Stupid mistakes you've done at work

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

T.M.H.N.E.T

Rainbows aren't just for world champions
Location
Northern Ireland
Years ago was asked to defrost a countertop fridge that had a tiny freezer compartment, the ice had grown into it's own postcode.

Cleverly I searched around an engineers desk for an appropriate defrosting tool (an insulated screwdriver) All was going well until it wasn't, and the freon gas was no longer contained in the matrix.

Owned up to the site engineer who just told me to stash it in a lockup he had for old electricals and go get another from the stores..


-----------------------------------------
Squad of us deep cleaning an old cabin type building one night, place was thick with plasterboard dust and we were only kicking up more so I flipped up the catches of a window and put my hand to the glass to open it out - only my hand went through the pane up to my elbow.

The same site engineer above, "is the big lad alright? Ok, I'll get the glazier in" And that was that
 

gbb

Legendary Member
Location
Peterborough
I ordered a box, 25ft of 5/8 inch pitch chain...not a cheap item, we always brought quality chain. When it arrived, we had 25x 25ft boxes of chain :blush:.
We used it over the next 3 or 4 years.

At the beginning of my on the tools work in the citrus industry, trained in house, we had a 3 phase motor go out on a weigher toward the end of a shift. I was happy to work on a few hours to get it done for the next day so worked on into the night. Disassembled the weigher, fitted a second hand motor and gearbox, tested it for 5 minutes, it ran, I was happy, this was my first big job on my own. As I started to put all the covers back on the machine, I leant on the motor...it was red red hot :ohmy:.
Panic, what have I done ?...took it all apart and realised it had the terminal links fitted for inverter drive...delta instead of star. A quick change of the links and a prayer I hadn't toasted the motor. Inexperience and rushing but It ran for years after.

Lots of small stuff, you're usually stripping and repairing stuff you've never done before, you have to just dig in and find your way...sometimes you take the wrong route to a repair, that's the way it goes, it's a never ending learning process.

I remember one of my dads. Towards the end of his RAF career he went onto trainers (Chipmunks....rubber band planes dad called them). He found some of the officers a bit up themselves and wasnt averse to squirting a little oil on the floor under an aircraft....'sorry chief, it's got a leak, unserviceable' :becool: so they couldnt fly that day.
Maybe not something stupid but it could have got him in fairly big trouble.


,
 

T.M.H.N.E.T

Rainbows aren't just for world champions
Location
Northern Ireland
Lawn tractor (Kubota) brought in on a trailer in lots of bits, a student had basically let it run without oil and it wasn't happy about it. The head mechanic had mentioned to me about ordering replacement pistons, rings, gudgeon pins etc so off I went to order 3x at over £300ea.

Soon after I realised I'd ordered slightly oversized pistons for a 3cyl engine that only really needed 1x standard piston, cue profuse sweating until the owners of the tractor somehow decided it would be sensible to start completely fresh with the entire block.
 

steven1988

Veteran
Location
Sheffield
When I were a student, BITD, I worked my holidays in a medicines warehouse. In "goods-in" we unloaded the trucks and stored the cases of product. Pharmacy sized bottles of, e.g. cough mixture, were Winchesters - gallon bottles - and came on pallets whch we stored on two tier racking.

One day we needed some more Benylin for the warehouse, so off I goes with the fork-lift and start to raise a pallet of said product from the top tier racking. What I HADN'T noticed was that someone had been up the stepladder and unloaded one side of the pallet. When I lifted it with the forks, the remaining cases of bottles tipped off the side and fell ten feet to the floor. About 30 gallons of cough mixture made a heck of a mess :blush:

When i worked in a distribution centre for the "every little helps" supermarket, a colleague we called dangerous john did the same sort of thing with a pallet of Bells whisky, around 400 bottles, from 30 feet.

All over the top of the reach truck good job he didn't get stopped on his way home that night
 

Dave7

Legendary Member
Location
Cheshire
Working at Cadburys in the flavour stores.
Each day I had to fetch a 1 ton container of molasses from the 'hot room' ..........kept there to keep it soft enough to pour.
I had to fill 10 pint containers.
As it was very thick each pint container took maybe 5 minutes.
On one occasion, while it was pouring I got engrossed in paperwork.
It was only when I moved that I realised an hour had gone by and there was half a ton of molasses over the floor.
The specialist cleaning team (and the boss) were none too happy :rolleyes:
 
On Sage I accidentally hit the "email" button with nothing selected. Of course you would nothing to be emailed. Sage emailled out every invoice in our system again.
 
Not my booboo but in a very competitive tender for £multi million contract some guy at our competitors copied us into all of the financial details of their tender. We promised not to tell so I dont think his boss ever discovered it.
 
Not my booboo but in a very competitive tender for £multi million contract some guy at our competitors copied us into all of the financial details of their tender. We promised not to tell so I dont think his boss ever discovered it.

That’s just a clever rouse to make you undercut and win the tender by a little bit, meanwhile they will submit the real tender which is much cheaper. Ha ha
 

Joey Shabadoo

My pronouns are "He", "Him" and "buggerlugs"
DSM on a play called the Chippit Chantie. Finger on the flies cue button to bring the tabs in, but maybe resting a bt too heavily on it. Leading lady goes to DSC for big finale piece...

TLDR - I dropped the heavy theatre curtains weighted with chains on an actress's head in front of 600 people.
 

swee'pea99

Legendary Member
1st day on new job driving a lorry bigger than anything I have before, clipped a car on the way out of the yard, told to carry on and they will sort it out, got to the first job and backed into an Austin Maxi ripping a hole in the wing, handed over details and cleared of quick, 3 corners later I cut it too sharp and run over the back of a parked Austin 1100 which bumped forward and damaged the car in front, left a note on the car as there was nobody about, back to the yard to find that I no longer had a job. The company is still there though W Hansens in Hounslow, I was 18 at the time.
Picking tomatoes in Queensland Australia and the guv'nor asked me if I could drive. Thrilled at the chance to escape the actual picking - which was the most back-breaking work I've ever done - I took over as the trailerman, driving a tractor and trailer round the fields to pick up the buckets. The whole articulated business took some getting used to - when you reverse, you have to turn in the opposite direction, then bring the steering wheel back at just the right point. I thought I'd got the hang of it, till midway thru' the afternoon, when the boss turned up just in time to see me reverse the trailer and clip one of the roof supports by the loading bay. Back to the buckets :cry:
 

oldwheels

Legendary Member
Location
Isle of Mull
Working at Cadburys in the flavour stores.
Each day I had to fetch a 1 ton container of molasses from the 'hot room' ..........kept there to keep it soft enough to pour.
I had to fill 10 pint containers.
As it was very thick each pint container took maybe 5 minutes.
On one occasion, while it was pouring I got engrossed in paperwork.
It was only when I moved that I realised an hour had gone by and there was half a ton of molasses over the floor.
The specialist cleaning team (and the boss) were none too happy :rolleyes:
Not as bad as the time one of my lot and a tanker driver started to fill a heavy fuel oil tank and left it to fill while they nipped off for a brew instead of watching it as they were supposed to do. The surplus in the tanker was supposed to go into another tank when the first one was full. When I came round the place was ankle deep in heavy hot fuel oil. Think something like molten tar. Fortunately the oil depot was only a short distance away and the clean up team appeared pretty quickly. I blamed it on our guy so the tanker driver did not lose his job.
 

oldwheels

Legendary Member
Location
Isle of Mull
Picking tomatoes in Queensland Australia and the guv'nor asked me if I could drive. Thrilled at the chance to escape the actual picking - which was the most back-breaking work I've ever done - I took over as the trailerman, driving a tractor and trailer round the fields to pick up the buckets. The whole articulated business took some getting used to - when you reverse, you have to turn in the opposite direction, then bring the steering wheel back at just the right point. I thought I'd got the hang of it, till midway thru' the afternoon, when the boss turned up just in time to see me reverse the trailer and clip one of the roof supports by the loading bay. Back to the buckets :cry:
I once reversed a trailer into a shed which was pretty tight and could not drive out again without unhitching which was fortunately an empty trailer. Easier to back into a tight space than go in forwards. Unless you are experienced with tractor trailers it is a concept hard to get your head around.
 

Bazzer

Setting the controls for the heart of the sun.
Not my booboo but in a very competitive tender for £multi million contract some guy at our competitors copied us into all of the financial details of their tender. We promised not to tell so I dont think his boss ever discovered it.
I had something similar, but there was no goodwill on my part. As part of financial hardship hearing, a very awkward solicitor had been required by a judge to produce numerous pages of his client's documents, including around 150 pages of bank statements. He had failed to comply within time and decided to electronically dump them all on me about an hour before a hearing to consider the non compliance. It was obvious from the content of various accompanying documents, that he had redacted huge sections of the bank statements and my only course of action was going to be a further hearing, which would allow yet another challenge. But he didn't realise until part way through the hearing, his secretary had accidentally sent me the clean copies.:laugh:
 
Top Bottom