messing up at work
 

share your stories of fucking things up at work and make my afternoon better.

hmmm...










no. :D

when i was working in a shop i

- entered 54 pence into the credit card machine instead of 54 pounds once.
- messed up multiple mount and frame orders
- gave someone a refund when i shouldn't have
- missed someone shoplifting like 8 frames when only i was working

mang, why do you post in arial font, and without paragraphs?

If I do something wrong I generally deal with it myself so it doesn't turn into a mess. I once booked a large group of people into an area and the people who were meant to look after them forgot that they were coming. Pandemonium ensued.

I hung up my boss's station wagon on the railroad ties that lined his driveway. Didn't mean to. It doubled as the company's delivery vehicle. This one time I was supposed to take something out to his house to work on, because the guy was sick. His driveway was curved and on a hill, two challenges--especially when backing up. I had to go back up to the front door and inform him, and he, sick as a dog, had to make arrangements to have a tow truck come out.

A week later, making a run to the post office for the company, I pulled in to close too the drive-up mailbox and clipped off the radio antenna of this same car.

I kept my job somehow.

I've never dropped a bollock that I couldn't pick up.

In the 70s I went in to work stoned a couple of times. I'm not proud of this. But it was the 70s, and I was, well, young and stupid.

The first time, I was a part-time cashier/stockboy/whatever at a local but very busy downtown/campus drug store. This particular afternoon of my shift was particularly beautiful, and I decided that making the bike ride downtown would be even more beautiful if I were just a little stoned. I thought if I got only a little stoned, it would wear off by the time my shift started. For whatever reason, I was feeling very stoned when the store manager assigned me to a cash register. At one point, as I was trying to figure out a dollar's worth of change for the customer at the register, I looked up to see about 20 people in line waiting. All sorts of looks on their faces, from puzzled, to bemused, to annoyed, to downright angry. Yikes.

I think the drawers came up quite short that afternoon, but there were other clerks on my shift that the manager had been suspecting (and later confirmed) were stealing from the registers, so she never blamed me--though I'm sure I had a lot to do with it. I'm sure people thought they were getting good deals that day at good old Drug Fair. "Go to the line with the stoner boy running the register! Make him break a 20!"

the other day i was pushing a trolley load of boxes through the offica and knocked over a table that had a scanner on it, the scanner broke, but nobody gave a shit.
a few years ago when i worked in a shop i took a forged £20 note

I shouted at my ex-boss at my previous job like two years ago. She fired me a couple of days after. An uber-bitch that was.

maybe he's sympathetic to your pain. also, it doesn't matter seeing as he didn't know who you were talking to anyway.

Sold a guy some shoes for a walking holiday. The poor bastard came back a fortnight or so later, complaining that I'd given him the wrong size to the ones he'd tried on, effectively ruining his holiday. I was sacked a few weeks after that, for general incompetence, rather than for a specific wrong-doing. I was only 16 at the time and thought my entire life would be a failure after that. As it turns out I was right. It's amazing how much you know at 16.

i used to mess up all the time on food orders, but not so much anymore. usually all that happens is that the food comes back and i remake it.

Too many! One morning I decided I would go to a park and do a bunch DXM, it was like 11am and I didn't have to work till like 5pm and I figured it would wear off and I would be pretty lucid. So I tripped balls on like 800mg and had this weird trip. I was sitting at the crossroads of two walking paths and I had to choose which one to go to, at the time it had all this symbolism, like it was a crossroads or my life and I had to choose life or death. So I choose the path out of the park and got on my bike and rode to work, quite a few hours early and I was severly FUCKED UP. On DXM you look pretty scary with huge pupils. I don't even really remember going to work I just was suddenly in the break room with my boss (who looked CRAZY) and he was asking what the fuck I was on and I just kept telling him that I could still work. He told me I had to go home and tried calling my parents. They werent home so I went home and deleted the messages. Actually one of the other managers took me home because he wouldn't let me bike home in my impaired state. I wouldn't tell him where I lived because I was firm on wanting to bike home so the guy called work and got my address and used his GPS to find my house. Actually I would give him false directions, we would pass by a house and I would tell him thats where I lived and then say "no actually I'm lying haha", despite my truancy I tried to carry on a pleasant conversation with him. So I sat at home for a bit and then when 5 o'clock rolled around I went BACK to work cause I wasn't fully aware that I had been sent home, I thought he just wanted me to go home and sleep it off, plus I worked at a restaurant and it was a busy night so I figured they would need my help (despite this, I was one of their best pizza makers and one of the only cooks). The manager was outside smoking and he was like "dude what are you doing here" and I told him I was there to work and I was sorry I was late and he told me I wasn't allowed to work and I asked why and he said in a snark tone "because you came to work HIGH ON COUGH MEDICINE". So I go over to a friends house and come back when I usually get home from work so my parents didn't know about any of this. I go back to work the next day and he is like "why the fuck do you think you still have a job here after the shit you pulled yesterday" and I told him that he never said I was fired so I felt I should still come to work. He got all pissy and said I cannot come back to work until he talks to my parents, I argued with him for awhile about that because I told him I was 18 and would like to work this out myself like an adult (I was 17 at the time but almost 18). He said he didn't care. So I went home and was about to talk to my dad about it but he had already talked to my boss and schedualed a meeting. So I went there that night to talk with the boss about it with my parents. I told him and my parents that I was sick and just accidently took to much. I really was sick so my parents ate that up. My boss told me that if I did it to get high then he HAD to fire me, even though he didn't want to. He told this sob story of how much he liked me and what a good worker I was and how he was worrying about me all night. I told him that story of how I was actually sick and I got to keep my job. The next day I came to work and he tells me he knows that was bullshit but that it was a pretty good story and a good excuse to keep me onboard and "your welcome". I thought it was ridiculous what a big deal he made out of it and now he suddenly doesnt care. But I quit about a month later.

and gmku, gone to work stoned a few times in the 70's? At said pizza place smoking weed is RITUAL. I smoked joints with my boss and took bong rips on break. And it was always super busy there so it could get pretty stressful cranking out pizzas all the time. Even some of the lady cashiers toked up. My dealer used to work there and his meeting spot is still the parking lot. Definitly threw up a couple times in the dumpster out back... bosses motto "I don't care what you do before work as long as you can still do your job."

No drug stories, but some years ago, when I worked in a storage library, I managed to bring down a huge book shelf (one of those that move on rails). this was due to misguidance though... and luckily it was almost empty (still weighing at least few hundred pounds). If I had not taken a step backwards I prorably would've been injured badly or killed.

Packed up machinery parts off of the floor and put in dumpster ( about $1,000 worth)

Left display case outside the store when closing up, ( I worked in a mall) and it wasnt there the next day when my manager opened up. Security guard had taken it to safety.

Thought I didnt have key to lock up, called another staffmate in who had to drive 30 mins to get there... then I found my key.

Over charged someone $50.. im sure this happened a few times, as well as under charged.

Left someone waiting for 20 mins when forgetting to write up a drink order.

Spilled an entire bucket of mocha sauce on myself when pouring it into another container.

There was another major at Sbux that I cant remember but I do recall the written notice for it so it must have been big... just not what it was for. I think I left the banking for the day out of the safe or something.

working with me is a hoot.

Generally speaking though, I do FIX a lot more things with my nerdpowers, than what I break. So it evens out.

I've:

- Crashed a director's car into a set of barriers
- Blown up a PC by kicking it by accident
- Managed to stop a couple of thieves stealing computers from my first job's office...but then didn't warn next door. Oops. Got a lot of suspicious looks from the police....
- Managed to ease doing a giant mail-out by throwing away much of the mail-out stuff after 2 weeks of sheer boredom
- Passed out drunk on a number of occassions (first job again)
- Didn't get round to accepting video ownership claims years ago - the shit-hitting-fan that ensued still makes me wince.
- Ordered a huge amount of stationery, realised that it was all the wrong type of stuff, and then found myself unable to return/refund it (First job....)

Nefeli - I was there for 4 years. You'd think with that stellar track record, I would've been fired!

Best of luck with your new projects :)