Mishaps at work can range from minor inconveniences to screw-ups of grand proportions. Major calamities often happen to the newbies, as they usually have less experience or training. Or plain luck, in some cases.

The r/AskReddit community discussed the misfortunes someone new at their job had to encounter. Part of the examples don’t even sound real but sadly (for some—more than for others), they are. Ranging from absolutely terrible to unbelievably funny and everything in between, they prove that la vie is not always en rose when it comes to work.

These examples are far from the only ones covering some unlucky people just trying to do their job. For more, make sure to browse Bored Panda’s previous edition of horrible mistakes people made at work that their coworkers never forgot.

#1

Certainly not the biggest mistake I've ever seen, but this sticks out in my memory...

When I was an RN working in the ICU, every July we'd have a fresh crop of residents (doctors fresh out of med school). Many were very nice, one or two were (and often would stay) flaming a******s, and most felt nurses were just waitresses. This superiority complex usually died down substantially in the first 2-3 weeks when the nurses in my ICU would prove their knowledge and earn their respect, but it would often be a rough 2-3 weeks for us nurses.

One July on the first day they began on the unit, I assisted one resident in putting in a central line (internal jugular IIRC). He inserted it and then said to the patient, "All done!" but he very much was not.

I made some excuse to talk to him outside of the room; something like, "Doctor, could you help me choose the right supplies for the next phase of the procedure?" or whatever. Out of earshot of the patient, I whispered to him that he needed to suture the line in place. He had no idea what I was talking about (sheesh, men never read instructions) so I told him how to do it. Luckily for me he was nice and didn't go off on me for correcting him - we went back in the room together and I made some transitional statement so the patient would never know the doctor omitted a pretty important part of the procedure. The resident put in the sutures as I instructed and there was absolutely no harm to the patient.

After, he took me aside and said, "My wife is an RN. She told me nurses would save my a*s. I just never guessed it would be on my first day - thank you."

#2

My vet tech instructor worked at a zoo in the past, and there was a co-op vet tech student there who had just finished her program. She was very head strong and did things the way she wanted them done.. not the proper way. Well there was this rare possum (last breeding male in captivity of its species) who had a cold or something, so they had it in the icu so it would have the best care, as it was so rare, and it was very important he didnt die. It was time to give him his pain medication. For those not from the medical world, this drug is given sub cutaneously. In animals it is given anywhere under loose skin you can lift and inject underneath. This is commonly done at the base of the neck. Tent skin, inject, done. So my instructor is in charge of the co-op student, both in the icu. The student insists she can give the injection, so my instructor gives her the go ahead as it is a simple procedure, and she's been trained. You really cant mess up... easily. So this girl goes to inject at the base of the neck but isn't lifting the skin out of the way. Instructor says how to do it correctly and the students refuses and insists she was taught at school that she didnt have to tent the skin. After a mild dispute the instructor says whatever, he will be fine. And the student proceeds with the injection. Well doesnt the possum start siezing. She had given him the injection into his spine. You couldnt do that so easy if you tried. At worst she could theoretically given the injection into muscle... not the spine. Anyways.. he died soon after. The LAST BREEDING MALE IN CAPTIVITY DIED because of this students ignorance..
Im pretty sure my instructor wrote her name down so she would never accidentally hire her in the future.

Image credits: ameliagillis

#3

I had a new guy ring me for some tech support. He didn't like the answer I gave him so he gave me a mouthful of abuse and then slammed the phone down. We worked for different departments in a global company. I don't know where he though I was located but the ten paces that took me straight to his desk must have been quite a shock.

#4

Little late for the party but whatever...

I work at a zoo and we have some pretty dangerous animals--lions, a tiger, grizzlies (oh my). So every single employee has to carry on them a can of super strength bear mace (like the kind you can't just go buy at a self-defense store). This stuff is made to stop a raging [insert any animal here] in its tracks, and can cause skin irritation and even nausea without even touching you.

Anyway this one seasonal girl saw a can sitting by her computer at the main lobby; it says across the front "COUNTER SPRAY", as in like "counter *attack* spray", but she thought it was counter as in "indoor counter-top/computer desk spray". So long story short we had to evacuate one of the largest buildings in the zoo (also the only building where we could sell tickets). It was so bad, people on the third floor of the building were having trouble breathing before they even got word of what happened.

Bonus story: one employee was out in the booth at the main gate with all the windows and doors closed, they were curious what color the spray was.. didn't end very well for them.

#5

A guy at work was told to go to the roof of a 4 story building, tie a rope grab to an anchor and come back down. He took this literally and used the rope to slide down the building. He had no gloves on and proceeded to burn through his skin on his hands down to his bone as he held on for dear life.

Image credits: narc339

#6

I'm only in my second year of being a teacher, but last year I witnessed a big mistake by someone who has been teaching for a really long time.

This person had been teaching for nearly 30 years, but most of that time was spent as a music teacher. I don't know why they felt the need to make a jump into being an instructional teacher, but they did. One day we are taking our students out to P.E. and they were asking me how everything is going. I said that it's going fine, but I am just having a tough time trying to fit in all the subjects and all the standards.

The teacher says "Do you know how I've saved a lot of time? I've stopped teaching reading." I laughed initially because I thought they were joking, but they were not. At one point they decided that teaching reading wasn't "worth it" so they had replaced that time with music time.

I believe their students had the worst reading scores in our school and their class was temporarily taken over by our school's reading coach. They are still employed

Image credits: expletiveinyourmilk

#7

They stacked donuts on top of one another when heating them in this conveyer belt type machine. The donuts and machine caught on fire…

Edit:You guys crack me up! I work at a cinema, so burning things happens on the reg. Poor girl was not having a good day though – she ended up covered head to toe in mango frozen yoghurt later that night thanks to a faulty machine. Never laughed so hard in my life.

Image credits: bbbest

#8

Fell asleep at her desk... Opposite our boss

Image credits: biffleboff

#9

New guy left a freezer door propped open overnight and ruined thousands of dollars worth of food. The boss shrugged it off and gave the guy a lecture, told him not to do it again. Sadly, most of the rest of the staff bullied him about it until he quit a week later.

Image credits: mrdiamond17

#10

They don't bother to train anyone they send to wash dishes at my work. They just throw them in the pit and tell them to do the job.

Sometimes that leads to catastrophic what-the-hell-do-I-do related failure.

One thing that is never explained is that you are supposed to change the dishwater in your machine to keep the dishes actually coming out clean, because the machine reuses the same water over and over.

One line cook got sent into the pit on my day off. Never changed the water once. By 8pm the white plates were coming out butter-colored and speckled with ash.

Rather than figure out something was amiss and ask how to fix it, he instead took to wiping down each individual plate with a rag so that the slime wasn't as obvious. Then sent them out to have people eat food off of them.

Health department would have had a conniption if they heard about that. I know I did.

Image credits: FrosthawkSDK

#11

A couple years back, a guy started at my work and on his first day was reading through all the SOP's and various other job specific stuff, when he fell asleep. Now granted this isn't good, but the new boss made him come in at 4:30am to match her insane schedule for some reason. His new boss walked in, and the following conversation took place:

* New Boss: "Hey, wake up!"
* Guy: "Sorry about that, this stuff is just so boring."
* New Boss: "Really? Because I wrote those SOP's..."
* Guy: "...."
* New Boss: "Well, I don't want this job to get in the way of your sleeping schedule, perhaps you should go find something more suitable"

So yeah, dude was fired within the first 30 minutes. But, PLOT TWIST, that new guy wasn't the one who made the mistake!

A couple years later (pretty recently), that dude shows back up at our place as an auditor (I'm in the biotech industry, and we have audits from our customers on a regular basis). He was now going to spend a day auditing the New Boss who had fired him for something that we all (the rank and file scientists) saw as pretty petty. Anyway he performed the audit and got way up her a*s on even the most minute details, and the audit went so bad that his company eventually started buying product from a different company.

So, her callousness at something minor (at least in our eyes) a few years back ended up costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars a few years down the road.

Image credits: LastLivingSouls

#12

Broke the copier with his butt.

Image credits: Mg42er

#13

She heated her food inside aluminum foil in the microwave.

The sparks of light and smell didn't phase her, she considered this normal. She was a super pretty, middle-aged woman.

Image credits: CommentatorPrime

#14

Accidentally shipped a box of iPods instead of "1" iPod, yeah the customer "lost" the rest somehow.

#15

A guy went to training to be a bank teller. They learned how to open up family trusts. The trainer had them out Michael Jordan as an example for the beneficiary.

It wasn't until 6 months later after a customer noticed that he had entered Michael Jordan as one of the beneficiaries for every trust he opened...

Image credits: elmatador12

#16

Teacher here. She showed a movie of Othello without previewing it. It was basically soft-core p*rn. Because she had promised the kids a movie and didn't have other plans, she kept showing it through the rest of the day. Ended up being investigated by the ethics committee. They let her finish out the year since it was only a few weeks away and then did not renew her contract.

#17

They told a boat the wrong height of the bridge. The top of the boat went away...

Image credits: whatever-silly

#18

I used to work as a service station attendant and there was a new guy at work who fell asleep at the counter. A larger woman (customer) stood at the counter and rapped on the counter. He got startled awake, and exclaimed, "You fatty woman scared me!!" Needless to say, she complained big time to the boss...

Image credits: tributetonothing

#19

On my first day, I backed my boss's customized pickup truck into a fencepost.

Image credits: dairydog91

#20

He couldn't find the opening of a garbage bag so he used some scissors to make his own.

What a surprise that was when I pulled out the bag and the contents stayed in the container while the bag was in my hands.

Image credits: Tostificer

#21

Putting salt in the cinnamon sugar.

Normally cinnamon and sugar is mixed together to make cinnamon sugar which goes in apple scrolls and coffee scrolls and on cinnamon donuts. Anyway this silly human mixed salt and cinnamon together. It all got put out the front and people were buying it and coming back very angry!

Or the time the apprentice wasn't careful when topping the cheese rolls and bacon got put on one, a Muslim brought it and was very upset (understandably) he started yelling at my apprentice calling her a filthy pig she said "at least I didn't eat some filthy pig like you did" needless to say she didn't last very long.

There are people saying negative stuff about Muslims, my problem was that he was a jerk not a Muslim.

Image credits: anon

#22

I used to work for Geek Squad. A new guy got confused and reformatted the wrong computer. Customer was understandably pissed. The store ended up having to pay a couple thousand dollars to have his data retrieved by a professional data recovery service.

Image credits: anon

#23

Didn't check the aircraft type before assigning a speed. Told an F-16 to "maintain best forward speed" which caused a sonic boom over a major metropolitan area.

#24

I hooked up a nuclear instrument wrong when I was in the Navy. A hundred thousand dollars down the drain.

Image credits: anon

#25

Well, firstly they were late on the first day.

Following that, after about an hour, then they asked how to **open** the program they said they were proficient in operating, which was required for their job...

#26

At my old job. This was called the Perfect Storm. I worked in a call center for an oil field. The foreman would call in oil. We'd type in the order number, create an order for the oil to be picked up by our trucks, and send if off to dispatch. The poor call center girl got the number off by 1 digit. So instead of picking up oil in the eastern part of our state, they picked it up in the western part of our state. Now usually this wouldn't be a major issue, but this particular time, the oil that was supposed to be picked up was h2s. H2s oil is extremely poisonous. The foreman, knowing he'd done his job, left for the weekend. The h2s oil kept pumping, filled up to max, and spilled over the edge and onto the ground. This is where it gets expensive. The EPA has to come out and assess. We are fined for that of course. There also happens to be a farmer who lives right next to the pump. His soil is tainted for the next 7 years. Not only do we have to pay fines, we have to pay this farmer for his crops that won't happen now. $15 million+ mistake. Because one digit was off.

Image credits: jenna810

#27

Someone mopped the floor with truffle oil instead of floor cleaner and bleach...needless to say they didn't last much longer.

Image credits: Handheldchimp

#28

A nurse at my work had just graduated from nursing school less than a month before, and started brand new career. She got rooms 247 and 245 confused. One lady got a really small dose of her usual pain medication-fine, whatever. The guy in the next room for a dose 10 TIMES what he was supposed to.

Image credits: Petaline

#29

Dropped another employee from the top of a climbing wall as they were being taught how to belay causing them to break their back. Same year, another girl hitched a horse incorrectly her first week on the job; the horse got spooked, reared back and with her hand still holding the hitch, her finger got cinched in the hitch she tied and she lost a finger. She came a few months later and worked the front desk instead.

Image credits: cstruiks

#30

Someone I know (couldn't have been me) worked in retail, and accidentally put their register into "training mode" where it acts normal, but when you tender a transaction, no-one's card actually gets charged. Tendered about 6 or 7 transactions like this. It cost thousands, and there were literally no repercussions. Except bosses told him not to do it again.

Image credits: PURPLEMENTALITYFACE

#31

I cost the company I worked for $22,000 in time lost and damages. I was a press operator at a stamping factory that made essentially the roll cage for Hondas. Blank (flat) sheets of metal were fed through dyes that formed the sheets. Fingers that pick up the sheets have sensors on them in case the blank isn't picked up. I was still new at three weeks in, working through a temp service. I was only trained for three days to run the press. At the point of the f**k up we were very behind schedule working six days a week 12 hours a day and stress levels were really high. The sensors went off. Press stopped. I checked everything and to my knowledge everything was fine. I started it back up. The press ran four rotations and my stackers stopped the press, showed me a double blanked part. Oh f**k! I go to check the dyes and my heart sinks. Three dyes were cracked in multiple places. Dye maintenance came and said I f****d up good. Few days later I learned I cost the company $22,000. Wasn't fired because it wasn't my fault. One of the sensors was faulty luckily for me. I should've seen the double blank. I quit a few weeks later because I never received proper training and hated that I couldn't run it right causing low number resulting in overtime for everybody.

#32

The new guy at my work ran a plate of regular pasta to a woman that had Celiac's disease, and had ordered it gluten free. She ate a decent amount of the pasta before her server saw what she was eating and snatched it off the table. The woman was understandably upset, and after talking to the manager for about 20 minutes her stomach had swollen like two times it's normal size

Dude wasn't fired even though we go through an extensive two week training before being put on the floor on our own. He was later fired for falling asleep in the middle of taking an order at table.

Image credits: ferretsathogwarts

#33

One of the things the nightshift has to do is shred all the papers in the shredboxes. The new girl shredded everything in our bosses inbox. To be fair it wasn't marked at all and the inboxes look just like the shred boxes.

Image credits: AlexThe44

#34

We had a 17 year old kid come in to do some work experience at our engineering firm, that week we also had a relatively new starter come into a our team from another office hoping to move to the city.

So our new starter asked the 17 year old kid to do some photocopying prep for an important meeting he had that afternoon and desperately need some drawings. The poor kid wasn't told what to do and ended up breaking the machine to the point we needed a call out to fix it, new guy lost his s**t and started swearing at the poor kid calling him a useless piece of s**t, everyone could hear across the office from the copy room. Our director overheard and came to investigate, it was the directors son on placement. The new uh disappeared pretty quickly.

#35

Drilled through a wall into a gas meter. House evacuated.

Image credits: anon

#36

A new girl at my job told everyone about how she doesn't believe in the moon...as in she thinks the moon is a huge picture attached to a satellite put there by the government. Needless to say everyone always makes fun of her...

#37

I am a dispatcher. When I was new I took a call for a cat in a tree. My boss said "ask them if they've ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree."

Apparently she was being sarcastic..

#38

On a Friday (Christmas eve) probably 15 years ago, all of us employees were off because it was a holiday. New accounting lady (first time entering direct deposit payroll) entered info incorrectly. Payday comes, and everyone in the whole company had their paycheck WITHDRAWN from their account instead of deposited. Late morning and people are out Christmas shopping, and cards are being declined, and peoples accounts are all jacked up. My auto insurance bounced. Luckily my shopping was already done. The owner of the company called each employee (20 or so people) and offered to give us cash to get us through until Monday if we needed it. They ended up paying each employees NSF or any other fees. Accounting lady cried nonstop from that Friday through that Monday when she could fix everyone's account. My bank said it was actually some sort of illegal activity by the Employer, and I could make a Police report, but we were all close and I didn't want to go there.

#39

I work in IT. We had a guy around September of last year who vehemently refused to look anything up. He was a stubborn older guy who thought he knew it all.

The CEO of one of our clients had an iMac in his office that wouldn't boot up at all. The new guy was sent in, and immediately declared it FUBAR. The guy trusted his judgement, and bought a whole new iMac. I don't remember the issue, but it was a 20 minute fix in safe mode when he brought the iMac back to our office. His excuse was "I didn't think Macs could do that." We lost that client, and Dave got fired.

#40

A month into my new job, I gave the GM's personal number to a customer. His cell phone number. Right after I did it, I had a panic attack. The customer had bullied me for it, leaning over my desk and threatening me while his wife distracted other customers so they wouldn't see this 40-something man intimidating a 20-something receptionist. He did call the GM's phone; I got lucky because he bragged about how he had gotten the number from me. The GM flipped his s**t and told the guy never to come back. He sat down with me for my side of the story later that week and told me what to do if something similar occurred. I'm still here 4-5 years later, but that will always stick with me. Thank god for my coworkers. One of the financial planners actually found the customer's number and reamed him out for his behavior, she was amazing.

But yeah, don't give out the GM's cell phone number.

#41

From the SO:

Guy started at 8am. Went to HR to complete some paperwork and spent most of his time trying to stare down the HR manager's blouse. Two hours later he told one of the executive secretaries that "they should have a wet tshirt contest at work, because they'd win". Needless to say he was out of there by noon.

#42

Manager told the new guy to "drop a bag of mozz sticks in the fryer for me" he acted a little confused, then said "uh okay.." And dropped the whole bag, unopened, into the fryer.

#43

He sent his boss an email with a recipe so she could lose weight.

#44

This new employee parked in the CEO's reserved parking spot, thinking he was away - and he was not. He was severely reprimanded, but still employed there, thankfully.

#45

At the night shift at a small mental hospital, new guy wants to watch movies at the nurse's stations computers but can't under the hospital's OS. So he decides to try to install linux. Fails and computer wont boot to anything. Doesn't tell anyone.

He didn't get fired, but wasn't allowed to go into a room where there was a computer, which was anywhere but a hallway. So he had to work night shifts completely in the hallways.

#46

He did a tire change, and put the tires back on, but only tightened the lugnuts a few times by hand loosely (they're then supposed to be secured with a torque to whatever setting). But he forgot to do that, so the customer is driving down the highway when they finally come loose and the tires just fly off... Yeah... Yeeeaaahhhh......

Image credits: Aza_kitten

#47

Worked in a salon, we had one girl fill up a big sink with detergent and proceed to wash up our colour bowls with the coffee cups. We ended up throwing away the coffee cups because we didn't want to accidentally poison a client. And before anyone asks- we had made it very clear to her that there were seperate sinks for each and to not mix them up.
Edit: the problem wasn't the detergent, which was a standard dishwashing detergent. The problem was the colour bowls. Serving up coffee to people with potential traces of ammonia and hydrogen peroxide and various other chemicals is a BAD idea.
Edit 2: it wasn't my call to throw away the cups- our boss said it had to be done so be it.

#48

A girl took a break in the middle of a lunch rush and started making out with her boyfriend in the dining area in her uniform.

#49

Hope this doesn't get buried.

A few months back, a new driver was hired and thought they knew it all. How to get to places, all the back roads, i dont need a map, yada yada...

Well one day, after the heavy rains in Nevada that flooded almost all of Vegas, a lot of traffic built up on the I15 south heading back to Los Angeles causing a delay of 3 to 4 hours. This is where his mental "Google Maps" comes in. He ends up taking the old road, completely ignores us warning him that the road no longer exists and was, literally, washed away. About an hour later, I'm sent to the state line in an empty bus. This idiot ended up going completely off road and got stuck in a 4 foot ditch and needed about 3 massive tow truck cranes to pull the coach out.

Source: I was the "rescue" bus

TL;DR: New idiot driver doesn't heed warning and drives bus into a ditch.

#50

He labeled a medication thorazine instead of hydrochlorothiazide. The patient died and the hospital was sued. This was 3 years ago and the litigation is still ongoing.

#51

I was working at an electronics manufacturing company. They put components in circuit boards. One of the steps in the process was running the completed boards through a router to cut them out of a panel (many boards would come with multiples in panels to make building them easier and faster, then we cut them out at the end of the process).

A new guy had been on the job 3 or 4 days and I was training him to run the router. I set it up for him, we ran a few panels and inspected them. Everything was fine so he was left on his own. Shortly after this the cutting bit broke and instead of asking for help to put a new one in he just put one in on his own and called it good. The problem was he put the wrong bit in. So now as he cut he cut the edge off of one of the components and he didn't realize it until he had all 500+ boards cut.

They had to get new components then removed each one by hand and solder a new one in place by hand. It took many hours of labor and the part was expensive It was a very expensive mistake.

He was let go the next day.

*So this blew up overnight. Here is some info for those who have posted. First, I was not in charge of this guy. I was told to set the machine up and show him how to run it (which was simple you just load the board, push the button and when it is done remove the board) then my boss sent me elsewhere to work on something else. The boss was 10 feet from where this guy was and he never asked for help nor did my boss ever check on him.

Second, it only took about an hour to cut all these boards so the damage happened quickly.

Third, the guy had no experience on this machine at all. He had never run it and knew nothing about how to change bits etc. He just decided to do it in order to show he could solve problems.

Last, I felt very bad when they fired him because I felt like he was trying to do the right thing and it backfired on him.

#52

Night attendant on his very first night on the job helped a paranoid schizophrenic completely dismantle the air conditioner unit because he had "found a hidden video camera recording him but accidentally pushed it further in to the unit when investigating". The man was fully aware that the client was an actively delusional paranoid schizophrenic who was being transitioned to 24 hour observation because of refusing his meds and yet he somehow fully accepted at face value that there was a hidden camera in the A/C.

#53

First day working with a new construction crew, I was to meet my new supervisor at the local McDonalds to follow him out to the construction site. I arrived to find they'd hired two new guys, me and someone else. The boss pulls up in his truck and tells us both to follow him. Me and the other guy, each in our own vehicles, follow the boss through the parking lot to where we turn out onto the main road. Boss turns left. I turn left. New guy turns right and drives off the wrong way! We never saw or heard from him again. Cell phones don't work out in the mountains where we were, so you gotta meet people in person. No telling why that guy turned the wrong way, but sometimes I still wonder about that guy... Such a strange way to start your first day at a new job. Guess he didn't need the money as bad as me. :) Turns out to be the best construction crew I've ever been on. That guy has no idea what he missed.

#54

IT guy came into our office, to configure a Macbook.

He wasn't a Mac Specialist. He also didn't know how DropBox worked.

He deleted the Dropbox folders from this Mac. And from all the other computers linked to it.

He deleted ALL our agency's files...several gigs of them.

We were nervous for a couple of hours, clients were nervous. Our boss called his boss...

Another time, the same IT guy was waiting for an email confirmation about the importance of files on a computer.

Didn't receive the email. Assumed that the files weren't important.

Deleted a month's worth of web design without backing up.

I'm amazed this guy is still working at that company.

#55

I'm a valet, this kid I worked with hit one of the support pillars in the garage with the side of a car, scraped the entire side, flattened the fender, and ripped the tire apart. This was during an overnight shift, and instead of notifying someone, he just parked it in the garage and went about his business.

He actually ended up getting fired for going up to a guests room to fool around while on the clock, but yeah he f****d that car up real good. Something like 20k in damages to a brand new Jeep Compass.

#56

When I worked at a retirement plan call center during the global recession, we had some new dumbass kid on his first solo day on the phones making outrageous promises to every caller, saying they were either getting their money back or getting a guaranteed profit. On investments in the open market.

What? Not only can you not do that, it's *illegal* to promise investors a specific rate of return on a variable investment.

Worst part was customers called him on it and said that didn't sound right, and his response was "I'm on a recorded line, everything I say *has* to happen!"

He was let go fairly quick.

For the record, as rainbow and butterflies as this guy sounds, that's not the way it is and if someone tries to tell you that they're taking you for a ride 90% of the time.

The other 10% are idiots like this

#57

This guy at my office brought his pet goldfish to work, and one of the brokers apparently ate it after a disagreement they had with the intern,ever since my HR director has banned pets for a " more productive " atmosphere

#58

The CEO decided to "call the bluff" of a client, it wasn't a bluff, they took their $15 million of business and walked away. That was about 65%-70% of the company's overall business. Idiot.

#59

I worked at an injection molding plant. Guy was changing a mold out and forgot step 2.... unclamp the mold from the machine. He took the crane up, heard a massive crash and realized he pulled two of the presses anchors out of the ground.

#60

New girl where I work (retail) started "free-loading" within 2 months of being there- she hadn't even passed the three month probation yet.

In case anyone doesn't know, free-loading is putting items in a customer's bag and intentionally not scanning them so they get them for free. Apparently she started doing it for family, then for friends and then acquaintances, obviously thinking we couldn't track it. Sure turned around quick when the cops escorted her out one day…

#61

One new girl at my work was (as a joke) told to laminate a cookie. She did.

Image credits: anon

#62

Security guard decided to play quick draw in the mirrored elevator. Shot a hole right through the door. He handed his gun over to the night desk operator and just sat there deaf until his shift ended.

#63

They dropped a radioactive source while drilling an oil well.

That area is now sealed for the next 100 years.

Image credits: aygoman

#64

He dropped a 15 ton mold from a crane. Damn thing probably fell twenty feet. He was specifically told not to lift ANYTHING with the crane and he decided to do so anyway. Crane was rated to ten tons and one of the cables broke. Put a big a*s crater in the concrete floor and cost the company about $175,000 dollars for the new mold, and probably another big chunk of change to have the floor repaired, and new cables and an overhaul for the crane. Caused the facility we provided the part for to be shut down for about 18 hours at a cost of $1,000 per minute. Total cost to un-f**k the situation was a little more than a million bucks. The Asians I worked for pretty much ran at him with a drug test. He failed it. The last time I saw him was about a week after it happened, sitting in front of his house, crying. True story.

#65

Dropped my first meal as a waiter right in front of them.

#66

I was training a new employee recently when he told me that he'd be 4 hours late for his training the following day as he had training for another job.

#67

This was someone in the same training group that i started the job with. I cruised through the training, and in my spare time wrote a quick batch file to open up the most used programs at the start of the day, then feeling nice i sent this out to the people in my training group.

This particular guy somehow managed to open up hundreds of instances of each program and link in the batch file, because he claimed he didn't know where it was all going (Straight to the taskbar) and kept running the batch file over and over and over.

He ended up sitting at his computer doing nothing but running my batch file repeatedly for two hours, not taking any calls, until one of the supervisors went over to check on him.

This is a tech support job, and yes, he is no longer here.

#68

Wanted to charge his iPhone, so he plugged it into a computer that was secured and not meant to have ANYTHING connected to it, ever.

Mistake on so many levels. Security took his phone and kept it for six months while it was forensically examined. During this entire time he kept paying the bill for a phone he didn't actually have.

Eventually it was returned to him and he was upset that all of the data on the phone had been wiped.

#69

He stabbed me in the hand with a knife.

Image credits: dotar

#70

Worked doing audio video installations. We were in a school system, and we asked new guy to pull a wire from the first to the fifth floor thru a cable chase. Typically this involved pushing a fish tape or other semi-rigid wand thru the path, attaching the new cable, and then pulling the wand out with new cables following. Fish tapes are usually bright plastic, pink or orange. That detail comes back later.

So new guy gets his instruction and proceeded to the first floor closet to prep for the pull. He sees the fish tape is already there, but it's stuck. He pulls on it, can't free it up, decides to just cut it and re tape the end. He attaches the new wires, heads up to the fifth floor to pull up the fish tape.

He gets there and can't find the fish tape. Typically it's very obvious, it's a disk about 20" across that the tape spools onto. Can't miss them. But it's not there. Our intrepid installer checks the fifth floor and the third floor closets, but no fish tape. On the second floor, he finds the tape in the wall but no spool. And it's here he notices the tape is being run down a different cable path... Something's odd here.

Then our site lead walks in, carrying the fish tape.

You know what else is bright plastic orange and in walls? Fiber. The guy cut the district's data backbone fiber to use it as a pull string.

#71

I ended up back-ending my boss' Ford F-150 with the Forklift (really, it was just the bumper). I had to pay $500 via check deductions or get fired. yup... I hate that Job

#72

Gave a client the wrong medication....twice.

#73

I worked at a beach park in college. We had a new hire come midway through a work schedule, so the supervisor had him doing odd jobs on the "when we have time" list. New hires were provisional, and the guy was trying to make a career out of it, so he did everything super thoroughly and fast.

He'd eaten up about 1/3 of the list before the supervisor sent him to the dunes. There was a patch of dune we had that was being held together mostly by poison ivy - not ideal, but you don't have a lot of options with dunes, so it had to be left to do its thing. Problem was, it was starting to crowd the boardwalk we had going through to the beach. If left alone, we'd start getting visitors with rashes; no bueno. So the super sent him there with gloves, shears, and a bucket, asking him to make sure the boardwalk was clear of foliage.

The new guy comes back to the station 15 minutes later. You see, he was so gung-ho he decided he didn't need gloves or shears to do the job and laid into the mostly-poison-ivy with his bare hands. By the time he'd made it back to the station, it looked like he had Hulk Hands in an angry red. The super rushed him to the emergency room where they gave him a shot and mummified him to the elbows.

His first job the day he came back to work was to learn to identify poison ivy.

#74

Left a child unattended for about 4 hours. It's a HUGE no no in my line of work. Also lands you with criminal charges.

#75

The other lab technician kept trying to bring down the pH using sodium hydroxide.

#76

Call center. We were all basically new as the place had opened within the past 6 months. He'd just started. Being such a new place, pretty much everyone knew everyone by name. It wasn't difficult. there were, maybe, 100 of us.

So one day, new guy, me, and a few others were outside in the smoke area talking. For whatever reason, guy starts talking about why he was fired from his last job. Credit card/SS# theft. We were all glancing at him like he was the world's biggest idiot. And glancing over at the call center manager and his assistant, who were suddenly very tuned into our conversation. We all went inside. New guy stayed outside. Management also came inside.

Within the hour, he was gone. He never made it back to the phones.

#77

My dad works in a plant making Diesel engines. A huge iron block is picked up by chains, brought to the next station, and brought down.

My Dad was at the "next" station. A lady, (who, my apologies, was not new to the job) slipped the chains on the block but neglected to properly bolt it on. Up it goes. Over my father's head.

And then down it goes.

The minute the crank went up, she began to scream that it wasn't attached. My dad, as he likes to put it "reached back to the speed I had in 1979" and hustled out of the way, literally diving on a concrete floor to become clear of the massive iron engine block. It smashed to the ground, he escaped unscathed except for a hefty bruise on the shoulder from his impromptu dive.

She was escorted off the floor, screaming "I could have killed him!" and was put on a 2 week suspension, and I think retrained.

#78

I used to work as an assistant on night trains all over Europe. Fun student job, lots of tips.

We were supposed to try and sell breakfasts to our customers for a small commission. No one bothered about the commission, so not many were actually sold. We did get 2 breakfasts for ourselves though,which we weren't supposed to sell of course. Generally, what happened was that you would try to sell your own breakfasts for the full price and grab some cheap food in a railway buffet.

I recall a newbie on the job who was quick to learn and cleverly sold his breakfasts on his first ever trip. When we arrived back in Brussels, where we were based, one of the manager guys of the firm was greeting us and asked about the sales. 'Sold some of those breakfasts?' he asked. Said the new kid: just my two personal ones, man.

Never saw him again on of my shifts.

#79

Was a bus driver at a university. Someone ran over a professor.

#80

I've mentioned this before, when I was a stripper a fellow stripper new to the club sh*rted in a lap dance, apparently due to some medication she was taking. I think it was a pretty big mistake.