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Most days at work are pretty mundane. You know exactly what to expect, and you can probably complete the bulk of your tasks without having to think too hard. This may sound boring, but sometimes the days filled with excitement are actually the worst days. Because anything out of the ordinary might mean that somebody has made a terrible mistake.
Recently, Reddit users have been spilling about the worst mistakes they’ve ever witnessed someone make at work, and I'll warn you right now, pandas, these stories are painful. From losing huge amounts of money to losing limbs, strap in and put on your safety helmets because this list is full of it all. Keep reading to also find a conversation we were lucky enough to have with Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle, to hear his thoughts on the importance of safety in the workplace.
Be sure to upvote the stories that you cannot believe occurred in the workplace, and feel free to share about any horrible mistakes you’ve ever witnessed while on the job in the comments section. Then, if you’re interested in reading even more cringe-worthy stories that happened while on the clock, check out this Bored Panda article next!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
A local dealership was promoting a contest where they would give away a truck. I was driving around with my parents who were visiting from out of state when we hear the commercial for the give away on the radio. The drawing was in about 15 minutes, and we were right there, so we stopped in and put our names in the collection bin.
I watched them take the bin upstairs out of sight of the crowd. They had clearly selected the winner in the back room and announced that if the winner was not present, they will contact them for the winnings.
So they chose a winner ….that was clearly from out of state. But what they didn’t realize, was that it was my mom visiting for the weekend.
She walks right up to the announcer, showed her license, and said, I’m so happy I won the truck! The look on their faces was priceless!
For the next couple of weeks, the dealership tried everything to not give us the truck, It was clear that they had no idea how to even give away the truck.
But we prevailed. And I’m happy to say it we loved the truck!
To gain some more insight on the topic of workplace safety, we reached out to Anjan Pathak. Anjan is a technology leader with over two decades of experience building and deploying cross-channel web applications. He is the CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle, which is dedicated to helping companies build winning work cultures, and is responsible for the technological progress and evolution of Vantage Circle. As an expert on work culture, we wanted to hear Anjan's thoughts on safety in the workplace and why it's so vital.
"When we think of a workplace, we spend most of our time there, five days a week. It has become like our second home. But that is only possible when we feel safe around our workplace setting," Anjan told Bored Panda. "Workplace safety is a crucial influencing factor that enables a workplace to become more employee-centric. It involves creating a safe working environment with the help of safe equipment, policies, and procedures to ensure employees’ health and safety, physically and mentally."
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#2
I used to work as a maid in a motel and our usual supervisor was out sick. The person who took her place that day mixed ammonia and bleach in a window cleaner bottle and poisoned me with ammonia chloride gas fumes when I sprayed the bathroom mirror. If the maintenance man hadn’t come by and found me unconscious,it could have killed me. For several months after I had respiratory problems,vision issues and a lingering burn in my nose and throat.
Michael Vickery 1 year ago
I had a coworker tell me she used this concoction at home. I told her it was really dangerous and she was making poison gas. Her response was she opened the windows and it really cleaned good. People are idiots.
#3
Years ago, about 8 or 9yeara ago. A nurse give an adult dose injection of a med to a 4 month old in the Emergency room. I even called him out on it and said, "...check that medicine before you administer, I think that's the wrong one."
He killed the kid.
Destroyed the family. Obviously lost his license. Devastated the hospital system with huge lawsuit payout. Made us all look incompetent.
F*****g cocky idiot. I hope it ruined his life and haunts him forever to the point he can't function or ever have a normal life.
"A safe workplace ensures that everything is intact, which assists in employees becoming more productive and engaged in their work," Anjan explained. "Well-implemented safety measures keep employees safe and also protect industrial equipment. Another critical factor to remember is that workplace safety creates a sense of job satisfaction that eventually leads to higher retention rates in the long run."
#4
Working at a car dealership. Last deal of the night, after closing time. Our check verification system was down and the customer has a personal check for $50,000 USD. Manager said to take the check because he wanted to go home. Finance guy took the check. Customer left with a new car.
Check bounced. Customer didn't return calls. Dealership went to his listed address, it was an abandoned house. They called his listed employer, they claimed to have never heard of him.
"Just take it so we can go home" cost them $50k
#5
In the ER, Doctor wrote down an order for 15mg IM of Toradol (anti-inflammatory pain killer) and the nurse I was training misread and started to draw up 15mg of Haldol (anti-psychotic). That's triple the standard dose for Haldol. This was for a patient with abdominal pain. The nurse I was training didn't question it at all. This wasn't a newly graduated nurse mind, just new to my department.
Yes, I stopped her before she gave the med. No, she did not continue to work in the ER.
Katie Lutesinger 1 year ago
I hate to think what that stuff might have done to the poor patient.
Anjan also noted that employers and managers have the authority to make decisions that will make the workplace safer to work, so there are plenty of actions they can take to ensure that their employees' safety is of utmost priority. A few recommendations that Anjan provided that can make a huge difference in the workplace are: identifying workplace safety hazards, revising the safety policies and making changes with the evolving workplace, developing a safety communication plan, allowing the employees to share their voices, designating health and safety representatives, forming a committee to look after the initiative, providing safety training programs to the employees, and ensuring easy access to emergency exits.
"Things should be actionable and well-planned to ensure everything works fine without hiccups," Anjan told Bored Panda. "And even if there are any shortcomings, always have a contingency plan to keep things running smoothly."
#6
Taught preschool for 8 years before the pandemic. It's protocol to count the children before moving from one room to another to make sure no one gets left behind. Had a coworker on her phone, didn't count kids, and had left behind a child in the toy closet. Kid was 2 years old and trapped, screaming and crying in a dark toy closet for 20 minutes before a teacher passing by the empty classroom heard her.
My coworker didn't even get a slap on the wrist and management never told parents.
This same coworker forced her class of 2 year olds to "get dressed themselves" for outside play in the winter so one time a little girl ended up playing outside in the Minnesota snow without boots on for ten minutes before my coworker noticed.
Pumpkin Spice 1 year ago
That's it, I'm crusading this woman! I've got a flowerpot and a thirst for vengeance, who's with me?!
#7
Update: The biggest question is "Where/what company is this?" This was over 22 years ago in Asia. I apologize for not remembering the name, but they went under shortly after.
Plant manager let the safety guy go because they didn't believe safety was a full time job and wanted to cut back on company spending and decided the supervisors could do all the safety audits, training, keep the building up to code.
Not even a week later 2 guys got their arms cut off working on a machine that they weren't trained/certified on and the back building caught fire due to pallets and cardboard boxes being stacked in the wrong area near the furnace.
We also asked Anjan if he has ever witnessed or heard about any particularly unfortunate workplace accidents. "Now, this is a question that I think I will be really happy to answer," he shared. "Since our inception, we have never had the misfortune of any workplace hazard, and the employees are well aware of their own safety."
"We, at Vantage Circle, also conduct a safety monitoring of the entire office premise on a regular basis to ensure utmost safety and security of our employees," he added. "We have also organized safety awareness days in our organization to spread awareness of how crucial workplace safety is and will always be. Our little efforts have worked to date, and I hope it continues in the future." Looks like we reached out to the perfect person to hear about maintaining a safe work environment!
#8
Oh, another one.
Worked at a large casino in a large tourist city.
The penthouse garden was being redone, and the gardener has put tarpaulins down to protect the tiles. A storm rolled through, and the tarps were blocking the drains, so the garden flooded, back into the penthouse, down the lift shaft, and into the restaurant I worked. Chaos.
2 years later, I'm working in a different hotel, same city. The restaurant had a fountain in it. I come in to open up one morning, and the restaurant is flooded. Gardener has turned on the fountain tap to refill and forgot to turn it off.
It was the same gardener.
#9
A lady in our sales department sent a racial message bashing foreigners and how cheap they all are to another coworker using our company email...which tagged the entire company. The CEO is also foreign.
Anjan also shared some tips with us for employees who are ever feeling unsafe in their work spaces. "The first thing that they should do is notify their managers or supervisors about it. But the system should be transparent," he told Bored Panda. "The employees should be able to raise their concerns directly with the HR teams or the CEOs themselves. This will give the higher-ups a clear picture of what they are missing out on and what the shortcomings are in the workplace in terms of safety."
"In addition, the management should be swift enough to address the concerns and work on resolving them as soon as possible," Anjan noted. "Afterall, your employees are your prized assets, and their safety should be your top priority. One should have proper planning in case such situations arise, so that there is a good action plan that makes the workplace safe."
#10
Forget they had cocaine in their pocket while crossing a border. This led the Austrian border and customs police to open up about 100 cans of exposed film stock that was in the van the guy was driving… film stock from a very expensive film shoot the week before.
The result was second unit had to go back and reshoot an entire action set piece for the film. Line Producer told me the mistake cost about 5 million euros.
#11
I'm a healthy human subject for medical research studies. I did a study with special dietary restriction groups of zero carbs, no carbs, and a regular diet. I was in the zero-carb group and our breakfast consisted of a large stack of Canadian bacon and a drink. I read on the side of the can that it had 18 grams of carbs. I mentioned this to the doctor in charge and he said, "Well, umm, it's hard to get zero carbs." I thought to myself, "In a drink? No, it's not!"
Three days later they realized that I was right and they had to stop our study and send us home. The doctor had been in charge of the clinic but I noticed he was no longer in charge when I was invited back to the next cohort of the same study. So instead of earning $7,000, I earned $4000 initially and $7,000 for a total of $11,000. So his mistake earned me more money.
Finally, Anjan told Bored Panda, "I think as organizations grow, working on safety measures becomes difficult, but it is something that should be done beforehand. Keep checking the newer developments and adapt to them well so that you can prioritize workplace safety no matter how difficult the circumstances."
If you'd like to learn more about Anjan's company Vantage Circle, be sure to visit their website right here.
#12
I'm a tattoo artist and I have two stories.
So these two things weren't like f**k ups that had a massive impact on a lot of people, but something that required immediate removals and getting fired from their jobs.
We had a new apprentice, maybe on the job less than two weeks. We already took the time and showed him everything related to his daily/weekly work, so he was familiar with the job duties.
First time he attempted to clean the metal tubes and piercing equipment that we kept in the 'clean room' before going in the autoclave, he didn't wear gloves. He got like two tubes cleaned of excess ink before I caught him and I explained that whenever he deals with any equipment, he needs to wear gloves because there is a fuckton of s**t that can go south (AIDS, Hep, Staph). Instead of just admitting his mistake, he grabs the metal brush he was using, starts rubbing it on his hand hard as f**k and says "Dude that s**t is so rare, I dont know why you'd even worry about it" i stared at him blankly for about 10 seconds and told him to grab all his s**t and get the f**k out and don't bother coming back.
Second one; Had a 'street tattoo artist' coming in to do an apprenticeship. We were gonna let him still work with his clients he already had under our supervision, but not work on people coming into the shop ('walk ins' as they are called) and he would still be incharge of cleaning and normal apprenticeship s**t even though he was gonna still work a couple tattoos a month. Within the first month I should him how to make his own shading ink and keep it stored properly so he didnt have to keep mixing his color for every cap of shading ink he needed to pour.
Yeah, well I walked into the shop early the next day for an appointment and found him standing over the sink we cleaned the metal tubes in (the one from the above post) using the metal tube scrubber to clean out excess ink from an old plastic bottle of red ink. I said "what the f**k are you doing, thats unsanitary, you need to throw that plastic bottle now." And once again instead of just admitting the mistake, literally turned to me straight faced and said "What the customer don't know won't hurt em" to which I responded "No, thats the exact type of s**t that will not only hurt them but potentially kill them." And promptly told him to grab his s**t, get out and don't come back.
ObsidianAce_ 1 year ago
I want to get a tattoo, but the ways it could go south… from having something you hate on you permanently or literally dying. Woo
#13
One time a member of my dev team was given a task to cancel a few credit cards (less than 10) directly in the database.
They cancelled 17 million, the mistake was only caught when the company helpline started to receive millions of calls the next day from all over the country with people asking why their cards were not working.
#14
Guy I know was looking at porn on his laptop at home, battery died and he passed out. Gets up the next day, goes to work and is in a conference room with co workers, plugs in the laptop and opens it.. immediately the room fills with loud gagging noises, he slams it shut.. and the noise goes on for like 10 more seconds. Left the job a week later.
#15
Company director sent his travel plans for a ‘work convention’ to the communal printer in the staff room. Bet him and the other director would have had a lovely time. 5* hotel, presidential suite in Barcelona for a week sounded nice. His wife thought so to and was furious she wasn’t going also surprised that him and lady director were sharing a room … for a week … and that when she looked into it there was no convention. Things went south pretty fast and now the company is no more.
#16
I had a girl that worked for me that one day had a guy try to pay with a $100 bill. We all knew that we did not take any bill over a $20 but she didn’t listen sometimes. This time she took the bill and when she was cashing out her draw the smart safe didn’t take the $100 bill. I asked if she checked it and she of course said yes. I looked at the bill and noticed it said “Movie Prop” on the bill. She somehow missed it.
Robin Diamond 1 year ago
I was working in a casino in Reno (many, many years ago) and a $1 bill was altered with $100 marked corners pasted on . It passed through 2 change people and a security guard before the head cage cashier caught it. I got to stick it to the wall with a thumbtack by the time clock so every employee could see it. It was so obvious when it was by itself, but in a stack of $100s, easy to miss.
#17
Was a 911 operator. I quit when I realized the job wasn't for me, because it's not a job you can half-a*s.
Anyway, we had a new guy who didn't take the job seriously at all.
One time somebody called and said they were paranoid that people were listening to their phone calls and their thoughts. This guy was calling from a neighboring city, so new guy had to transfer him to an operator at the neighboring city. Once the call is connected, you have to hang up, since it's no longer your call. But new guy thought "this call's too interesting" and decided to mute himself and listen on the line. The operator is assuring the caller that nobody's listening to his calls and thoughts, and at this point new guy goes, "Ah this is boring," and hangs up, which makes a loud audible **click**. Now the caller is going into a paranoid meltdown because **somebody actually was listening to his calls**.
#18
Didn't personally see it, but my MIL' s doctor (family doctor/general practitioner) forgot the fax with her lung scan report. Next time she was there (about 6 months after the scan) she asked: "BTW, what did that report say?" "What report???" "From my scan?!" *Searches in a huge stack of unsorted papers on an untidy desk* "Oh." Well, she had lung cancer and nearly died because her treatment started 6 months late.
#19
Make a $30,000 art mistake. Misspelled text on a tee shirt that was produced for costco and the spelling error was only realized after 15k shirts were made. Really the opportunity cost probably bumped that up to about $60,000 since the shirts couldnt be remade in time.
It was me about 10 years ago.
Edit: about 3 months after this i got a promotion to mid management. The handling of this error probably caused this. I owned up to it and took full responsibility. A mistake of this magnitude is a humbling thing. To this day i wont hire or promote someone into a high level leadership role unless theyve made a big a*s humbling mistake at some point, and owned it.
#20
Saw a guy get zapped pretty bad when he stuck a tool in the wrong place on a big dryer at a hotel where I worked. We had asked him if he should cut the power first, and he said naww, don't need to. For a moment after, we thought he was dead.
#21
A nurse friend told me a colleague hadn’t been checking the PH aspirate from a baby’s Nasogastric tube (meant to do before every tube feed to make sure it’s positioned correctly etc) baby ended up passing away because the tube had actually been passed into the lungs not the stomach due to an unknown cut being made during intubation the baby had previously had.So she had been feeding the milk into the lungs and essentially drowned the baby.
#22
Someone managed to CC the entire enterprise, consisting of 6 figures of employees.
Then the follow up idiots all hit reply all “I don’t think this is for me”
In a matter of minutes there’s were probably hundreds of millions of emails produced as a bunch of idiots piggy backed off the first idiot and hitting reply all.
Email Servers crashed and weren’t restored until the next day.
IT quickly fixed that too so people could only mass CC within their own department unless IT approved it.
Jihana 1 year ago
The same thing happened at a previous jon. International company, someone sent an email that a package had been delivered to a factory somewhere in South America (forgot ehich country). To all employees worldwide. Then people hit reply all to ask to be removed from the mailing list. I counted 39 please remove me emails before the server crashed.
#23
An IT worker once sent an advisory to the entire company about an email several people had received with a malware link. She did so by forwarding the actual email with the link.
#24
Dude gave the signal that he was done working on a forge. Then he put his arm in to check something.
His robot arm is pretty cool though.
Wood Carver 1 year ago
I think I understand what happened but correct me. This is an automated press for hot metal. Said all clear, someone else turns on the press. He reached back in anyway? Sounds horrible and like it could have been prevented with a laser light gate.
#25
There was a company in rural New York in the late 1960's that took scrap metal, melted it down in big coal-fired crucibles and made home decor pieces - doorstops that looked like little dogs, bookends, that kind of thing. Not a huge profit margin but their materials were cheap and they had a steady market.
An industrial consultant convinced them to transition to electric furnaces - significant up front expense, but much lower ongoing operating costs. The consultant even designed the new electric crucibles for the company.
The company president had been thinking of expanding operations, so asked the industrial consultant to double the size of the electric crucible designs. The consultant did so, but made a mistake with the cube-square law in designing the supports for the crucibles.
The first time the double-sized (but about four times as heavy) crucibles were filled with scrap and fired up they collapsed, flooding the factory floor with molten pot metal and chunks of wrecked equipment. The company went straight to bankruptcy.
#26
I heard there was this guy who had to clean a load of paella pans by tying them down and letting the tide of the sea do the work (was a beach restaurant in spain) apparently he forgot to tie them and almost everyone of them floated away. Sounds funnier when he tells it though.
#27
Once, I served drinks to a little girl and her mom.
I accidentally got them mixed up. The mom ordered a mixed drink with bourbon and the daughter said her drink tasted funny.
#28
A guy i worked with got fired from his 120k a year job because he was stealing juice from the stock room
#29
A girl on the till had a guy come up and buy a $2 pack of gum with a $100 note saying sorry he didn’t have anything smaller. She gave him his $98 change and he left. He came back in a few minutes later and said “hey I found a $2 coin in my car can I have my $100 back?”. So she did it. It was a small shop so it was a tough scam to fall for. She also managed to lock herself out of her own car while it was running but parked in a way that no one could get in or out of the car park
#30
Watched an HP repair rep delete about 50 terrabytes of company data by not listening.
Story:
HP comes out to replace a hard drive that is on the fritz. This hard drive is 1 of many. All of these hard drives are bundled together in what is called a RAID Array. This combines the drives into one massive drive for data storage. The array has redundancy so it can afford to lose a drive or two. If too many drives die, the redundancy is gone and your data is lost/corrupted.
HP guy comes in calls us.
Us: Ok pull drive 14, it should be blinking yellow and the rest should have a green light.
*HP guy pulls wrong drive
Us: Ok we saw drive 9 go offline. Put that back. We need to wait for the RAID to rebuild. If you pull the wrong one again the RAID will fail.
*HP guy does not wait, and pulls another drive
US: Uh the whole RAID went offline, did you see what happened?
*HP guys leaves both drives on the front desk and leaves.
Turns out the lights on the device were not on....easy fix, there is a setting in the device to turn them off or on. Rather than telling us he didn't know which drive was which, he just pulled at random and ruined the entire companies data. We had to restore from many many old backups.
What do you think ?
Leo Domitrix 1 year ago
Not a co-worker at the time, but an ER nurse practitioner blew off my mom's issue as asthma. She was having a heart attack. I yelled down the ER and got a cardiologist in, and then in Covid had to work alongside that same f*ckhead ER NP saying things were allergies and asthma. Never been so glad to see someone quit their job.
PeridotPlatypus377 1 year ago
Doctors and nurses are wonderful and deserve an enormous amount of respect and recognition but like everyone else it’s important that they remember that they aren’t infallible and that they can still make mistakes.
Load More Replies...
GoodWolf 1 year ago
Accidentally tipped the truck ramp instead of lowering it. Dumped a whole pallet of white paint into customer's driveway. Went to sit in the truck and cry before trying to clean that s**t up.
Amy Taylor 1 year ago (edited)
On the set of a show I was working on, one of the wardrobe gals was working on their truck and was running wardrobe racks onto the liftgate to take to set. Someone had tipped the liftgate while she was standing on it with the racks and she fell off onto the asphalt breaking her arm.
Load More Replies...
PeridotPlatypus377 1 year ago
Everyone makes stupid mistakes. The scary part is that some simple mistakes can have disastrous consequences. People don’t go to work everyday thinking their lives are going to change for the worst because of an accident on the job whether it’s a life altering injury, or costing your company a significant amount of money. Your career and sometimes your life as you know it just end. I bet it’s a brain autopilot thing much of the time. Many car accidents happen because the driver is so used to driving they let themselves go on autopilot and are not as attentive as a new anxious driver. I’ll bet a lot of these are like that, especially the ones operating machines or handling the same computer systems everyday. It’s frightening because it really could happen to anyone even though we all think we are too smart or careful. I bet everyone here thought that too.
Ruth Hempsey 1 year ago (edited)
I've been taking an inhalent for years for COPD. Tonight instead of putting it into its little machine and popping the capsule to breathe in the chemical, I swallowed it instead. Called the pharmacy who said it's not toxic just take another one. Oops. In my defense I'm chronically exhausted caring for my spouse but I'm very annoyed at my idiocy too.
Load More Replies... Leo Domitrix 1 year ago
Not a co-worker at the time, but an ER nurse practitioner blew off my mom's issue as asthma. She was having a heart attack. I yelled down the ER and got a cardiologist in, and then in Covid had to work alongside that same f*ckhead ER NP saying things were allergies and asthma. Never been so glad to see someone quit their job.
PeridotPlatypus377 1 year ago
Doctors and nurses are wonderful and deserve an enormous amount of respect and recognition but like everyone else it’s important that they remember that they aren’t infallible and that they can still make mistakes.
Load More Replies... GoodWolf 1 year ago
Accidentally tipped the truck ramp instead of lowering it. Dumped a whole pallet of white paint into customer's driveway. Went to sit in the truck and cry before trying to clean that s**t up.
Amy Taylor 1 year ago (edited)
On the set of a show I was working on, one of the wardrobe gals was working on their truck and was running wardrobe racks onto the liftgate to take to set. Someone had tipped the liftgate while she was standing on it with the racks and she fell off onto the asphalt breaking her arm.
Load More Replies... PeridotPlatypus377 1 year ago
Everyone makes stupid mistakes. The scary part is that some simple mistakes can have disastrous consequences. People don’t go to work everyday thinking their lives are going to change for the worst because of an accident on the job whether it’s a life altering injury, or costing your company a significant amount of money. Your career and sometimes your life as you know it just end. I bet it’s a brain autopilot thing much of the time. Many car accidents happen because the driver is so used to driving they let themselves go on autopilot and are not as attentive as a new anxious driver. I’ll bet a lot of these are like that, especially the ones operating machines or handling the same computer systems everyday. It’s frightening because it really could happen to anyone even though we all think we are too smart or careful. I bet everyone here thought that too.
Ruth Hempsey 1 year ago (edited)
I've been taking an inhalent for years for COPD. Tonight instead of putting it into its little machine and popping the capsule to breathe in the chemical, I swallowed it instead. Called the pharmacy who said it's not toxic just take another one. Oops. In my defense I'm chronically exhausted caring for my spouse but I'm very annoyed at my idiocy too.
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