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Biggest Fuckup at Work?
- Thread starter Imbarkus
- Start date
- Status
well personally, out of the... six places i've worked, i've only fucked up at three of them.
gamestop: this isn't really me screwing up, but this lady called from san diego saying none of the stores in her area would take back her game boy despite having bought (and lost) the warranty for it. since it was just a game boy, i told her to bring it down and i'd take care of the transfer (since there are ways you can find that information. well over an hour later, a lady comes in with an xbox 360 (this is 2006), and says she had spoken with me over the phone about the game boy and the warranty.
...so i went ahead and took in the system as a defective with no receipt. this was before the rrod was so widely known. i swap it out for a brand new one, but she does buy a warranty with the machine, so i think her story was legit... just that she wasn't clear on what names for things were.
internship: the second semester of my internship was pretty awesome. i got to do some design work for an mmo, and i even worked with some of the tools in putting the quests into the game. i tend to work pretty fast though, and i would run out of things to do. i also had been tasked with putting a bunch of quests into the game, so i put all of them that were in my folder up in the 'to be activated' file, so that everything was all ready to go and be tested as soon as somebody clicked them on. basically, it would have saved everyone a bunch of time. instead, i got an e-mail one morning sent through the entire office demanding to know who put such and such quests up. i fessed up, but nothing big came about it. my supervisors were kinda like, 'oh yeah, should have run that by them first.'
my last job: so at my last job, i worked with a team in a small room, and by the time i was done working there, i decided to clean the room out. i was one of only three guys remaining out of an original team of ten or so, and a lot of wires and papers were just lying around. i made sure to shred the papers after running them by people just in case they were needed, and bunched up the wires and put them in the storage room. about three weeks before i quit, one of the full-timers came in and asked for certain pages with notes on them. i didn't know what happened to them, but they were probably among the papers that i shredded. i kept that information to myself though since i didn't know either way and didn't want to incriminate myself.
edit:
oh, yeah. i fucked up at best buy once. these guys came into the inventory room telling me that in fifteen minutes, these people would be wanting a tv to be wheeled out to their car. half an hour later, something happens so i'm in direct contact with the people who wanted this tv wheeled out to their car and they are so pissed they had to wait. i apologize profusely, but they told me it wasn't my fault since no one told me about it (and they were not being sarcastic). they were happy to go home with their new tv at least.
gamestop: this isn't really me screwing up, but this lady called from san diego saying none of the stores in her area would take back her game boy despite having bought (and lost) the warranty for it. since it was just a game boy, i told her to bring it down and i'd take care of the transfer (since there are ways you can find that information. well over an hour later, a lady comes in with an xbox 360 (this is 2006), and says she had spoken with me over the phone about the game boy and the warranty.
...so i went ahead and took in the system as a defective with no receipt. this was before the rrod was so widely known. i swap it out for a brand new one, but she does buy a warranty with the machine, so i think her story was legit... just that she wasn't clear on what names for things were.
internship: the second semester of my internship was pretty awesome. i got to do some design work for an mmo, and i even worked with some of the tools in putting the quests into the game. i tend to work pretty fast though, and i would run out of things to do. i also had been tasked with putting a bunch of quests into the game, so i put all of them that were in my folder up in the 'to be activated' file, so that everything was all ready to go and be tested as soon as somebody clicked them on. basically, it would have saved everyone a bunch of time. instead, i got an e-mail one morning sent through the entire office demanding to know who put such and such quests up. i fessed up, but nothing big came about it. my supervisors were kinda like, 'oh yeah, should have run that by them first.'
my last job: so at my last job, i worked with a team in a small room, and by the time i was done working there, i decided to clean the room out. i was one of only three guys remaining out of an original team of ten or so, and a lot of wires and papers were just lying around. i made sure to shred the papers after running them by people just in case they were needed, and bunched up the wires and put them in the storage room. about three weeks before i quit, one of the full-timers came in and asked for certain pages with notes on them. i didn't know what happened to them, but they were probably among the papers that i shredded. i kept that information to myself though since i didn't know either way and didn't want to incriminate myself.
edit:
oh, yeah. i fucked up at best buy once. these guys came into the inventory room telling me that in fifteen minutes, these people would be wanting a tv to be wheeled out to their car. half an hour later, something happens so i'm in direct contact with the people who wanted this tv wheeled out to their car and they are so pissed they had to wait. i apologize profusely, but they told me it wasn't my fault since no one told me about it (and they were not being sarcastic). they were happy to go home with their new tv at least.
This man cost his company something around eight million dollars.Osiris said:I used to work on ICL mainframe computers, one night I was too lazy to do a complete shutdown (long ass 1 hour+ process) so just switched off the lights and left the system up for the night.
Next morning I came in and I knew I was in the shit as soon as I opened the door and midsummer like temperatures blasted out of the room into my face, I got the fear and sweats immediately as I knew pretty much without looking what had probably happened, the A/C had failed overnight.
Totally fried the CPU unit and the HDD units, I had to initiate Disaster Recovery procedures straight away and within 4 hours a new ICL system-in-a-container was in the parking lot.
Cost of damage was finally measured well into 7 figures, approaching 8 figures.
Somehow, I kept my job, still don't know how
Actually, I do know, but that's another story.
I don't know if anyone here can beat that.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Feep said:
I definitely feel better.
The GM has been running interference for me, explaining to everyone what an unfortunate situation it is, but that we'll get past it.
For myself, I've taken the lesson in humility pretty seriously, and fought the urge to mope. Checks are in place to prevent anything like this from happening again.
In the long run, I'll be better for this experience.
CommonSense
Banned
Imbarkus said:
GM? At that level of damage you're shitting straight into the CIO's cornflakes (see Rim for an example of what that type of failure in the network results in). Personally, I would have fired you. Glad you have a great boss it seems!
Don't worry though, the worst I've ever seen personally was a Hospital System that shall go unnamed putting their core Data Center in a basement and getting it flooded up to 5 feet within the second week it was operational due to failure to seal the room.
Est cost: 15,500,000 + 1,750,000 in downtime chargebacks by end users.
CommonSense
Banned
Aad said:
Wait, are you my broker?
PumpkinPie
Banned
No fuck ups for me, I have managers to take the blame for stuff like that.
My list of responses are as follows:
Job not out on time: "management should've sent us the drawings earlier, not my fault"
Your work is not correct: "I know nothing about it"
Customer has reported a fault: "work is checked by people higher up than me before it goes to a customer, therefore it's their responsibility"
Not a single fuck was given. To be honest though, I don't think I've ever made a mistake at work.
My list of responses are as follows:
Job not out on time: "management should've sent us the drawings earlier, not my fault"
Your work is not correct: "I know nothing about it"
Customer has reported a fault: "work is checked by people higher up than me before it goes to a customer, therefore it's their responsibility"
Not a single fuck was given. To be honest though, I don't think I've ever made a mistake at work.
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
Aad said:
One one hand I'd like to say that considering how "well" HBOS is/was managed this doesn't phase me at all.
On the other hand I'm a HBOS customer.
bengraven
Member
Dropbox installed so my podcast buddies can share the newest podcasts/edits/shownotes with me.
Put some torrents in the dropbox while at home so I can transfer to my home laptop.
Tier 3 tech finds the torrents in my dropbox while doing a random security search on my work computer. They also find some bikini pics that a podcaster's brother put into our public dropbox for the podcaster to see. They also find two seasons of BSG that a coworker had burned from his personal collection and put on my PC so I could have something to watch on Labor Day since the phones and emails were dead.
Torrents + "porn" + copied DVDs automatically = "Ben is pirating on his work computer"
Even though they're "in the cloud", everything on my dropbox is "technically on your PC".
They analyze this and look at my attendance record (which had been bad that year due to my wife having polyovarian cysts).
Fired the next day.
I try and tell them that I can't possibly be pirating because 1) the torrents are not on my PC, they're in my dropbox (I know that copies are on my PC technically, but I'm trying to save my job) and 2) I have never had actually torrent software on my work PC - try and find BitTorrent, dig deep in the harddrive and you'll never find it. Unless another user before I was hired had it on there. And if so, look at the dates.
Been unemployed for 10 months.
Put some torrents in the dropbox while at home so I can transfer to my home laptop.
Tier 3 tech finds the torrents in my dropbox while doing a random security search on my work computer. They also find some bikini pics that a podcaster's brother put into our public dropbox for the podcaster to see. They also find two seasons of BSG that a coworker had burned from his personal collection and put on my PC so I could have something to watch on Labor Day since the phones and emails were dead.
Torrents + "porn" + copied DVDs automatically = "Ben is pirating on his work computer"
Even though they're "in the cloud", everything on my dropbox is "technically on your PC".
They analyze this and look at my attendance record (which had been bad that year due to my wife having polyovarian cysts).
Fired the next day.
I try and tell them that I can't possibly be pirating because 1) the torrents are not on my PC, they're in my dropbox (I know that copies are on my PC technically, but I'm trying to save my job) and 2) I have never had actually torrent software on my work PC - try and find BitTorrent, dig deep in the harddrive and you'll never find it. Unless another user before I was hired had it on there. And if so, look at the dates.
Been unemployed for 10 months.
While on my culinary externship in late 2001, I shattered an 10 foot long glass tray display, with a few hundred dollars worth of premium cheese on it, just as I was wheeling it out to a wedding reception. So I had to tell the exec chef what had just happened.
I walk out into the reception hall to let him know, and I'm searching my mind for what to say. At that moment I fully realized what "dead man walking" means. When I got to him, I was still speechless. Too make it even more awkward, I had to whisper in his ear, because the bride was within 5 feet of our position.
Me: Chef, there's a situation with the cheese tray.
Him: What?
Me: The cheese tray is fucked.
Him: What do you mean "fucked"?
Me: It's FUCKED.
As soon as we got back to the kitchen, and he saw the damage (a $1000+ sheet of glass was in tiny pieces, and the all of the carved cheese was completely worthless), he went fucking INCREDIBLE HULK mad, as he literally started throwing carts and pans shit around the kitchen.
So the whole kitchen had to pause to help fabricate a couple dozen pounds of cheaper cheese onto a few smaller trays.
After the wedding reception was over, both the Executive Chef and the Executive Sous Chef walked up on me, and the whole kitchen froze. They said we needed to go have a talk behind the dumpster (which was the chef's office when something went wrong), and I knew then that I was fired. It was like taking a walk to the guillotine, and all of my co-workers in the kitchen basically stopped what they were doing to give me their final salutes.
So we get out their and the conversation started like this:
Chef: Do you smoke?
Me: No.
Chef: Do you want to smoke right now?
Me: Yes. *takes cigarette while trying to keep hand from shaking*
It was like the last smoke before the firing squad.
E. Chef: Ok, so... you know you fucked up, right?
He talks about how disappointed he was in me not asking for help with the transport, how I didn't react properly, and how mad the owner of the restaurant was going to be in the morning, when he finds out his ultra expensive tray was in a million pieces.
But instead of, "go home, you're fired", he says, "Oh you think you screwed up?" Then he proceeds to break off into this long story about how he, as a young man, overcooked a few hundred pieces of chicken right before a ceremonial dinner for the Queen of England. I'm like what? By now he realizes I'm not at all laughing at his jokes and am about to kill myself, so he casually throws in, "oh btw, you're not going to get fired at the end of this conversation."
After some lecturing on how important crisis management is in the kitchen, we walk back in, with everyone assuming I've been let go.
I learned a lot of lessons from that night. Ten years later, I've never made a single mistake in the professional kitchen.
I walk out into the reception hall to let him know, and I'm searching my mind for what to say. At that moment I fully realized what "dead man walking" means. When I got to him, I was still speechless. Too make it even more awkward, I had to whisper in his ear, because the bride was within 5 feet of our position.
Me: Chef, there's a situation with the cheese tray.
Him: What?
Me: The cheese tray is fucked.
Him: What do you mean "fucked"?
Me: It's FUCKED.
As soon as we got back to the kitchen, and he saw the damage (a $1000+ sheet of glass was in tiny pieces, and the all of the carved cheese was completely worthless), he went fucking INCREDIBLE HULK mad, as he literally started throwing carts and pans shit around the kitchen.
So the whole kitchen had to pause to help fabricate a couple dozen pounds of cheaper cheese onto a few smaller trays.
After the wedding reception was over, both the Executive Chef and the Executive Sous Chef walked up on me, and the whole kitchen froze. They said we needed to go have a talk behind the dumpster (which was the chef's office when something went wrong), and I knew then that I was fired. It was like taking a walk to the guillotine, and all of my co-workers in the kitchen basically stopped what they were doing to give me their final salutes.
So we get out their and the conversation started like this:
Chef: Do you smoke?
Me: No.
Chef: Do you want to smoke right now?
Me: Yes. *takes cigarette while trying to keep hand from shaking*
It was like the last smoke before the firing squad.
E. Chef: Ok, so... you know you fucked up, right?
He talks about how disappointed he was in me not asking for help with the transport, how I didn't react properly, and how mad the owner of the restaurant was going to be in the morning, when he finds out his ultra expensive tray was in a million pieces.
But instead of, "go home, you're fired", he says, "Oh you think you screwed up?" Then he proceeds to break off into this long story about how he, as a young man, overcooked a few hundred pieces of chicken right before a ceremonial dinner for the Queen of England. I'm like what? By now he realizes I'm not at all laughing at his jokes and am about to kill myself, so he casually throws in, "oh btw, you're not going to get fired at the end of this conversation."
After some lecturing on how important crisis management is in the kitchen, we walk back in, with everyone assuming I've been let go.
I learned a lot of lessons from that night. Ten years later, I've never made a single mistake in the professional kitchen.
bengraven
Member
King of fuckups is my ex-brother in law though.
We were working as baggage handlers at the Hubert Humphrey terminal in Minneapolis. He loved working there, especially on the overnight shift, despite barely getting any sleep. I now wonder if he was on drugs. He was so excitable.
One of the jobs we had to do was back a lavatory truck up to the airplane, hook a hose up to the plane and suck all the shit, piss, and blue juice out of the plane.
One day he was finished and got back in the truck and floored it to get away from the plane.
Only he was in reverse.
He destroyed the entire back end of the plane.
12 million dollars in damage.
$12,000,000.
We were working as baggage handlers at the Hubert Humphrey terminal in Minneapolis. He loved working there, especially on the overnight shift, despite barely getting any sleep. I now wonder if he was on drugs. He was so excitable.
One of the jobs we had to do was back a lavatory truck up to the airplane, hook a hose up to the plane and suck all the shit, piss, and blue juice out of the plane.
One day he was finished and got back in the truck and floored it to get away from the plane.
Only he was in reverse.
He destroyed the entire back end of the plane.
12 million dollars in damage.
$12,000,000.
QualityPixel
Banned
Holy shit! Can't top that!
Tetraeon said:
A friend used to be an overseer at this place where they process fish. Filleting, packing and so on. One of his subordinates was a very, very stupid woman. Once, she was operating a huge saw on a conveyor belt. A fish got stuck or something, and she reached her hand inside the saw to pull out the fish... while the saw was still running. Came out one finger short, but doctors managed to reattach it somehow. A year later, she was at the saw again, and did THE SAME THING. Reached into saw, cut off finger. My friend quit later after years and years of pent-up frustration due to his co-workers. The woman is still there as far as I know. How she's even allowed to operate machinery there any more is beyond everyone.
Edit: Same friend was in a coffee bar a year or two ago. There was only one girl at work, and she went in the back to do something. They heard a tremendous crash, and the girl stormed out. Turned out she had been using the dishwasher, and had somehow managed to drop and break almost every single glass and plate they had. The place had to close for a day or two.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
UPDATE accounts SET bla='foo'
oh fuck forgot the where clause
Edit: I see there are other programmers who have made this mistake in the thread
oh fuck forgot the where clause
Edit: I see there are other programmers who have made this mistake in the thread
I once was joking with an older co-worker on how it is impossible to make it up the corporate ladder without people retiring or dying. I then told him I heard a story about many executives dying in a crash and how that was the only reason many of the people in their current positions had their jobs.
I later found out he was on the plane and saved another person's life who I worked with regularly. Needless to say I felt like shit for the next 2 months.
I later found out he was on the plane and saved another person's life who I worked with regularly. Needless to say I felt like shit for the next 2 months.
sonikokaruto
Banned
Quick story: one of the bosses @ work is a dumbass who knows how to do anything so whenever he is away, he uses remote desktop.
So he calls and tells us to shut down his monitor so no one sees anytjing so i go "i'm gonna shut down boss's monitor so no one can see him watching kiddie porn"
I just got scolded by some co-workers -_- (at least)
So he calls and tells us to shut down his monitor so no one sees anytjing so i go "i'm gonna shut down boss's monitor so no one can see him watching kiddie porn"
I just got scolded by some co-workers -_- (at least)
ShadyMilkman
Banned
I was a Private Investigator for a few years a while ago. 99% of the cases were Worker's Comp related, with the employer not believing that their employee was injured, and was just milking the system.
Every now and then, I'd have to do surveillance on the weekends; it didn't happen that frequently, but when it did, it fucking sucked.
One particular case, my boss told me I would have to do Saturday surveillance, and gave me Friday off to compensate. I wasn't planning on going out, but a close friend called and suckered me in to going out with her
Well, we go out, and I get wasted. I'm supposed to be at the subject's house at 6:00am, but I wake up at like 9. When on surveillance, I'd have to call my boss to check in when I arrived, and every subsequent two hours to give an update.
Well, I obviously missed that. My boss then called shortly after I woke up and I bullshitted that I was actually at the house and that nothing had happened. He wondered why I hadn't called to let him know I was there and I made something up about my phone being dead and that I needed to recharge it, or something.
For the rest of the day (surveillance was 8 hours, typically 6am - 2pm), I'd call and give him updates, saying nothing happened, etc. while nursing my hangover.
Unfortunately, with every case, you have to write a report. They are pretty boring, consisting of nothing more than "7:43am - subject seen walking from car to front door", shit like that. I had to make up the entire thing for that day, and considering the fact we bill people for this time, I was already being a complete shithead.
Turns out, the subject had a doctor's appointment that day at 11:30am, meaning I should have seen the entire thing happening. When doing surveillance, you have to film every last thing a person does; if the person is visible, you have to be filming. If a person gets in their car, you have to follow, and if they get out somewhere, you have to film them, no matter where they are. In the past, I've followed a subject in to a doctor's office, making up a reason to stay in the lobby as long as the person is there (I had a backpack with a pinhole camera on one of the straps, allowing me to film). I usually just talked to the receptionist about medical insurance or something as an excuse to stay.
We found out about the doctor's appointment from the subject's employer. When my boss looked at my report and noticed that I said nothing was happening at 11am or so, he asked how I could have missed the person leaving their home.
Welp, he wasn't too thrilled. I could either say I missed it, which would have been me saying I am a shitty PI, or admit that I was never there to begin with. I probably should have said the former, but I admitted I was never there. Hooooly fuck, he was justifiably pissed.
We ended up not submitting the report and told the employer that we weren't able to do surveillance that day for some random reason. I was forbidden from surveillance for about a month and had to sit in the office doing menial BS work the entire time.
I should have been fired, but regardless, I always felt guilty for doing that to my boss as he was such a great guy. He and I had a great relationship.
Things went back to normal, but I still look back and wonder what I was thinking.
Every now and then, I'd have to do surveillance on the weekends; it didn't happen that frequently, but when it did, it fucking sucked.
One particular case, my boss told me I would have to do Saturday surveillance, and gave me Friday off to compensate. I wasn't planning on going out, but a close friend called and suckered me in to going out with her
Well, we go out, and I get wasted. I'm supposed to be at the subject's house at 6:00am, but I wake up at like 9. When on surveillance, I'd have to call my boss to check in when I arrived, and every subsequent two hours to give an update.
Well, I obviously missed that. My boss then called shortly after I woke up and I bullshitted that I was actually at the house and that nothing had happened. He wondered why I hadn't called to let him know I was there and I made something up about my phone being dead and that I needed to recharge it, or something.
For the rest of the day (surveillance was 8 hours, typically 6am - 2pm), I'd call and give him updates, saying nothing happened, etc. while nursing my hangover.
Unfortunately, with every case, you have to write a report. They are pretty boring, consisting of nothing more than "7:43am - subject seen walking from car to front door", shit like that. I had to make up the entire thing for that day, and considering the fact we bill people for this time, I was already being a complete shithead.
Turns out, the subject had a doctor's appointment that day at 11:30am, meaning I should have seen the entire thing happening. When doing surveillance, you have to film every last thing a person does; if the person is visible, you have to be filming. If a person gets in their car, you have to follow, and if they get out somewhere, you have to film them, no matter where they are. In the past, I've followed a subject in to a doctor's office, making up a reason to stay in the lobby as long as the person is there (I had a backpack with a pinhole camera on one of the straps, allowing me to film). I usually just talked to the receptionist about medical insurance or something as an excuse to stay.
We found out about the doctor's appointment from the subject's employer. When my boss looked at my report and noticed that I said nothing was happening at 11am or so, he asked how I could have missed the person leaving their home.
Welp, he wasn't too thrilled. I could either say I missed it, which would have been me saying I am a shitty PI, or admit that I was never there to begin with. I probably should have said the former, but I admitted I was never there. Hooooly fuck, he was justifiably pissed.
We ended up not submitting the report and told the employer that we weren't able to do surveillance that day for some random reason. I was forbidden from surveillance for about a month and had to sit in the office doing menial BS work the entire time.
I should have been fired, but regardless, I always felt guilty for doing that to my boss as he was such a great guy. He and I had a great relationship.
Things went back to normal, but I still look back and wonder what I was thinking.
I worked as a security guard once. A hotel took use of our services and I had nightwatch duty during Christmas celebrations. One room was constantly noisy and the receptionist asked me to just cut it as they didn't listen much to warnings.
I walked up there and just barged in, a handful of men were there, some of them cleaning up empty bottles of the table, barely any music on. I had a raised voice and told them shut it all down and that people had to leave. Turns out these were the top brass of one of the biggest firms in the city and they didn't take shit lightly. They started threatening with legal pursuits and demanded to talk to the hotel employees and they didn't back down even when I tried to calm down expressing regret on the way I came in. It was a pretty embarrassing affair for thirty minutes, I wish I had taken deeper consideration into what I actually observed going in.
The boss asked me the following Monday if something special had happened at the hotel that weekend so obviously he had been contacted. I told the story straight and he just nodded and that was that.
I walked up there and just barged in, a handful of men were there, some of them cleaning up empty bottles of the table, barely any music on. I had a raised voice and told them shut it all down and that people had to leave. Turns out these were the top brass of one of the biggest firms in the city and they didn't take shit lightly. They started threatening with legal pursuits and demanded to talk to the hotel employees and they didn't back down even when I tried to calm down expressing regret on the way I came in. It was a pretty embarrassing affair for thirty minutes, I wish I had taken deeper consideration into what I actually observed going in.
The boss asked me the following Monday if something special had happened at the hotel that weekend so obviously he had been contacted. I told the story straight and he just nodded and that was that.
I work as a systems admin for a software company. I was up on the 6th floor in central Christchurch , New Zealand when the 6.7 aftershock hit. Building was evacuated immediately. We needed to restore data from backups, I only had one of the two offsite backup drives at home.. and the drive failed to work... >_<
My ass (And the whole company) was saved because me and a workmate managed to talk our way back into the building two days later to retrieve the servers.
I didn't know what stress was until those days, major fuckup and i was just extremely lucky we hit the right cop who let us in. Nobody was supposed to be allowed into the CBD at all (its still cordoned off to the public 8 months later.)
My ass (And the whole company) was saved because me and a workmate managed to talk our way back into the building two days later to retrieve the servers.
I didn't know what stress was until those days, major fuckup and i was just extremely lucky we hit the right cop who let us in. Nobody was supposed to be allowed into the CBD at all (its still cordoned off to the public 8 months later.)
DEAD RABBIT
Member
Not really 'work' or money related, but a fuck-up nonetheless. I was doing an internship at a research group of the university where I was a student. It's a mandatory thing where you do research on some topic and learn about working in such an environment. Well, the group where I worked at focused on quantum optics/computing and there were a couple of really old and shaky guys/professors who have quite a reputation/recognition in the physics community. Quantum optics/computing flowed out off classical optics & quantum mechanics, which are of course very old fields in physics. So it's not a surprise that there are a lot of old scientists roaming those departments.
There was this presentation by two middle-aged/young researchers outside the university for our group. This old professor shakes hands with those two researchers and it's quite visible that they have quite a lot of admiration for him (he probably organized it, but I am not sure). Now, it's really stupid but, I was sitting somewhere in front of the class room and I saw the old man moving towards me and he is holding out his hand as if he wants to shake my hand. I instinctively grasp his hand and shake it as in a greeting-sorta way.
Immediately, I sense the awkward silence and glimpses from all the other group members, the presenters, and observe the slightly cross face from the professor when I realize that his intention was to grasp the empty chair next to me to take a seat, not to shake my hand. I thought he honestly wanted to shake my hand and he was also looking at me as well in a smiley-faced manner, but because he's such an old, slow and stiff guy he was holding out his hand in an awkward manner (from my position anyway, in retrospect) and I totally misinterpreted it. I was like 'Oooohh shit', but we just continued more or less as if nothing had happened. And my German mentor laughed his ass off afterwards during lunch. Sure it was funny, but I did feel like I had broken something, since I could see that the two presenters were very confused when I shook his hand: "A low-life student is on equal footing with us, wtf?"
In the scientific community, it's kinda crazy how much of a social class system exists or can exist.
There was this presentation by two middle-aged/young researchers outside the university for our group. This old professor shakes hands with those two researchers and it's quite visible that they have quite a lot of admiration for him (he probably organized it, but I am not sure). Now, it's really stupid but, I was sitting somewhere in front of the class room and I saw the old man moving towards me and he is holding out his hand as if he wants to shake my hand. I instinctively grasp his hand and shake it as in a greeting-sorta way.
Immediately, I sense the awkward silence and glimpses from all the other group members, the presenters, and observe the slightly cross face from the professor when I realize that his intention was to grasp the empty chair next to me to take a seat, not to shake my hand. I thought he honestly wanted to shake my hand and he was also looking at me as well in a smiley-faced manner, but because he's such an old, slow and stiff guy he was holding out his hand in an awkward manner (from my position anyway, in retrospect) and I totally misinterpreted it. I was like 'Oooohh shit', but we just continued more or less as if nothing had happened. And my German mentor laughed his ass off afterwards during lunch. Sure it was funny, but I did feel like I had broken something, since I could see that the two presenters were very confused when I shook his hand: "A low-life student is on equal footing with us, wtf?"
In the scientific community, it's kinda crazy how much of a social class system exists or can exist.
Mines is not too big of a fuck up, but it sure as hell is embarrassing:
When I was like 15 or 16, I had a job working temporarily at my neighborhood park during the summer. Since I didn't know shit about fixing sports equipment and I sucked at sports in general, I worked in the office with the park manager in his assistant as like sort of a go-fer/secretary. One job I had was to call the homes of a list of people to remind them of their child's ceramics class. This was my first "job" and I was nervous as hell so I didn't want to screw this up...well I did when I lost the script. I made the calls and relayed the message to the best of my recollection and I was pleased. Then imagine dozens of parents calling the park to ask why the hell their child is scheduled for forensic class Wednesday at 4:30.
Another time as a store checker, I accepted an obviously fake $100 bill from this shifty dude even after being skeptical of it. The bill felt like felt, wasn't see-through, didn't have the markings of a post 2000's hundred (Profile and line of text when held up to light), and after I blacklighted it the damn thing lit up like a christmas tree...and yet I still took it. I got a stern warning and that was it. I guess I got off lucky because it was the holiday season and that kinda foul-play was expected.
When I was like 15 or 16, I had a job working temporarily at my neighborhood park during the summer. Since I didn't know shit about fixing sports equipment and I sucked at sports in general, I worked in the office with the park manager in his assistant as like sort of a go-fer/secretary. One job I had was to call the homes of a list of people to remind them of their child's ceramics class. This was my first "job" and I was nervous as hell so I didn't want to screw this up...well I did when I lost the script. I made the calls and relayed the message to the best of my recollection and I was pleased. Then imagine dozens of parents calling the park to ask why the hell their child is scheduled for forensic class Wednesday at 4:30.
Another time as a store checker, I accepted an obviously fake $100 bill from this shifty dude even after being skeptical of it. The bill felt like felt, wasn't see-through, didn't have the markings of a post 2000's hundred (Profile and line of text when held up to light), and after I blacklighted it the damn thing lit up like a christmas tree...and yet I still took it. I got a stern warning and that was it. I guess I got off lucky because it was the holiday season and that kinda foul-play was expected.
Back in 2006, I worked as a IT specialist for an Airlines company. So one day one of the managers come to me and say that we're letting go one of the guys responsible for the company and that I had to revoke all his access to the system and stuff, and to not say anything to him.
So I go into the room we all share, and never realizing that the guy is in the room and promptly started to tell a co worker friend of mine of my conversation with the boss. He tried to stop me, but I was all fussy and didn't listen. Man.. When I saw him there at the corner, I wanted to die. I just left the room, praying that he wouldn't say anything. Fortunately, he didn't, and I really don't know why.
To this day I feel bad for that.. But I learned to watch every inch of a room before I start talking.
So I go into the room we all share, and never realizing that the guy is in the room and promptly started to tell a co worker friend of mine of my conversation with the boss. He tried to stop me, but I was all fussy and didn't listen. Man.. When I saw him there at the corner, I wanted to die. I just left the room, praying that he wouldn't say anything. Fortunately, he didn't, and I really don't know why.
To this day I feel bad for that.. But I learned to watch every inch of a room before I start talking.
So yesterday I was ripping tickets at my movie theatre. These 2 guys hand me their tickets and it's for Captain America in 3D. So before they head towards the theatre I say "Hey guys here's your 3D..." *notices that 1 guy has a glass eye* "...glasses..."
I felt so bad, the whole movie was going to be blurry for him. Wasn't my fault though. Person who sold the ticket should have informed them that it was in 3D. I don't think they realized so until I handed them the glasses.
I felt so bad, the whole movie was going to be blurry for him. Wasn't my fault though. Person who sold the ticket should have informed them that it was in 3D. I don't think they realized so until I handed them the glasses.
WickedAngel
Banned
bengraven said:
Just for future reference; Dropbox can selectively sync folders depending on your preferences.
I'm a Sr. Systems Engineer at a financial services company.
Once I was walking by a coworkers office and another coworker who's a good friend of mine said something as I was passing by. Something like "hey dickhead" but it's guys being guys friendly. So I turn around and pick him up above my head and start tossing him like a pizza. I hear a snap so I put him down (he's not small I'm just a big dude). My pinkie finger was broken.
Another: We use Microsoft Forefront UAG for a lot of our remote access (activesync, OA, OWA, sharepoint, etc) at that time we didn't have a test UAG (we do have redundancy) and I was asked by a developer to add a test client site. It used a different way to authenticate compared to any of our other trunks and didn't work. It was the end of the day Friday and I was ready to go so I reversed the changes and left. Sunday morning I get an email from someone saying nothing is working remotely. Check and everything is down. That one site caused some crazy bug that Microsoft never saw which caused the firewall policies of UAG to corrupt and brought everything down. Spent 10 hours in the office on a Sunday during football season.
Last one: I handle most of our backups. We have a sister client with only a few users. I get an alert for every backup and made a rule so that i only see them if it failed. Since i didnt get any emails of failed jobs i had assumed everything was perfect. The problem was the exchange job stuck and was running for a week. This cause all the other daily exchange jobs to miss their time. A missed job has no alert. One of the users had an email issue and possibly needed items restored to his mailbox. When my boss asked me to tell him what the time of our last backup (expecting it to be from last night) I had to fess up that it was from 1 week ago. Didn't get chewed out but the look I got said enough. So glad we didn't end up needing the backup anyway.
Once I was walking by a coworkers office and another coworker who's a good friend of mine said something as I was passing by. Something like "hey dickhead" but it's guys being guys friendly. So I turn around and pick him up above my head and start tossing him like a pizza. I hear a snap so I put him down (he's not small I'm just a big dude). My pinkie finger was broken.
Another: We use Microsoft Forefront UAG for a lot of our remote access (activesync, OA, OWA, sharepoint, etc) at that time we didn't have a test UAG (we do have redundancy) and I was asked by a developer to add a test client site. It used a different way to authenticate compared to any of our other trunks and didn't work. It was the end of the day Friday and I was ready to go so I reversed the changes and left. Sunday morning I get an email from someone saying nothing is working remotely. Check and everything is down. That one site caused some crazy bug that Microsoft never saw which caused the firewall policies of UAG to corrupt and brought everything down. Spent 10 hours in the office on a Sunday during football season.
Last one: I handle most of our backups. We have a sister client with only a few users. I get an alert for every backup and made a rule so that i only see them if it failed. Since i didnt get any emails of failed jobs i had assumed everything was perfect. The problem was the exchange job stuck and was running for a week. This cause all the other daily exchange jobs to miss their time. A missed job has no alert. One of the users had an email issue and possibly needed items restored to his mailbox. When my boss asked me to tell him what the time of our last backup (expecting it to be from last night) I had to fess up that it was from 1 week ago. Didn't get chewed out but the look I got said enough. So glad we didn't end up needing the backup anyway.
I've never made a huge work mistake in my 19 years of working, but I have seen several big fuckups.
I witnessed from very close, I was on the flight line, an F-16 come in for a touch and go and then another F-16 do a flyover right above it and they collided. One of the planes crashed and the pilot safely ejected. The other super stud pilot somehow managed to land his even though the plane was hella torn up. This was at Luke AFB in 94 or 95. I think it came out that the air traffic controller was at fault.
I also saw a pilot get his flight manuals sucked into his engine which ruined it. He payed them on the inside edge of the intake.
I saw a pilot dump a C-27 on its tail in front of an IG inspector during taxi.
My dad, who was also in the Air Force, supervised a bunch of crew chiefs. One of his troops overfilled a jet with liquid oxygen and blew a T-38 totally in half. I got to go check out the wreckage when I was like 11.
Air force people do some dumb shit. That is for sure.
I witnessed from very close, I was on the flight line, an F-16 come in for a touch and go and then another F-16 do a flyover right above it and they collided. One of the planes crashed and the pilot safely ejected. The other super stud pilot somehow managed to land his even though the plane was hella torn up. This was at Luke AFB in 94 or 95. I think it came out that the air traffic controller was at fault.
I also saw a pilot get his flight manuals sucked into his engine which ruined it. He payed them on the inside edge of the intake.
I saw a pilot dump a C-27 on its tail in front of an IG inspector during taxi.
My dad, who was also in the Air Force, supervised a bunch of crew chiefs. One of his troops overfilled a jet with liquid oxygen and blew a T-38 totally in half. I got to go check out the wreckage when I was like 11.
Air force people do some dumb shit. That is for sure.
Guts Of Thor said:
Wait, so you load the driver's truck? Damn it, I am a FedEx driver and I have to load my own truck.... 200+ boxes.... in 25 minutes! Now I feel way screwed!
And this happened to a friend of mine the other day, partially because of me. Im also Ops Lead at my station, and my friend was late at the sort, so as he was about to leave, I went and lowered the van's cargo door but didnt fully closed it just in case he was going to put more boxes inside... guess what, he didnt have to, and he never closed the door fully. So his door opened while on road, and out of the 150 pkgs he had, guess which one was the one that fell off the truck..... yeah, the most urgent and expensive one (a box full of flowers from Hawaii for a wedding that was the next day). So I, unintentionally of course, ruined a wedding and my friend got a warning letter. :/
HisshouBuraiKen
Member
This is a second-hand story and not exactly a fuck-up but funny nonetheless:
A friend of mine used to work the concierge desk at the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando, and one night was sent upstairs to deal with a noise complaint.
So he knocks on the door and HULK HOGAN answers it. My friend, all 5'6" of him, meekly tells Mr. Hogan that they've received complaints about the noise from his room.
Hogan's response? "You got the WRONG ROOM, brother."
Friend apologizes profusely to Mr. Hogan for his mistake.
A friend of mine used to work the concierge desk at the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando, and one night was sent upstairs to deal with a noise complaint.
So he knocks on the door and HULK HOGAN answers it. My friend, all 5'6" of him, meekly tells Mr. Hogan that they've received complaints about the noise from his room.
Hogan's response? "You got the WRONG ROOM, brother."
Friend apologizes profusely to Mr. Hogan for his mistake.
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