Hello,

Made a decision about 2 months ago, and realised today that I missed a single line in a document. This line means essentially that all the work a 10 person team has done is pretty much pointless, and needs revisiting.

And it’s all my fault for missing that one line. Probably cost in excess of £100k to fix.

Feeling pretty rubbish at the moment, missing a ride to wallow in my stupidity.

My plan of action is to tell as many people as I can and see what we can do about it, basically I’ll be seen as a total idiot, but maybe we’ll get to do it right, but probably not as the timescales are too tight.

Anyone else been in a similar situation?

well at least u didnt kill anyone, in my job **** have and do cost lives.

Sounds like there should have been a process in place to double check it.

Also, mistakes happen.

THE MAN OR WOMAN WHO NEVER MADE A MISTAKE WAS BORN A CONSERVATIVE.

+1 If so important then was there no peer review / signoff process ?

I have a lousy day everyday, im just in the wrong job, although my issues don’t cost £100k, hope you get it sorted nothing worse than a work error and trying to sleep.

Yeah mistakes happen, it’s how you handle it that makes or breaks you.

I was told at 7am that I wasn’t needed on a particular assignment – great, I can go home, except that I’ve got a raging infection in my right eye. I could hardly see and I had to drive 2.5 hours home.. that was fun.. 🙁

I think it’s generally assumed that I’m in a position that should know what I’m doing, and these kinds of mistakes just shouldn’t happen. I think the fact that I’ve been doing the work of at least 3 or 4 people probably means that mistakes are going to happen, I used to post on STW all the time, now I never have the chance as I’m just far too busy in meetings and doing stuff.

Yep. You’re human. Mistakes happen. Go to the pub.

The problem is that the one line is completely fundamental, but only stated once in a document, and doesn’t actually appear within the context of anything.

And, this particular thing has been implemented before, but again, in the same way that I have. Which probably suggests that it wasn’t clear enough in the first place.

That’s tough. But as some one ignorant of these things I’m amazed that there is no double check

I think my dad had a major work muck up once. I think it was a calculation. He said the only way to make no mistakes was to do nothing, which is obviously pointless and stupid. One really can’t work error free

Drinking booze already…

I think my confusion with “drop database” and “detach database” one morning at 3am probably lost some money for the company I worked for at the time. Thank f*** for backups…

What 3dvgirl said.
You’ve lost some money. It happens. Everyone is still alive so it could be worse. Imagine being a surgeon and making a hash of your job

If one line makes all that difference then there should be checking in place.

Plus, there is surely someone else you can blame for this. 😉

I sympathise with you, I’ve been there on a few occasions. I put it down to experience and move on. Will be ha distant memory soon enough

We have a Contract Review Process where every department needs to sign off against, works pretty well

I wish I had a job like yours where money is(or appears to be)the the focal point!
Saying that, isn’t every job? Budgets are more important in my job than staff safety that’s for certain.

Money is always the focal point. Always. 😉

MrsMCTD works in child protection. Helps me get a sense of perspective when I’ve had a bad day.

Had bad day the other day. Swiss cheese effect resulted in me missing that one letter was missing from a document. Everyone lived.

Great support network in the job. The best way to deal with it is talk about it with colleagues.

Unless you personally have lost 100k then I’d struggle to give a shit. Then again I’m self employed so can’t really grasp the concept of working for for someone else.

I burnt my department down a few months ago.

With 8 fire engines, a super fire crane thing and 3 command cars around me at 1am I pondered what new career I fancied next. 6hrs later in the bosses office he told me mistakes happen, no worries – just put it back together again. Very relieved but also a bit sad – some of my ideas the previous night had been quite exciting!

I worked in a bank and a colleague got one letter wrong doing an International Payment and it went to the wrong account, never to be seen again.

The payment was for £395,000 and was to a country that is known for being dodgy. He amazingly kept his job but was never let loose on foreign transactions again!!

I am having to sit through 3 weeks of Dangerous Goods Regulations. I would happily swap with you, I’m sure you would soon want to get back to your 100k mistake 🙂

Thanks for the comments everyone. I’m not used to making mistakes, I’m usually very diligent so finding it hard to resolve this with myself.

I’m hoping we can put something in place to clean things up, or at least reduce the cost to put things right in future. also to make sure it cant happen again.

I know its not life or death, but id rather keep my job and actually be good at it, rather than be known as the moron that missed an obvious piece of work.

been mentioned i know – verification process.

I’m surprised by all the people that think it should have bee signed off or double checked. If you are in a position of responsibility then sometimes you are the person who is supposed to notice! Anyway, face it, try and solve it as best you can. How you react to failure is far more indication of a person than how you react to success.

If you worry too much about making mistakes you may never take the opportunity to make anything.

Thanks for the comments everyone. I’m not used to making mistakes, I’m usually very diligent so finding it hard to resolve this with myself.

I understand that. But key point you usually get it right. Focus on that. That’s why you were given responsibility. Its while you’ll continue with responsibility

Not the same thing but in my first ever job I worked as an admin person on a research project. I was tasked with organising a conference for about 100 people in Kendal which our staff were to deliver.

I meticulously planned everything- the venue, catering, hand-outs, projectors, name-badges, the lot.

Come the day, we all set off from Manchester at 7am, me sat in the passenger seat of the Directors car. It was halfway up the M6 that I realised I had actually forgot to send out the invitation letters to the delegates.

A really awful sinking feeling overtook me and I had to carry on chatting to the Director, enthusing about the day all the way up to Kendal and into the car-park.

Got there and there was a perfectly arranged venue, fresh pastries laid out, steaming hot tea and coffee laid on, powerpoint and projector at the ready….and an empty room.

Had to come clean after about ten mins of us all being stood there 😳

Come the day, we all set off from Manchester at 7am, me sat in the passenger seat of the Directors car. It was halfway up the M6 that I realised I had actually forgot to send out the invitation letters to the delegates.

Now that is fekin genius!!!!

Id have had to persist for at least a while. See if you can get every other fecker sacked 🙂

@op – sounds a bit of a clanger but as has been said, there needs to be a formal contract review process, where I work the bid people, project managers and account managers all review contract stuff

Duggan’s ****-up experience always makes me smile when reading it as it’s something I can see happening very easily

I meticulously planned everything- the venue, catering, hand-outs, projectors, name-badges, the lot.

I do hope this event was being organised in the functions suite of a brewery.

I’ll add that if you feel you’re being criticised for making the mistake, part of the lessons learned process you initiate should be about establishing a checking system.

When we’re dealing with commercial arrangements here then something of a 100k value would have at least 4 people’s eyes going over it. If we’re into the multi-million pound agreement territory then generally any documentation will have a large team reviewing it before it sees the light of day. It’s not lack of confidence in the people, it’s a result of being bitten by mistakes like this that anyone can make.

Come the day, we all set off from Manchester at 7am, me sat in the passenger seat of the Directors car. It was halfway up the M6 that I realised I had actually forgot to send out the invitation letters to the delegates.

Did the fact that you hadn’t had a single response from anyone to say they were coming not trigger alarm bells? 😆

Before I was qualified, I was up all night drafting papers for a Mareva injunction which we planned to have heard the next day. It’s a pretty serious injunction (freezes assets) and one which the court doesn’t take lightly, particularly as we were having ours heard ex parte (i.e. the other party didn’t even know about it).

I got the documents into court and the High Court judge had agreed to hear us at 3pm.

When we turned up, the very serious looking judge asked who drafted the papers. Everyone looked at me and I must have looked like I had seen a ghost.

He asked me what kind of injunction I thought we were applying for and I very quietly said “Minerva Injunction”. He said “Yes, that’s what you’ve written throughout these papers. Are you aware that it’s actually called a Mareva Injunction and the Minerva is the name of the pub next door to the court?”

Oooops 🙂 Easy mistake to make at 4am!

With the majority, not having a checking process is bad.
Everybody makes mistakes, the only ones who don’t are called liars. This is why we check things.

There’s been a few that have cost, not quite 100k though. 🙂
We’re only human. I’ve always just held my hands up & owned up. Its the best approach. If one of my chaps screws up then I’ll take the flack as long as they come clean & admit a mistke instead of waffling on trying to duck the responsibility. Do the right thing, offer your profound apologies with a degree of sincerity & folk will (usually) rally round.

I flew to the wrong country for a business meeting. Only realized when I was reviewing the notes on the plane. Ended up in HK, should have been in Singapore. 😕

I’m project managing the replacement of the PBX at one of our sites. Apparently all the phones went down this morning when the engineers replaced the switch. Not quite sure what everyone was expecting. Either way it’s my fault. 😕

I flew to the wrong country for a business meeting.

Lol.. winner so far!