20+ Employees who made big mistakes on the job: '[She] printed 500 copies of her gas bill on the company printer'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jun 20, 2025 11:00 AM EDT

To err is human, and to err at work is sometimes very funny. Just ask the coworkers of the woman who accidentally printed 500 copies of her own gas bill on the company's printer! That's one of the nice perks of office working: you can sneakily print out some shipping labels, reading material, or personal documents without having to pay a quarter per page at the library. You've just got to be careful, though… Most of us have had the trouble of a slow printer that has trouble connecting. We wait to hear the noise of the paper beginning to churn through the machine, and when we don't, we hit that print button again. And again. And again! And suddenly, you're left with 10 copies of a 7-page report your boss asked for. Or in this woman's baffling case, she printed 500 copies of that gas bill. But the printer only held 250 sheets of paper, meaning she had to reload another ream of paper just to continue printing out that gas bill. How bizarre! 

Other workers made mistakes that were way more costly or disruptive than wasting a few reams of paper. A couple people literally bankrupted their companies with their incredibly big mistakes! Check out a bunch of excellent stories below and read for yourself just how wild these workplace mistakes were. 

Next, read about a customer who tried to save $91 by turning in a rental car early, only to discover the employees weren't going to cooperate: "If I'm getting charged an extra day, I'm using it." 

Advertisement
  • 01

    "What's the worst mistake you've seen someone do in their job?"

    Heythere23856 A guy i worked with got fired from his 120k a year job because he was stealing juice from the stock room
    via u/Heythere23856
  • 02
    NadjaStolz28 I worked at a car dealership several years back. There was a new mechanic who was there barely a week, and tasked to go fill all the brand new, top of the line, biggest diesel trucks on the lot. Diesel.
    via u/NadjaStolz28
  • 03
    The guy filled all the trucks with regular gas. At the gas station down the street. Then drove them back to the lot. He was fired pretty quickly after that.
    via u/NadjaStolz28
  • 04
    DP487 An IT worker once sent an advisory to the entire company about an email several people had received with a malware link. She did so by forwarding the actual email with the link.
    via u/DP487
  • 05
    Da... Oh, another one. Worked at a large casino in a large tourist city. The penthouse garden was being redone, and the gardener has put tarpaulins down to protect the tiles. A storm rolled through, and the tarps were blocking the drains, so the garden flooded, back into the
    via u/D***IGottaJustSay
  • 06
    penthouse, down the lift shaft, and into the restaurant I worked. Chaos. 2 years later, I'm working in a different hotel, same city. The restaurant had a fountain in it. I come in to
    via u/D***IGottaJustSay
  • 07
    open up one morning, and the restaurant is flooded. Gardener has turned on the fountain tap to refill and forgot to turn it off. It was the same gardener.
    via u/D***IGottaJustSay
  • 08
    firelock_ny There was a company in rural New York in the late 1960's that took scrap metal, melted it down in big coal-fired crucibles and made home decor pieces - doorstops that looked like little dogs, bookends, that kind of thing. Not a huge profit margin but their materials were cheap and they had a steady market.
    via u/firelock_ny
  • 09
    An industrial consultant convinced them to transition to electric furnaces - significant up front expense, but much lower ongoing operating costs. The consultant even designed the new electric crucibles for the company.
    via u/firelock_ny
  • 10
    The company president had been thinking of expanding. operations, so asked the industrial consultant to double the size of the electric crucible designs. The consultant did so, but made a mistake with the cube-square law in designing the supports for the crucibles.
    via u/firelock_ny
  • 11
    The first time the double- sized (but about four times as heavy) crucibles were filled with scrap and fired up they collapsed, flooding the factory floor with molten pot metal and chunks of wrecked equipment. The company went straight to bankruptcy.
    via u/firelock_ny
  • 12
    Mondestruken Before retiring, I was a branch manager for my state's DMV. Suddenly, one of the other managers is off sick for a few days. Then it became a week. Two weeks. Then, the auditors completed their investigation, and she was gone. Turns out she was accepting bribes from aspiring truck drivers so they would pass the written
    via u/Mondestruken
  • 13
    test. She was taking in an additional $100 - $250 a week. The dumb part? The pay was decent, and the benefits were fantastic. So she gave up decent pay, fantastic benefits, and a really nice retirement for extra spending money. Then there was the assistant manager who would pocket. anywhere from $750 to $1500 a week. So a better payoff. But she was
    via u/Mondestruken
  • 14
    removing it from the day's cash receipts. She had only ever worked for the DMV, working her was up from clerk. She had no idea that there are accounting systems within accounting systems. The bank would send over deposit discrepancy reports which she would blithely pitch, not realizing that the same exact report was also sent to our central office. The wheels of
    via u/Mondestruken
  • 15
    state government turn slowly, so she was able to do this for over a year, but once those wheels start, they do not stop. She ended up going to prison, and ordered to pay over $30K in restitution. The full manager also got fired because the investigation revealed that he was rarely in the office, and left everything up to the assistant manager.
    via u/Mondestruken
  • 16

    This is unreal

    byebyecars I worked for a start-up cider manufacturer in my second year of college. Normally after a day of production we have to sanitize all the metal components in hot caustic wash. There are hundreds of pieces, so it takes a while. Anyways, our managers left. us an hour before our shift ended to clean up. I had to go do some e-commerce end-of-day stuff before
    via u/byebyecars
  • 17
    leaving so my coworker wrapped up the cleanup. On Monday we returned to the warehouse burned down. Apparently he left the caustic heater on all weekend and it caused a chemical fire. Everything was destroyed and it ended up bankrupting the company. He dropped out of his co-op degree after, he wouldn't be able to get recommended for another placement.
    via u/byebyecars
  • 18
    SuitableHope7813 A local dealership was promoting a contest where they would give away a truck. I was driving around with my parents who were visiting from out of state when we hear the commercial for the give away on the radio. The drawing was in about 15 minutes, and we were right there, so we stopped in and put our names in the
    via u/SuitableHope7813
  • 19
    collection bin. I watched them take the bin upstairs out of sight of the crowd. They had clearly selected the winner in the back room and announced that if the winner was not present, they will contact them for the winnings.
    via u/SuitableHope7813
  • 20
    So they chose a winner ....that was clearly from out of state. But what they didn't realize, was that it was my mom visiting for the weekend. She walks right up to the announcer, showed her license, and said, I'm so happy I won the truck! The look on their faces was priceless!
    via u/SuitableHope7813
  • 21
    For the next couple of weeks, the dealership tried everything to not give us the truck, It was clear that they had no idea how to even give away the truck. But we prevailed. And I'm happy to say it we loved the truck!
    via u/SuitableHope7813
  • 22
    alltherobots Printed 500 copies of her gas bill on the company printer. The printer only has enough tray capacity for 250 copies so she had to have reloaded the paper at least once.
    via u/alltherobots
  • 23

    This easily fools a lot of employees, especially if it's done with a $20 or $50 bill

    BugJuiceForever I had a girl that worked for me that one day had a guy try to pay with a $100 bill. We all knew that we did not take any bill over a $20 but she didn't listen sometimes.
    via u/BugJuiceForever
  • 24
    This time she took the bill and when she was cashing out her draw the smart safe didn't take the $100 bill. I asked if she checked it and she of course said yes. I looked at the bill and noticed it said "Movie Prop" on the bill. She somehow missed it.
    via u/BugJuiceForever
  • 25
    DangerousTrash Can I'm a car mechanic. Had a colleague once, who had a pretty small job on an engine, about an hour or two and costs like $50. Made a mistake, quite big, but also quite common and easy to make, it's the "well category, not something to drag him through the mud for. Started fixing it, made an even bigger mistake. At this point we even had to
    via u/DangerousTrashCan
  • 26
    outsource some issues we couldn't fix in house, we were looking for about 2 weeks and $500, on us of course, not the customer, but it was still okay. We got everything back, he started putting the engine back together. All done, first run
    via u/DangerousTrashCan
  • 27
    whoopsie another big problem, whole engine apart. Broke something again, outsourced, expensive. Overall it was about a month long procedure, hitting $1000. Once it was done, he got fired. He got away with a lot, but at one point it was way too much.
    via u/DangerousTrashCan
  • 28
    Cheezburger Image 10518987008
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

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

  • 29
    redditusername_17 We had an old electrical engineer in my department, really knew his stuff except he was nearly useless on a computer. He didn't want everyone to know so he skated by and had other people pick up the slack for him. Though a series of blunders and lack of
    via u/redditusername_17
  • 30
    documentation on his part he caused an electrical control box to be removed from the list of parts that we were supplying to the customer for that program. That was worth 12.5 million dollars for revenue in the first 6 years once the product went into production.
    via u/redditusername_17
  • 31
    bushpotatoe I'm a home appliance installer and was out working a pretty big job at some 20,000 square foot mansion. They had another installation team working on a second kitchen in the basement. One of these guys was drilling the mounting holes for the dishwasher into their granite
    via u/bushpotatoe
  • 32
    countertop (don't do this, ok?) and drilled them too small, so when we went to secure it a massive 4ft chunk of granite split off and smashed into the floor, breaking a couple tiles in the process. Dude sounded like Yosemite Sam with his cussing and the customer was p ed.
    via u/bushpotatoe
  • 33
    ctrl_alt_excrete I didn't see it in person, but there was a video I saw on Reddit fairly recently where somebody emptied the used deep fryer oil into a plastic bucket. Needless to say, it didn't hold.
    via u/ctrl_alt_excrete
  • 34
    BillyMayesDer On my last day of my high school Walmart job I was showing the new guy how to move pallets of milk into the cooler. There were maybe 6 in total. I went to grab the last one and when I got back into the cooler the new guy
    via u/BillyMayesDer
  • 35
    had somehow bumped the pallets with the one he was bringing in and knocked all of them over. Milk all over the floor, all that product gone. I immediately left and never looked back
    via u/BillyMayesDer
  • 36
    iceariina Me: I put washer fluid in the coolant tank when I was new to oil change. Customer got a free coolant flush, no harm done, and I learned to pay better attention when under the hood.
    via u/iceariina
  • 37
    Co worker: told a customer they could go in the middle of their oil change cuz he assumed it was done and didn't check that new oil had been put in. Customer drove off and totaled their engine cuz there was no oil. Company had to pay for new engine. Co worker somehow didn't get fired.
    via u/iceariina
  • 38
    And once, a Co worker almost started putting oil in before I had the drain plug in or a new filter on. I had to yell for them to stop. They're supposed to ask if the person in the pit was ready for oil and they just...didn't, I guess.
    via u/iceariina
  • 39
    Flo... Machining. Had a coworker once who scrapped a large stainless steel part on a lathe. Instead of telling the boss, they decide to bore out the center, replace it with a with a plug of the exact same size that they press fit in, then machine over it so it appears as one seamless piece. Passes through inspection, sent to the customer. Customer
    via u/Floptopus
  • 40
    vacuum bakes it, and the center plug falls through. Had that not happened, the part would've essentially, and quite literally, blown up the customer's equipment once it got to a certain stage. Government work, so there's years and years and
    via u/Floptopus
  • 41
    millions and millions of dollars invested into this customer's project. Our shop would've had to close down permanently if the mistake wasn't caught when it was. Coworker was fired immediately.
    via u/Floptopus
  • 42
    Cheezburger Image 10518987520
    via Blake Cheek For Unsplash+

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

  • 43
    astarisaslave I work for an IT company and my client is one of the biggest consumer goods providers on the planet. One time a project manager tried to deploy a 60-manday project in a single week without any quality control whatsoever and ended up implementing discounts on products which weren't supposed to have them. So as you can imagine things
    via u/astarisaslave
  • 44
    got super ugly super fast. Client lost about a billion dollars in revenue (seriously) and our leadership got involved firefought for several months. It happened in our contract year with them too and we almost lost them over this incident. The PM who delivered the project was first placed on leave then eventually moved to another account.
    via u/astarisaslave
  • 45
    ReaverRogue So a friend of mine works in telecoms. When he was a young engineer, he accidentally knocked out fm radio in several London boroughs.
    via u/ReaverRogue
  • 46
    To be clear, this is quite a feat. There are like, four layers of redundancy before it bumps to mp3 songs, which it did. Only for five minutes or so but, hooo boy...
    via u/ReaverRogue
  • 47

    This lifestyle just doesn't gel with that 9-5 life

    RedditAdminsEat Had a buddy whose wife and he would play marathon WoW sessions into the early a.m. First mistake was when he was caught by the network admins playing WoW, from work, on the company laptop. After that happened he uninstalled the game and didn't play from the office, but would be on voice chat
    via u/RedditAdminsEat
  • 48
    to guide his clannies in raids while on the clock. Last straw was when after one of those marathon sessions he fell asleep at his desk, and unfortunately for him our department head was strolling by and noticed him out like a light at his
    via u/RedditAdminsEat
  • 49
    desk. He got canned that day. Really dumb because they had a young teen daughter to support, and while they lived paycheck- to-paycheck, it was a decent one, like upwards of $60K (database developer).
    via u/RedditAdminsEat
  • 50
    BEBB
    via Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash+

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

  • 51
    Spam FriedMice Hmmmmm...adventures I'm HAZMAT. When things go wrong, they go really wrong. There was the time we were doing an asbestos removal job in the pump house under one of those 250,000 gallon. water tanks you see elevated 50ft In the air. William broke a pipe fitting before the shut off valve, so no way to shut it off.
    via u/Spam FriedMice
  • 52
    Asbestos waste washed out the containment, through the decon and out the door. Was everywhere. And that's how William earned the name "Quarter Mill Bill". Have more.
    via u/Spam FriedMice
  • 53
    GrinAndBeerlt It's me, I'm the idiot. I was a busser in a busy restaurant when I was 18, and I managed to dump an entire full bus tub onto a little girl.
    via u/GrinAndBeerlt
  • 54
    F nusT field I heard there was this guy who had to clean a load of paella pans by tying them down and letting the tide of the sea do the work (was a beach restaurant in spain) apparently he forgot to tie them and almost everyone of them floated away. Sounds funnier when he tells it though.
    via u/F**nusT***field
  • 55
    TeaLoverGal I live in Ireland, I used to work in a store that accepted Sterling (British pounds) to be more convenient for tourists. So everyone was trained on Sterling and Euro (our currency) extensively... even though most of us were familiar with it from going up North or to the UK.
    via u/TeaLoverGal
  • 56
    A girl working on the till accepted a completely different European currency.... thinking it was Sterling.... it had the image of a King on it.. a different language and colour than Sterling.... I still can't understand how she did it, it was in no way similar. Nice girl but me... she had lived in the UK at one point.
    via u/TeaLoverGal
  • 57
    nethtari My first day on my own in my job of Identity and Access Management. We got a ticket to remove access for someone. I was excited and got the whole thing done without someone watching over me...
    via u/nethtari
  • 58
    I accidentally removed all the access for the requestor. Of course it was near the end of the day. I was scrambling to make phone calls and such to get her access back.
    via u/nethtari

Want More? Follow Us and Add Us as a Preferred Source on Google.

Tags

ask reddit mistaken work coworkers askreddit mistakes workplace stories workplace stories
Scroll Down For The Next Article