messing up at work
 

share your stories of fucking things up at work and make my afternoon better.

hmmm...










no. :D

when i was working in a shop i

- entered 54 pence into the credit card machine instead of 54 pounds once.
- messed up multiple mount and frame orders
- gave someone a refund when i shouldn't have
- missed someone shoplifting like 8 frames when only i was working

mang, why do you post in arial font, and without paragraphs?

If I do something wrong I generally deal with it myself so it doesn't turn into a mess. I once booked a large group of people into an area and the people who were meant to look after them forgot that they were coming. Pandemonium ensued.

I hung up my boss's station wagon on the railroad ties that lined his driveway. Didn't mean to. It doubled as the company's delivery vehicle. This one time I was supposed to take something out to his house to work on, because the guy was sick. His driveway was curved and on a hill, two challenges--especially when backing up. I had to go back up to the front door and inform him, and he, sick as a dog, had to make arrangements to have a tow truck come out.

A week later, making a run to the post office for the company, I pulled in to close too the drive-up mailbox and clipped off the radio antenna of this same car.

I kept my job somehow.

I've never dropped a bollock that I couldn't pick up.

In the 70s I went in to work stoned a couple of times. I'm not proud of this. But it was the 70s, and I was, well, young and stupid.

The first time, I was a part-time cashier/stockboy/whatever at a local but very busy downtown/campus drug store. This particular afternoon of my shift was particularly beautiful, and I decided that making the bike ride downtown would be even more beautiful if I were just a little stoned. I thought if I got only a little stoned, it would wear off by the time my shift started. For whatever reason, I was feeling very stoned when the store manager assigned me to a cash register. At one point, as I was trying to figure out a dollar's worth of change for the customer at the register, I looked up to see about 20 people in line waiting. All sorts of looks on their faces, from puzzled, to bemused, to annoyed, to downright angry. Yikes.

I think the drawers came up quite short that afternoon, but there were other clerks on my shift that the manager had been suspecting (and later confirmed) were stealing from the registers, so she never blamed me--though I'm sure I had a lot to do with it. I'm sure people thought they were getting good deals that day at good old Drug Fair. "Go to the line with the stoner boy running the register! Make him break a 20!"

the other day i was pushing a trolley load of boxes through the offica and knocked over a table that had a scanner on it, the scanner broke, but nobody gave a shit.
a few years ago when i worked in a shop i took a forged £20 note

I shouted at my ex-boss at my previous job like two years ago. She fired me a couple of days after. An uber-bitch that was.

maybe he's sympathetic to your pain. also, it doesn't matter seeing as he didn't know who you were talking to anyway.

Sold a guy some shoes for a walking holiday. The poor bastard came back a fortnight or so later, complaining that I'd given him the wrong size to the ones he'd tried on, effectively ruining his holiday. I was sacked a few weeks after that, for general incompetence, rather than for a specific wrong-doing. I was only 16 at the time and thought my entire life would be a failure after that. As it turns out I was right. It's amazing how much you know at 16.

i used to mess up all the time on food orders, but not so much anymore. usually all that happens is that the food comes back and i remake it.

Too many! One morning I decided I would go to a park and do a bunch DXM, it was like 11am and I didn't have to work till like 5pm and I figured it would wear off and I would be pretty lucid. So I tripped balls on like 800mg and had this weird trip. I was sitting at the crossroads of two walking paths and I had to choose which one to go to, at the time it had all this symbolism, like it was a crossroads or my life and I had to choose life or death. So I choose the path out of the park and got on my bike and rode to work, quite a few hours early and I was severly FUCKED UP. On DXM you look pretty scary with huge pupils. I don't even really remember going to work I just was suddenly in the break room with my boss (who looked CRAZY) and he was asking what the fuck I was on and I just kept telling him that I could still work. He told me I had to go home and tried calling my parents. They werent home so I went home and deleted the messages. Actually one of the other managers took me home because he wouldn't let me bike home in my impaired state. I wouldn't tell him where I lived because I was firm on wanting to bike home so the guy called work and got my address and used his GPS to find my house. Actually I would give him false directions, we would pass by a house and I would tell him thats where I lived and then say "no actually I'm lying haha", despite my truancy I tried to carry on a pleasant conversation with him. So I sat at home for a bit and then when 5 o'clock rolled around I went BACK to work cause I wasn't fully aware that I had been sent home, I thought he just wanted me to go home and sleep it off, plus I worked at a restaurant and it was a busy night so I figured they would need my help (despite this, I was one of their best pizza makers and one of the only cooks). The manager was outside smoking and he was like "dude what are you doing here" and I told him I was there to work and I was sorry I was late and he told me I wasn't allowed to work and I asked why and he said in a snark tone "because you came to work HIGH ON COUGH MEDICINE". So I go over to a friends house and come back when I usually get home from work so my parents didn't know about any of this. I go back to work the next day and he is like "why the fuck do you think you still have a job here after the shit you pulled yesterday" and I told him that he never said I was fired so I felt I should still come to work. He got all pissy and said I cannot come back to work until he talks to my parents, I argued with him for awhile about that because I told him I was 18 and would like to work this out myself like an adult (I was 17 at the time but almost 18). He said he didn't care. So I went home and was about to talk to my dad about it but he had already talked to my boss and schedualed a meeting. So I went there that night to talk with the boss about it with my parents. I told him and my parents that I was sick and just accidently took to much. I really was sick so my parents ate that up. My boss told me that if I did it to get high then he HAD to fire me, even though he didn't want to. He told this sob story of how much he liked me and what a good worker I was and how he was worrying about me all night. I told him that story of how I was actually sick and I got to keep my job. The next day I came to work and he tells me he knows that was bullshit but that it was a pretty good story and a good excuse to keep me onboard and "your welcome". I thought it was ridiculous what a big deal he made out of it and now he suddenly doesnt care. But I quit about a month later.

and gmku, gone to work stoned a few times in the 70's? At said pizza place smoking weed is RITUAL. I smoked joints with my boss and took bong rips on break. And it was always super busy there so it could get pretty stressful cranking out pizzas all the time. Even some of the lady cashiers toked up. My dealer used to work there and his meeting spot is still the parking lot. Definitly threw up a couple times in the dumpster out back... bosses motto "I don't care what you do before work as long as you can still do your job."

No drug stories, but some years ago, when I worked in a storage library, I managed to bring down a huge book shelf (one of those that move on rails). this was due to misguidance though... and luckily it was almost empty (still weighing at least few hundred pounds). If I had not taken a step backwards I prorably would've been injured badly or killed.

Packed up machinery parts off of the floor and put in dumpster ( about $1,000 worth)

Left display case outside the store when closing up, ( I worked in a mall) and it wasnt there the next day when my manager opened up. Security guard had taken it to safety.

Thought I didnt have key to lock up, called another staffmate in who had to drive 30 mins to get there... then I found my key.

Over charged someone $50.. im sure this happened a few times, as well as under charged.

Left someone waiting for 20 mins when forgetting to write up a drink order.

Spilled an entire bucket of mocha sauce on myself when pouring it into another container.

There was another major at Sbux that I cant remember but I do recall the written notice for it so it must have been big... just not what it was for. I think I left the banking for the day out of the safe or something.

working with me is a hoot.

Generally speaking though, I do FIX a lot more things with my nerdpowers, than what I break. So it evens out.

I've:

- Crashed a director's car into a set of barriers
- Blown up a PC by kicking it by accident
- Managed to stop a couple of thieves stealing computers from my first job's office...but then didn't warn next door. Oops. Got a lot of suspicious looks from the police....
- Managed to ease doing a giant mail-out by throwing away much of the mail-out stuff after 2 weeks of sheer boredom
- Passed out drunk on a number of occassions (first job again)
- Didn't get round to accepting video ownership claims years ago - the shit-hitting-fan that ensued still makes me wince.
- Ordered a huge amount of stationery, realised that it was all the wrong type of stuff, and then found myself unable to return/refund it (First job....)

Nefeli - I was there for 4 years. You'd think with that stellar track record, I would've been fired!

Best of luck with your new projects :)

golden child's story was awesome!... I fuck up at work all the time, on purpose usually. I've stolen shit, got fucked up at work (just the other day, I bought a bottle of liquor, went out to my car, drank the whole bottle, and came back in, all in the course of 15 minutes -- don't worry, it was weak liquor; Boone's Farm), ate food, and lately .. you know those cardboard cases over top of DVD's? Like, there'll be a DVD but there'll be ANOTHER case over top of that? I've been switching all of them up, putting the cases over top of the DVD's without the cases. So, I'll put the RIGHTEOUS KILL slipcase overtop of PRETTY WOMAN. I do all this shit, and I tell my boss about it and he laughs and he's like "Why you telling me this shit man? Don't tell me this shit!" And we laugh. He's my boss but he's not the OWNER OF THE STORE, so he doesn't really give a fuck, because the store is always so fucked up by the other shifts and costumers that my "contributions" don't really matter. He's an ex-con (!) who got put in prison in Florida for dealing crack and now he's a manager, he's awesome, he looks exactly like Scarface, he's always doing this fucked up shit, he put a brick through some woman's back car window the other day when she was in a video store because she yelled at him for throwing lettuce on the ground. He's so fucked up. It's hilarious. I've torn up the floor there.. that wasn't on purpose.. one time I spilled a huge pallet of wine, all this pretty expensive shit, the entire floor was covered in red wine. It was great. I've probably cost that store tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars worth of damage. But I'm a good worker so they don't care.

I once forgot to turn the sign around so the shop was 'closed' for half a business day. And no one ever found out about it.

I left the phone logged in when I left the office once, which caused much frustration to all the people who rang after 5:00 pm, when I left the office. I'm pleased with myself.

Sometimes I'm a little dyslexic.

At the pharmaceutical manufacturer where I was temping in place of someone on maternity leave, and her computer contained all of the FDA reports they are required to maintain.

well, I went to format a floppy and typed FORMAT C.

After realizing it wasn't a virus and I'd typed the wrong drive, I sheepishly went to the mgr, ready to leave without even getting my timecard signed.

She informed me I wasn't leaving that easily but would be staying to recreate all the documents. So I worked there for several more months.

"messing up" implies that I'm capable of error.

that said, I was once sued for ONE-MEEELLION DOLLARS by a disgrunted ex-employee of the corporation for which I was employed.

they fucked with the wrong bot.

needless to say, I had the last laugh.



I'm intrigued. tell me more. this time...slowly.

this shit is fucked up.

Two Roads diverged in a Yellow Wood


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there,
Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost (1874–1963)

when i did a summer job cleaning offices, i forgot to place new toilet paper. the next day i got yelled at because an important ceo guy had been stuck on the toilet without paper. i had a hard time not laughing.

i messed up many things the first days on that job, mainly because i wasn't told what to do, so the next day i'd get all this shit about 'you didn't do this and this and this', when i had no idea i had to do them... ah well.

I once told some old lady to eat a dick.....nah, but I wanted to.

I've messed up a few times, but a friend of mine that used to work here (he got fired for reasons that are related to this thread) took the cake.

We work in shipping, and he was so confident he wouldn't make a mistake that he would try and do two orders at once, and he would end up mixing the shipping labels. He did this a few times, sending stuff that was supposed to go to California to Georgia, and then subsequently vice versa.

The finally straw that got him the boot was an order that called for a 2 foot antenna. He sent a 6 foot antenna instead. In case you don't know much about shipping, that is the difference between sending a small box FedEx and having to build a crate and call in a truck.

I crashed a golf cart into a chain link fence at 3am when I was as security guard.. the windscreen was limo-tint black, worse then wearing sunglasses, and I was being lazy not wanting to look out the side..

hit that shit unexpectedly at full speed, and we tweaked that cart to be a little faster to begin with..

hey, chain link is fucking invisible at night, all you can see is the poles..

bruised this shit out of my ribs and my pride.



and I had to buy the fucking golf cart of the city for 500 bucks...

I walked out of my last job.

I was broke, living with only my mother, and paying bills up the fucking asshole. I paid for groceries all the time, and cellphone, and internet... and when I went to get something to eat on my lunch break, I found I didn't have a single dollar in the bank account. Being a hormonal 17 year old girl, I cried my entire break, and my dickhead manager who had verbally harassed me in the past told me I was worthless to anyone and anything. So I walked out. My mom picked up my last check for me.

walking off a bullshit job because of a dickhead boss is the american way!

I remember the last time i did that, it was the best! went a bought a newspaper, a pack of smokes and waited for my bus to show up as if I DIDN'T just quit my job, but rather as if I had won some kind of monumental victory (which in my mind, I did)

Yeah, it was a job at Albertson's for minimum wage. I was working 40+ hours a week, which is illegal because I was a minor at the time. But I needed the money. My managers verbally harassed me all the time because I was a teenager. I felt really empowered when I walked out those doors.

What? That makes sense.

Yeah, I fuck up at work all the time. We mostly just smoke weed in the walk-in. Or we make pizzas to eat and take food home.

I've never messed up all that much apart from rookie mistakes.

Once I took far longer than I should have to strap metal carts for the post office to palets.