'We sent 10k copies of a useless calendar to a client': 30+ Employees who worked with very incompetent coworkers

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Apr 30, 2025 11:00 AM EDT

Have you ever had one of those coworkers who constantly takes your breath away with their lack of knowledge? There's always that one person who never ceases to amaze you when they literally never know what's going on. While you're locked in, working on your caseload, they forgot their email password a month ago and just… haven't checked their email since. While your boss is bugging you about turning in a months-long project, your coworker is just realizing now that there's a project to be done. The 2 of you will probably be treated the same by your company, even though that dude in the cubicle next to you is dumb as rocks. I'll never understand how some people keep their job in spite of their constant mishaps.

Some industries are much more forgiving of mistakes, though. Office work and email jobs let workers get away with anything due to the lax nature of those duties (a late email never hurt anyone, right?). Other industries are very serious about their rules and regulations because people can and do get harmed when protocol isn't followed. Heavy machinery is unforgiving! There are stories from numerous different industries down below, check them all out and be glad that you don't work with these goofballs. 

Up next, read about some victorious workers who gleefully quit their jobs, like one person whose bosses "raised my wage 15 cents. I quit on the spot."

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  • 01
    Sh... Social worker here. We're supposed to see clients who live with families once a year. A mom of a kid kept calling her worker but got no answer. Mom called the on call worker who discovered the assigned worker had logged the visits in and made thorough notes. The mom said she never saw her in two years. This led to her
    via u/ShiroHachiRoku
  • 02
    whole caseload being audited and then they found she had logged a visit with a client who'd been de d for months. While being audited, her supervisor decided to do a surprise visit to the client she was supposed to see. She never showed up and logged in the visit the next day.
    via u/ShiroHachiRoku
  • 03
    PumpkinsDad At a Petco all the Guinea pigs were in a big plexi- glass enclosure with a center divider. Boys on one side and girls on the other. An employee decided that all the long haired Guinea pigs should be on one side and short haired on the other. It took forever to sort them out and all the females were pregnant.
    via u/PumpkinsDad
  • 04
    [deleted] Had a guy take a cover off the base of a radar unit which had like 40 bolts holding it on. Gave him a ratchet wrench to do it. Half hour later I go check on him.....only had about 10 off. Watched him a bit....he would take it off each time to move it for the next turn! showed him how a ratchet works....never assume people know stuff.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 05
    '[Coworker] planted a tree upside down'
    via Pasqualino Capobianco on Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 06
    Onwisconsin42 I worked on a golf course during the summer. Area with lots of poison ivy. Two of my coworkers were instructed to weedy a river edge area. If we encounter poison ivy, we either stop what we are doing or go get full suit protection with respirators. These dumba es were weedwhacking in the
    via u/Onwisconsin42
  • 07
    thickest poison ivy I had ever seen. No protective suit or glasses or respirator. I roll up and notice what the h I they're doing and point out all the poison ivy everywhere- they were aerosolizing the oil. They both ended up in the hospital on steroid to prevent their death because of the oils they inhaled.
    via u/Onwisconsin42
  • 08
    Oh... Tried to cool down hot oil (in a chute, all ready to be emptied) with a nice big bucket of water.....I heard "THOMAS NO" only to turn around and see a GEYSER of hot oil shooting towards the ceiling before it hit and splashed down around him. Nobody was hurt some J how
    via u/Ohiolongboard
  • 09
    Edit: because it has come up, the chute that the oil was in was on wheels and had a wooden handle, it absolutely didn't need to be cooled lol
    via u/Ohiolongboard
  • 10
    zachm26 Not a mistake necessarily, but I once witnessed our chief accounting officer (and our only accountant; it was a small company) type in values into two Excel cells, pull out a calculator, add the two numbers together in the calculator, and then type the answer in a third cell. She had apparently been doing this for years, with sheets
    via u/zachm26
  • 11
    consisting of thousands of rows. I explained how to use formulas and copy them but she apparently forgot because I saw her doing the same thing again months later.
    via u/zachm26
  • 12
    Psychological-Ea... One of my coworkers took an order to feed 150 people and told them two platters of sandwiches would do. Each platter is 5 sandwiches cut into 3 bits. So at best, they'd have 30 pieces of sandwiches to feed 150 people. He doubled down and everything and had days to figure it out.
    via u/Psychological-East91
  • 13
    atot806 The designer, creative director and head of production all missed that there was an eight day week on a calendar. We sent 10000 copies of a useless. calendar to a client. Rightly so, they refused to pay for it.
    via u/Psychological-East91
  • 14

    He had no idea what he was doing

    [deleted] When I worked construction, there was a guy who showed up with nothing in his tool belt except a small bag of peanuts in one pocket. He didn't stay around too long.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 15
    10s I had a coworker who was a guidance counselor at five schools in district. She was supposed to work one day at each school, unless she was called to a school for an urgent case. She would frequently call the school she was supposed to be at, stating she had an urgent case at another school.
    via u/1Os
  • 16
    One day at lunch she was talking about what was happening in her favorite soap opera. This was before VCRs, and the show aired long before the school day ended. The principal was sitting at our lunch table. He got up, smiled, and told her, "see me when you are done with your lunch."
    via u/1Os
  • 17
    After checking, she hadn't seen more than a few kids per week, for many months. Funny thing is, complaints. about her work had gone down in that time. She was a crappy guidance counselor.
    via u/1Os
  • 18
    overengineered A grabbed the arm of an intern once, right as he was about to grab a 00 gage (the big wires that feed electricity the whole building) bare handed to move it out of the way to show us a problem behind. It was hot.
    via u/overengineered
  • 19
    He claimed it was fine cause he was only gonna touch one wire at a time. The lead electrician "respectfully" requested said intern be removed from his sight before turning himself into carbon and paperwork. I agreed with this sentiment and had intern watching OSHA videos for almost 3 days straight as punishment.
    via u/overengineered
  • 20
    muppetmat13 Shut down a critical file server, then lied about it...even after he was presented with the logs that showed it was his user account that initiated the shut down. It's not so much the mistake that he made, but it was when he lied about making the mistake...that was a rookie move.
    via u/muppetmat13
  • 21
    serafel Pharmacy, I was a float pharmacist at the time. There was this lady that was a pharmacy assistant, all employees of the grocery chain besides pharmacists were union. Dumb as bricks and extremely negligent, but hadn't made enough mistakes to get fired. You pull up dr is that need to be filled from a queue,
    via u/serafel
  • 22
    scan the bottle of the dog, and the label for the patient prints out. If the dog is incorrect it will tell you that you're wrong and the label won't print. What I assume happened, is she scanned the incorrect bottle, went to get the right one, scanned it, bent down to get a vial, then she opened the WRONG bottle of dog, dumped the
    via u/serafel
  • 23
    contents, opened RIGHT bottle, dumped the contents (RX was for 200 tabs, most bottles are 100 count). She left it on the counter to check, and I always opened the vial and look at the tabs or capsules to make sure it's right. Opened it, looked right. Later when the person came to pick up, it was jostled from hanging in the pickup
    via u/serafel
  • 24
    area, and I always open it to show the person what's there and another check for me as well. Lo and behold, glyburide and gliclazide are mixed together! I apologized and corrected it, but I was furious. She put a high dose of glyburide in the bottle and the person was on a low dose of glicalizide. They could've had a critical hypoglycemic event because they were
    via u/serafel
  • 25
    old, and both meds make you release more insulin. I told her she wasn't allowed to put any bottles in recycling anymore, she had to leave everything she touched on the counter. I also couldn't ask her to enter prescriptions or do anything else because she was useless. She'd worked there for like 9 months and despite close shadowing and training with the best
    via u/serafel
  • 26
    assistants, she just didn't understand anything. I told her manager and I think she got written up, but she eventually quit because everyone hated her because she was so stupid.
    via u/serafel
  • 27
    [d... I worked in a paint shop and every time a new chemical was introduced to the shop, I would ask about the hazards. They would tell me that it is a green chemical; there are no hazards. "It's baby safe" they would say. Once when I entered the shop I saw a guy using a new spray. The side of the bucket indicated that it was dangerously poisonous and
    via u/[deleted]
  • 28
    highly corrosive. I told him that he should be using a mask and gloves to use that chemical. He said "Don't worry, it's baby safe. They even have a picture of a baby playing in it." Sure enough it did. After seeing the image, I yelled at the guy "This is the baby. He is not playing, he is not swimming, HE'S DONG!"
    via u/[deleted]
  • 29

    Here's the sign, designed to point people away from danger even if they can't read

    A WARNING Children can fall into bucket and drown. Keep children away from bucket with even a small amount of liquid.
    via u/[deleted]

    And this dude still managed to look at this, with the bold red circle crossed through it, and misunderstand the sign. Come on now. 

  • 30
    Mr_Frible Tried to retrieve his lighter from a deep fat fryer with his hands. boy was that fun to clean up.
    via u/Mr_Frible
  • 31
    Gr... New guy was dragging 2 8000lb rolls of paper through the warehouse. This is against the rules for good reason, anyway, he drove through a door designed for 1 roll, and dig the top roll through the wall
    via u/GrandMoffHarkonen
  • 32
    Edit: No, that isn't a typo. I spoke with a rollgrab driver this morning to double check my facts; the rolls in this plant are between 6000 and 8000 pounds each. The picture really can't do justice to the scale here.
    via u/GrandMoffHarkonen
  • 33
    M UNTER
    via u/GrandMoffHarkonen
  • 34
    theysocool The office we worked in was shut down due to co id and the company went 100% remote. A new senior engineer was hired to work directly with our product team and also manage a team of developers. During our company wide weekly zoom meeting after he was done presenting for the company he turned his
    via u/theysocool
  • 35
    camera off but forgot to put him self on mute. 100+ people heard this man playing Fortnite and talking down about the company to someone else in the background among other things. He only lasted a month.
    via u/theysocool
  • 36
    RosenBrtt I used to work for a landscaping company and over the course of a summer I witnessed one of my co- workers accidentally set 3 different things on fire (a hedge trimmer, a truck, and himself)
    via u/RosenBrtt
  • 37
    Yaboijustlikesgoats Poured sink cleaning solution into the ice cream machine instead of the cream mixture and I had to stop them, they then said "I'm sure it'll be fine, it was only a little." No that would poison people. I had to clean out the whole machine top to bottom and refill it. I ended up throwing away nearly a
    via u/Yaboijustlikesgoats
  • 38
    whole bucket full of contaminated ice cream mixture. I would also like to add that the containers didn't look anything alike, the sink stuff came in big plastic jugs with screw tops and the ice cream comes in carbord cartons (like orange juice) that you have to cut open. so I don't know how she could have possibly mixed the two up.
    via u/Yaboijustlikesgoats
  • 39
    jackleggjr Nearly leaving a child behind on a field trip. We took a large group of 4 and 5 year- old children to visit a farm/petting zoo/pumpkin patch. We had three vehicles. I was in charge of my own group, but I noticed one of the other teachers was being very lax in her supervision for most of the trip.
    via u/jackleggjr
  • 40
    When it was time to leave, I loaded my children on the bus (with some other adults) and did a head- count/attendance check. Before getting on my bus, I noticed that the other teacher had climbed onto her bus and sat down BEFORE the children boarded. She walked on first and had the kids follow her. I almost let it go, but gut instinct told me she wasn't counting her students. Once
    via u/jackleggjr
  • 41
    they were all boarded, I walked back and climbed on her bus. She seemed irritated when she realized I was checking on her... I was not a supervisor or anything, just a fellow teacher, so she didn't answer to me in any way. She said something like, "We're all good, let's go!" I knew how many were in each group, so without answering her, I did a quick count. Sure enough, we
    via u/jackleggjr
  • 42
    were missing one. I ended up leaving the bus and going to find the kid myself... he was still on the playground with children from another school. When we got back to the bus, the other teacher blamed the kid! She said he "wandered off." Really, she is the one who gathered the group and left the play area, meaning she is the one who "wandered off." She was
    via u/jackleggjr
  • 43
    ped when I went to the administration about the incident.
    via u/jackleggjr
  • 44
    Cheezburger Image 10500070144
    via Getty Images for Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 45
    LtDirtyBear I worked as a Radiation Protection Tech at a power plant that was re-fueling. My job was to sit outside of a contaminated area and if anyone wanted to take something out of the area (tools, etc.) I had to make sure it didn't have any radioactive particles on it. To do this you wipe the tool with something like a tissue and then hold the tissue up
    via u/LtDirtyBear
  • 46
    to a machine called a frisker. If the needle on the frisker goes above a threshold then the tool has to be cleaned or left in the area. One day I come back to relieve a guy who had been sitting outside the area for 2 hour. He tells me there's been no issues and everything has cleared. I look at the frisker, lean over and turn the machine on.
    via u/LtDirtyBear
  • 47
    sbenzanzenwan One volunteer had no computer experience. We showed her step by step how to do her job. She didn't know what a mouse was, how to click on something, etc. We got her up and running. She was pleased with herself, at having gotten the hang of using a PC.
    via u/sbenzanzenwan
  • 48
    Fast forward two hours. Come back to the office and she's in tears "I swear I didn't do anything! There were just fish everywhere all of a sudden!!" Look at the computer. Aquarium screen saver. After her little breakdown, she had to take the rest of the afternoon off.
    via u/sbenzanzenwan
  • 49
    Sa... My coworker at the bowling alley had to walk down a lane where a group of very young children (maybe 4-8 years old) were bowling to retrieve a ball that had stopped in the gutter about halfway down to the pins. When he had picked up the ball my other coworker told him to go walk it back down to the children. However this
    via u/SamusMcFizz
  • 50
    guy had it in his mind that it would be best to bowl it back down at the group of small children instead. Luckily one of the adults with the children was a big muscular guy who was able to stop the ball and pick it up without anybody getting hurt.
    via u/SamusMcFizz
  • 51
    allthefishinthelake Was making pizza. Guy broke the pizza board (the thing with the handle you make the pizza on and then slide the pizza into the oven) I found the other one and he lost that. So I told him to make pizzas on one of the plastic cutting boards. He put the pizza into the oven on the board and just left it. The board melted No more pizza that day
    via u/allthefishinthelake
  • 52
    ONSFishing I don't know exactly the problem, but my wife and I had a house built, 3 months after our closing the company that installed the HVAC wanted to do a routine maintenance as part of the warranty. The guy came in and looked at the system setup in the attic and just "oh this is Jerry's work" in a very apologetic voice and
    via u/ONSFishing
  • 53
    scheduled someone to come out and redo 90% of the work before the warranty began I don't know what Jerry did, but it was apparently well known in that company to likely need to be redone.
    via u/ONSFishing
  • 54
    Independent_Waf... Putting all the patients false teeth in a bowl together to soak on a dementia ward. Took us weeks to try and match patient to teeth, no, they weren't marked up with the patients names. Doubt the right teeth ended up with the right patient, it was guess work.
    via u/Independent_Wafer719
  • 55
    eljosho1986 My wife worked at a gas station and found out her coworker, who had been there for years, had been refilling the napkin dispenser by cramming them one at a time through the front slot. She walked up and unfastened the back and apparently his jaw hit the floor. He had never considered that there might be a better way to do this.
    via u/eljosho1986
  • 56
    HeavyMetalSasqu... Planted a tree, UPSIDE DOWN.
    via u/HeavyMetalSasquatch
  • 57
    Cheezburger Image 10500063232
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 58
    TechnicolourOutS... Some new hire (like JUST hired) decided that a spare computer lab needed to be redesigned for better feng shui without realizing it was designed in a haphazard way thanks to a fluke of the building interfering with the computer network. The entire lab was rendered useless. He was gone within a hour.
    via u/TechnicolourOutSpace
  • 59
    [deleted] One of my reports missed a 9 AM meeting and when I asked him why he said "you said the meeting was at 12, not 9!" Of course I was very confused because the meeting invite said 9 and everyone else on the team knew it was at 9. So he sent me a screenshot of his outlook calendar and it turns out he just had all his sh set to the wrong time zone.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 60
    daughtcahm New temp-to-hire admin, she was supposed to order lunch for a big meeting. They told her where to order from and how many omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans. She showed me the order she was going to place, and I corrected her, pointing out she didn't have any vegan food or enough. vegetarian. She told me I was wrong and ordered
    via u/daughtcahm
  • 61
    anyway, even with me screeching at her not to do it and explaining what was wrong. Omnivores got beef. Vegetarians got chicken. ("It's not meat.") Vegans got salads with egg and cheese. ("But it has vegetables.") ...she was not hired on full time
    via u/daughtcahm
  • 62
    FormerWordsmith Removing the plastic wrapping from a pallet of 5 gallon cans of (highly flammable) acetone. He didn't have a box cutter so he proceeded to melt it with a lighter
    via u/FormerWordsmith
  • 63
    panfried540 I knew a dude that printed almost a thousand pages of counterfeit dollar bills for a joke or prank. The boss walked in immediately after and wound up behind the back area of the business throwing it all into the burn barrel getting rid of it. Dude didn't last much longer than that
    via u/panfried540
  • 64
    lydriseabove I have a list a mile long of the sh our completely incompetent project manager did, but the best was insisting that a $3000 load of fertilizer still absolutely had to be delivered as previously
    via u/lydriseabove
  • 65
    scheduled despite the company warning against it as we were expecting heavy rains that day. The entire pile was washed away within a couple of hours.
    via u/lydriseabove
  • 66
    OhAces A guy was using the overhead crane in a machine shop I worked in. It had two hooks on it, one was raised right to the roof, the other was lowered and beside another guys machine. The guy using the crane was looking at the hook by the roof and mobilized the crane, he was wearing earmuffs and the shop is loud af so when he started
    via u/OhAces
  • 67
    almost killing everyone in the line of machines with the other hook he couldn't hear the rest of us screaming. The hook almost threw the first guy into his lathe, hit the next guy's tool board, flipped over to the side he
    via u/OhAces
  • 68
    was on almost put him into his lathe, rinse and repeat for the next three machines. When it bounced over the last one it grabbed the A- Frame that held all the bar stock and started lifting 30- 40T of steel off the ground someone finally made it to him and slapped the controls out of his hands. That was his last day at that job.
    via u/OhAces
  • 69
    jef... Emptying hot fryer oil into a plastic container. Guess how that went Well this blew up! And yeah it melted went everywhere. What a pain to clean that was. Kid got fired
    via u/jeffers2286
  • 70
    elyas_machera I worked for TSA in college. This guy was working the X- ray while I was clearing bins. All of sudden bags starting flying through and crashing into each other. He'd fallen asleep, and his big belly was pressing the forward button on the X-ray machine.
    via u/elyas_machera
  • 71
    NeetSamurai90 I worked at a tech repair shop, or not sure how to call it,- but we basically repaired laptops, pcs, printers, and the like (no tvs, not that it matters). This was ran by three older dudes and one of their nephews worked there too. The dudes were pretty chill most of the time, and one of them was really cool like, ALL the time.
    via u/NeetSamurai90
  • 72
    The nephew was a moron, though. He had seniority over me, but they trusted me way more than they did him. Despite being there for more than a few years, and despite him being a close relative. So one day, the chill dude has to take a printer to a company that was like 2 hours of driving away and since it was the nephews task to test the printer
    via u/NeetSamurai90
  • 73
    properly, he asked him like 10 times if he had tested it. The nephew said he did, just 5 mins ago, and that it worked... Of course, he did not test it. and it did not work when he hooked it up at the company. Needless to say, the chill dude went ballistic on him. Shortly after that, he got fired because of many similar mistakes he made.
    via u/NeetSamurai90
  • 74
    All he had to do was test a printer. It was 5 minutes of work.
    via u/NeetSamurai90

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