row of checkouts as far as the eye could see, busy with eager customers adding to shareholder value. In the foreground was one said customer busily packing her purchases into a Sainsbury carrier bag.
.Adorning the front cover was a photo of their newly-opened flagship store featuring a row of checkouts as far as the eye could see, busy with eager customers adding to shareholder value.
There was something similar with a data centre where the manager was photo in front of a huge network rack with all the IP numbers shown and what ever other details were needed to completely hack the place. I think they had to reconfigure the entire infrastructure after that went to print (and the manager left)
A rather ambitious, yet peculiarly unpopular, senior police officer spent months working on an in depth report into public safety and wouldn't let anyone else near it until the final version was published. Alas, whatever word processing tool he used to auto-correct mis-spelt words resulted in him having 50 shiny copies of a final report, each making hundreds of references to pubic safety.
