[Closed] whats your biggest work cock up? (imbecile content)

I was doing some QA on some software we were about to release. Worked a succession of 18+ hour days to get it done on time. One thing I forgot to test though was the installer.

We made 15,000 CDs with the useless installer on.

First ever day at work I took the whole of Boston (Lincs) telephone exchange out of action for a day by cutting through a live cable. My boss saw the funny side though, I just shat myself.

A nightshift some years back a lamp blew on the control panel at work. I attempted to stuff 30 tonnes of flour into space for 5! The top of the bin house was filled to a depth of 5 feet and then the fire escape door opened and it snowed on the dock in mid-summer! Then the delivery blowline filled up and I was late home as I fixed the plant for the next shift while they were in.
Happy days 😕

Well, retro, can't comment as to whether you are an imbecile or not as I haven't a clue what you are on about! 8) (Oh, and I'm quite happy in my ignorance!!)

I forgot an O-ring while working at NASA. We laughed that night!

as a 15 yr old on work experience i was given the task of choosing images for an ad campaign ok'd a list with the bossman, wrote down the codes for all of these. international print and web exclusive licence £15K each.

misread a code and ordered 1 extra: they really weren't bothered but 15K was more money than i had ever had at that point in life!!

missed the minus sign out of the reflector calculation on the hubble telescope years ago, didn't cost that many millions to put right 😆

Went for a wee while working at Three Mile Island. Chuckle? I'll say matey....

I was marshalling on a corporate team challenge, I had been moved at a couple of minutes notice from finish to key turning in the MTB race section (up on top of Shatton Moor). I *assumed* that the race carried straight on and down Bradwell Edge (cos thats where I had always ridden...) but in fact they should have turned and gone via the gliding club and descended on the road... 😳

Covered the dials up with tinsel and balloons for someones birthday. Chernobyl was a really dull place to work til I livened it up!

During my apprenticeship one of the lads swapped a 5V and 24V feed to a sensor array for a helicopter. The head was worth £25k before, and nothing afterwards..... Same guy also deleted ALL of the test records for an entire programme, years worth. He didn't own up to that one.

I, of course have never made a mistake......

Ok, there was the time when I threw a customers cherished piece of music making equipment at the wall. Not deliberately of course, he'd just handed to to me after I'd booked it in for service. I tripped going through into the workshop and in full view of him inadvertently lobbed it full pelt. Have never apologised so profusely, or been so embarassed!

Quite recently, miss-read some work details and chopped down a national fibre circuit. Fault process didn't work as it was supposed to so customer was offline for rather longer than they should have been, and I got bollocked 🙂 (If the fault process had worked normally it would have been back up and running in no time and it would just be 'one of those things')

Not mine but still a cracker I think.

I worked at a travel firm years back and one of our 'senior' agents booked a chap on his flight to Luxembourg only she didn't. Having guessed at the airport code she actually ended up sending him to Luxor in Egypt. What amazed us what that a) He didn't pick up on it when he saw his itinerary, b) he didn't pick up on it at check in, c) He didn't think it was a surprisingly long flight to Luxembourg and d) he didn't cotton on when the price was significantly higher than it should have been. That cost the company close to £3k to put right.

We had another agent who booked a couple on a flight to San Jose in California. Simple enough, right? Well they ended up in San Jose Costa Rica as the agent never bothered to check which one they wanted. £7k to put that one right.

My worst mistake was pulling an unexpected double shift (18 hours) in the Factory I was employed at. I had 500 collet blanks that I had to perform a (pretty straightforward) machining operation on. Well, I took a break at the end of my first shift and neglected to check the settings when I got back and proceeded to do my thing before dropping them off at QC before the next stage.

They ALL failed QC. Gulp. Lesson learned.

Two things;

In my youth I drove a truck and trailer through the wall of a parcel delivery depot in Gatwick. On Christmas Eve.

And, in an attempt to prove how cool I am to the kids (I'm a PE Teacher) I attempted to bunnyhop one of them. I was successful the first three times, but ran out of bounce for the fourth and landed square on Jaasat's nether regions.

That one took some explaining...

Not me, but the copy boy on the first newspaper I worked on, a regional daily tabloid with a devoted following.

In those far off days, the copy boy was a vital part of the team. Apart from fetching cuppas now and again, his main job was to pick up cuttings from the cuttings library and deliver them to journalists' desks. This was back before the internets (I'd just started using something called NCSA Mosaic at University).

Now, the copy boy didn't have a hugely demanding job, and for this reason, the hiring policy was to hire from the local special needs school. The copy boys were as a result always happy souls who brightened up the place no end.

The printing presses (Big, two-storey tall Heidelbergs, I seem to remember) were in the same building, right by the news room. When the first edition rolled off, the building shook, and didn't stop 'til home time. These were big, big machines knocking out tens of thousands of issues of two seperate dailies and the weekend papers too.

Naturally, things like this have lots of fast moving machinery that can cause death and mutilation, and as a result, there are lots of big red buttons everywhere.

Our chap had a slight 'Father Dougal' moment when passing through the print hall one day.

The inkies swore in the pub later that a glazed expression had come over his mug the moment he read the 'Emergency stop' sign above one of them.

That cost about fourteen grand, and something like 40,000 copies had to be chucked in the end.

No one had the heart to so much tell the poor chap off. As far as I know, he was there right up until the clippings library was culled.

A couple

I still chuckle at hitting "reply all" to an email by accident and copying 1200 people.

80 odd out of office responses the following day.
And then all the Wags start replying resulting in a Director playing moderator.
The email was advertising places on a course on...."effective use of email".

Or the time I screeched out of a car park with a one-in-the-country prototype Casio printer on the roof of my car.

We have a Vertical platform lift. It can be tipped over to fit through doors BUT it needs to be placed on its lowering arm first. This requires humans to plan ahead and attach the arm.

My Boss has dropped it
I have dropped it
Contractors have dropped it twice.

I have tried to drive through a roller shutter too. But cant beat my pals who took a Luton Van to..... a McDonalds drive through. They got their burgers, but did bring a bit of the height restriction barrier home with them.

First day of job. Chatting to new boss in car park at end of day, drove away and mowed down a cyclist (stay off the pavement kids!). Day two and the police are waiting for me in reception. At least everyone new my name.

Drilled into the dry riser of a block of flats on the 11th floor when installing cable tv. Hit a water main and flooded the riser from there down.
Oh, in an attempt to stop the flow (we eventually had to wait for the tank at the top to drain, I hit the "right" pipe) we shut every stopcock off.
No heating, no hot water, for a tower block, from about 4.00 pm to 8.30 pm, on the 23rd of December.
Honestly, some people get so touchy about heat in winter, or having a shower before going out for Christmas drinks!

I was very happy when Kenninghall Mount flats got demolished.

A neighbour drove a loading forklift into a bowing 747, righting off the plane.

He was fired for that one.

Writing off a 747? You have to be kidding!! They cost tens (hundreds?) of millions!!

I once reversed quite hard into my Boss's car whilst driving my Supervisors van in a car park in Bracknell. In my defence he pulled out behind me, your honour...

🙂

Cut the phone cable to the office, had already taken a poll aorund everyone else who all thought it looked redundant so cut it, couple of hours later someone pointed out the phones didn't work, when BT came round the next day they pointed out the mistake.

"Stupid Bird!"

Whilst working in my first job as a Honeywell main frame operator I loaded the system disk on all disk drives with the bosses permission. The disk had crashed all 12 heads on each disk drive and resulted in a £65,000 bill and about a days downtime.

I went on to work there for another 7 years before becoming an IT Manager!!

Had to scrap some classified parts that had a fault which were used on some radars the RAF used , they were basically big valves but cost about £800,000 a piece.

We were sent a list of serial numbers which we were informed were the ones requiring scarping, valves were then dragged out into scrap yard and put beyond use.

Later informed that someone at the other end had made a mistake with the covering letter and those serial numbers were for the valves that were ok.

RAF suddenly has zero stock of serviceable valves for one of its main ground-based air defence radars.

Not strictly my fault though.

I dropped 1000 metres of armoured cable on my bosses Lotus.

I crashed £250,000-worth of hovercraft into a groyne on the beach at Aberystwyth. I made quite a mess of the bow, split the front fuel tank.
Deisel and glass fibre everywhere.

One of these:
[img] [/img]

I was working for the company that built them at the time.
The owner, who was sitting next to me, was none too pleased, I can tell you.

Not really a cock up but lately I have been touching things and they seem to blow up, things like lasers and power supplies and it isn't really helping me finish my phd.

Commented on a contractor's curtain wall drawing crossing out the correct level of the head of the curtain wall and putting in an incorrect one (that obviously I believed was right at the time), that I never found the origin of. Only about £16K to rectify once it was on site!

Summer job at Uni after 1st year, getting some practical engineering experience. Doing some work on water pumps for a block of flats and at the same time providing some technical support to guys cleaning the water tanks. Sparky I'm working with has gone off to do something. Cleaning guy asks if it's possible to get some water into the tanks. I check out the fuse panel, realise that there aren't enough fuses, but hey, there's two pumps and I only need to power up one. So turn things on with only half the fuses in place. Mucho sparks, all fuses blown, no water for the building for 24hrs. Why is it that they don't teach you about 3-phase electric until SECOND year?

Also, same summer (and not my fault although I got the blame for it). Working at a navy base, tasked with replacing the pump which delivered hot water to the whole dock - "a nice wee job for a student." Old pump very big, new pump very small, no problem, I re-drilled the mountings etc., got the old pump out, new one installed, no problem. But because of the size difference, the old pipework didn't quite reach. So I go find the guy who's supposed to be supervising me to see if we can sort out an extra bit of pipe to bridge the gap. He comes round, checks it out, says something like "****it, it'll go", grabs the old pipe and tries to bend it over to reach. Pipe snaps off, water everywhere, have to just bung it up. No hot water (and hence no post-shift showers) for the whole dock full of navy boys. I was popular.

I worked for a small Leasing brokerage about 10 years ago, I was the new boy in sales, and I brought in a new customer, a Printing guy who kept bringing in £25K printer deals with 5 massive london based charities.

This went on for 3 months, £250K later the first repayments started for the charities and on the same day I get 5 calls, 1 from each of the charities advising that he had ripped each of them off, no printing equipment.

He was nowhere to be found.

As we were the Brokerage, the banks in question held us liable, and i had to sit my boss down and tell him that he had to find the £250K to pay the banks back.

He called the banks with me sat there, confirmed everything, then just looked at me sadly and then was quietly sick into his little waste paper basket.

I did my nine months work experience from Uni in a cider brewery in Ireland - the one where they brew Magners (it's Bulmers for the Irish market). One of the tasks was to take a litre sample of the final blend of cider (which would be a very pale yellow colour), analyse it in a colorimeter, add a mix of red and orange colourant till it was in spec, then multiply this amount up for an 8000 gallon bulk tank which would then be sent through to the bottling plant.

I was on an overtime shift and added an extra zero to the weight of red colourant, and despite the plant operator Christy saying "that seems like an awful lot of red there don't you think", insisted that my calculations were correct. Anyway, 8000 gallons of Bulmers were coloured to look like, well, all I have to say is that it took me a while to shake off the nickname "Lucozade Kid" and two further 8000 gallon tanks had to be made up to dilute it down. The plant was bottling Bulmers for around two weeks!!!

Loads in life but few at work

I was on a customer site many years ago. They had employee a load of temps for 3 weeks to enter data into their new system as it was cheaper than writing and automated routine. The UNIX server started to run out of space.

I logged in as root
ls /temp (spotted a load of log files that could be deleted)
rm -rf (had fogotton that I was still in the root directory, not the temp directory)

Nothing was backed up as it was a new computer and the only data was the 40 peoples 3 weeks of work.

For the none UNIX among us, I basically forced the main computer running the business to remove all the data from the disc destrying itself in the process.

I ordered the shelling of a Serbian village. My boss forgave me though as the Serbians were the 'enemy' in the worlds eyes.

(I bet there were a few American and UK commanders who did just that).

I was in the meeting later with the customer and my boss when my boss tendered MY resignation to the customer!

I deleted the contents of a SAP table when I had just started out on development - something to do with forgetting to put a check in the select statement to pick up only some records.

Luckily a backup had been taken just before... phew! Quite a few pubs wouldn't have had their taps working otherwise...

myself and the small test chamber have a hate-hate relationship, one summer I put my hand in to scoop some test dudt out, (everything switched off, what could go wrong?) unfortunately the thermostat had malfunctioned turning the heating elements onto full blast (22mm copper pipes with electrical elements inside). Hand goes in, scoops up dust, touches somethign hot, instinct reaction is to close fist and pull hand out. unfortunately it meant i grabbed onto seveal hundred degrees of hot pipe, tightly, and lost most fo the skin off my right palm. Being single at the time this was a big inconvenience.

cured that one my submergeing it in iced water which turned red.

Smothering it in salvol and putting a latex glove over it then submerging it in iced water.

Wen't to the BMX track that night, blimey braking hurt!

Second incident involved re-routing some piping to turn the circulation pump into a giant hoover by attatchig its outlet to a big hoover bag with ductape.

What could posisbly go wrong?

Well the chambers windows imploded, all the glass was sucked down to the pump, chewed up into millions of small pices and ejected through the bottom of the hoover bag at warp speed and accross the workshop. Thank god there was no one stood behind me (imagine a shotgun, with a 6" bore, filled with glass form a 1m square reinforced window).

managed to monitor, level and produce a 45 minute discussion with Radio 4s Sue MacGregor. It was to be used in training and discussion materials with a major client throughout the country.

Didn't press record.

mema,

you sound like a student in my lab 🙂

Whilst on site constructing a petrol station, we were digging the tank farm (about a 4m deep excavation). The machine bucket goes through a small plastic pipe at about 2m deep, 110mm diameter. I climb in the hole and have a look, and decide its a piece of scrap pipe or redundant water pipe and tell the lads to continue digging. At about 3.5m down I send 2 lads into the hole to start compacting the bottom. Just about then, a fountain of sh!t and p!ss comes spurting out of the plastic pipe at an unbelievable rate of knotts, covering the two guys in human waste. By the time the fountain had stopped, the whole excavation was about 1m deep with raw sewage.

Turns out the pipe was the upstream pressure main from an underground sewerage pumping station.

I was not the most popular of people that day.

To be honest I have loads of stories along those lines. Construction sites always seem to be a cock up rich environment.

not me but a hapless guy who used to work with me at a landscaping firm. Appropriately his nickname was "f*ck it Farley" as he had a unique talent in being able to break almost anything he touched. One notable occasion he was loading tools into an astravan and getting steadily more pissed off with everyone slagging his latest mishap. In a fit of pique he told everyone where to go before horsing a fencing mel into the rear cabin. Unfortunately he threw it with such gusto that it went straight through the windscreen and made several large dents on the bonnet. We fell about laughing, he picked up his cards later that day.

On another occasion at the same firm the mechanic was tasked with giving a standlone chipper a safety test. This thing was a beast that could devour 4" tree trunks like they were breadsticks and featured a safety cut out that meant the machine wouldn't start unless the hopper feed was in place. Now, any normal person would have reasoned that if the hopper feed was up and the engine didn't start then the safety switch was doing its job. This poor chap, however, tried to put his hand on the safety switch (right in front of the grizzly feed rollers) whilst struggling to reach the start switch, purposely sited miles away so you can't do what this guy was doing. Needless to say when the engine turned over the machine jolted and the poor guys hand was planted into the feed rollers, breaking every bone in his hand and scalping the back of it. not nice at all.

Was working on a site as banksman (second pair of eyes due to the awkward nature of the dig) when we went through a major fibre optics telecoms cable. In our defense the telecoms company hadn't bothered to tell the land owner they had taken the cable across his land or flagged it up in the search which we had to pay them a fee for.

90 KG of bonbons all stuck together.
had t chuck them all out (by 'digging' them with a scoop), right in front of the factory boss and some visitors.

felt like a plumb.

many moons ago i worked for a financial firm in Dublin, i was a very new system admin geek.... they had a dealing desk of about 6 dealers and one day doing my 'routine checks'COUGH i started to mess about with one of the servers that was connected to the main feed of reuters and another bespoke financial software live feed....

10 minutes later blue screen of death, no idea what i had done, no idea how to fix, 6 irrate dealers screaming at me to get the system back up, to this day i still don't know what happened but the company lost a load of money and we had to call out the cavalry to fix it.

when i was 18 i worked for a small brewery, they used to let me use the forktrucks even though i didnt have a license, one day the main guy was ill so we have a a few lorries from brains turn up for unloading, truck one easy, truck two easy, truck 3.... unloading 2 pallets of 22gal kegs i reversed back hit a pothole the fork truck and the pallets fell over, if this wasnt bad enough it was right infront of the main offices and one of the kegs smashed through the back window of the MD's 3 weeks old Rover 800.

do i win?

I reversed a JCB off a 30 foot sheer drop and landed on a railway line 😳

ac282: It got so bad that when there was a power cut in the uni I was bombarded with emails afterwards asking what I had done this time!

@boarding - jeezus, hard landing!

Was building a gearbox to go out to the next test and was waiting for the 1 off test differential hub (4ks worth) to turn up that was being machined/inspected over (a friday) night by some poor bleeders, received the hub at 7 am on the saturday morning, built the diff and was walking to rig to fit to the gearbox, on lifting it to the gearbox to fit it I dropped the ****er!!! Yep and the only damaged part was the one off hub!!! Opps....

Boss didn't see the funny side, in fact called me a c@*t. He had a point!

A while ago I was working in air traffic control research and we were doing a project for the folks at West Drayton. We set up a meeting with one of the chief controllers there but it had to be about 3 weeks off as he was away at the time.

Anyhow, we roll up to the meeting and in the chit-chat before we got down to work I asked mr air traffic controller where he'd been - 'I've spent 10 days in Hong Kong watching the planes take off & land at the airport' he said. So I replied 'Well at least that's part of your job and you're not some sad plane spotter with an anorak and thermos flask'. Guess what - he'd been there on holiday, not with work, and he was a card carrying plane spotter.

The client relationship was always a little strained after that.

@boarding - jeezus, hard landing!

Scariest thing ever 😆

17 years old, never driven one before and I was handed the keys and asked to bring it up to the workshop. Jumped in, started it up, pulled a lever that I thought was the window wiper which actually turned out to be the forward/ reverse gear, blipped the throttle and it started moving backwards. I started to panic and went to slam on the brakes but the ground was rough and the thing was bouncing about and I hit the throttle instead 😳

I remember sailing off the edge and the thing tipping backwards. Luckily at the bottom there was a slight transition to the flat so it managed to stay the right way up 😆

On another occasion I managed to tip one of these on it's side

[img] [/img]

just two, drove a ten tonne forklift into a newly refurbished rollformer, Only clipped it, but it was messy.

And dropped a 15Tonne coil of steel from 6ft it landed 3ft from my feet... I went home that day...

Best i have heard is a 10-15 Tonne coil jummped off a trailer on a bridge over the M4 at Port Talbot straight through the fence and Landed in the middle of the carriage way below. Apparently there was a Motorbike that narrowly got missed.

I left a motor running over night, which cooked the oil, which worked the jiggers, that moved bits, that made the show look good.
I got shit for it. We spent the day replacing several of gallons of hydraulic fluid. It all worked fine. It was a simple mistake which anyone could have made.
I'm not even sure if it was me.
Quite good to look back on it and compare with others experiences though.
Ooh the pain.

Becoming a lawyer.

Thought mine was bad but after reading some previous posts makes mine seem rubbish...

My first project in my current job created an interactive CD (I know in these internet days!), CD relied on drawing in other files on the CD, by referring to their exact file names, burned the CD, CD software truncated the file names to make it compatible with older machines 500 cd's wasted.

Had a bit of a faux pas last week. Our team's split across two offices at the moment. Last week a guy from the other office called me and asked if I was going to join a conference call. He said it was about one of my clients but I knew nothing about it at all. He said a colleague was supposed to be on it but she was off ill so would I mind joining in. I said yes and asked when it started and he said it was supposed to be 12 minutes ago but they hadn't started and they were waiting for me. Various senior management folk were supposed to be on the call.

It all sounded very strange as I knew nothing about a call regarding one of my clients. Anyway I dialled in, entered the passcode, joined the call and said hello. At that point there was a massive uproar of laughter and I immediately thought this was a big practical joke from my team and they'd got me to dial in to a non existent call. Therefore I shouted

"FANNIES"

down the phone and went to hang up. As I was just about to replace the receiver I heard the strong Geordie accent of someone that wasn't in my team and was supposed to be on the call. 😳

I left it a few minutes before dialling back in again 😆

I was asked to get something from my regional managers car. I was distracted by his payslip stuffed in the boot and forgot the keys were in the car when i slammed the boot. Then it dawned on me that i had no keys.

A very awkward two hour drive to his house to get the spare keys and drive him back again! 😳

how much more than you did he earn though?

I once went away for a business trip to the States. I had a bit of work that I wanted to do, so I found I could dial up the office network from the hotel. International calls aren't THAT expensive, I thought. Well I spent a fair bit of time online, working and doing some er chatting also.. Came to check out, and the phone bill alone was $3,500. Oops!

My Dad's got loads of stories. Working as a mining electrician, one time him and a mate were trying to fix some machine above the ground. They fixed it up, switched it on and bang - lights out, machine off. Whilst they are faffing about looking for torches to try and fix matters, the mate taps my Dad on the shoulder and points out of the window. The entire village and half the valley is in darkness...

It's a miracle that UK Plc hasnt gone to the dogs with all these f***-ups! oh.. wait.... 🙂

Not me, but I got the blame for some bloody reason...

I was driving corn-cart (13 tonne twin axle trailer on the back of a tractor for taking wheat back to the yard and the dryer from the field) and we had some cockmonkey flying the combine harvester that year. The rules are you DO NOT drive your corncart behind the combine. So I was parked up at the end of a 30 acre field, well out of the way of cockjockey in the combine. Feet up on the dash having a kip for a few minutes, there's a godalmighty crash, and denzel has only gone and backed the combine halfway across the field into my [i]long time stationary[/i] trailer.

One very ****ed back end (where the straw choppers are) of a £200k+ combine.

Since there was no market for bailed straw that year we had been chopping and ploughing in. Since it was [i]my fault[/i] apparently, I had to "mow" each field with the topper after the combine had been through for the rest of the season to make the straw small enough for ploughing.

A few weeks later wurzel-gummage was sacked after the manager finally realised he was a cock and been flying the combine like one all season when he wasnt looking - the drums which do a lot of the work inside were all bent and banged to crap because he'd been charging through the crop too quickly for them to keep up.

In my first job as an estate agent i took the side of an old Lambourghini which was parked next to me in my company car space. The owner hated the estate agents and assumed it was the boss who he had had a disagreement with. He smashed his windscreen in.

I put a book down on top of a computer keyboard attached to a Lighting desk Back up unit. It was on a shelf up above my head so I couldn't actually see what was there.

The unit took control, Ran a cue and plunged Charles Kennedy and the liberal Democrat conference into near darkness during a Live TV broadcast by the BBC.

I unplug all keyboards attached to lighting desks and put them in another room when shows are on now!!

One that still wakes me up at night...

Working as GM in a boatyard which stored, on hardstanding, some very expensive racing yachts. Most of these yachts are kept ashore all winter, with dehumidifiers to dry them out - less weight, faster boat. The output from the dehumidifiers is via a hose usually poked through a seacock - in this case the toilet one (about 1.25in diameter). Anyway, this boat (a £250k one) boat gets launched in the slings, I start the motor and pop her on the moorings and wait for the launch to to pick us up. The launch arrives and the driver mentions that the yacht is pretty low in the bows, I respond saying that its high water and the anchor strop was probably pulling her down a bit, nothing to worry about. How wrong was I.

Hop on the launch and have a quick look back, the bow is REALLY low, I ask the launch driver to turn around and I'll have another look. Unlock the boards and look in - water halfway up the companionway ladder! I dived in and swam/waded forward and see the sea gusing through the open seacock. Manage to get my hand on it (and keep my head just above water) and find a cap...

Four hours it took to bail her out - I never did own up to the owner when he mentioned that the bloody dehumidifiers didn't seem to have made much difference that winter!

Ripped the side out of a brand new transit with a dumper. 17 years old didn't know how to drive, they told me to get in and try. oops.

Fell out of a skip into a drainage ditch (don't ask).

Reversed works van into mums car on drive, half asleep, didn't see it 2 ft behind me. Wheelspinning on spot for 30 seconds wondering why i wasn't moving.

I once spent a night-shift spinning the fork-lift truck around the car park, wheelspinning and seeing how tight it would turn. Boss turns up in the morning and sees the resulting rubber mess on the pale concrete. ooops.

then there was the time I sent an email slagging the HR manager off to my mate. Except I managed to send it to the HR manager.

But the best is the time I accidentaly hit "set as wallpaper" instead of "save as" on a certain, ahem, adult image. I had Active desktop turned on, so couldn't see it. Until I plugged my laptop into a customer's projector and put it on the 10' screen in his boardroom. Oops...

But the best is the time I accidentaly hit "set as wallpaper" instead of "save as" on a certain, ahem, adult image. I had Active desktop turned on, so couldn't see it. Until I plugged my laptop into a customer's projector and put it on the 10' screen in his boardroom. Oops...

priceless!

Back in the late 80's my uncle was a director for a small, Indian family owned shipping company based in London. One of their 8 cargo ships was supposed to be sailing from Pourtsmouth to St Petersberg in Russia.

Apparently the cock up occured as a result of slight langauge difficulties between the Indian brokers and the Spanish crew, but after 3 days of motoring towards St Petersberg, the crew admitted that they were a 3rd of the way across the Atlantic, as they had been heading for St Petersburg in Florida!

went for a job interview, arrived early, and got out spoke to the security guard, went back and sat in the car for 10 minutes and then went in for the interview - thought that went ok.
Came out of the interview room and the office lad, asks "do I have a peugoet car?"
Out in the car park it had rolled down into an empolyee's car!
I can't explain why, the handbrake was on, I'd sat in the car for 10minutes, why did it move? (handbrake was fine)

Got the job, I work 3 days a week not 10ft from the woman who's car, my car dented.

Not my ****-up personally, but a colleague did this in the car dealership where we used to work:

He was driving a new Hyundai Sonata 3.0 V6 Auto in through the open rear doors of the showroom, all nicely polished to go on display. On the passanger seat were his desk diary and parker pen.

As he entered the showroom and drove past his desk the phone rang. It was Sunday and only he and one other salesman were in the dealership. He clocked that the other salesman was outside on the forecourt with a customer so he stopped the car and put it in park, then got out of the car to answer the phone.

Realising he didn't have his pen on him he quickly leaned back into the car, knocking it back into drive by accident. The car took off at a brisk walking pace across the showroom, with him spread headfirst across the front seats, feet sticking out the open driver's door. The car then ploughed through the luckily empty customer seating area. On it's way it semi-flattened the seats and caused the coffee table to half fold and make a small ramp. This ramp was just enough to lift the front of the car up and bring it to a halt, but not before it just managed to shatter one of the main showroom windows with it's front bumber. Apparently the saleman outside thought old Beadle was going to step out.

All true I swear. The dealership was the old Stonehouse Motors on Barnes Hill, Birmingham (now All Electric Garages, or a housing plot probably!) and the salesman was a guy named Tony Power (he now sells property in Florida, so won't mind me mentioning his name).

It was easily done in this model Hyundai too. Just 4 Months later a young trainee mechanic in our workshop, was in a V6 Sonata on a 4 poster ramp at ground leven and knocked the car into reverse during a PDI. That car shot backwards and bent all 4 doors forward!

Nothing this exciting ever happens now that I work in a bike shop you know!

Ive bent & broken a fair bit of machinery down the years but compared to some of you lot Im a complete amateur - Well Done to you all!

When I was an apprentice at a rather large international chemical company, we (thats the guy I was working with and me) had a maintenance/inspection routine to do on the tepmerature probes opn the front firing wall fo a High Pressure Oil fired Steam boiler, duly unscrewed the first one, checked it all was fine.

Unscrewed the next one, fne put it back in and cross threaded the ****er to the point where it had stripped the thread on the boiler wall, **** **** ****, this thing was due back online in 2 hours. Cue chemical metal, mixed it up, bunged it in the hole and screwed the temp probe in, bobs yer auntie it lasted 4 years until the plat was de-commissioned!!

This one's not by me, the lead installer on the telecomms section I was Commissioning Eng for, decided to take it upon himself ot install the main card in a Marconi MSH64 Admux unit, these things weighed summit like 9kgs, and had abou 600odd 24carat gold pins on the back, they had a special winding/installation handle on the front and guide rails, oh yeah they were worth just under 100k. He decided as I wasn't there to "Bang one in himself" properly against the rules as he wasn't trained to do so. cue about 500 bent pins and a written off card.

I was set to comission the loop on the afternoon and put it on test over the weekend, but surprisingly couldn't as we didn't have the main card, suffice to say he wasn;t flavour of the month.

@ Baordin Bob, I've seen the aftermath of when a flipped RRV isn't so lucky, wedged between platforms and the driver off work for a month. Took 2 65t road cranes to lift the ****er out!!

I once got caught racing and skidding mountain bikes round the warehouse with some colleagues whilst doing some weekend working - nobody else on site but forgot about the CCtv!

We hired a courier once to send a cd urgently to the other end of the country. he carried an empty cd case all the way there because the cd was still in my pc.

I've also talked an engineer through rebooting a server over the phone and told him to set the switch the wrong way. The server died and after the local engineer refused to work on it anymore I had to drive from Manchester to Hemel Hempstead immediately to reboot the server. When i got there I flicked the switch to 'don't halt bootup' and pressed the power switch to fix it. That sounds like nothing but it was costing BP about 5000 pounds an hour. I drove fast.

Oh, and I know a chap who arrived on site for some scheduled work, hung his coat on the main data centre emergency cut off switch, did his work and went home. The switch had tripped and the data centre was runnig on UPS when he left. It took a dozen engineers the next 12 hours to fix everything when the UPS ran out of battery while he was tucked up in bed.

started work for a local chippy firm here in germany. arbeitskollege asks if i'd take the truck back to the yard as he had to be somewhere.

reversed the truck into someones driveway to turn around. pulled out and took the whole front picket fence with me. jumped out and saw that the stakes had been ripped out, lifting the block paving. collected the fence and tried to stand it up as best i could.

jumped in the truck and went back to the yard. everyone, inc bosses, were busy. thought i'd tell them next morning. never really got a chance. three days later one boss turns up on site and asks if we'd seen what had happened to the fence. he assumed the fork lift we had on-site had done it. left it so....

same firm. done a job about 1.5 hours away. there were load of tools sitting there. got told to clear everything away as we were leaving. i did ask about the tools and the gaffer said "alles" so i picked up the tools thinking they were ours. got back to the yard and realised that they weren't ours. bugger.

the german guys ended up calling me "sh!t" and they said it was the word i used most often. not sure if that is a complement.....

had a shitty summer job at Aldi picking orders. the best thing about it was 8.50/hour and we got to drive around on these mini stand-on forklifts. myself and another guy used to smoke a fair bit before work and then get a bit carried away playing 'bumper cars'. we managed to crash into the bosses little workstand/desk thing ripping the wire out of the ground and then matey boy ran into a stack of loose peppers. we tried to put everything back as best we could. thought we got away with it when just as we were jumping back onto our trucks the boss walks into the warehouse clapping his hands. he'd been watching it all on CCTV.

we lost our jobs.

another time, although this wasn't my fault but still cost me my job, i was working at the local car auction. simple enough job. drive car through auction hall, park up get another car, drive through.
picked up this shitheap of a car, can't remeber what. drove it down toward the entrance. there was no queue and there had to always be another car ready to go through after the last one to maximise sale time. so i gave the accelrator a boot then coasted toward the hall. put my foot on the brake and nothing....... quue brace position as i rammed the back of an old mercedez. got out of car, all eyes on me. thought i'd take the pressure off a little so gave a bow. the auctioneer was the bosses son. he said over the tannoy "office, now!"

yeah, lost that job.

tooslow: was that the one which used to run trips from Aber to Borth/Aberdovey and back? Whatever happened to that? Are you responsible for it's demise?