My most embarrassing workplace goofup

[Braznor]

This happened at my current place of work. I work at a inhouse helpdesk where we handle enquires for policies and discount queries from our dealers throughout my country. The policies keep changing by the day and sometimes even two to three times a day depending on the circumstances. We use an internal chat system to handle queries amongst ourselves and also because it helps as a written record of what transpired during that day though we sit barely a feet away from each other. Each team have their own chatroom where other people (from the company) can too join in, if they wanted.

A week after I joined the company, I happened to notice a person logged into my room with the username 'Wild Weasel' This was pretty unusual because we are always required to be logged under our own names.

Curiosity got the better of me and I PMed him: It went roughly like this:

ME : Who are you, wild one?
ME : What are you, wild one?
WILD WEASEL : ?
ME: Your name?
WILD WEASEL : Is that really necessary?
ME: Company policy requires so
WILD WEASEL : You are Braznor(real name substituted with the forum name here)?
ME: Last time I checked
ME: I'am Braznor the great.
WILD WEASEL: Really? What makes you so great?
ME: People don't know I'am a descendant of Napoleon
ME: But please don't tell anyone else
Me: Please don't
WILD WEASEL: Why not?
ME I don't want to be hunted for my genepool
ME: HA HA HA

....a slight pause in the chat. I was busy with my work then.

WILD WEASEL :You have a weird wacky sense of humor
WILD WEASEL : :thumbsup:
WILD WEASEL : Well, my name is XXXXXX
WILD WEASEL : Have a great day
ME: Thanks, bye.

Then WILD WEASEL logged off from my room.

During lunch, I found WILD WEASEL was the executive director of the company. i.e the boss of my boss's boss.

Needless to say the lunch didn't go too well for me. After two or three days, my boss told me that they at one of their meetings laughed over this.

Do you have any such stories to share?

 

[imported_Ned Flanders]

No.

 

[SonnyDaze]

Nope. Company policy prevents participation in pre-adolescent online chat rooms.

 

[leftyman]

I just ate a bowl of cereal at my desk.

 

[Mardeth]

Braznor Bonaparte?

 

[j00fek]

nothing yet

 

[meltdown75]

My most embarrassing story is the fart... but I told that one already.

Another time I got busted and felt really embarrassed was a few years back when someone in a nearby cubicle were talking about the internet. We somehow got on the discussion of all of the messed up stuff you can find on the internet and how there seemed to be no limits, especially with porn.

I have a tendency to exaggerate and be overly sarcastic, and I said something like, "yeah... it's crazy... you could find 8 guys and a donkey if you wanted to."

Just then I turned around and a senior staff member was walking behind me and was giving me the strangest look ever. That person just happens to be my manager now...

 

[Fritzo]

I was experimenting with video confrencing with Netmeeting. When Netmeeting first came out, it had very poor security- you basically created a host, and it appeared on a list of hosts for anyone to join. It's 8:00pm at night, and I created a test room in Netmeeting, then started reading some Technet documents about it. 5 minutes later, a co-worker walks into the room and yells "YOU HOMO!!!!" then runs out.

I was startled, then I looked up at the screen (mind you, it was a 21" Trinitron). To my horror, some fat hairy shirtless freak had joined the room while I was reading and was fondling himself on the screen. My co-worker then got on the company intercom and announced "Will all butt lovers please report to the conference room".

Ugh...that happened about 8 years ago and we still laugh about it.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Originally posted by: Fritzo
I was experimenting with video confrencing with Netmeeting. When Netmeeting first came out, it had very poor security- you basically created a host, and it appeared on a list of hosts for anyone to join. It's 8:00pm at night, and I created a test room in Netmeeting, then started reading some Technet documents about it. 5 minutes later, a co-worker walks into the room and yells "YOU HOMO!!!!" then runs out.

I was startled, then I looked up at the screen (mind you, it was a 21" Trinitron). To my horror, some fat hairy shirtless freak had joined the room while I was reading and was fondling himself on the screen. My co-worker then got on the company intercom and announced "Will all butt lovers please report to the conference room".

Ugh...that happened about 8 years ago and we still laugh about it.

haha poor guy
(YOU)

 

[bignateyk]

My first day at work I fried a $600 DSP circuit board while attempting to dis-assemble the code off the onboard PIC.

Luckily noone found out about it, but on the downside, I had to spend $600 + overnight shipping to get a new one so noone would know. :thumbsdown:

I probably could have sent it back for warranty, but I wanted to save myself the embarrassment of explaining how I managed to fvck up on my first day.

 

[Kev]

OP's story isn't remotely embarrassing.

 

[CptObvious]

I had a near-miss this week. A couple weeks ago, my boss gave me an assignment that was time-sensitive (an appeal that had to be filed within 30 days, no exceptions). In my defense, he waited two weeks to give it to me, and did not give me any instructions on how to do it. We don't normally handle appellate work so he doesn't quite understand the administrative process either, he just dumped it on me to learn it. Anyway, I prepared the necessary paperwork, and put it on his desk to review. He never got back to me so I forgot about it until he asked me on Tuesday (the 30th day) what was going on with it.

I was freaking out, thinking I dropped the ball on a $40K case that I would probably have to explain to the firm's biggest client. I left the office at 4:30 to get to the courthouse downtown to file it in person. Luckily the traffic wasn't too bad for rush hour so I got there at 4:45, and filed it about 10 minutes before the deadline.

I don't know if missing the deadline would've cost me my job, but considering all the last-minute crap my boss pulls on me (e.g., calling me on the way to work to pick up a file and head to court to argue a case I know nothing about), I really need a new place to work.

 

[MisterJackson]

Originally posted by: Fritzo
I was experimenting with video confrencing with Netmeeting. When Netmeeting first came out, it had very poor security- you basically created a host, and it appeared on a list of hosts for anyone to join. It's 8:00pm at night, and I created a test room in Netmeeting, then started reading some Technet documents about it. 5 minutes later, a co-worker walks into the room and yells "YOU HOMO!!!!" then runs out.

I was startled, then I looked up at the screen (mind you, it was a 21" Trinitron). To my horror, some fat hairy shirtless freak had joined the room while I was reading and was fondling himself on the screen. My co-worker then got on the company intercom and announced "Will all butt lovers please report to the conference room".

Ugh...that happened about 8 years ago and we still laugh about it.

Suuuure...that's your story and you're sticking to it huh?

 

[mikej007]

Well, this gem I'm going to share with you was perpetrated by a guy that sits in the cubicle next to me. Let me explain a little of the background first.

The Director of our department sits down the hall and often keeps the blinds up on his windows so you can see what he's doing in his office. His wife works for our company in another building, and the Director would often bring up the security cams on his PC to see what she was doing during the day. When he'd do this, he'd turn his LCD away from the window so no one walking by could see what was on the screen. So whenever we'd see through the window that his LCD was turned, we'd laugh amongst ourselves that he was watching his wife.

In the past, our crew of IT misfits, when someone would make a statement, often times we'd say "Oh really" after every sentence, just to piss the person off.

Keeping this in mind, the guy Joe that sits next to me opens his IM client and begins to write out an IM. After a while I hear him say "OH FVCK" and he literally runs out of his cubicle into the Director's office. Apparently he thought he had selected my name in the IM list, but he had actually been conversing with the Director.

I copied the text off our IM server because I couldn't let this one be lost.

Joe: <Director> is watching his wife on the security system again
Joe: he has the monitor pointed away from the window
Director: Is he? Really?
Joe: Yup then he is going to your moms house when he is done
Director: lol
Director: Well, since my wife gets off from work at 2, ain't happening

I don't think I've ever laughed as hard about anything else in my life. I had tears streaming down my face and of course shared the text file with the rest of the department who laughed their asses off too. Apparently because the Director said "Is he really" Joe thought it was me screwing with him. That's why he added the line about going to my mom's house.

Nothing ended up happening to the guy that sits next to me, our Director had a sense of humor and apparently when Joe ran in apologizing he was spared any corrective action.

 

[TraumaRN]

Generally in my job if something embarrassing happens we all know about it. Especially since I work in the busiest ER in michigan...usually they involve some sort of bodily fluid.

Something embarrassing that I watched happen did happen last week. This guy had this huge infected blister on his hand running from his pinky all the way into the palm of his hand. We wanted to incise and drain it, then admit the guy for a course of IV antibiotics. Well I'm assisting this complete bitch of a surgical resident, who wouldn't listen to any of the nurses, or myself about this patient when we said he couldnt feel when we touched the abscess/blister. Well retard surgeon tried injecting lidocaine directly into the thing when it already looked like it was gonna burst. Well the first injection went well she pulled the needle back to numb another area and that thing just EXPLODED all over the sterile field, onto her scrubs, gloves, arms you name it.

I think she was more pissed than embarrassed cuz I was standing their snickering(so was the patient at this point) and muttered I told you so under my breath.

 

[rudder]

I broke a $500 part while starting the engine of a Boeing 727.

Embarrasing but luckily it was a maintainence test flight so there were no passengers to piss off.

 

[MisterJackson]

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
Generally in my job if something embarrassing happens we all know about it. Especially since I work in the busiest ER in michigan...usually they involve some sort of bodily fluid.

Something embarrassing that I watched happen did happen last week. This guy had this huge infected blister on his hand running from his pinky all the way into the palm of his hand. We wanted to incise and drain it, then admit the guy for a course of IV antibiotics. Well I'm assisting this complete bitch of a surgical resident, who wouldn't listen to any of the nurses, or myself about this patient when we said he couldnt feel when we touched the abscess/blister. Well retard surgeon tried injecting lidocaine directly into the thing when it already looked like it was gonna burst. Well the first injection went well she pulled the needle back to numb another area and that thing just EXPLODED all over the sterile field, onto her scrubs, gloves, arms you name it.

I think she was more pissed than embarrassed cuz I was standing their snickering(so was the patient at this point) and muttered I told you so under my breath.

Nasty ownage!

 

[Rage187]

this is happened to a coworker of mine at my last job.

We are in a big QA lab and the director of engineering is showing the facilities off to some investors. He is gay and has a "husband"

When they are behind a couple racks and out of site a coworker kicks open the door to the lab and yells "smells like gay sex in here", not knowing that they were in there.

 

[TheoPetro]

my biggest F up came during my second lab job. I was basically thrown into mixing things with little to no experience with them. None of the chemicals were really dangerous but still. Anyway I was just finishing up my 11 hr day and doing the final mixture when I went to mix everything together (we mixed stuff in different bottles then combined the mixtures) I started mixing everything into a bottle which I thought was empty. Well turns out it was filled with ~40g of gold plated, 5micron, spheres. I basically destroyed $5000 worth of material that afternoon. It was within my first 2 weeks there too. The cool thing was they asked me to come back after I left

 

[BUTCH1]

I left the wrong sunscreen component on a pallet that got put into a batch which then
had to be destroyed since this was not a listed ingredient. Cost to the company, $13,800

 

[chcarnage]

A colleague of mine once destroyed 500 kg of chocolate by adding a wrong ingredient. It was in his apprenticeship, too (which he finished nonetheless).

 

[GasX]

crop dusting my way past the President of my old company...

 

[Ktulu]

Farting during a meeting.

 

[slackerinabox]

I was laid off from a job and was too depressed to pack my stuff up. I asked that they just mail everything to me, and they agreed. I got my package a week later and in it was a book titled "The Making of a Serial Killer". Yes, I dig true crime stories all the time but I perhaps shouldn't have forgotten that book in my desk, especially since I could have been thought of as a disgruntled ex-worker.

 

[Stiganator]

It didn't happen to me, but to my brother. He is a food scientist and he was formulating some new foods in the lab. They get blue 5 in big 25lb bags of ultra micronized dye. Well, he was unaware that you can only open these bags in special room that is free on air flow. Micronized Blue Dye + any air flow = blue room. Plus it got into the ducts and got pumped into other labs. The had to destroy everything in the like 3 labs and it took 3 weeks to get them online again. This was an internship so needless to say he didn't get offered a job.