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

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Originally posted by: Doboji
I knocked a toddler unconcsious with a pancake plate at IHOP... was a waiter at the time

-Max
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holy sh!t, did you loose your job?

mine sucks compared to that. my supervisor and manager come to my cubicle and ask me to come outside so they could talk to me. the company was going thru a downsizing at the time so i thought, great i'm getting the axe. as we walk out i turn to them and blurt out "you guys suck."
luckily they laughed it off and i'm still employed.
 
Originally posted by: Doboji
I knocked a toddler unconcsious with a pancake plate at IHOP... was a waiter at the time

-Max
Click to expand...
Whoa... C'mon, we need more than that! What was the parents' reaction? :Q
 
Shuting down the main server at the data center during working hours to have a tech replace a DLT tape drive. (for a data center, they stay up later, instead of 4pm EST for normal branches)

It felt like I would be fired on the spot. what made it worse was that it was not approved via change management. A contractor would be fired on the spot for that offense.

My manager quickly defended me. and nothing ever came of it, not even a letter. I got my raise a few days later.
 
Deleted an in-addr.arpa zone and killed a bunch of PTR records. It only took a few minutes to get the backup restored but it was still a stupid careless mistake.
 
Originally posted by: SaltBoy
Originally posted by: Doboji
I knocked a toddler unconcsious with a pancake plate at IHOP... was a waiter at the time

-Max
Click to expand...
Whoa... C'mon, we need more than that! What was the parents' reaction? :Q
Click to expand...

Well see thats the thing they didnt even notice...

I was walking by with a plate, and dropped it just as I passed over the kid sitting in the booster chair thingamabob... the plate literally ricocheted off the kids head... the kid didn't make a noise... just slumped down in his seat like he was sleeping... I panicked for about 2 seconds... but saw he was breathing... the parents were arguing about something so they didnt even notice... He came to a few seconds later, and started crying... but he seemed to be fine... so I didnt say anything, and quietly walked in the back...

I'm a very bad person...

-Max
 
Originally posted by: amish
Originally posted by: Doboji
I knocked a toddler unconcsious with a pancake plate at IHOP... was a waiter at the time

-Max
Click to expand...

holy sh!t, did you loose your job?

mine sucks compared to that. my supervisor and manager come to my cubicle and ask me to come outside so they could talk to me. the company was going thru a downsizing at the time so i thought, great i'm getting the axe. as we walk out i turn to them and blurt out "you guys suck."
luckily they laughed it off and i'm still employed.
Click to expand...

And they talked to you about ....
 
Originally posted by: IHateMyJob2004
Originally posted by: amish
Originally posted by: Doboji
I knocked a toddler unconcsious with a pancake plate at IHOP... was a waiter at the time

-Max
Click to expand...

holy sh!t, did you loose your job?

mine sucks compared to that. my supervisor and manager come to my cubicle and ask me to come outside so they could talk to me. the company was going thru a downsizing at the time so i thought, great i'm getting the axe. as we walk out i turn to them and blurt out "you guys suck."
luckily they laughed it off and i'm still employed.
Click to expand...

And they talked to you about ....
Click to expand...

mandatory pay cuts 🙁
a nice 5% off of the top. they were telling me before it became public knowledge.
 
Originally posted by: 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
Click to expand...


didn't Homer do that once? 😉
Click to expand...

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 😉
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After reading your post I feel more confident in the ability of the US Navy nuclear program.

Ausm
 
Which class of sub? I work at EB, something like that is definitely a big deal, glad to hear that everything turned out fine. Though, I would think that interlocks would prevent you from starting pumps in an unsafe condition?
 
I was workign for a factory, making doors, and we ahve these million dollar machines to make the doors, and in each machine theres like 50 different knives to make different model of doors. I was the operator of the machine, and just started (was my second day as an operator) I accidently hit the emergency button instead of a pause button, and the 3000 knive fell onto the floor 😱 Great thing is, i was really good friend with the foreman, so we joked about it and continued working! lol.

Another time i was the programmer @ the factory, (got upped again! 😀) and i was called to fix a machine because it wasnt working, (the head of the motor was in the table, and the machine stopped there) Instead of LIFTING the motor with a command, and putting it back in place, I made the motor TURN (typo kind of) and a busted up the knive again.

Lots of people did worse then me at that place though! some people broke a knive a day $$$$$$
 
I worked for a company that administers 401k plans for companies. Basically they maintain databases of user information and process contributions, withdrawals, etc for each employee on a daily basis. Anyway, I had the responsibility of making sure a batch file from the client that contained new employee contributions posted to the system every 2 weeks (they were paid bi-weekly). These files contained literally 1000's of contributions, since it represented every employee in the company that contributed to their 401k!

Now keep in mind that since we changed most accounts on a daily basis, and every change to an account could effect many different parts of an account, we had to make sure new information was posted precisely the first time or user accounts could be valued incorrectly (i.e. the wrong 401k balance!) I forgot to have an 'off-cycle' file on a holiday post, but luckily it was only like 20 employees or so (it could have been 1000's, which would have been a disaster!) That's probably my bigggest mistake on the job.
 
Originally posted by: Taggart
I worked for a company that administers 401k plans for companies. Basically they maintain databases of user information and process contributions, withdrawals, etc for each employee on a daily basis. Anyway, I had the responsibility of making sure a batch file from the client that contained new employee contributions posted to the system every 2 weeks (they were paid bi-weekly). These files contained literally 1000's of contributions, since it represented every employee in the company that contributed to their 401k!

Now keep in mind that since we changed most accounts on a daily basis, and every change to an account could effect many different parts of an account, we had to make sure new information was posted precisely the first time or user accounts could be valued incorrectly (i.e. the wrong 401k balance!) I forgot to have an 'off-cycle' file on a holiday post, but luckily it was only like 20 employees or so (it could have been 1000's, which would have been a disaster!) That's probably my bigggest mistake on the job.
Click to expand...

huh? I still don't know wtf you did wrong and the big deal with the off cycle file? haha 😛
 
i didnt open a water inlet to the feed tank that supplies a water pump...but i turned the pump on....
both are supposed to be left on, but a float valve in the tank had broken so i had been cutting the pump/inlet off that week

of course, i was used to not ever even touching either....so i forgot about the water one morning :/
after about 2 hours the tank went try
after about 10 more minutes the pump died
boss said i get to buy the next one if i do it again
cost of a new pump? $400 😱

 
Lost the keys to the EMS van, the skeleton key to campus, and the key to our office/supplies. Not a good day.
 
This isnt that bad but I couldnt stop laughing about it for an hour or so. I was stocking merchandise and putting this big box of speakers on a shelf that is above the wall displays, its mostly meant for storage so that if a customer wants to buy the product on display we bring down the box from up there. Anyways, I was putting up the box of speakers which was quite heavy and I was having a bit of a hard time so as I was close to getting it up there I decided to put a little bit of a throw into it to get it over easier and well it went over nicely. Turns out there is no shelf there at all and so the box being heavy and just thrown over comes crashing down onto a wall of microphones on display and knocks a whole bunch of other merchandise on the floor making a whole lot of noise. There was only 1 customer in the store but they were talking with my manager about something and I was so amazed to see that nobody even noticed so thats when I started cracking up. I couldnt stop laughing because of how it just fell so fast and probably got damaged because it hit the floor so damn hard. When I first had the box in my hands it was all nice and clean and after it fell the corners were all smashed and wrinkled and the box was really dusty. That was a great day I must say. lol
 
I listened to a code developer who said everything was tested and let a code push go through on Macy's webservers. As soon as the servers were back up their site was hosed. 5 hours later the site's still down and I'm getting screamed at by one of their VP's. I was glad to work at the hosting company, so that he couldn't fire me.
 
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