What's the biggest mistake you've ever made at work?

[kranky]

Here's mine...

I got a job as a CAD drafter when CAD systems had just come out and cost $50,000 per terminal. It was a very cool thing to be able to use something like that, and at the end of the day (I worked 4-midnight) I would stay around just to play with it to see what kinds of things it could do.

By combining very wide lines and some text, and layering them in a certain order, I ended up with a drawing that, when you opened it, showed a white screen with a small black square that said "Click here for your secret message". Clicking would cause the system to select and highlight a piece of text that was behind the lines, and it would suddenly appear over the white background. Trying to be clever so I could show it to other drafters the next day, I chose the text "(very bad word) you".

Turns out the next day a bunch of people from US Steel came to see the system, and the VP took them over to one of the drafters who was going to show them some stuff. The drafter knew I worked 4-12 so he chose my file area to work in so he wouldn't interfere with his ongoing work.

So the VP and a bunch of bigwigs from US Steel were standing there when my file was opened, and the drafter was puzzled by the "Click here for your secret message" thing, so he clicked it. And the message popped up. And the VP was very, very angry at the poor drafter so the drafter explained he was using my file area, not his. And kranky got in very, very bad trouble when he came in at 4 PM.

 

[Whitecloak]

being sincere and honest

 

[kranky]

Originally posted by: whitecloak
being sincere and honest

Elaborate?

 

[Whitecloak]

Originally posted by: kranky

Originally posted by: whitecloak
being sincere and honest

Elaborate?

well my project manager was screwing up the project for which I was the consultant. I tried raising this issue with him but he was not responding to my queries. So I had no other option other than to go to his boss. Now, his boss is very a poor people manager and he decided to resolve this query by arranging a confrontation between me and the project manager. Needless to say, in the meeting, he believed the Project Manager rather than me. I got all the sh!t piled on to me.

 

[maziwanka]

Originally posted by: kranky
Here's mine...

I got a job as a CAD drafter when CAD systems had just come out and cost $50,000 per terminal. It was a very cool thing to be able to use something like that, and at the end of the day (I worked 4-midnight) I would stay around just to play with it to see what kinds of things it could do.

By combining very wide lines and some text, and layering them in a certain order, I ended up with a drawing that, when you opened it, showed a white screen with a small black square that said "Click here for your secret message". Clicking would cause the system to select and highlight a piece of text that was behind the lines, and it would suddenly appear over the white background. Trying to be clever so I could show it to other drafters the next day, I chose the text "(very bad word) you".

Turns out the next day a bunch of people from US Steel came to see the system, and the VP took them over to one of the drafters who was going to show them some stuff. The drafter knew I worked 4-12 so he chose my file area to work in so he wouldn't interfere with his ongoing work.

So the VP and a bunch of bigwigs from US Steel were standing there when my file was opened, and the drafter was puzzled by the "Click here for your secret message" thing, so he clicked it. And the message popped up. And the VP was very, very angry at the poor drafter so the drafter explained he was using my file area, not his. And kranky got in very, very bad trouble when he came in at 4 PM.

so, what happened to you?

 

[edro]

Forgetting to backup somone's data before I Ghosted their machine. Oops...

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

left about $20k out of a bid once. Thank god I didn't get it...

 

[911paramedic]

Got a code 3 call at 3AM when my partner and I were both asleep, he was looking up the address and it was my turn to drive. I said "what's the quickest way?" and he said "just keep following Lombard until we hit [insert street here]", so I did. Yup, we were so damn tired we weren't thinking clearly yet and ended up going down this street. (turned off the lights and sirens, but I will say that woke us up)

 

[Pliablemoose]

Underestemating how truly evil management could be.

 

[Feldenak]

Originally posted by: whitecloak
being sincere and honest

 

[FoBoT]

the worst thing i did while i was in the Navy:

while the nuclear reactor was shutdown, i ran the reactor coolant pumps in Fast speed for some maintenance while the coolant system pressure/temp was too low. i got disqualified from my watchstation

the danger of doing this is the shock/stress can cause brittle fracture of the reactor vessel, the sudden catastrophic failure of the steel shell holding the reactor core

but nothing bad happened (to the reactor), just to me. i had to do a bunch of re-studying of the pressure-temperature curves we operate in and interview with several people to make sure i re-learned the stuff i messed up

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
the worst thing i did while i was in the Navy:

while the nuclear reactor was shutdown, i ran the reactor coolant pumps in Fast speed for some maintenance while the coolant system pressure/temp was too low. i got disqualified from my watchstation

the danger of doing this is the shock/stress can cause brittle fracture of the reactor vessel, the sudden catastrophic failure of the steel shell holding the reactor core

but nothing bad happened (to the reactor), just to me. i had to do a bunch of re-studying of the pressure-temperature curves we operate in and interview with several people to make sure i re-learned the stuff i messed up

didn't Homer do that once?

 

[kranky]

Originally posted by: maziwanka
so, what happened to you?

The VP complained to my boss' boss (Director) who called me in when I got to work the next day. He asked me why he shouldn't fire me on the spot for what happened. I explained, emphasizing I had no reason to suspect anyone would ever look at my file area. He believed me but said there had to be consequences because of what went down, the fact that it embarrassed our VP and our company and our department especially.

I got three days suspension without pay and a letter in my personnel file, and had to personally apologize to the VP (a very high-up person I had never even seen before) and the drafter. The nice thing was a couple years later my boss' boss told me I was the top drafter and since I had a spotless record ever since the "incident", he pulled the letter out of my file along with the suspension notice. Officially it had never happened. But people talked about it for years.

 

Clocking out early when i was younger, they had video cameras.
Ohh well, i didnt get fired but i sure was humiliated, lesson learned.

 

[woowoo]

While running an uplink truck, I put a TV show up on the wrong sattelite.
Lasted for about 15 min then the phone started to ring........

 

[kranky]

FoBoT, great story, glad nothing really bad happened!

 

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by: MikeyIs4Dcats

Originally posted by: FoBoT
the worst thing i did while i was in the Navy:

while the nuclear reactor was shutdown, i ran the reactor coolant pumps in Fast speed for some maintenance while the coolant system pressure/temp was too low. i got disqualified from my watchstation

the danger of doing this is the shock/stress can cause brittle fracture of the reactor vessel, the sudden catastrophic failure of the steel shell holding the reactor core

but nothing bad happened (to the reactor), just to me. i had to do a bunch of re-studying of the pressure-temperature curves we operate in and interview with several people to make sure i re-learned the stuff i messed up

didn't Homer do that once?

i think homer actually caused a nuclear accident (or more than one perhaps?) , this didn't cause any problems to the physical plant. technically, what i did was not record/verify the temp/pressure before running the pumps. it wasn't until several weeks later someone was reviewing the logs books and noticed that we didn't log the temp/pressure at the time we logged switching the pumps. so i might have checked, but since i didn't record it, i/we couldn't prove the condition of the plant at the time.

anyway, there are no "Homer Simpsons" in the US Navy Nuclear Power Program, so don't worry too much

 

[athithi]

Forgot to remove p0rn from the shared drive on my machine when I quit without notice. This was at my first job. It was a tiny company of about 6-7 people and we were all fresh graduates. I was the first to get a hardware refresh with the fastest processor (Pentium 166, I think ) with a large HDD (10GB ) and hence I received the honor of hosting all the p0rn we downloaded After I quit and moved to the US, my bosses (who were pissed that I had left without notice) called up my parents and told them that I had abused company property by downloading p0rn I have changed jobs three times since then and though I have never repeated the mistake of downloading inappropriate material, I still make sure that I wipe my machine clean of all personal information atleast 2-3 weeks before I leave. And I give sufficient notice too.

 

[NuclearNed]

It's a two-way tie:

1) When I was fresh out of high school, I got a job as a dj at a local radio station. We broadcast a lot of sports; due to time constaints we would tape the feed of a lot of games and then broadcast it when we had the time. Such was the case one night when I still fairly new. My boss showed me how to set up the reel-to-reel recorder and record the game, which would start later that night. He emphasized to make sure that when threading the media that I didn't get the tape twisted in the mechanism, or else the machine would be trying to tape on the wrong side of the media and thus not actually record anything. He emphasized this again... and again... and again. When it came time to actually tape the game, I made extra sure that I threaded the tape correctly, and didn't get it twisted. I double and triple checked it. I even quadruple checked it.

Hours later... I took the freshly recorded game tape from the machine and cued it up to broad cast the game. An ominous silence came from the machine. It was our scheduled time to broadcast the game, and I had no game. As if on cue, my phone started ringing. I nervously answered to find (horror!) that the station owner was on the other end wanting to know when I was going to start the game. Thus began the yelling.

2) My first programming job after college was with a company that made prepaid telephone cards. They had a big gala event planned where they were going to give out a set of about 200 cards to some very big VIPs from whom they were trying to get some business. Keep in mind that the cards were already physically printed with an account number stamped on them, and that this account number corresponded with the account number in our databases. Without these account numbers in the database, the cards were completely useless. About 2 hours before the party, I was working on these account numbers and dropped the database table. Luckily, through an act of God, I had printed out the entire database just a moment or two earlier. I spent several rushed minutes recreating the database by hand.

 

[Feneant2]

Mine is more in the embarrasing factor.

I used to review fansubbed anime for a small group on IRC and I did it at work cause I was bored. In my address book I had 2 names, mine and the management/director list for the maritimes (4 provinces). Of course, I clicked on the wrong address and sent my review... In those days there was no recall, I was soooooo embarrased

 

[dman]

Maybe not the biggest mistake, but, the one I remember:

I did a net send to all back in the days I was working in techsupport. We had moved desks and during the move I (thought I) lost a set of headphones. Anyway, everyone in the LAN got it (which was more than I thought--I only thought our area would get it), and it got me a flogging as well as a new policy to the peons not to use net send * ever. At least it stopped other folks from using it too.


And the headphones were at home. I didn't have them at work... so they weren't 'lost' during the move.

Lame, but, it was embarassing.

 

[Doboji]

I knocked a toddler unconcsious with a pancake plate at IHOP... was a waiter at the time

-Max

 

[minendo]

Had sex with the bosses daughter on his desk.

 

[lokiju]

Myself and a co-worker were tasked to setup a huge area for training for users that were flying in from all of our US sites, we had a good 30 or so PC's setup but power we very limited in the room we were using, it was about 10:00 PM at this point (was supposed to leave at 5) and we were just both tired and not wanting to think about a good way to run it, ,so we ended up daisy chaining a lot of power strips off of one another, well my boss came in and decided to power them all up and as a result, blew the breaker. He was just disappointed in us and we just wanted to get the hell out of there, we ended up finding extension cords and running properly in the end.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: kranky
What's the biggest mistake you've ever made at work?

Telling them I'd be willing to do IT work if they need me to.

Now I'm stuck in an IT rut.