The Most DISASTROUS Workplace Mistakes You Will Ever See...

Everyone makes mistakes. It’s a natural part of working life and anyone that says otherwise is chatting nonsense. And in my experience, the best way to handle mistakes at work is to view them in a positive light.
Sure, solve the problem and fix the mistake. But once that’s done, it’s okay to have a laugh.
Which is why this video is about celebrating 7 of the funniest and most disastrous workplace mistakes you will ever see!
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[@thehangmansdaughter1120]

30 years ago I made a mistake at work, charging a man $50,000 on his platinum card. It was my second day and I hit the 00 button by mistake, multiple times. The guy was really chill about it. I was in tears, but he came in, hugged me and told me not to worry, he'd talk to my boss. A year later I left that job and went to work for the customer.

[@qbalsdon]

I was on a remote call many years ago with a very young and arrogant tester. He told me our boss told him to tell me to clear a staging (not production, but still important) database. Me: "Are you sure? We use that for demo's" Tester: "I told you to do it, and [our boss] told me to make you do it" Me: "[Swallowing the temptation to tell this person to fix his attitude] Ok, but this is against my better judgement" ... Delete staging database ... The next thing all I hear was the CEO cursing to high heavens from behind the tester (I was in a remote office), screaming that he was in the middle of a client demo when everything collapsed. Oh man that was great

[@CputtockDthomson]

As someone who has done fast food if you drop your phone in a fryer they'll make you drain the fryer, clean it and then once that's done fire your ass for being on your phone at work

[@acrawley5128]

I work in HVAC. The company had just spent a week installing new ductless heat pump units in an office building. The guys go and fire them up and I hear one of the office workers mention that something smells like it's burning. Suddenly the power in the building goes out and the emergency lights kick on. One of the apprentices had wired the low voltage into the high voltage and the journeyman supervising him hadn't caught it because he had skipped the commissioning checklist. Over $100k in equipment sent straight to the trashpile. Luckily it wasn't my installation I was just there to help with any troubleshooting and it was very easy to figure out what went wrong. 😂

[@scooter2099]

Last one made me laugh. Had an issue with the plumbing and toilets on our floor one time. Maintenance came up to sort the issue out. Our sweet young receptionist was asked by the boss to send out a general email to all staff explaining the problem, recommend alternatives, and to apologise to all for the inconvenience. Poor lass got hit by spell checker and wound up apologising to all for the "incontinence". We all laughed our heads off, poor lass hid under the desk for a few days. Bosses reckoned it was the best laugh they'd had in ages.

[@Su-ri5ob]

A colleague who was retiring received a letter regarding her pension which ended ' hoping this doesn't cause any incontinence ', like she said if we'd made that mistake we'd have been hauled over the coals.

[@NettersNetwork]

That happened to legal secretary in my old office. I forget what word she wanted but I think maybe penal or penalize and her report to the client and managing partners went out with penls instead

[@NickAskew]

Many years ago I was working in the UK at a company with a few 'lads' that liked to take the piss out of the older guy (me). It was good natured enough but I wanted some small revenge. One day they were away from their machines for a few moments and I took my chance. I sent an email to the group 'everyone' and wished everyone merry Christmas and happy new year, it was that time of year. I also marked the email with read receipt. Well the result was even more spectacular than I hoped. It turned out that "everyone" was the global group for the company and that read receipts could only be deleted individually on the ancient system they had in the early 90s. He was busy until mid January deleting them. 😂

[@MrMojo23100]

Working in a warehouse as a forklift driver like in the first video, if you made a mistake or dropped something that made a noise you would hear all the old guys call out from all over the warehouse "One fu*king job!" It started as an inside joke making fun of a manager who would say "You had one fu*king job" to belittle and embarrass anyone who made a mistake. So we turned it into a joke to take away his power, which continued long after he resigned.

[@SimRacingVeteran]

Former army mechanic here. I was still apprenticing and I put a Ford F250 into a bay door. It wasn’t a regular bay door that could be easily replaced with an other. No no it was a 3 month special order and 20k to replace. Yep, not my finest hour that day.

[@crimesagainsthilarity4714]

My first job was a customer assistant in a large supermarket. One day I was put on stock in the warehouse and towards the end of my shift asked to put a pallet of outdated Orange Juice Cartons in the Baler for recycling. Nobody told me I needed to empty the cartons first. I watched a tidal wave gush out of the machine and flood the floor. The whole yard was a sea of orange juice. #whoops

[@alicevanhuijzen-vandenbran6646]

I work at a museum in The Hague, where I also give guided tours. One time I had a tour in the evening for some vips. And during this tour I had to step over a fence to show how the perspective works. And wouldn't you know, during stepping over the fence, I ripped my pants on my leg at quite an awkward position. And I still had to continue the tour. So I walked in front of everyone with a ripped pants and a very red face for another 20 minutes🥴.

[@59withqsb12]

I have one of those white mugs with a black handle and the letters UNT on it. You may have seen this same mug on a certain KZbin channel. I mostly work from home. During my very first one-to-one meeting with my very new boss AND her very new deputy on Teams, I absent-mindedly picked up said mug and took a sip from it. Apparently the look on my face (mortified) when I spotted it in my little picture-in-picture view of myself was hilarious, and luckily they both absolutely p***sed themselves. All my new boss said was "That's hilarious, but try not to do that in the whole office meeting." Phew. It never entered my home office again.

[@alliedatheistalliance6776]

I mean, keep it handy just in case..

[@NettersNetwork]

I LOVE that youtuber!

[@NavaSDMB]

This is a GOOD mistake. That factory's products were liquids; one of the ways in which they were stored was these cubic-meter plastic containers, which were placed on pallets and held in place by a metallic cage. The forks in the forklifts were about a handspan longer than the pallets. One day a recent hire was in tears at the breakroom. He'd been trying to align some of those containers a little bit better and had pierced one of them, sending 1 cubic meter of material to the drain and the in-factory water-treatment plant. The veterans were telling him "it's not so bad, really!" "I'm fired! I'm so fired! There's no way they'll renew me, and I was really liking it here!" Eventually one of the veterans said "ok, raise your hand if you ever perforated a cube." Everybody but me. "Raise your other hand if you've perforated a cube a second time." No second hands. "You see this? The only one who's never holed a cube is the lab girl. Lab girl, why haven't you perforated a cube?" "Because I'm not allowed to use a forklift! I would never perform a task for which I'm not trained!" "Exactly. Every single worker here who's ever used a forklift has perforated a cube the same way you did, by trying to leave things more perfect than the material allows for. But none of us has done it twice. Welcome to a permanent position." Yeah, the new guy's contract was over at the end of the month and he was made permanent. And he hasn't perforated a second cube...

[@pjaypender1009]

Those are called IBC totes.

[@tomburns7544]

What a great thing to include on your channel, Ben. Such a nice change but also a completely necessary thing to include with dealing with workplace troubles. Thank you!

[@MarideMari82]

I once accidentally deleted all company websites in my first week 😂 it’s wasn’t entirely my fault as the system was faulty but you can imagine my horror and I really thought I was fired. Thankfully we had a backup and a good laugh 😅

[@hb-man]

This! If you work in IT and take it seriously, you know stuff gets wrong, you simply don't know when, where and why. Be prepared by assuming anytime, everywhere and by any effect, including human error and technical error.

[@scragar]

I once wrote a command that sent an SMS to everyone who had an appointment confirming that we'd cancelled their appointment. It was supposed to SMS a reminder, then if they replied "cancel" it'd cancel the appointment and send the cancelled SMS. Unfortunately there was a mistake in the logic that handled picking which message would be used and the reminder was replaced with the cancellation message. So anyone who had an appointment due in the next week(everyone as we only booked a week in advance) got a cancellation message. It was not my proudest moment.

[@xlerb2286]

I've made plenty of mistakes through the years but I've been lucky they haven't been memorable. In fact at the moment none come to mind. You own up to it, clean up the mess, maybe get a sympathetic "we've all been there" from a coworker (or a "how thick do you have to be" if you've got _those_ type of coworkers), and get on with the day.

[@annarichter484]

I once made a similar mistake to the Irish lad. In a letter for a mass mailing and a collage discovered it after we had printed all letters and already in the envelops. My manager was an absolute a-hole about it. She knew I am dyslexic but had refused to proof read anything as "everyone should be able to spell correctly". She was screaming at me and when the CEO came to check what the fuss is about the blamed everything on me. The CEO was so great, he said a) everyone can make a mistake, b) she knows about my disability so it is her responsibility to proof read and c) all the improvements I had done to the company since starting there had save thousands while my error cost a few hundred bugs so she should get a bit perspective.

[@geoffmerritt]

When I proof read, I read it as I wrote in my head and not what is on the paper... I can proof read a hundred times and it will look the same. If I leave words out n the paper, I'll "proof read' them as being there. Thankfully grammarly and chatgpt help, that has not always been the case though. Even crayzier, I know how to spell correctly, I know the correct rules, I know how to place their, they're and there.

[@erzabetf9544]

The CEO thinks your manager should proofread your work? 😂 Someone needs to proofread your work because anyone can make a mistake - dyslexic or not. But not your manager. Find a peer or an administrative assistant to do that.

[@arimunic]

​@erzabetf9544 what a dumb take, managers frequently reviewer their subordinates work.

[@erzabetf9544]

@@arimunic What an obnoxious response. Your manager, who’s most likely the highest-paid person on the team, should not waste her time correcting your spelling errors. If you think that’s a manager’s role, you’re doing it wrong. And that would not surprise me … 😂

[@katiemccready6140]

⁠@@geoffmerrittI had to laugh a little at your comment because the part where you say that you know how to spell is immediately preceded by your misspelling of the word “crazier.” No Y necessary once you change crazy by adding the ier. Not trying to make fun of you, because everything else you wrote looked right to me (at first glance, at least…I’m not auditioning to replace autocorrect!) but just because that’s the kind of easy error that I too would make right before stating that I know how to spell! Sure, I may KNOW how to spell, but I don’t always FEEL like doing it, okay?!!! 😜

[@Mantolwen]

That woman who dropped her phone in the deep fryer reminded me of Ben from Flawless Cleaning shredding his iPhone in the wood chipper. Oops!

[@Picklepower2x]

I was at work applying for another job. In the application I said I prided myself on confidentiality. I then put the application in an envelope and went out to post it. When I came back, I couldn't find some really important and confidential documents. Yes. I had accidentally posted them along with the application! They kindly sent them back with a note that said "I don't think you meant to include these". Funnily enough, I didn't get an interview but I did get away with my mistake.

[@strawberrykatnz]

😂😂😂😂 Oh no haha.

[@NettersNetwork]

I thought for sure you were going to come back to your desk to see that your job app was there and open for all to see.

[@Fast_Eddy_Magic]

In the early '90s, I worked in the warehouse of a book publishing company. Our supervisor drove the forklift, and he would crash into everything quite often. There was never a disaster, so we all thought it was funny. There was a metal box high up on one of the walls, that had something electrical in it, that had a huge dent. I was told that, yeah, he crashed the forklift into it (happened before I started working there). 😂

[@scottsmartky]

That first video and the other one where the guy just collapses multiple sections in a warehouse are why I refuse to ever operate a forklift; I'd 100% do something like that.

[@darthraider450]

For the first one he saw the mistake and did the right thing, to move out of the way and prevent being hurt. Your life and the lives of others is the most important factor of work. Mistakes can be rectified and dealt with in time, but you can’t replace your life.

[@bethenecampbell6463]

Absolutely true. The floor in that warehouse was a n accident waiting to happen. Hopefully everyone learned the important lessons there without being injured.

[@Rapscallion2009]

I was supposed to send an email to the company with words along the lines of "external email and internet access is down - helpdesk staff are working on this". Unfortunately I got autoincorrected to "external email and internet access is down - helpless staff are working on this" Got an email back from the CEO with the typo highlighted "THIS bit we had guessed. :-)".

[@tfodthogtmfof7644]

I have coined the terms “CLEs and RGEs” which stands for “Career Limiting Emails and Resume Generating Events”. I frequently have to remind myself not to commit CLEs and RGEs.

[@Simon_PieMan]

I use CLO, for career limiting opportunity.

[@Z-Ack]

The college/ hospital networking infrastructure it group i used to work for was trying to transfer all of their fiber optic breakout points as well as all the copper connections around a whole campus and 5 hospitals with all the interconnects. They had fiber that was used by the sec, local police dept, federal depts, and even had a dedicated place in the mainframe for a global clock that was used world wide.. well they were trying to transfer all of the info into a new program that took all the various databases and combined them. Well they ended up corrupting the software and lost every bit of it. Thousands of hours. Multi millions of dollars of cabling that was all now just spaghetti because there was no test info on fiber pairs, no vacancy reports, no traffic reports. It all had to be redone manually. This was after i of all people told them to backup the files at least on a few usb drives but the boss said “thats the whole point of this software, so we dont have a whole bunch of data scattered throughout all these different programs”.. like ok. Your the boss.. lol. He got transferred after that..

[@UncleJoeJoe]

I feel for the RAF guy, I spent 22 years in the Royal Marines and the use of profanity and nicknames is the culture of the military. So mines not as bad but on operation Telic (Iraq 2003) we were attached to the the Blues & Royals (Cavalry regiment) don’t know how many know this but the challenger tank has a water boiler in it (us Brits need our tea 😂) at the time I was a corporal in command of a small recce troop. So we’d scouted ahead then came back to the company of Challengers to report what we saw. Talked to a Captain who after briefing told us to go grab a wet (cuppa) so I grab cups walked to to nearest tank and shouted to the guy at the water tank “Oi! Horse sh*gger! Can we get some of your boiling hot p*ss without any added sp*nk!!” He turns around and as I get closer I see his rank markings! It was the Lt Colonel 1ic of our entire brigade! 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ luckily he had a sense of humour about it and just, with a grin replied “of course you can Corp! But I’m definitely wa*king into your cup now!” 😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@WomensTop20]

A colleague in my department burned her popcorn and did not know that it set off an automatic alarm to the fire department because no alarms went off in the office. So we're all working and bopping along when suddenly, two firemen come rushing by our cubicles looking for an electrical fire. We all knew what happened, but we weren't about to fess up. We kept our heads down, exchanged banter, and tried to keep from giggling ourselves into tears. To this day, I don't know if management ever found out, but it was one for the history books in our department.

[@jrr851]

There was a guy who pushed out a channel update file for their security software and their deployment tools didn't catch it. It caused havok worldwide including airlines grounding planes and hospitals shutting down. Teams of IT people worldwide needed to work all weekend to fix the glitch.... Too soon?

[@rolandhansen812]

The one with the 20,000 leaflets spelling mistake remined me of one. Many MANY years ago my mother worked for a high-end clothing company with retail stores. They were having their annual warehouse sale. The ad flyers came out saying Annual Whorehouse Sale. A lot of them went out before someone noticed the mistake.

[@NettersNetwork]

Still not as bad as Mattel sending out toys with the website address pointing kids to a adult entertainment site.

[@nanabug373]

I work at a mortgage brokers and had a pretty frustrating call with a Conveyancer, I was trying to give them information that there was a problem that would prevent exchange of contracts which they had already issued release on. She just kept repeating we can't give you any updates over the phone. I hung up and said "what a stuck up f@#£ing 🐄". I hadn't hung up. I then heard a quiet voice from my phone say "excuse me?". We use a mobile app to dialout and I hadnt hung up i had taken her off speaker. I was 7 months pregnant and very hormonal and my fingers were massively swollen.... turns out i couldnt now use the app properly. I phoned my boss who saw the funny side and dealt with the situation for me.

[@efnissien]

There is the classic, in an unnamed Airforce, they'd just taken delivery of new fighter aircraft. A member of the groundcrew walking beneath the nosecones of lined up fighters, jumped up to swing off the antenna at the front. The antenna bent at 90 degrees... realizing he'd done a 'bad' he came up with an ingenious scheme to cover it up. He went and bent all the rest of the lined up aircraft and hope no-one noticed... they did. Millions of dollars worth of aircraft were grounded. Moral of the story, if you fuck up, fess up.

[@janetbaker645]

I worked for a nonprofit organization, I was a beginning off-set printer…the higher ups decided to put a newsletter that was on the biggest paper our machine could handle. 11”x 17” but in onion-skin thickness of the paper….see-thru paper…the printer used moisture with the ink to print….it was utter chaos….instead of the paper coming out and laying flat (we had to turn it over to print the other side) it was curling up….my boss and I had to gather 2 or 3 pages that curled up and toss it on the table where would put the completed projects on…we didn’t have to put up with it long.

[@phaedrapage4217]

The phone in the fryer was her reminder from the universe that you shouldn't be handling your phone around food. Instant karma for the food safety violation. 😂

[@jahanas22]

I worked for a large department store in their pricing department. One day someone accidentally reduced a diamond necklace by 80% instead of $80. They lost their job.

[@DavidGreen_au]

When I was working for a major, at the time, financial institution, I received an email in my in-box where the sender was expressing his dislike using quite colourful metaphors, of the Accounting division. Unfortunately the sender switched the Subject and To fields, so his email, while attending to be subjected as "Accounts" was sent to the corporate wide distribution list called "Accounts". Needless to say, the email distribution list "Accounts" went quite high up the Corporate hierarchy. It was a career altering action, and I heard he had been off-boarded within the following couple of hours.

[@GeorgieB1965]

At a government agency, the storekeeper showed me a dozen boxes of #10 envelopes that had our agencies return address misspelled. Instead of "Capitol Avenue", they had printed "Capital Avenue". Had to throw out the boxes and reorder them. Your hard earned taxes at work.

[@debbiestevens6312]

So no one could manually change 1 letter on an address? Pathetic waste of money.

[@GeorgieB1965]

@@debbiestevens6312 Yes. I should make a correction though. "Capitol" was actually spelled "Captiol", and not what I had previously stated. My apologies for not catching it when I had originally made the comment.

[@capt.bart.roberts4975]

There was the night a patient died in my operating theatre, we were wheeling her in the box around to the morgue. I was working with Eddie better known as Buttercup, god alone knows why. Anyway we had come around, past at the main entrance and drive. The hospital is right at the top of a very steep hill, and had a semicircular drive. Well it was an awful night, of thunder and lightning along with high winds. Anyway, a page of a newspaper was blown past us, as lightening struck the racecourse grandstand about fifty yards away, BrrrrBANG! Buttercup freaks out, let's go of the trolley, which is bloody heavy, and I'm left at the back. I lost my footing, and slipped under the trolley to watch it upside down, building up speed, disappearing down the drive turning downhill and picking up even more speed. I managed to get to my feet. Told Buttercup to phone up the porters, and get out the tug and meet me at the bottom of the hill. So I take off running after the trolley and corpse. Unfortunately I start seeing the funny side of it all, and started laughing my socks off. I had no hope of catching the damn thing. So I slowed to a jog, it's a very long, steep hill, with a dual carriageway and traffic lights across the bottom. It was lucky it was midweek, awful weather and midwinter. There was not a soul out. I finally got to the bottom of this steep half mile long hill to see our to box on its side, with a very dead little old lady lying their with her legs akinbo. With two coppers stood over this tableau, scratching their heads. When I finally got my breath back, I explained the circumstances of how the lady got there. They took me into the little police station at the junction. Got me a cup of tea, and allowed me to use their phone, to talk with the other nurse I was working with, making sure the porter was on his way with the tug. By the time I'd drunk my tea, he was there, we hitched the box and lady to the back of the electric tug. Finally delivering her to the morgue. It took me a couple of hours to make out the incident report. It was six in the morning before I got home. Luckily I was working a late shift the next day. The poor wee lady, had no family, so no unfortunate explanations to them.

[@NettersNetwork]

She got to have one last adventure!

[@jackym4891]

I am sure I made plenty mistakes, but I do not remember them. I fix them (with or without help) and move on, lesson learned. I do always tell my team that making mistakes is part of the job and if they make one, come to me and we will fix it. And if anyone is bothered by it, I will be their shield. The worst thing they can do is not tell me about it. I will not get angry, I will be very disappointed (imo hurts more). I am glad to say, the teams I work closely with dare to take risks and try to think out of the box because I allow them to make mistakes. The other day some colleagues (these were not my regulars, 2 other teams I never worked with before) were playing the "who can blame the other harder" match and I just told them both to shut up and tell me what was needed to fix it. Told them I did not care who broke the thing, but how can we fix it. the whole ambience of the call turned around in a blink, much better.

[@brantnuttall]

yesterday (Friday), making my weekly KZbin video, I managed to cut my video piece to camera whilst keeping the audio so now it opens up with a photo of me whilst talking in the background. Saying that, my composition that I played went pretty well.

[@sillsfamily6655]

My first day at a department store I walked through the wrong door & set off the fire alarm. The office ladies were lovely about it & all had a good giggle. It made me memorable apparently, and they got me off the sales for & into a sweet office job - winning!

[@drango]

I just remembered one of the mistakes I have often retold to newer members of staff working as a customer assistant in a supermarket. We just had a new bailer installed in our warehouse replacing a compactor that we had lost the license with (Compactor shoved the card into a big metal container that would be taken away and replaced by the company we were contracted with) So with the new bailer we were all learning how to tie the wires to hold the card together at the end for the first time, with the two ends of the wires just looking like hooks. The way you're supposed to hook the wires together causes them to effectively tie themselves tighter as the cardboard expands being pushed out, however, following my managers instructions (and not actually reading the manual to learn how to do it properly) I effectively just hooked the two ends of the wires together, all three times. So I the eject the bale only for all 3 wires, top, bottom, then middle, to undo with a ping, and all the compacted card to just spew out of the open hatch of the machine and across the warehouse floor. After refilling the bailer with said managers help (who then walked away not wanting the hassle of tying the wires again) I actually read the manual, found out how to actually tie the wires together, and ejected the full bale again with none of the wires breaking on me, and have been the one teaching almost all new staff how to tie the wires since, using this story to explain why you cant just hook the two ends together and call it done.

[@ShayKane64]

The man that never made a mistake, never made anything!

[@scooter2099]

In IT for 40 years - used to say anyone who claimed they'd never f*ked up was either lying or God.

[@debbiestevens6312]

When I was an apprentice electronics engineer my boss took on another tech (ex calibration guy, no qualifications). We used to build some test equipment for use in our dept. They collared all the overtime for themselves. I came in one morning to find this bloke’s face plastered in bright red spots approx 5mm diameter: he’d built a circuit board the night before, put all the electrolytic capacitors in the wrong way round, when he powered the board up all off them exploded hitting him in the face. I peed myself laughing mainly coz he was always telling me that going to college day release was a waste of time!

[@simonspacek3670]

It was not my mistake, but one local tech. I was just a tech support peasant back then and we started to get calls about VPN not connecting. Nothing was scheduled for that night, but you know, sometimes there was some emergency change which we were not told about. But not on that night. A local tech was supposed to remove old server, but he accidentally unplugged the main VPN server. The kicker is that instead of plugging it right back and acting like nothing happened (we would get two calls and most probably we wouldn't even notice it), he was standing there and waiting for a ticket to fix it. When you make a mistake (and it happens of course), just fix it. Or ask somebody to help you fix it. Don't be stupid about it. BTW, in a good company, admitting to mistakes and doing what you can to fix them is a good career move, because other people will see that you are honest and you want to improve. In government run places no, there you can still very often see "he, who does nothing, does nothing bad. He, who does nothing bad, gets promoted."

[@Ben-Askins]

Love this, and great advice as well!

[@mrdrummer2564]

When you were introducing the software one, I thought for sure it was regarding the Crowdstrike incident a week ago... I can only assume you finished this video before too many details were known? Never deploy code on a Friday, and always test code prior to releasing!!

[@Ben-Askins]

It inspired me to do this video for sure! But thought I would keep it to ones people weren't aware of

[@joeschmo622]

I think wearing that Sanny Claus hat was a huge mistake. 😂🎅😂🎅😂 Well, it's July now, so...

[@Suraht]

I worked at a factory that produced ranges, as in cooking oven and stovetop combinations. Once built, they were put into the cardboard shipping box, the extra packaging and supports were put into place, and it went to the back to be stacked eight boxes high. One day, every single box that was stacked up for storage fell over, causing the factory to have to spend a few thousand man hours tearing open all the boxes, examining products, fixing what we could, and scrapping out units that were beyond repair. After we finally dug through everything, it turned out that there was one box that the worker forgot to put the corner support posts in, and by the worst luck imaginable, that box ended up on the bottom of that particular stack in storage, and on one of the corner stacks. When it had the seven boxes placed on top of it, that box could only hold the weight so long. When it failed, the seven boxes on top of it fell over, rammed into the three stacks next to it, which fell over and rammed into other stacks, and the domino effect swept ftom that one corner all the way across the entire atorage area.

[@martynrich5187]

2.50sec i thought he was going to talk about crowdstrike for a moment

[@Ben-Askins]

I would be lying if I said it wasn't the inspiration for this video

[@Fast_Eddy_Magic]

2:20 Gordon Ramsay, "It's raw!!!"

[@elsiestormont1366]

And after her congratulatory message, Virginia responded "Please, call me "Ginny" (😆 poor woman)

[@psychic7615]

I work in the insurance industry and I process the insurance invoices. One day, years ago, I typed in Pubic Liability instead of Public Liability. Gave the client a bit of a chuckle when they read it. 😂

[@MsAnpassad]

My worst mistake cost the company thousands. When I was a student, I worked in a factory during the summer and one chain in the machine broke, I lifted it up and contacted the mechanics that would be there in a few minutes. As I didn't want to stop production, I started to pull the pallets by hand and by doing so, the chain got twisted into the machine. So instead of a few minutes of repairs, it took hours. But a coworker had a more fun mistake during another summer holiday. That year I worked at a restaurant and she was new. The boss told her to order 20 boxes of glass and she thought she did. We had 20 pallets of glasses delivered.

[@brendamiddleton8194]

I worked at a print shop with a cranky old time printer. He didn't suffer fools lightly. One day, I went into the press room to ask him a question. He was standing in front of the press with his back to me. Just as I was wondering if I shouldn't disturb him, I spoke his name just as he let go of a fart! He was embarrassed and I tried not to laugh. As time passed, he found the humor, and we shared the story with the shop, and we all had a good laugh!

[@MobileTech296]

Back before Christmas we went to see a show, and early on in the performance there was this pratfall where the two of them landed on the ground in each others' laps. But they sat there a bit too long while the guy in back was bent over and we started getting worried. When the guy in front asked what was wrong, the guy in back said, "I split my trousers." The whole place erupted in laughter, including both performers. It was a good couple of minutes before everything calmed down enough for them to go on. Fortunately, it was a comedy show to begin with, so they just rolled with it, occasionally improving around it. If you think your mistakes at work are bad, just be glad it didn't leave your shorts on display. 😂

[@Inasafespot]

So glad she didn’t try to grab the phone with her hand. I had a manager who couldn’t understand when I admitted to doing something he considered wrong because why would I admit to doing something that could’ve gotten me into trouble? A week later he was complaining that another staff member wouldn’t admit to doing something wrong that he knew she had done.

[@richardclarkson3016]

I worked for a local authority in the UK and asked why a room in the basement was called Carol’s Room. Apparently, Carol was a clerical officer many years previously who’d been asked to order 1,000 of a certain size of small envelope. The envelopes came in boxes of 500 but instead of ordering 2 boxes, Carol ordered 1,000. The supplier wouldn’t take them back so somewhere had to be found for them and a spare room in the basement was allocated. By the time I worked there, about half had been used but they’d been there for about 10 years and the glue had deteriorated and every one had to be taped down before posting.

[@kevinthurlow8055]

A work colleague managed the same error with soap (confusing bars for boxes). Luckily there was a large storage area. But she totally owned this slight slip, by sending an "everyone" email on the day she finally finished the last box. There was a really nasty blame culture at the company, but she just got admiration!

[@rebeccabiddix6319]

I love your videos and can relate to some of them. Keep up the good work.

[@catsmeowarizona9814]

15 or 20 years ago, I worked for an electronics company that built printed circuit boards. I had just been hired and was only there a few days and they had me entering the components into a program that would order all the parts needed to build that particular lot of boards. The design was for a large printed circuit board that measured about 20” x 16” large. Once I entered the parts, my supervisor reviewed the order, and then accounting took a look at it. The order was placed, and eventually it hit the assembly floor. All the parts were put in the totes and went down the line to be assembled into the board. Next thing I know we get a message asking where is the circuit board? We can’t build it without the board. Apparently I had forgotten to add it and no one else caught it. Bare board had to be ordered from a supplier which kicked the delivery date out so we missed the deadline. You can bet I never did that again. I stayed there for 11 years before moving on.

[@chrisdonnellyofficial]

Feel so sorry for the developer... it happens to the best of us!!

[@Ben-Askins]

We know better than most for sure

[@PatrickMagee]

I had a semi-colon at the end of line of C code that should have been on the next line down - on embedded code for an aerospace avionics product. I did it the day before the formal release. The five second code change then took another week to complete a new formal release. I was no rookie at this point, just did not review the change properly before the release.

[@maretkita4065]

Someone ordered holiday cards to send out to clients and contacts. Someone proofread them before they were printed. The name of the company on the cards and envelopes was misspelled. They had us send them out anyway. It was so embarrassing, especially since those of us sending the cards out also answered the phones.

[@lc7798]

That last one, I'm LMAO!

[@egirl150]

This is really minor, but my first day at Trader Joe's, I dropped an entire case of pickles. Not only did I have to clean up all the broken glass, but I spent the whole day smelling like pickles.

[@alastairmartin3049]

Every year at the end of year party we always have a conversation about the biggest cock up of the year. It always lightens the mood and it is what it is. Shit happens might as well laugh about it

[@DavidGreen_au]

"Disastrous Workplace Mistakes"? Crowdstrike anyone‽ The financial impact of that global outage has still not been fully quantified.

[@jonathanbennett9511]

While studying for my Alevels at school, it’ll be 2002-2003, I worked 10 TIL 4 in a supermarket as a cashier. At that point I was still new to the drinking scene and naive. I went out on the Saturday night ended up in a club home at around 2.30. I went to work for time the next day hungover and went to my conver. All going well expecting to be sent for lunch at 12. I didn’t go at 12 has to wait 30 mins. At 12.20 I was scanning a customers shopping through, up to £80, just about to ask them for payment, I threw up all over there shopping! Got sent home and a warning but still kept my job

[@ImaginationEngine-xq3wg]

When I was completing my engineering degree in New Zealand, there was this American speaker that came and conducted a workshop at the university with several students and local businesses. He told us a story about how someone he had met was working for Boeing (sometime back in the 90s) as a young engineer on a prototype engine worth millions of dollars. He was doing some final checks before it was to be presented the next morning. Somehow he knocked it over into another machine and damaged it beyond repair. Somehow he managed to get it standing back to where it was and managed to turn the obviously damaged part around so it couldn't be seen and think he may have altered a record of him being there. That's the jist of it anyway, could be missing a couple details since it's been several years since I heard this. Basically, when someone found it the next morning, getting ready for the presentation they found the damage to the engine and realised it could not be salvaged or repaired and they never knew who did it. That same engineer, a week from retirement still working for Boeing, revealed what he had done and laughed it off as the worst mistake of his career that no one knew about. No idea what happened to him after that. The speaker was using this as an example of businesses, often very large corporates and apparently Boeing and McDonald's are notorious for this, fostering a culture where they intend to blame someone for mistakes or make someone a scape goat so people are more likely to cover things up and never admit to mistakes which is one of the worst ways to conduct business and I, for one, condemn anyone that is that sort of shitty person.

[@listey]

"We've all done that.". Really, have we?

[@scragar]

I have also never sent an email to the wrong person. I've seen it happen a lot, but it's usually the same 10-20% of people making the mistake repeatedly rather than new people. I think in part the sheer number of emails may play a part, I send a dozen or so email a day, that's only 60 a week. I'm sure someone who uses email a lot would be more likely to make the mistake simply because they send a lot more.

[@Papa-Rah]

I was on a troubleshooting call with a colleague helping out a client with some errors they were encountering. We had a screen share going where we were sharing our findings in the logs etc. Throughout the call the client was being incredibly difficult. They would ask questions and would always interrupt as we would try to answer them. After an hour and a half we had gotten nowhere all because the client ( devs and network people ) were not listening to our advice on how to resolve. Not realising that the screen share had not yet turned off ( thanks MS Teams ) my colleague and I shared some choice words about the head dev guy who was essentially the main detractor on the call. Unfortunately, they saw the messages.... yeah ... tough day after that. Didn't get in any trouble thankfully because as soon as the call ended, we walked up to our boss and told him what happened. Owning up to it saved our asses.

[@danpeters6874]

I used to work in a warehouse and made a similar mistake. It wasn’t a very big stack of boxes. The problem was that they fell in the middle of the night and the motion triggered the alarm system

[@briangunn21]

We have all dropped out phones in deep fryers. I do it every other Tuesday

[@NettersNetwork]

*raises hand* um... I never have?

[@Unhinged_Mouse]

I had a female member of a HR team who was running late for a meeting so she msg’d me saying she was “just going to the toilet and will be a few sex” - she was oddly quite in the meeting and we have never spoken about it.

[@markojotic]

Early on when the internet was new there was a video of a cook whose long hair fell into the soup, he wrung it out into the soup and continued working.

[@hotcut3]

I worked at a warehouse 30 years ago and a coworker dropped a pallet of 96% liquor he was tasked with the cleanup and when he was finished, he was done for the day, he was sent home in a taxi because he was too drunk to continue due to the fumes of the alcohol

[@mikeoxlong9210]

Just taking a moment as a boss to forgive someone for a miatake and working with an individual to fix it makes the biggest diffrence in someones life and even future

[@tomarmstrong3800]

That first one had me cracking up

[@Ben-Askins]

Yeh really did

[@susanrand512]

What warehouse manager allowed this😅bet he wasn't 😃 happy.

[@sinjull2256]

When I was working in a store I was to put out a pallet full of 2 litre juice boxes. And this is in a store where you dont just shelf the items, you put the pallet out there. So of course I am taking it out, switching out the old pallet with the new one and as I am pushing the new on in I notice it is stuck in the pallet just left of it. I decide to just easily pull out and fix the angle, but as I am doing it the juice boxes on that pallet starts to slowly follow and then I have around 10 boxes of juices splashing down on the floor. I stand there a bit dumbfounded before I head away quickly to bring the mop. My boss was watching this happen on the cameras with another co-worker and he sends her out to help me clean. I didnt get in trouble just that yes, I can see it was funny for him and now after but there and then I was like "damn, this is bad!"

[@josephruddofficial]

So good 🤣🤣🤣

[@bcase5328]

6:22 An excellent proofreader is worth every penny. Turn your autofill off. Do your first check. Then, you can turn on autofill for corrections. Check a second time.

[@Gryphon1-1]

No no no, you're supposed to put flour on the phone first, then deep fry it! We have standards about these sorts of things!

[@mistiinseattle]

I worked for a very large corporation and a guy sent an email to our local team consisting of several hundred employees. I dont recall the content but for some reason he cc'd his dad (who did not work there). His dad accidentally hit reply all instead of reply and told a very inappropriate racist joke. The guy kept his job but did have some apologizing to do.

[@adeptusmagi]

lol the air force one you sure it was a mistake that would get you a reputation on base forever and i want to see the rest of the deep fried phone vid to see if they shut the fryers down after all that plastic and nicad battery contamination

[@MireillevanDriel]

At #8: I also don’t want to be the person who pushed the update on CrowdStrike about a week ago 😮

[@cmorris9494]

The president of my company always keep the building i worked at cold. I spilled water on my gloves that I wear at work. I decided to heat them up in the microwave. The gloves caught on fire setting off the smoke alarm. I put out the fire pretty quickly. Needless to say they had to get rid of the microwave. Not long after there was this virus that went around the world and my job decided we could work at home.

[@hollz2267]

I worked at an airport at check in/boarding. I was the duty manager for my shift. Check in had gone well and boarding was almost finished. My radio goes off "we hit the plain with the high loader" That is the machine used to load the bags into the plane. They hit the door. The door would now not close so the plane could not take off. We de boarded the now angry passengers and then had to rebook them on another flight. It took hours. The ramp agent was in disgrace for weeks. This was bad enough, but then less than a month later, my radio went off again "you are not going to believe this...we hit the plane with the high loader again" I was ripe for murder at that point. I enjoy the managers meeting the next day, where it was explained to the ramp staff that the next person who hit the plane with anything, was going to explain it to the angry mob of passengers we had to deal with. I added that we would supply the panagers with tomatoes to throw at them!

[@bobyjonhson3665]

My go to: "But did anyone die?"

[@AJPemberton]

That first warehouse was mostly the company, not the worker(s). Cans are unstable enough on a single pallet, even if wrapped. Stacking the pallets 4 high is asking for trouble. Stacking multiple pallets 4 high in rows? … good for entertainment I suppose.

[@StrawberryFieldsNIR]

Indeed, the insanity of that one. The question was never "why did they fall down?" but "why didn't they fall down sooner?" or maybe "how on earth did they manage to stack them like that in the first place?"

[@joeschmo622]

I'd love to see a story from someone who works/worked at Clownstrike.

[@garethaskew-hargreaves6549]

My biggest mistake at work was when I worked at an airport and walked behind a running jet engine. Not a fun experience or my proudest moment.

[@thomasf103]

I'll be honest. The warehouse one annoys me because they are clearly not safe shelves. There needs to be better safety practices for stacks that high. What a joke.

[@bigbirdthug]

'can' you imagine? I see what u did there

[@alliedatheistalliance6776]

This isn't just one mistake, it's a few excruciating hours of mistakes. Anyway I got a job at a Zoo, and it was a sort of general purpose job where you could be doing a range of different tasks. I think three of us were starting on the same day, and there were different options, and the boss asked if there was anything we couldn't do, or something like that. I honestly said I'm not very good with numbers, so I might not do well serving customers, and maybe I'd be better doing the dishwashing (which is what I initially thought I was going to be doing) because, well, I'm not very good with numbers. He snapped "you'll do what I tell you to do!" and so I had to go to a small ice cream hut, on one of the hottest weekends of that year. No training, nobody else even remotely close by to ask for help (I don't have a key and I can't leave it unlocked), it's roasting hot, i'm sweating like a pig, and I have a line of customers as long as a football field, all angry at me, asking for 10 calippos, 50 calypsos, whatever. All I have is a small menu printed on the wall with prices, and one of those solar powered caluclators that randomly switches off. So I'm typing in '50 * 1.10' or whatever then getting something like 63 (wtf) so I'm just guessing, is that £63 or £6.30? Neither sounds right, but I don't want to rip off the customers either so I just lowball it, which in fairness probably isn't helping my queue situation. BTW I can also only put the items on a small shelf, which the kids or parents then grab and run off with, so when the calculator fucks up and I have to do it all over again, I have to try to remember what they had to try the calculations again, and of course the parents pretend they didn't have anything if I ask. I didn't even have a pen and paper to make this any easier, and it was either before mobile phones were widely used, or I had been made to leave it in a locker, I can't remember exactly. Anyway after a morning of this eventually someone strolls leisurely over to relieve me, I explain my problems, and thankfully get put on dishwashing duty for the rest of the day. Anyway it takes a while for the blowback to arrive, the manager blows up at me, and all I could say was 'I told you I'm not good with money', and making things worse my dickhead cousin (my cousins ahole husband) who "got me the job" (as if it was some esteemed position I should be forever grateful for) phoned to shout at me, just vaguely stopping short of physically threatening me. Needless to say I was fired, never got a paycheck and they were even muttering about taking me to court for their losses, good luck with that! All in all not my best day. I was never a dick to servers or customer service etc, but experiences like that gave me even more respect for people who do these shitty jobs, and it annoys me when people act like they're easy jobs or these workers are lazy or entitled.

[@NettersNetwork]

Now I'm wondering how far off you were in the prices. It doesn't sound like much though from what you were saying.

[@alliedatheistalliance6776]

@@NettersNetwork I honestly wish I'd cost them thousands, cuz fuck them, but realistically it was a maximum of about £50. But they were pissed, which is the main thing! 😏

[@RR-bn5wo]

Hi Ben, Not sure if youd ever get round to readjng this but my mother recently went through a tough time at work. Would love a chance to ask some advice, if you offer such things. Thanks so much, appreciate the content.

[@debtompkins5363]

insane to have anything stacked that high and narrow, poor planning to have too much height and not enough floor space for stock

[@jerseyjoyride1316]

And not shrink-wrapped? Seems like a weirdly impractical balancing act! Also makes me wonder if it's AI. 🤔

[@SamSung-ww3rp]

There is a warehouse one where the guy back into one rack post and took down the entire section

[@rosemaryjones5550]

Not me but dads vp cc everyone calling the ceo a muppet who couldn’t find his arse with both hands a map and a compass

[@simonebernacchia5724]

Next video the Cloudstrike mess might show up

[@Powergenetic]

Worst one for one for me as a business owner was one of my managers, top bloke and the only big mistake he's ever made but one totally due to him being lazy this day. He had a plant up job to quote but rather than y'know, actually go there and do measurements/work stuff out he instead used google maps and then sends over the quote to the client. Client accepts and the team goes out there a couple of days later to make a start. Manager rings me up telling me he's royally messed up the job and to come to site to check it out. The manager had indeed REALLY messed up with EVERYTHING. No where near enough plants, soil, not even enough worked out for skips or labour needed for a job of this size. He was incredibly apologetic and admitted what he did. Is what it is but I was gunna be out of pocket for nearly 10 grand on the job lol. I was understandably furious but the manager is a good guy and agreed to come in on the job for a couple of saturdays for free to at least try and save some money on labour lol.

[@NettersNetwork]

which is the very least he could have done and more than just a couple of Saturdays.

[@vvebvvaster]

Is the first clip the toxic, "When I think about you I touch myself" manager who was told NOT to drive the forklift anymore from one of your other vids?

[@robertpeacock1635]

First one, I would not put all the blame on the lift driver. First there were cans already at the base of the stack, so the video started after problem started. I don't think that was the right lift to be able to reach high enough to correct the lean. Those stacks were too high without additional support. Either a warehouse manager was not in the decision loop about that, or they should not be manager. Thankfully, the cans did not appear to be full of liquid.

[@ZacharyAshton]

Did you ever see the video of the police officer hanging upside down by his pants which are stuck on a fence, wearing a pair of tightly whiteys which he has soiled. How can anything else compete with that?!

[@StrawberryFieldsNIR]

Every grandmother everywhere: "always wear clean underwear"

[@NettersNetwork]

There is one video of a buff guy wearing sweats. He is holding a weight in each hand and proceeds to do a backflip, causing his sweats to slip down and reveal that he sharted himself. After the flip, he's is super pumped up and pleased with himself. I'm guessing he didn't watch what he recorded before posting, or maybe didn't catch it, because it's out there now.

[@k-saurrous]

I'm the reason my friends workplace has a weekly report checks on company accidents. So my friend is training me at the gym RE im the client, she works at the gym as a trainer. So i'm using the leg extension machine, shes watching me but only half paying attention. I think she's loaded my leg weights and i go to start.. turns out she hadnt yet and i launched my legs up thinking i was going to get resistance.. i don't it, was like lifting a paper clip and i kick the other trainer square in the shin. The scream he let out as i've realised how close he was to me (i wear glasses so my depth perception isnt fabulous, i dont train with them on).. wow. I felt sooo damn bad! So how'd this change things? they now have to say "loaded" or "stacked" once theyve put the weights on so we can commence. Also stops the trainer from being distracted when its all happening. They also put down the bright yellow floor tape so you could see how close people whatever equipment youre using. Was a complete accident and an obvious eventually gonna happen moment when we were both distracted. Now for the equipment checks, its to make sure nothing is damaged or needs repair, the monthly item is to record whats changed.. why? because whilst wearing my glasses i ran into one of the eye height level supportive arms.. the tape around tells me to be outside of that area with or without glasses and the accident reports are to make sure no other items need to change because of my damn clumsiness 😑😬