'He manages to destroy more than $2 million in material': 20+ Employees and their coworkers who made giant mistakes at work

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jul 24, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

These people shared the biggest and funniest ways they've ever messed up at work. Maybe they didn't find it funny at the time, but looking back on your mistakes can be hilarious. 

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and some are much more serious than others. U/headtotoe asked people to tell about the worst mistakes they've ever made in the workplace. After a little bit of pushing from commenters, the OP shared the mistake that led them to ask the question. They wrote that at their data entry job at a newspaper, they input some wrong digits. In turn, their mistake trickled down to the mail carriers, who didn't have enough papers to give to each customer. Then, those customers got annoyed that they didn't get their newspaper subscription, and complained about it to the company. Then, the OP writes, they did it again the next day! It's impressive how one mistake can lead to a cascade of other things gone wrong. 

These people who shared their stories below are from all types of industries, from waiting tables to working in IT to working in the legal field. Check out all the responses below, and next time you make a mistake, remember that someone else has definitely done something worse. 

After that, this boss tried to tell her babysitter to miss her own sister's wedding just to take care of the boss's kids instead. 

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  • 01
    Tire - 'I dropped a 50 pound sand bag on the gas pedal of a golf cart, it zipped across a large field before crashing through the wall of a shed'
    via Kenan Kitchen on Unsplash
  • 02
    Font - Reddit, I just screwed up royally at work. Let me hear your worst work f up stories. In other words, make me feel better about being a dumbas. EDIT: Ok you all want to know what happened to me? I work at a newspaper doing data entry type stuff. Basically I entered a couple numbers wrong, creating a giant s storm of people calling my boss at 11pm. The numbers I entered wrong caused lots of issues with the trucks that carry the newspapers to their specific drop points, which in turn causes
    via u/headtotoe
  • 03
    Font - carriers to be short papers on their routes, which in turn leads to customers bing that they didn't get they're papers. (I swear to god, a nuclear bomb could go off and people will still expect to get a newspaper.) Worst of all? I did this two days in a row. EDIT 2: Wow. Thanks everyone for telling your stories. I definitely feel like less of a dumba after reading them.
    via u/headtotoe
  • 04
    Font - rooran Worked as a student in a bank-agency. I wasn't 18 yet, so I wasn't allowed to be at the front desk (some insurance-issues), basically I was doing paperwork in the back. Once, a customer wanted to enter, but one can't just walk into a bank, you have to ring a bell, and have an employee open the door for you by pressing a button under the front desk.
    via u/rooran
  • 05
    Font - Long story short, he rang, all employees were busy, so I went to press the button. I check under the desk, s, 3 buttons. The man was looking at me, looking pretty ped by the waiting-time, so I just press a random button. Turns out it was the motherf ing alarm button. TL;DR: I accidently pressed the alarm- button while working in a bank.
    via u/rooran
  • 06
    Font - pickeldudel I incorrectly labelled about 30 pairs of shoes as being $80 instead of $150. That was not a good day.
    via u/pickeldudel
  • 07
    Font - [deleted] Right out of tech school, I got a job as a mechanic in a small chain shop. Often times, experienced techs would diagnose a problem them pass it along to me to do the hard labor. I think that is pretty typical. So, I get this car that needs an air conditioning evaporator replaced. For those that don't know, this is often found way up inside the dashboard and can be a considerable amount of work to extract. This particular one was a beast and fought me every step of the way: hidde
    via u/deleted
  • 08
    Font - I get it all back together and recharge the AC system. The car goes out working perfectly. As it turned out, the driver was taking a trip across country and I missed a crucial part of any evaporator install: checking the drip valve. All of the accumulated water that would normally drip outside onto the ground was instead pouring inside her car. So, she gets back from her trip and the car was soaked. Over an inch of water under the carpet and seats. We had to strip it down to the metal and
    via u/deleted
  • 09
    Font - lgyure85 I work at a pet store. I accidentally threw a snake away. I was cleaning the bedding and didn't see him buried in his. I dumped it. 2-3 days later my department manager brought it back to me after finding it in the receiving garbage. Somehow I didn't get in trouble. Snake was fine.
    via u/lgyure85
  • 10
    Font - [deleted] I worked in a mailroom right out of college for a fairly large company. We often times had Overnight, Next Day AM packages that HAD to be there or apparently the world would explode. I was responsible for getting these to the drop boxes before pick up time, which means I had to take them with me when I left work and drop them off. Well one Friday, had one of these urgent letters. Left work and completely forgot about it. It sat in my car all weekend. Got to work the next monday,
    via u/deleted
  • 11
    Font - management were literally freaking out cause the letter didnt arrive (got yelled at, etc). It apparently was a half a million dollar check that this company was waiting for or they were going to take some kind of legal action or something. It turned out fine, but I wanted to die at the time. Been there.
    via u/deleted
  • 12
    Font - reseph I had two SSH sessions open. One to my personal server at home and the work server. Went to reboot my server. Rebooted the work server. Web hosting company, so uh yeah.
    via u/reseph
  • 13
    Font - w4lter I was working in a sterile hood when a massive sneeze hit me out of fling nowhere. The force of it caused me to duck my head under the hood and blow mucus everywhere inside. The whole lab froze and eyes slowly rolled my way in disbelief like this. I contaminated every sample and they had to call in an outside company to resterilize.
    via u/w4lter
  • 14
    Font - sirlearnsalot I used to run charges on credit cards as part of my job at a bike parts vendor. One day I mistakenly charged a bike shop over $1000. It made the owner of the shop go over their credit limit and get a bunch of fees. I was fired soon after. The only job I was ever fired from. I later moved to the town where that very same bike shop resides. I spoke with the owner and mentioned that I had worked for the vendor long in the past. She told me in detail about the time that her card
    via u/sirlearnsalot
  • 15
    Font - mhelweg I was a stage manager at a 3000 seat hall in downstate NY and was doing a performance of julio iglesias. Due to a snowstorm that day, I predicted a cancellation, so myself and about 5 other stagehands hit the hotel lobby bar for about 3 hours prior to doors.
    via u/mhelweg
  • 16
    Font - The radio DJs who were supposed to introduce him did not arrive on- time. Even with the snow, the house was sold-out and packed... I walked out on stage and stumbled over a cable, and almost fell from the deck - recovering, I walked up to the mic (with spotlights on me all the way) and proceeded to blank on his name, and managed "JEWEL-E-O EN- GRACIAS"" and ambled off the stage. Narrowly escaped unemployment.
    via u/mhelweg
  • 17
    Font - [deleted] I worked at a plant nursery that sold bulk soils and sand. We loaded this into customers trucks with a Bobcat front end loader. Guy jumps into Bobcat after improperly attaching the bucket, and scoops up ~2000 pounds of sand. Everything is fine and dandy until he attempts to tilt the bucket down and dump the sand. BOOM, 500 pound bucket holding 2000lbs of sand SMASHES the side of a guy's brand new Tundra. Couldn't even drive it.
    via u/deleted
  • 18
    Font - kidjan First day on the job as a carpenter (edit--I had been working at the company as an apprentice, so it wasn't exactly my "first day on the job." It was my first day not digging postholes )--I was building a deck. My boss shows me how to use the miter saw and lay down the top of the deck, and then takes off to do another job, leaving me to finish. So I'm cutting each piece, laying it down, cutting another, laying it down, and I start to think gee, this would be way easier if I just cu
    via u/kidjan
  • 19
    Font - Bad idea. What I didn't account for was the deck wasn't perfectly square, so after a couple more boards, they were short an inch. A couple more after that, they were short a few inches. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a "board extender," so I basically ruined all the wood. TL;DR I basically ruined a few hundred dollars of lumber. First day on the job.
    via u/kidjan
  • 20
    Font - jumpbreak5 Found a lighter in my pocket while standing in my boss' office at the deli I worked at. I was bored. I had to run past the entire deli counter screaming to get to the sink when I lit my shirt on fire. There were at least 15 customers in line.
    via u/jumpbreak5
  • 21
    Font - choast i was working at a pizza place making large batches of dough (50 lb bags of flour should put it into frame). anyways i finish an entire batch and section them off into large dough-balls and slide them in the fridge. that's when i look down and see the unopened package of yeast just chillin on the table. i didnt put any yeast into the dough. had to throw it all out. bosses were pretty cool about it, but then my next shift somebody took a s all over the womens bathroom and i had to c
    via u/choast
  • 22
    Font - HaveBSinMEWillTravel. Not mine, but a coworker's. I used to work manufacturing large televisions. The company had just received a shipment of 50 104" screens from a vendor. A brand new employee was charged with transporting and stacking them. Just as he stacking the 50th screen it slips out of his hands. It falls and shatters all 50 screens. In his first 4 hours of work he manages to destroy more than $2 million in material and set back production by weeks. Edit: Spelling.
    via u/HaveBSinMEWillTravel
  • 23
    Font - BrianTheSquirrel I got bored at work and I stapled a cell phone battery. It spewed out battery acid and then exploded. My manager was dissapoint.
    via u/BrianTheSquirrel
  • 24
    Font - rotO Rriot DELETE * FROM table WHERE value='_ <instead of SELECT *> (3,798,436 row affected) tight bhole
    via u/rotO Rriot
  • 25
    Font - Fozler I declared a loyal (Yearly 7 figure) customer bankrupt that wasn't bankrupt. It happened within my first week on the job in 2005. I was 19 and was forgiven.
    via u/Fozler
  • 26
    Font - StrangelyBrown Working as an intern at a major investment bank, I accidentally deleted the main configuration table from the developer's test database. Almost immediate the department filled with cries of "WTF? Did something very bad just happen to the dev database??". Only the dev database though. Panicking, I asked the experienced girl sitting next to me for help. She suggested we just make a new copy of the table from the live database. We did that and things calmed down for a while.
    via u/StrangelyBrown
  • 27
    Font - Later that day the s hit the fan again when someone realised that the configuration table values meant test trades were being sent to live trade servers (or something along those lines). The girl next to me was nearly fired...
    via u/StrangelyBrown
  • 28
    Font - claimed4all I staked out a unit (put wood markers in the ground to indicate location of building) and they poured the foundation walls. 3 days later I get a call that I put the driveway right in line with a fire hydrant. Now the small company that I work for has to pay to relocate the Hydrant, probably 1500- 2000$. I may have made the final f up, but whoever did the plans had the hydrant 20' from where it actually was. Just happened last week too. Now what the h happened to you?
    via u/claimed4all
  • 29
    Font - Outsomnia I was a c tastic waitress for a summer in university. Seriously. You did not want me waiting your table. Story the first: Just fresh out of "training", I'm tending to a pair of women at brunch. I notice an almost empty coffee mug. Out of the goodness of my heart, I decide to refill it without her asking. As I'm leaning over with the coffee pot, I hit it against a ledge of a separator thingy... coffee sloshes out of the pot and all over the woman. Woman is livid. I am humiliated.
    via u/Outsomnia
  • 30
    Font - Story the second: It's a busy night, and I've been slammed (given too many tables). For some reason, I am also told to tend to a table of eight persons, one of which is the restaurant's general manager. Hoo boy. Cue me fing up everyone's orders, bringing them wrong food (which fs up the orders of other tables), nearly spilling something on a child, etc. etc. At the end, the general manager has a word with me and actually tells me it's not my fault, the manager for the night should have re
    via u/Outsomnia
  • 31
    Font - Story the third: Family slyly requests slice of cake to celebrate birthday of their son. They repeatedly ask me to make sure that it is peanut-free because he has an allergy. I talk to the kitchen, and reassure the parents that the cake I've recommended is peanut-free. Deliver cake. Kid needs puffer almost immediately after taking a bite. F tl;dr: I really am a sl waitress.
    via u/Outsomnia
  • 32
    Font - kmack I dropped a 50LB sand bag on the gas pedal of a golf cart, it zipped across a large field before crashing through the wall of a shed. Not a terrible f probably my most comical. up, but
    via u/kmack

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