Bigger or smaller in scale and absurdity, mistakes are often inevitable. They can happen anywhere: at home, in school, or, of course, at work, usually making for one unfortunate—or funny if you’re just a spectator—story.
Stories about mistakes at work, some funnier than others, were recently discussed on the ‘Ask Reddit’ subreddit, where the user ‘Midtown-Fur’ asked people to share the dumbest instances of workplace blunders. Covering all sorts of situations, from unexpected to so cringy it hurts, they add up to one colorful collection of mishaps, so if you’re curious to see what they entail, wait no longer and scroll down to find netizens’ answers on the list below.
#1
I needed to cut a 2 inch rubber hose. There wasn't a table nearby so I put the hose on my knee and pushed the box cutter through the hose, directly into my knee. Sometimes the brain just doesn't work.
Image credits: IcedT_NoLemon
#2
Not me but a middle aged female in another department was unmuted while taking a massive dump and loudly taking a personal call on her cell. All 265 people on the call could hear her answer the phone and start talking about whatever while hearing the distinct sound of pee followed by farts and plops. Despite the CEO and the group directors all calmly (at first) telling her to please mute before the panic started to set in. She thought she was muted the entire time and had the volume set so low she couldn’t hear people yelling at her so she could instead be on her own call. It was almost 5 minutes into the call when we could hear the toilet paper rolling in the dispenser that she went dead quiet and left the meeting a second later. This was also not a work from home position either.
Image credits: Sierra419
#3
This one makes me laugh when I think about it:
I was sixteen pushing grocery carts outside a grocery store. “Lot attendant” was my title, and my job was to make sure chaos didn’t break out in the parking lot. But I also had some other duties, like taking out trash, emptying ashtrays, and doing a few other little odd jobs around the store. One day a woman taps me on the shoulder in the store and says “I’m sorry, but my kid just threw up over that display.” She points at this display of Entenmann’s snack cake that was freestanding in between some aisles. And I can see that this toddler had clearly projectile vomited all over it. There was some on most of the boxes. And I think “I’ll handle this.”
So I scoop up all the boxes, take them out to the dumpster, and throw them all away. And as I’m dusting my hands off and congratulating myself on being so helpful, a manager was like “what did you just do?” And I said “I cleaned up a big mess, a kid threw up on everything.” And he said “yea but you can’t just throw a whole display away. There’s a process. Inventory. We have to report these losses.” I said “I push shopping carts man. I don’t know anything about any of that.” And he let out a long sigh and said, “this isn’t going to be fun for either of us.”
Then he lowered me by my ankles back into the dumpster and I had to fish out all the snack cake boxes covered in child vomit and then learn how to scan them through some kind of computer. And in case you’re wondering, I haven’t eaten an Entenmanns snack cake since.
Image credits: DryTown
#4
Cut grass on a z-turn for like an hour before I realized I forgot to turn the blades on.
Image credits: Cvillain626
#5
I'm an assistant. My second week on the job I took my boss's $2000 personal computer to get repaired. When I was bringing it back to his house, I dropped it and cracked the screen.
Thank God it was a small crack and my boss is the chillest person on the planet, I genuinely thought I was going to get fired but instead he just happily started using it again and said it was no big deal since it still worked.
Image credits: CaptainFartHole
#6
I accidentally deleted the entire project directory for my company thinking i was deleting a folder called proposals. We lost about 2/3 of the directory before i was able to cancel the deletion. The data was gone as the folder was too big to fit in the trashcan so it was permanently deleting files as it went along.
Image credits: Twinchad
#7
I asked the Prince of Monaco to step out of the way because we were expecting a VIP to arrive any second. He was the VIP.
Image credits: thehandsomegoat
#8
Drove a semi truck full of mail from Providence to Boston with the trailer door open.
Image credits: shawnwarnerwrites
#9
My boss charged me with carefully depositing our cash earnings from the week at the bank down the road.I walked out to my car, set the bag on top of the car, and happily drove off ?.
Image credits: BeowulfShatner
#10
Sent the wrong door sizes to the framing company, every since door was 1 inch too short. It was on a 212 unit apartment building. I think each unit had between 7-10 doors. It’s amazing how expensive 1 inch can be.
Image credits: DirtyDan24137
#11
I delivered funeral flowers to a hospital room where the person was very much alive. Didn't realize it until I was about to deliver the get well soon flowers to the wake.
Image credits: neighborhooddisgrace
#12
Was filling a paint drum and left to use the bathroom then proceeded to go on break and midway through a snack realized and ran all the way back to paint everywhere.
Image credits: ResponsibilityNo4442
#13
Teams meeting, thought I was on mute. Person I dislike shows up a couple mins late and I blurt out… “Stupid a*s finally decides to show up.”.
Image credits: theBerj
#14
Forgot to turn the sign to open. Coworker found out after he came out, asked why the place was empty and watched five people come to the door, stop, turn and walk away. I was hungover and stood at the counter like a zombie for an hour and a half having watched many people walk up and away.Coworkers greeted me until I resigned with "Are we open?".
Image credits: skummelgutt
#15
Was on vacation and my boss told me to push a script another employee wrote before he quit. I was at Disneyland and didn't bother looking at it and just pushed it. Needless to say the former employee locked all our computers, 25000 of them. They tried to pin it on me but in the end my boss got in trouble for forcing me to work while I was on vacation and without anytime to prepare.
Image credits: Kimchi_Cowboy
#16
I wiped a users hard drive forgetting to backup the users data. I told the user a virus wiped their drive and they believed me.
Image credits: TraditionalTackle1
#17
Was giving a presentation to 300+ people and rested my arm on top of the podium in a spot where there was a button that turned the entire system off, taking ~10 minutes to reboot and get my presentation back up. 2 minutes into talking again, I did it again.
Image credits: redmooncat15
#18
I am personally responsible for a US Navy warship losing all power and going completely dark in the middle of the night, in the middle of the pacific ocean, for almost a half hour.
I also am responsible for flipping a switch that resulted in a mass murder of fish large enough that the local media covered the event and postulated on the possible causes.
Image credits: Silver-Reserve-1482
#19
Left the lift gate down on a truck while adjusting position. Took out someone's rear window.
Image credits: tychozero
#20
At 17, mistaking HR for a reasonable ear for my Manager being a total a**hat and bully. HR is not there to protect you it's there to protect the company.
Image credits: Fragmented-Rooster
#21
Made a joke about getting fired to collect unemployment. Got fired for making the joke. Got denied unemployment. Lol.
Image credits: rac300
#22
Worked at a graduate school in online education. Was trying to delete a class site and somehow deleted THE ENTIRE SEMESTER WORTH OF CLASS SITES.Luckily we had backups and my boss was very chill.
I panicked, Reported the error and left to cry at my then boyfriend's house. Was sure I was fired. I wasnt?.
Image credits: glass_boxofemotion
#23
One of my first jobs in 1989, I was doing typesetting and artwork and did a menu for a restaurant round the corner. I did the Wine List on the back page and accidentally typed 'Whine List', the spell checker didn't pick it up and no one else picked up on it until two weeks later when the owner brought them back saying: "Oi, look what you did!".
Image credits: Common-Hotel-9875
#24
I cut the end of a finger off in a meat slicer. I was slicing deli meat for a woman. In my pain and haste, I finished the job, wrapped the slices, and gave it to the woman. Then I bandaged it up.They found the sliced ham later on a shelf somewhere.
Image credits: DomingoLee
#25
Turned off the stadium lights to a professional baseball game, mid-windup by the pitcher.
Image credits: FallenRadish
#26
Put an adrenaline needle through my thumb. I was basically messing around with returned stock at a pharmacy whilst destroying old medication. Our old fashioned pharmacist/owner would always prime the adrenaline injectors and stab them into the wall to get rid of the liquid before disposing of it. I stupidly tried doing this myself one day but I squeezed the wrong end as I tried to prime it, and it ended up going right through my thumb and out the other side popping through my thumb nail.Felt like such an idiot. The needle wasn’t actually used, it was just out of date stock that a patient had returned. I still think about what could have happened quite often nearly 15 years later.
Image credits: ruobrah
#27
Brand new manager trainee. Had to sit through death by 90’s OSHA videos. All stuff I had seen before and I was incredibly bored of it. At the end of the video there was a random guy in our office I assumed was a customer and I sarcastically said “well that was an hour I’ll never get back”. He goes “did you not enjoy it?” I said “yeah I didn’t at all but like, I get it, safety comes first so it’s necessary but the videos are so common sense it hurts. Anyway can I help you real quick? I have a meeting to get to, big guy from corporate merchandising team several states away is gonna be here in an hour or two”.He goes “I’m filling in for big guy from corporate, I’m the North American safety director. Let’s have a chat about your vision of safety at our workplace since you have that all figured out”.
#28
Working for an investment manager, he gave me an order to sell 80,000 dollars of Microsoft in a client account. Wasn’t thinking and entered a sell of 80,000 shares. MSFT was selling at $100+ per share at the time. Cr*pping bricks as I got the brokerage firm’s trading desk on the phone and waited on hold to hear if they could bust the trade...
They did. Phew.
Image credits: MissSnuggelsxz
#29
I renamed all customers last names to the same last name. I don't remember why I was doing an update, but forgot to include the where clause. Thankfully i had a way to restore them, but that sucked.
Image credits: not_a_moogle
#30
Large printer, one of those office units…. Well, it had a manual switch to go between 220 and 110 voltage. Half way around the world and coworker forgot to change the switch to the correct voltage and fried the power supply. It’s going to take a week to get a replacement unit but my coworker need to depart to go to his wedding. So a week later, I fly out to finish this guys job and install the new unit. I forget to check the voltage and fry it again. Ooops.A lady at work replied to a promotion notice with, “this b***h don’t work at all, just takes credit for our work.” Sent it as reply all.
Image credits: SaltyDogBill
#31
My second week at my current job I backed into and knocked over a light pole. Worst part: it was on video.
#32
Well, many years ago while in my early days of military life I was in charge of ordering supplies for my division. I was trying to order D batteries for mag lights. I wanted to order about 38 cases which was 380 batteries. I misread how they came. I thought it was ordered by each, so I ordered 380 batteries. That was the first mistake. For the second mistake I actually fat fingered it and ordered 3800. To compound the error the unit of issue was by the case…. I ended up with 3800 cases of D batteries while at sea on an aircraft carrier.It sucked so bad.
#33
I once sent out an important email to the entire company but forgot to attach the critical document everyone needed.#34
Work in payroll so have $5-10k+ mistakes aren’t uncommon. Was testing out a new warning/deduction code on a new account and had entered $5k as a test check and forgot to delete it before processing, to a terminated employee, who promptly emptied his bank account so we couldn’t pull it backMuch worse, a coworker rerouted something like 15-20 direct deposits to her own account. It’s all super traceable with username/time stamp records of every single change so she was promptly fired and I believe arrested.
#35
Why filter for laser chiller $100? Me find same filter on McMaster Carr for $50. Me save lab $50 every six months.Except the McMaster one, while having the same filter specs, also contained cellulose. I caused some $15k pump diodes to die about 10k hours prematurely. Of course, we only figured out the issue when the second set of diodes died prematurely as well...
#36
A 3d sensor we make slipped from my hands... dropped on the floor. i felt so f*****g bad ...we sell those for 100k :| (nothing broke ! we just had to fix the laser and camera alignements)
We have a tradition now, if you drop a sensor, your name will be written on the floor where the hole left in the floor is (they make a nice mark in the flooring material).
#37
We were in an all-hands meeting over Zoom. Small company, ~90 employees. Had just hired 6 new people, mostly remote. CEO ended the meeting by opening it up to questions. I wanted to sound welcoming to the new employees but I didn't want to turn on my mic, so I typed in the chat, "where are all the new employees located?", immediately hit send. Except I didn't type "new". I accidentally hit J on the keyboard instead of N. And I didn't proofread before sending. So I asked the entire company where the Jew employees are located. IMMEDIATELY followed up with "new* omg I'm so sorry" and my CEO played it in stride like a pro. Best part - one of the Jewish employees Slacked me after the meeting to tell me where he was located.
#38
I accidentally took down a small network for a church. I was eating a donut and looking at a workstation screen trying to solve an issue. The staff at this site were weird about turning off monitors to save electricity. One of them said something about the monitor next to the one I was working on being on so without looking I reached over and hit the power button. The screen I was looking at stopped responding and when I got up to check the server I realized I had hit the power button on the server and not the monitor.#39
Taken a new medicine at work then made me act like I was drunk as f**k , it was so embarrassing and stupid. I should’ve tried the new medicine at home first.
Image credits: Hunnidrackboy8
#40
I practice criminal law. During a drink drive trial I was, for some reason, using the word “circumscribed” during a question to a witness. However, without realizing it, what I actually said was “circumcised”. Twice. On break, the court reporter asked me why I said what I’d said. I didn’t believe her. She played it back for me. I’d said it. ??♀️.#41
My biggest mistake was that I had this delusional that if I work hard, never slack off and never called in unless really sick, somehow I would move up in the company. It's really about who you know in higher positions that gets you moved up, I've also noticed they don't want to lose good workers by moving them up in positions.#42
Ate a cookie a customer gave me. "Oh no, those were for later..." "Yeah, I could tell by the aftertaste. Thanks tho, I'll just go spend the rest of the day on maintenance tasks away from customers."
Luckily I'm the boss so I just put on my headphones and started fixing s**t around the shop. I let my main manager know the f**kup and he kinda just didn't send anyone my way for the rest of the day. Definitely got razzed for that one every time I brought in baked goods for the team for years though.
#43
First job was as a cart boy at a golf course. Pulled all the carts in for the night and forgot to plug them all in. Most were dead come morning on a Sunday. Fired on Monday.#44
I tattooed a child.#45
I was working remotely (think dial up modem; 4800 baud) on an environmental data monitoring system. I had rebooted it a few times.Little did I know that I had shutdown a refinery line that took several days to recover. It cost them a few hundred thousand dollars
Ooops!!!
They should have said something before they allowed me to connect.
#46
Worked in a mental hospital as a janitor. Been there for about a week when someone said I needed to clean a part I've never cleaned. It was a wing that had a security desk, and locked door. Halfway though mopping the floor the entire place locks down because one of the violent patients got out since I didn't know I had to lock the door, and the security guy was out to lunch. That ward was an isolation Ward for violent people who were there on court order or sentenced there. Thankfully the guy who got out just went to the day room, and turned on the TV. When the nurses said he had to go back he did.
The janitor that did that ward was off sick, and I've never even been to that side of the hospital before. Wasn't told of any special rules or anything.
#47
Got involved with a married coworker. Whom I later learned was just going through all the new male employees.#48
Forwarded an email to a coworker, which included a link to a viral video that everyone in the world was talking about that month — a very naughty video.BUUUUUUUT I forgot to use my personal email instead of my work email. Boss intercepted the message. I was fired the next morning. This was a week before Christmas.
In the grand scheme… it all worked out for the best. I ended up at a much better job making twice as much money. But I still feel dumb about it.
#49
Long ago, was in IT and was moving data volumes on and offline. Misread and 8 for a 0 and took the Airline’s reservation system down for 30 minutes. At 2 million per hour, oops. Immediately reported what I did, it was fixed, mgr said you know what you did and I know it won’t ever happen again. Yup. Sorry. Okay, carry on. I Went on to a long career in IT. Clearly never forgetting that lesson and response.#50
Ran a customers credit card and accidentally added an extra zero. Took a $2,300 order to a $23,000 order and the charge went through. Our accounting person caught it at the end of the day when they mentioned the really great day we had to my boss.#51
I used to make soup in a factory for a living and you’re supposed to use specific ingredients for each one because of different allergens. Anyways, I accidentally mixed two different totes of noodles together, which was over 1000 pounds altogether. I was absolutely mortified by my mistake, but my boss just waved it off and calmly said not to do it again. It probably helped my case that I was one of their best workers and it was around 140 degrees in the factory that day.#52
Left the back door unlocked to a pool facility. Thankfully nobody wandered in and died but I'd have 100% been on the stand for negligence if they had.#53
As a flight attendant, I forgot to disengage the emergency slide on arrival and when the cleaning crew opened the door the slide deployed. It was incredibly lucky that no one got hurt. Everyone enjoyed taking a turn going down the slide though.#54
Didn't do a test fart before I let the big one out during a teams meeting.#55
Lets seeeee, lost a kid as a ski instructor. That sucked, he was a little s**t and hard to keep track of (non english speaker and didnt want to listen to my s****y spanish) This was on a HUGE mountain also (heavenly valley) luckily a lifty nabbed him and handed off to a ski patroller.Then there's the cabinet shop I was working in a couple years ago. Trying to make a rabbet cut on althe table saw, I was lining up my mark with the saw blade at the back of blade. Decided to turn the saw on and move my piece into the blade, FROM THE BACK. That piece of wood left my hands like a bat out of hell. Table saws are insanely powerful and I gave that thing a nice chunk of wood to throw at its absolute hardest, fastest speed. I put a hole in the metal garage door that faced the saw. I'm lucky I was standing to the side.
first thing was not so stupid, the saw thing was definitely stupid AF.
#56
Was dollying 5 cases of beer in glass bottles. Dropped them and they all shattered.#57
Nuked my companies data center switch. Every single server lost connection for 4ish hours.Why didn't I get fired?
They had zero backup plans for any sort of disaster recovery and I was brand new.
#58
Set off a fire alarm by trying to get some wasps that were trying to nest in the employee bathroom.
Turns out wasp spray, when sprayed right into a fire alarm (where the wasps were wasping about) will set it off.
#59
I had just taken over as the Cybersecurity vulnerability manager. I set up a Nessus scan for the entire network, over 12k individual IPs, overnight. What I didn’t know is that the scan would boot the cameras and door locks offline for the duration of the scan. So not only did I take all the cameras offline at a military installation but I also cause all the locked doors to fail open, unlocking everything for over an hour. I got called in the middle of the night. Didn’t get fired, fixed it going forward.#60
Signed off a work email to an external client with kind regards, but accidentally swapped the g with a t.I wanted the ground to swallow me that day.
#61
Print designer — I made a typo on the sold price of a home for a real estate company, and apparently people keep an eye out for that stuff to sue for false advertising. Company paid them out $30,000 and I didn’t get a raise that year lol.#62
I accidentally put my work email as sender for a 1 500 000 subscribers promotional emailing.RIP my inbox during 3 days.
#63
Stuck my hand in a bagel slicer while the blade was slowing down.
#64
Not me per se, but an attorney at a large NY law firm where I was a paralegal knew I was taking a trip to Amsterdam.So I sent my out of office email to the litigation team, and he replied all with “Pothead slacker.”
He was gone the next day. Poor guy.
#65
I was working at a retail hardware store about 25 years ago. I had to do the cash deposit and drop it off at the bank night drop. Don’t know how, but I forgot to go to the bank and went directly home instead. I didn’t even think about anymore. The cash bag with over $10k in cash and checks was waiting for me in the car the next morning. I didn’t even lock my car doors.#66
First day on the job working for a cleaning company, the very first thing I did was pick a mop up from the bucket directly vertical, rather than at an angle, and shattered the overhead strip light above me. While talking to the boss.#67
Quit a job where I had to do next to nothing, watched movies all day, but was paid the bare minimum, to do a job where I'm constantly busy but paid the bare minimum.#68
During a conference call, I forgot to mute my mic and made an offhand comment about the meeting being boring. Everyone heard it, and it was so embarrassing.#69
Giving my 100% effort.#70
Delivered the wrong furniture at a house and they wouldn’t give it back. The company I worked at didn’t care, told me to get over it even though THEY gave me the wrong address to deliver to. Tried to take it out of my paycheck so I put in my 2 weeks.#71
Working on an automatic failover in a Cisco ASA for our main outside interface and accidentally setup a NAT loop that brought the whole org down for any external communication for 2 days while we tried to find the needle in the haystack of ACLs that caused it.In my defense, it took 4 layers of TAC escalation and 6 Cisco engineers to stumble upon it.
150 employees just suddenly didn't have anything to do. No email, no internet, no connection to any cloud services... Nothing.
My boss was like "you ain't a cowboy if you ain't been bucked off..." or, in other words, "sometimes when you're working hard, stuff goes wrong. Learn from it, move forward.".
#72
I used to be a realtor. I listed a house, helped the sellers arrange staging, hired a professional photographer. Listing looked great, lots of interest, multiple strong offers, everything went unusually smoothly. Driving home from the closing, I was thinking how good it felt that the clients were so happy. So happy with the price they got, how smoothly it went, the photos, the staging... F**K. THE STAGING. I'd forgotten to notify the stager that the house had sold. All the rented furniture was still in it. If the buyers wanted to be sticklers, they could keep it all. I immediately called the buyers' agent, but she didn't respond for *hours* and I was s******g bricks. I called the stager and admitted to my giant screw-up. She pulled guys from other tasks and got the furniture out once I finally got ahold of the buyers. Ended up buying gifts for the stager, the buyers, and the buyers' agent. That day is one of the reasons I decided to no longer be a realtor. .#73
Connecting duct to a new heat pump and drilled a screw through the copper refrigerant piping. Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft! In the basement of a very, VERY wealthy and influential family’s vacation home.#74
I spilt a Bloody Mary on the lap of a very rich American who had just told me he was on his way to Heathrow. He was wearing a cream linen suit. He had told me his baggage had gone ahead, that he was having brunch then heading to the airport. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone look at me with such anger in their eyes, before or since.#75
I worked at a semi truck tire retreading plant. One day I was walking down the middle of the warehouse, both headphones in, tapping my pen on my clipboard as I gazed over the sea of tires before me, trying to count how many of the 315's were in the back row. I was then run over by a forklift.#76
Getting a friend hired.I worked for a restaurant for many months and it was great, never heard a complaint.
one day they decided they wanted more help, offered my friend the job.
in less than six months, trouble was happening everywhere.
I’ll never work with a friend.
#77
Back in the day of floppy disks... the big boss was working for a week on a job for a presentation for a client, lots of spreadsheets, etc. On the day of the presentation, he gave the floppy and a blank to the new 18 year old fresh out of a tech high school with high grades in "data processing" IT guy to make a backup. You would put the original in the drive, run the backup program, put the blank in the drive, it would go back and forth and copy the original to the blank.... if you didn't screw up the process.My immediate boss told me he had to go to bat for me big-time to keep my job.
#78
Used to a custodian for many years, when I was leaving the lunch room one afternoon after mopping it. Walking down the hallway to the custodian closet to clean the bucket and this annoying 6th grader that was always talking s**t to everyone started talking s**t to me. I don’t know why I popped off but I bopped him in the head with the end of the mop stick. He teared up and said he was gonna tell the principal and his parents. I walked off let home and I thought the police were gonna head to my house later that evening and arrest me. They never did and I kept my job.#79
I scheduled a meeting with a client and forgot to account for the time difference. They were really upset when I didn’t show up at the right time.#80
A typo in a technical report turned 101.0 into 1010.The minimum standard was 100 so it passed with flying colours. Of course, given natural production variation, there were soon many, many expensive problems.
#81
I ordered 6 ASME water heaters in 3 phase configuration for a job. There was no 3 phase electrical anywhere on the jobsite.If you're not familiar with plumbing, ASME heaters are made to order non returnable. And you can't convert them in the field to the correct electrical configuration.
$9K a piece. Boss was not happy. I thought I was about to get fired. Luckily, we were able to make it up elsewhere further down the line.
#82
Backed the truck into a hotel.#83
Double-billed a client for 5 years to the tune of over $30K. Complete oversight on my part. Got them fully restored. .#84
Fresh out of college and I worked in a lab and was about to test a sample from the ER. I opened a tube of blood quickly that had a rubber cap that was suctioned into the tube. When I opened it, I opened it towards myself and the force of the ‘Pop’ splashed blood onto my face, lips and eyes. I had internal panic and embarrassment. I froze, then quickly wiped it away and never told anyone.I worked at a children’s hospital and convinced myself I’d be ok. That was 14yrs ago and I don’t have HIV or anything, so that’s nice.
