Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
40 Times People Witnessed Their Incompetent Coworkers Make Such Dumb Mistakes, They Could Never Forget Them
Blunders are a part of being human. Whether it's walking into a glass door or sending an email to the wrong person, we usually have multiple ones every day. But every now and then, we manage to mess up so badly, we surprise even ourselves and everyone around us.
A few days ago, Reddit user xk543x made a post on the platform, asking other people, "What's the dumbest mistake you've seen an incompetent co-worker make?" And the replies have flooded its comment section. So we decided to compile the best (or worst?) ones and, honestly, I don't know if I'm impressed or disappointed by these folks.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
At a Petco all the Guinea pigs were in a big plexi-glass enclosure with a center divider. Boys on one side and girls on the other. An employee decided that all the long haired Guinea pigs should be on one side and short haired on the other. It took forever to sort them out and all the females were pregnant.
Cactus McCoy 2 years ago
AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Also go to your local shelter first if you decide de adopt pets.
Bored Panda managed to get in touch with xk543x and they agreed to tell us about the origins of the post. "I was just chilling and drawing in my sketch pad when I came up with the idea to ask Redditors this question," they explained.
xk543x thinks hiccups at work are unavoidable and most are not a big deal but if you manage to make others doubt your competence, then it's a problem.
At the end of the day, they believe everything depends on what the employer is paying their employee. "Don't expect someone to dedicate their life to a job who would be reviewing applications tomorrow if you died today."
RELATED:
#2
I was working in an open plan office that had a small kitchen area at one end, microwave, kettle, sink, toaster and water cooler.
We saw one of the managers fiddling with the toaster for a while, looked like she was trying to clean it. It never occurred to her to remove the crumb tray, she was poking around inside it with a knife while it was still plugged into the wall. People just sat back and watched, wondering how long before she got zapped.
Then she turns on the tap and lifts the toaster towards the sink. Someone stepped in then to stop her.
You might just write this off as someone being a bit dim but she was the Health & Safety Officer for the building.
AspieGirl88 2 years ago
Health & safety officer?? Please tell me that’s a joke. I’d never trust H&S ever again after this! 😣
#3
Nearly leaving a child behind on a field trip. We took a large group of 4 and 5 year-old children to visit a farm/petting zoo/pumpkin patch. We had three vehicles. I was in charge of my own group, but I noticed one of the other teachers was being very lax in her supervision for most of the trip.
When it was time to leave, I loaded my children on the bus (with some other adults) and did a head-count/attendance check. Before getting on my bus, I noticed that the other teacher had climbed onto her bus and sat down BEFORE the children boarded. She walked on first and had the kids follow her. I almost let it go, but gut instinct told me she wasn't counting her students. Once they were all boarded, I walked back and climbed on her bus. She seemed irritated when she realized I was checking on her... I was not a supervisor or anything, just a fellow teacher, so she didn't answer to me in any way. She said something like, "We're all good, let's go!" I knew how many were in each group, so without answering her, I did a quick count. Sure enough, we were missing one. I ended up leaving the bus and going to find the kid myself... he was still on the playground with children from another school.
When we got back to the bus, the other teacher blamed the kid! She said he "wandered off." Really, she is the one who gathered the group and left the play area, meaning she is the one who "wandered off." She was pissed when I went to the administration about the incident.
AspieGirl88 2 years ago
She had the nerve to be p*ssed when you went to admin?? It’s a teacher’s job to supervise ALL the students in his/her care & they can’t lay blame on the young child for getting split from the group, as they don’t know any better. Teachers DO, though & must take responsibility. She should just be lucky the mother of that child doesn’t try to sue for negligence, as a lot of parents won’t tolerate that. 🤨🤷♀️
However, incompetence might not be entirely the workers' fault. Many of them want to be good at what they do but often do not get the opportunity to improve. 2018 research from Totaljobs has revealed that 2 in 3 UK workers have changed jobs due to a lack of learning and development opportunities.
"Importantly, four in five (81%) employers agree that their staff perform better after training, highlighting the positive impact training has on both businesses and employees, who benefit from refreshing existing skills and learning new ones," the researchers wrote. "Besides the positive impact on an individual’s career, businesses as a whole are reaping the rewards, with nearly 90% of employers stating that upskilling an individual team member also improves their wider team’s output."
#4
Annual sales meeting.
Brand new guy is seated next to the CEO. He proceeds to put his head down and fall asleep on the table. During the meeting.
They woke him up at lunch to fire him.
Nor 2 years ago
Wait, I have so many questions to this! Does he suffer from something or was he just tired?
Iifa A. 2 years ago
Might be a habit from school. Instead of interrupting class you put your head down and be quiet. In Ireland in my experience this was standard to deal with difficult students or students having a hard time. Teachers would tell you to put your head down. After a decade I have seen a lot of people doing it in a working environment, in cubicles, meetings even in virtual meetings. Or maybe he just was so disrespectful and not understanding right place and time concept that he just thought Hey I'm bored, I better let everyone know by putting my head down... It's interesting how people have different understanding of what is professional behaviour and what applies to them.
Load More Replies...
Jayne Kyra 2 years ago
Also OP´s comment: "Guys come in from all over the country the night before the sales meeting. Everyone hangs out at the hotel bar and drinks too much. He was just hungover...and stupid."
Poultry Geist 2 years ago
If I was a guy this would be about me ! I always get so tired when someone starts talking about something I’m not interested in ! My eyelids get heavy and my eyes start watering ! Also happens after I eat , when I 1st wake up, it happens a lot actually
Andy Frobig 2 years ago
I took one college class where most of what I remember from the lectures is "Wake up, Andy." In my defense, I was working graveyard shift at the time.
Load More Replies...
Colt Seavers 2 years ago
Imagine thinking your annual sales meeting is so important it warrants firing a dude
Notyomama 2 years ago
Sleeping during working hours (while not on break) is a huge NO NO in the US. Especially not during a once a year meeting. The guy was right next to to the CEO. Of course he got fired.
Load More Replies...
Keerthi Vardhan 2 years ago
I believe he might be studying from a condition. There could be a very valid reason behind it.
Notyomama 2 years ago
I work with people that are narcoleptic and or have sleep apnea. That is not how that works. They don't lay their head down on the table.
Load More Replies... #5
Had a coworker land a plane on the edge of the runway. Like the starting edge. Cracked a landing gear leg and bent a turbine blade in one engine. Then the scatter brained old moron doesn’t log it or tell anyone. Just parks it and walks away. The next crew doesn’t notice the damage, because it’s really not easily detectable. So they go flying and get a bunch of weird s**t going on with the port engine. When they turn back, the f*****g gear wouldn’t lock down. Fortunately they were able to get on the ground and stopped without making themselves or anyone on board dead.
All we did was fire him. No reports to our regulator, no criminal complaint about his conduct. In hindsight I should have made those complaints myself rather than leaving it to our management.
Peppy Piplup 2 years ago (edited)
What. The. F**K. Do you know how many plane crashes are caused by people not telling anyone that the plane's damaged?! This guy could have killed hundreds of people!
#6
Working in pharmacy, a pharmacist gave a customer a flu shot and threw the used syringe in the container with the new syringes instead of the container to dispose them. Another pharmacist went to grab a new syringe later on and ended up getting stabbed with the used syringe. Caused a total s**t storm.
"In fact, training is so important to the workforce that 41% of people say they have secured a new job as a direct result of training, which explains why almost half of the workers are paying for their own professional training," the researchers continued.
Highlighting this trend, over two-thirds (67%) of employees at the time believed training to be more important than a few years before the survey.
#7
Planted a tree, F*****G UPSIDE DOWN.
#8
Removing the plastic wrapping from a pallet of 5 gallon cans of (highly flammable) acetone. He didn’t have a box cutter so he proceeded to melt it with a lighter
Cactus McCoy 2 years ago
He won't even notice the difference between workplace accident and idiot hell.
However, if you want to merely appear as if you're knowledgeable and capable, there are tricks to form such an impression.
For example, speak quickly. In one study, Brigham Young University researchers had 28 university students listen to recordings of six people whose voices had been manipulated to sound slower or faster than normal.
The student volunteers rated the speakers most competent when their voices had been sped up and least competent when their voices had been slowed down.
#9
Took the wrong coffin to a funeral. Someone else had to drive to the cemetery with the correct deceased on board, and thankfully they made it before the viewing.
AspieGirl88 2 years ago
I’ve heard of this happening before, except they realised too late. The wrong coffin was buried in the wrong plot & a service had already happened (they had to dig it up again). The family were of course devastated that they’d have to go through it all again, because they’d been mourning someone else & not the loved one they thought they were laying to rest. Also, the family of the other person were upset that their loved one was buried in someone else’s plot, even if it was just a little while. Hard to believe such mistakes can happen & I can’t help wondering if there were mistakes made that weren’t even corrected. 😥
#10
I used to work for a landscaping company and over the course of a summer I witnessed one of my co-workers accidentally set 3 different things on fire (a hedge trimmer, a truck, and himself)
Also, if you're a woman, consider wearing makeup. Research suggests that wearing makeup can make women seem more competent.
In 2011, Nancy Etcoff at Harvard University led a study in which more than 250 adults looked at photographs of 25 women with different types of makeup. One-quarter of them wore no makeup, one quarter was made to look "natural" (some makeup), one quarter was made to look "professional" (a bit more makeup than the "natural" group), and one quarter was made to look "glamorous" (the most makeup).
Interestingly, the respondents rated the "glamorous" women the most competent and the barefaced women the least competent.
#11
Tried to retrieve his lighter from a deep fat fryer with his hands. boy was that fun to clean up.
#12
I worked as a Radiation Protection Tech at a power plant that was re-fueling. My job was to sit outside of a contaminated area and if anyone wanted to take something out of the area (tools, etc.) I had to make sure it didn't have any radioactive particles on it. To do this you wipe the tool with something like a tissue and then hold the tissue up to a machine called a frisker. If the needle on the frisker goes above a threshold then the tool has to be cleaned or left in the area. One day I come back to relieve a guy who had been sitting outside the area for 2 hour. He tells me there's been no issues and everything has cleared. I look at the frisker, lean over and turn the machine on.
Research from Harvard Business School suggests that asking for advice can also make you seem more competent.
In one experiment, 170 university students worked on a series of computer tasks and were told they'd be matched with a partner who would complete the same tasks. (The partner was actually a computer simulation.) When they'd finished the tasks, the "partner" either said, "I hope it went well" or "I hope it went well. Do you have any advice?"
Students who'd been asked for advice found their "partner" more competent than those who hadn't.
(The researchers thought that when you ask for advice, you're validating the person's intelligence and experience, so they feel good about you in turn.)
Of course, you could just work on your skills. But who has time for that, right???
#13
Not a mistake necessarily, but I once witnessed our chief accounting officer (and our only accountant; it was a small company) type in values into two Excel cells, pull out a calculator, add the two numbers together in the calculator, and then type the answer in a third cell. She had apparently been doing this for years, with sheets consisting of thousands of rows. I explained how to use formulas and copy them but she apparently forgot because I saw her doing the same thing again months later.
#14
New temp-to-hire admin, she was supposed to order lunch for a big meeting. They told her where to order from and how many omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans. She showed me the order she was going to place, and I corrected her, pointing out she didn't have any vegan food or enough vegetarian. She told me I was wrong and ordered anyway, even with me screeching at her not to do it and explaining what was wrong.
Omnivores got beef.
Vegetarians got chicken. ("It's not meat.")
Vegans got salads with egg and cheese. ("But it has vegetables.")
...she was not hired on full time
Peppy Piplup 2 years ago
So in summary, the people who can eat both only got meat and no vegetables (not a balanced diet), the vegetarians got nothing because they don't eat meat (because she thought that chicken wasn't meat for some reason????) and the vegans got salad... covered in a thing they can't eat? Wow, everyone loses. How did she mess that up so badly?!
#15
My wife worked at a gas station and found out her coworker, who had been there for years, had been refilling the napkin dispenser by cramming them one at a time through the front slot. She walked up and unfastened the back and apparently his jaw hit the floor. He had never considered that there might be a better way to do this.
#16
I hired a new employee on Friday and gave him directions to the job site for Monday morning. He got there early and helped thieves load all of the building material on their truck and take off. The webcam showed him stopping traffic so they could leave.
#17
A grabbed the arm of an intern once, right as he was about to grab a 00 gage (the big wires that feed electricity the whole building) bare handed to move it out of the way to show us a problem behind. It was hot.
He claimed it was fine cause he was only gonna touch one wire at a time. The lead electrician "respectfully" requested said intern be removed from his sight before turning himself into carbon and paperwork. I agreed with this sentiment and had intern watching OSHA videos for almost 3 days straight as punishment.
#18
I worked at a company with a shared inbox. One guy sent all of his emails with a distinct font and color. He was super untrustworthy and sucked at the job.
One day he sent an email to a customer from the shared inbox but put my signature on it, to make it seem like it came from me instead of him. He left the font and color the same as all of his other emails.
He didn’t last long there after that.
#19
The designer, creative director and head of production all missed that there was an eight day week on a calendar. We sent 10 000 copies of a useless calendar to a client. Rightly so, they refused to pay for it.
#20
I worked in a paint shop and every time a new chemical was introduced to the shop, I would ask about the hazards. They would tell me that it is a green chemical; there are no hazards. "It's baby safe" they would say. Once when I entered the shop I saw a guy using a new spray. The side of the bucket indicated that it was dangerously poisonous and highly corrosive. I told him that he should be using a mask and gloves to use that chemical. He said "Don't worry, it's baby safe. They even have a picture of a baby playing in it."
After seeing the image, I yelled at the guy, "This is the baby. He is not playing, he is not swimming, HE'S DYING!"
#21
I worked for a non-profit that hired a guy in fundraising purely “for his rolodex” and they couldn’t care less about any of his job functions as long as he kept bringing more rich people to fundraiser parties. Well when the pandemic hit and we were forced to go remote, it became clear how incompetent he was with technology, and how he’d been coasting for years in the office by sticking to phone calls instead of email, etc. We had our first major online fundraiser coming up and I warned my boss that this dude had no idea how Zoom worked - never muted himself, camera up the nose, treated it like watching a YouTube video. But again, he was the guy inviting all the rich people to the event, so they didn’t want to “lecture him about a computer program” and “hurt his ego”.
Then in our massive 200+ person zoom event, he set his laptop on the bathroom counter and proceeded to take a shirtless, nasty old man dump complete with grunting, splashing, and squelching. It was so loud it drowned out the speaker. They had to end the event early because they had no way to mute him and it kept going for a full two minutes with no sign of stopping. I nearly threw my laptop out a window that night.
Cactus McCoy 2 years ago
If there was no call host on that session who could easily mute his mic, turn off his camera and even remove him easily this company is as incompetent as that employee.
#22
I don't know exactly the problem, but my wife and I had a house built, 3 months after our closing the company that installed the HVAC wanted to do a routine maintenance as part of the warranty. The guy came in and looked at the system setup in the attic and just "oh this is Jerry's work" in a very apologetic voice and scheduled someone to come out and redo 90% of the work before the warranty began.
I don't know what Jerry did, but it was apparently well known in that company to likely need to be redone.
#23
I worked on a golf course during the summer. Area with lots of poison ivy. Two of my coworkers were instructed to weedy a river edge area. If we encounter poison ivy, we either stop what we are doing or go get full suit protection with respirators. These dumba**es were weedwhacking in the thickest poison ivy I had ever seen. No protective suit or glasses or respirator. I roll up and notice what the hell they're doing and point out all the poison ivy everywhere- they were aerosolizing the oil. They both ended up in the hospital on steroid to prevent their death because of the oils they inhaled.
Alex Taylor 2 years ago
It sounds as if the 2 guys didn't know what 'poison ivy' was, and that nobody checked this before letting them loose with their weedwhackers. Having said they - if this was the case, why on earth didn't they ask what it was before doing the job?
#24
A guy was using the overhead crane in a machine shop I worked in. It had two hooks on it, one was raised right to the roof, the other was lowered and beside another guys machine. The guy using the crane was looking at the hook by the roof and mobilized the crane, he was wearing earmuffs and the shop is loud af so when he started almost killing everyone in the line of machines with the other hook he couldn't hear the rest of us screaming. The hook almost threw the first guy into his lathe, hit the next guy's tool board, flipped over to the side he was on almost put him into his lathe, rinse and repeat for the next three machines. When it bounced over the last one it grabbed the A-Frame that held all the bar stock and started lifting 30-40T of steel off the ground someone finally made it to him and slapped the controls out of his hands. That was his last day at that job.
Nimues Child 2 years ago (edited)
When I was teaching, the lights went out at school one day. We soon found out that a tow truck driver hadn't secured his hook, snagged a telephone pole and pulled it down, killing the power. It was by a new car lot and had a transformer on it. Between the pole and the transformer bits, he had destroyed 5 brand new cars. It was his first day on the job...and his last.
#25
Poured sink cleaning solution into the ice cream machine instead of the cream mixture and I had to stop them, they then said "I'm sure it'll be fine, it was only a little."
No that would poison people. I had to clean out the whole machine top to bottom and refill it. I ended up throwing away nearly a whole bucket full of contaminated ice cream mixture.
I would also like to add that the containers didn't look anything alike, the sink stuff came in big plastic jugs with screw tops and the ice cream comes in carbord cartons (like orange juice) that you have to cut open. so I don't know how she could have possibly mixed the two up.
AspieGirl88 2 years ago (edited)
Pour a teaspoonful of bleach into their coffee right in front of them & say “I’m sure it’s fine; it was only a little bit” … perhaps then they’ll realise their error! 🤣
#26
Was making pizza. Guy broke the pizza board(the thing with the handle you make the pizza on and then slide the pizza into the oven) I found the other one and he lost that. So I told him to make pizzas on one of the plastic cutting boards. He put the pizza into the oven on the board and just left it. The board melted No more pizza that day
#27
A few years ago, I was working in IT at a hospital. The following is a genuine account of what occurred:
We had received a call regarding a computer that was not turning on, so I went to one of the offices. This wasn't strange because we got them all the time. To put it mildly, 95 percent of those calls were due to "user mistake," so I was bracing myself for the worst... However, not to this extent.
When I arrive, I confirm that she is correct; the computer will not power on. I examine the plug first. It's affixed to the wall, and it appears to be in good working order in the computer's back office. "So, what were you doing when this computer stopped working?" I inquire. In response, she state
As a result,"Well, I thought it was too hot, so I used the water cooling option."
As a piece of background, this model of computer featured a fan port on the top of the machine that looked like a funnel. She pointed to this fan port when she said "water cooled."
"...There aren't even any water-cooled PCs here." When I returned to my desk with the now sloshing PC, my IT colleagues were bewildered as to why I had pulled the machine without permission... Until I emptied the water into a garbage pail
James016 2 years ago
It may have been salvageable, I used to work for a tour operator and frequently people would spill things on their computers. So we would tell them to remove the battery and put the laptop into a warm dry area such as the hotel's laundry. This would actually work as long as they didn't try to power up the laptop between spilling and this, that is the key thing here. Another time in one of the hotels, they had a freak storm and where the computers were got flooded so the computers got soaked. They put the PCs in car and left them in the sun for a few days (it was a hot country) The computers worked after that.
#28
I knew a guy who was a foreign exchange dealer in London. He made a trade but apparently forgot to press go (or whatever) When he got back from lunch the company had lost £10m. The whole department had to work together all afternoon/evening to make enough to cover his losses so he wouldn't be sacked. A hell of a team building exercise. ;)
#29
I worked in a place notorious for having bad recruiters and hiring bad temps. They had this one guy, on a 3-month lease, and we couldn't get rid of him fast enough, in the summer of 2001.
First, he claimed all these Microsoft certifications, and after a few days, we realized he didn't even know how to use a mouse or how scrollbars worked. So we put him on the worst detail: all he had to do was go to one of 20 popular websites, and use a stopwatch to time how fast he clicked "enter" and how fast it took the web page to load. We were testing some web caching software. Then he had to go on another machine with the software, and do the same thing. He had never used a browser. So we had to teach him how THAT worked. The concept blew his mind, and we wonder how an adult had lived in 2001 who didn't know how a browser worked. We knew he lied about the certifications at this point, but he had 90 days we were stuck with him.
Very quickly, however, he discovered how to find p*rn. And started browsing that instead of testing websites. This was in the days of MSIE 5 or 6, so of course, they became infected with popups and viruses. We'd catch him at it, and he'd deny it every time, and we'd have to complete wipe the desktop and reinstall Windows, only for him to do it again. We caught him doing it with other machines in the lab, too. The guy literally had no impulse control, claiming the whole test lab was infected and just absolute lies that a kid would tell who had no idea how computers worked. Thank god we never caught him jerkin' it, but I feared reviewing the lab security tapes should it have gotten to that.
"You were browsing p*rnography again. We have told you many times, that's against company policy."
"No, I didn't."
"I am literally looking at you browsing p*rn."
"That's not me."
"There's [p*rn site] on your task bar."
"That was always there."
"You have a popup from [lewd site name]."
"That was someone else who was here, earlier."
"Who?"
"You know, that hairy guy. With the beard."
"There is no hairy guy with a beard who works in this lab. You have been the only one here besides me."
"I know I saw him. He browses the p*rn all the time!"
Ugh. Like a mentally deficient 12 year old. I was so glad to get rid of him.
Alex Taylor 2 years ago
Any employment lawyers out there? Quote "We knew he lied about the certifications at this point, but he had 90 days we were stuck with him." Surely the fact that he provably lied about his qualifications would have given the company grounds to sack him immediately?
#30
When I was in the coastguard, there was an incident when a vessel called in what they thought was another vessel in distress, but couldn't be sure and couldn't raise them on VHF.
The watch commander kept refusing to launch the rescue boat until he had 'more details'.
Like, dude, this far North the life expectancy of a person in the water without a survival suit is measured in single digits of minutes. We can get more details when the boat is en route; the exact position of a bunch of floating corpses is of limited value.
After three or four minutes I just said 'f**k it' and launched the boat.
It turned out the suspected casualty's radio was banjaxed, but they were otherwise fine; their boat just had a very low freeboard and looked a bit 'sinky'.
I fully expected to be sh*tcanned for it, but I was not; the old man had a long conversation with the guy about how nobody will ever find fault with sending an asset to a possible false alarm, but failing to send an asset to a real emergency is...well, it's Not Good.
The dude had previous before I joined for shrugging off a red flare report as a hoax. Two people died in that one.
#31
The office we worked in was shut down due to covid and the company went 100% remote. A new senior engineer was hired to work directly with our product team and also manage a team of developers. During our company wide weekly zoom meeting after he was done presenting for the company he turned his camera off but forgot to put him self on mute. 100+ people heard this man playing Fortnite and talking down about the company to someone else in the background among other things. He only lasted a month.
#32
When I was in the Navy, this known dumba** and pathological liar was on armed watch with an M-14 patrolling the topside decks. Literally all you have to do is walk around for 4 hours with a rifle on your shoulder.
This dude came back to the Quarterdeck (main entrance to the ship) WITH NO GUN.
He tried to claim it fell off his shoulder and into the water while tying his shoe. How a rifle would fall off your shoulder, pass through your hands that were tying the shoe, and through all three lifelines (like guard rails) is still a mystery.
My theory is that he was doing drill team stuff - like tossing it spinning in the air - and lost it that way.
#33
I didn't see it happen, but I used to work at a factory making N95 masks, and one night the entire place ground to a halt.
Turns out that an incompetent co-worker running the machine that made the basic form of the mask decided that the best way to clear a jam in the thing was to ignore the sign that said "don't put your hand in this part of the machine," removed the safety cover that was clearly marked with a label that said "no, seriously...do not remove this," and stuck his hand in there.
The machine did to him what Gollum did to Frodo on Mount Doom, and as a result a factory the size of an Ikea shut down for half the shift.
#34
Tried to cool down hot oil (in a chute, all ready to be emptied) with a nice big bucket of water…..I heard “THOMAS NO” only to turn around and see a GEYSER of hot oil shooting towards the ceiling before it hit and splashed down around him. Nobody was hurt some f*****g how
Edit: because it has come up, the chute that the oil was in was on wheels and had a wooden handle, it absolutely didn’t need to be cooled lol
Rose the Cook 2 years ago
After closing, a tightwad employer insisted that rather than changing a vat of dirty oil I throw ice cubes into it while hot. Supposedly this would cause any particles to rise to the top to be skimmed off. I explained why this was a bad idea then told him to do it himself when he refused to listen. Later he called asking me to come back in and clean the mess.
#35
I have a list a mile long of the s**t our completely incompetent project manager did, but the best was insisting that a $3000 load of fertilizer still absolutely had to be delivered as previously scheduled despite the company warning against it as we were expecting heavy rains that day. The entire pile was washed away within a couple of hours.
#36
One of my reports missed a 9 AM meeting and when I asked him why he said “you said the meeting was at 12, not 9!” Of course I was very confused because the meeting invite said 9 and everyone else on the team knew it was at 9. So he sent me a screenshot of his outlook calendar and it turns out he just had all his s**t set to the wrong time zone.
Paul Davis 2 years ago
It seems to me he was still supposed to show up at 12 PM that time zone, which was 9 AM for everyone else.
#37
Wouldn’t say incompetent, but was quite an entrance. A new person joined and on day 1 remote was somehow able to delete the production teams entire Dropbox file directory, which was about 25 TBs of video, design files, production files etc.
Was about 2 tense weeks working with Dropbox to get it back, but yeah that new person was uncomfortable…
#38
Emptying hot fryer oil into a plastic container. Guess how that went
Cactus McCoy 2 years ago
That's a slick idea. With careful execution he might slip right by you noticing.
#39
I worked grocery for twelve years and one day I get an in house page if I could come to the receiving dock (I worked produce) to assist the grocery manager.
We had just got a grocery load in, and the driver hadn’t used a load lock (a bar that goes across the truck if it’s not a full truck) and we had NINE full pallets of product toppled over and broken.
My job was to take pictures on my cell phone of the mess and the grocery manager called up our distribution center to inform them of what happened.
We had to take the keys to the truck away from him as he was fired on the spot and he had to find his own way home. And it was a four hour drive home from our store.
The whole time he was bitching that he wasn’t his fault that they can’t force him to supply his own load lock as he was an independent contracted driver.
He did about 10k worth of damage to product, lost his job, and any future possibilities at driving a big rig for anyone in the state because he didn’t want to buy a piece of equipment that cost $50 or even worse he didn’t ASK our warehouse for one, which they would have HAPPILY loaned him one (he’d be fined if he didn’t return the lock back after his run)
MAtthew Holt 2 years ago
If he's an independent contractor how did the store take the keys to his truck? This sounds like a c**p company that hires people 1099 and pretends they are independent
#40
I worked with a guy who “cut” the grass on the greens of an entire golf course with the mower blade off.
What do you think ?
Justme 2 years ago
I was training a new employee on software that sends medical records with referrals. We walk them through and at the end don’t hit send or it will really send a referral on a training case (patient with “Spontaneous Crustacean Fingers”). She hit send. 150 nursing homes across the state got fake records complete with “wound photos” of a hand with shrimp heads on them.
Horatio Jay 2 years ago (edited)
I worked at a pretty popular local dive bar and grill / music venue in a university town when I was in college. We had some really talented cooks, but the manager hired this guy that I had previously known through friends, who we all considered to be a pompous a*s. On his first shift in the kitchen, my coworker asked him to melt some cheese onto a burger, which we do by putting the burger on a metal spatula after it's cooked, putting a slice of cheese on top, and sticking it in an open-front, super-hot oven called a salamander for a few seconds. Instead, this guy puts a piece of cheese on the spatula, and sticks it directly in the salamander. The dishwasher had to chisel at that thing for about twenty minutes later that night to get all of the blackened cheese off. The guy who did this didn't show up for any more of his shifts. The mistake itself was pretty innocuous, but, because he always talked about how smart he was, we relished the fail.
Seanette Blaylock 2 years ago
Did the rest of the kitchen learn any good new profanity from that poor dishwasher? :)
Load More Replies...
Lisa Intally 2 years ago (edited)
At a TV news station where I worked, we had a neverending stream of 20 year old men who were clueless. One needed a memo written because he insisted on wearing heavy metal T-shirts to shoots where we often had to interview politicians on the local, state and federal levels. Then, he would do things like not white balance the camera so his interviewees' skin looked as blue as if they had stepped out of Avatar. He then had every opportunity to color correct it with our editing system, but apparently chose not to, so his pieces went out that way on every show that day. Did he get into trouble? Not really. But, if I (a girl) had done that, I'd be canned in an instant as the "incompetent woman" that they thought all women were. As the final insult, he had a big fit over me taking out the new HD camera and said I was "emasculating" him by doing my job. That was the last straw in all the gender-based harrassment and I complained, then guess who got forced out of their job? Not him.
Ellen Ranks 2 years ago
What is it with those frail men that are "emasculated" as soon as a woman does something they feel is a "man thing"?
Load More Replies...
LakeMonster 2 years ago
Back in the day I worked for the corporate technical communications department for Blockbuster, back when they had 3,000+ stores (yes I'm old). We handled all communication to stores - things like operating manuals, HR forms, standard contracts, etc. The manager of our department was a total tool, and she thought she walked on water. Our most important document was the customer agreement form - a legally binding contract that we used with every new customer, which at that time was thousands of people a day nationwide. When we made revisions we ordered batch printing of 10,000 copies or more at at time. This cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So we have a new contract come out, and our brilliant boss has it sent to print BEFORE getting final review from Legal. And of course it's wrong, so the whole batch has to be trashed. And then she does it AGAIN. And a THIRD time. I think she cost the company over $400,000, in 1992 dollars. How she was not fired is beyond me.
De Burke 2 years ago
Worked in a pool. Occasionally the chlorine pump would get air locked and SOP was to call maintenance. Idiot lifeguard decided to do it himself and unplugged the hose without turning off the pump which immediately started spewing concentrated chlorine solution all around the plant room and he couldn't get close enough to put the hose back on. He had his access to the plant room revoked.
Mistiekim 2 years ago
Not a co-worker, but a professor in biochemistry. We were in the lab working with ether. My lab partner and I were the only ones in a hood in one of the rows of them. We started to feel sick and get a headache, etc. We told our professor and he found he had forgotten to turn on the airflow in that row of hoods. We were huffing ether that entire time.
Benita Valdez 2 years ago
"Alex, on business trips do not use the company laptop for anything other than business related things like our site and the software we use and don't open emails from people you don't know; use your company phone for internet searches and personal stuff if you need". Guess what Alex, age 55-60 who worked for the company for over 20 years did? Infected our entire system with a lovely virus that shut down work a few days and required our parent company to send their IT guys for over a week to fix and reinstall everything on every computer and install more safety measures. How he managed to infect our software and email so badly is beyond my comprehension. And how he still hasn't gotten fired is beyond me (not a relative or friend of anyone). After that, noone with a company laptop was allowed to remotely access our software and very few were allowed to remotely access email.
Kelly Lee 2 years ago
Walked in to the copy room to see the new young secretary (back when we were called secretaries) laying hands on the copier and praying over it. A couple of minutes later, I was explaining to her that praying doesn't help when the paper tray is empty. This was at a She didn't last long. This was a charismatic church and she was sweet as pie, she just didn't have what it took to run a large church office.
Rhon Young 2 years ago
How about a software salesman telling the techies to Not tell him about the product so he could sell the customer whatever he wanted? How about TQM's escalating a job to "global" because the customer "added" something to the product and then it wouldn't work! Oh yeah, it worked fine when they removed what they added but the wanted to keep their add on so we have to fix our "faulty" product the suit!
Cyndielouwhoo 2 years ago
I worked with someone who, when I asked them to write down the new password for a FTP site wrote all dots. I laughed and yeah, but what is it really? She just stared at me...she wasn't joking 😲🤔
micca 2 years ago
Ooh I've got a good one. A uni colleague of mine left for the US to work at a university lab as a biochemist (I'll refrain from giving details like what uni etc) and questioned a senior colleague why a sink in the lab was out of order. She was told the story of how our professor, a PhD with years of lab experience, worked there years ago, and after some work that required him to use liquid nitrogen, he proceeded to pour it down the drain. The lot. The dude T-1000ed two stories of plumbing in the university, making the fixing of it a nightmare so they gave up
Cynthia Souza 2 years ago
I am a retired elementary school teacher. Every year, I would explain to my students why I had the rule of "Do not leave the classroom without telling (me)." One year, a new teacher at our school with no classroom management skills had a noisy, chaotic classroom. One day, one of her students had had enough, and left the classroom, left the school and walked home. Her dad came home at lunch to find her watching television. When he called the school to find out what the heck was going on, the principal went to the classroom and asked the teacher where the student was. The teacher had not noticed she was missing. The student was moved to a different classroom and the teacher left at the end of the school year.
Teresa Lewis 2 years ago
New girl at our medical office. Someone comes in and says they have a summons for medical records. She turned to me and loudly said, "What's a summons?!" A few days later, she is checking in a patient. The patient had an unusual name and spoke with an accent (obviously not from the US). She asked where he's from and he said Hungary. She looked him dead in the eye and said, "Cool! Where is that??"
Gary Sansom 2 years ago
Worked with a consultant anaesthetist who "attempted " a spinal anaesthetic 13 times! 13 separate punctures! Poor patient was in agony! Arrogant old basturd ignored my subtle suggestion that I should ask the anaesthetist in the next theatre for assistance. He gave up, eventually! He always smelled of B.O. and never washed his hands! That was only one example. He was also a rude, ignorant old cant! Thankfully he retired /-;
Justme 2 years ago
I was training a new employee on software that sends medical records with referrals. We walk them through and at the end don’t hit send or it will really send a referral on a training case (patient with “Spontaneous Crustacean Fingers”). She hit send. 150 nursing homes across the state got fake records complete with “wound photos” of a hand with shrimp heads on them.
Horatio Jay 2 years ago (edited)
I worked at a pretty popular local dive bar and grill / music venue in a university town when I was in college. We had some really talented cooks, but the manager hired this guy that I had previously known through friends, who we all considered to be a pompous a*s. On his first shift in the kitchen, my coworker asked him to melt some cheese onto a burger, which we do by putting the burger on a metal spatula after it's cooked, putting a slice of cheese on top, and sticking it in an open-front, super-hot oven called a salamander for a few seconds. Instead, this guy puts a piece of cheese on the spatula, and sticks it directly in the salamander. The dishwasher had to chisel at that thing for about twenty minutes later that night to get all of the blackened cheese off. The guy who did this didn't show up for any more of his shifts. The mistake itself was pretty innocuous, but, because he always talked about how smart he was, we relished the fail.
Seanette Blaylock 2 years ago
Did the rest of the kitchen learn any good new profanity from that poor dishwasher? :)
Load More Replies... Lisa Intally 2 years ago (edited)
At a TV news station where I worked, we had a neverending stream of 20 year old men who were clueless. One needed a memo written because he insisted on wearing heavy metal T-shirts to shoots where we often had to interview politicians on the local, state and federal levels. Then, he would do things like not white balance the camera so his interviewees' skin looked as blue as if they had stepped out of Avatar. He then had every opportunity to color correct it with our editing system, but apparently chose not to, so his pieces went out that way on every show that day. Did he get into trouble? Not really. But, if I (a girl) had done that, I'd be canned in an instant as the "incompetent woman" that they thought all women were. As the final insult, he had a big fit over me taking out the new HD camera and said I was "emasculating" him by doing my job. That was the last straw in all the gender-based harrassment and I complained, then guess who got forced out of their job? Not him.
Ellen Ranks 2 years ago
What is it with those frail men that are "emasculated" as soon as a woman does something they feel is a "man thing"?
Load More Replies... LakeMonster 2 years ago
Back in the day I worked for the corporate technical communications department for Blockbuster, back when they had 3,000+ stores (yes I'm old). We handled all communication to stores - things like operating manuals, HR forms, standard contracts, etc. The manager of our department was a total tool, and she thought she walked on water. Our most important document was the customer agreement form - a legally binding contract that we used with every new customer, which at that time was thousands of people a day nationwide. When we made revisions we ordered batch printing of 10,000 copies or more at at time. This cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So we have a new contract come out, and our brilliant boss has it sent to print BEFORE getting final review from Legal. And of course it's wrong, so the whole batch has to be trashed. And then she does it AGAIN. And a THIRD time. I think she cost the company over $400,000, in 1992 dollars. How she was not fired is beyond me.
De Burke 2 years ago
Worked in a pool. Occasionally the chlorine pump would get air locked and SOP was to call maintenance. Idiot lifeguard decided to do it himself and unplugged the hose without turning off the pump which immediately started spewing concentrated chlorine solution all around the plant room and he couldn't get close enough to put the hose back on. He had his access to the plant room revoked.
Mistiekim 2 years ago
Not a co-worker, but a professor in biochemistry. We were in the lab working with ether. My lab partner and I were the only ones in a hood in one of the rows of them. We started to feel sick and get a headache, etc. We told our professor and he found he had forgotten to turn on the airflow in that row of hoods. We were huffing ether that entire time.
Benita Valdez 2 years ago
"Alex, on business trips do not use the company laptop for anything other than business related things like our site and the software we use and don't open emails from people you don't know; use your company phone for internet searches and personal stuff if you need". Guess what Alex, age 55-60 who worked for the company for over 20 years did? Infected our entire system with a lovely virus that shut down work a few days and required our parent company to send their IT guys for over a week to fix and reinstall everything on every computer and install more safety measures. How he managed to infect our software and email so badly is beyond my comprehension. And how he still hasn't gotten fired is beyond me (not a relative or friend of anyone). After that, noone with a company laptop was allowed to remotely access our software and very few were allowed to remotely access email.
Kelly Lee 2 years ago
Walked in to the copy room to see the new young secretary (back when we were called secretaries) laying hands on the copier and praying over it. A couple of minutes later, I was explaining to her that praying doesn't help when the paper tray is empty. This was at a She didn't last long. This was a charismatic church and she was sweet as pie, she just didn't have what it took to run a large church office.
Rhon Young 2 years ago
How about a software salesman telling the techies to Not tell him about the product so he could sell the customer whatever he wanted? How about TQM's escalating a job to "global" because the customer "added" something to the product and then it wouldn't work! Oh yeah, it worked fine when they removed what they added but the wanted to keep their add on so we have to fix our "faulty" product the suit!
Cyndielouwhoo 2 years ago
I worked with someone who, when I asked them to write down the new password for a FTP site wrote all dots. I laughed and yeah, but what is it really? She just stared at me...she wasn't joking 😲🤔
micca 2 years ago
Ooh I've got a good one. A uni colleague of mine left for the US to work at a university lab as a biochemist (I'll refrain from giving details like what uni etc) and questioned a senior colleague why a sink in the lab was out of order. She was told the story of how our professor, a PhD with years of lab experience, worked there years ago, and after some work that required him to use liquid nitrogen, he proceeded to pour it down the drain. The lot. The dude T-1000ed two stories of plumbing in the university, making the fixing of it a nightmare so they gave up
Cynthia Souza 2 years ago
I am a retired elementary school teacher. Every year, I would explain to my students why I had the rule of "Do not leave the classroom without telling (me)." One year, a new teacher at our school with no classroom management skills had a noisy, chaotic classroom. One day, one of her students had had enough, and left the classroom, left the school and walked home. Her dad came home at lunch to find her watching television. When he called the school to find out what the heck was going on, the principal went to the classroom and asked the teacher where the student was. The teacher had not noticed she was missing. The student was moved to a different classroom and the teacher left at the end of the school year.
Teresa Lewis 2 years ago
New girl at our medical office. Someone comes in and says they have a summons for medical records. She turned to me and loudly said, "What's a summons?!" A few days later, she is checking in a patient. The patient had an unusual name and spoke with an accent (obviously not from the US). She asked where he's from and he said Hungary. She looked him dead in the eye and said, "Cool! Where is that??"
Gary Sansom 2 years ago
Worked with a consultant anaesthetist who "attempted " a spinal anaesthetic 13 times! 13 separate punctures! Poor patient was in agony! Arrogant old basturd ignored my subtle suggestion that I should ask the anaesthetist in the next theatre for assistance. He gave up, eventually! He always smelled of B.O. and never washed his hands! That was only one example. He was also a rude, ignorant old cant! Thankfully he retired /-;
You May Like 50 Epic Fails That Are Funny Because They Could Have Been Easily Avoided (New Pics) “Months Of Saving”: 50 Times People Instantly Regretted Spending Money 50 Examples Proving That Not All Engineers Are That Smart
Greta Jaruševičiūtė
Simona Kinderytė
Ilona Baliūnaitė
Related on Bored Panda
