15+ Employees who made giant mistakes: 'He's super fired'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jan 1, 2026 3:00 PM EST

These workers made the biggest mistakes ever, and their colleagues remember it all too well. 

When you make a mistake at work, it's mortifying, an immortal memory that haunts you as you try to fall asleep at night. On the other hand, when your coworker messes up, it's the funniest thing ever. Crazy how that works! 

These people have memories of their coworker's biggest mistakes, and some of them did get fired for their transgressions. Some were small mishaps that had big impacts, although no one was let go for it. One of my favorite stories was a worker at a big food chain who had been instructed to move bulk jars of garlic to a higher shelf. Wow, what could possibly go wrong! As anyone could've guessed, it didn't take long before the first garlicky spill happened. A guest knocked one to the floor, leaving glass shards and a powerful garlic scent behind. I can't even imagine how long the smell lingered, even after repeat cleanings!

That's a pretty tiny mistake in the grand scheme of things. But other people made some oopsies that cost their employer thousands of dollars. One person in charge of sending out his company's advertisement in a weekly shopper ad messed up in a big way by forgetting one single letter! The ad was supposed to be for "men's shirts." I want you to think of the worst letter you could forget from that phrase. Go ahead, guess! Yep, it's the one you thought, transforming from something a man might wear, to something unprintable. That must've been the funniest day of work for his coworkers, not to mention an ad that could be cut out and framed on someone's desk, due to how enduring of a typo that is. Just a generationally funny thing to do, though no doubt that dude was embarrassed by it. 

Some employees shared the really expensive mishaps that went down at their offices. There are stories from people in numerous job types, from the retail workers of the world to the cubicle dwellers. Let's all be thankful that they were kind enough to chronicle the funniest, most dim-witted mistakes they ever witnessed so that we can all have a little giggle at their misfortunes. 

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    Old man in white shirt peers around wall with hand over mouth, to his right sits man in suit looking serious
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

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

  • 02
    4x420 When i was a teen i worked at a full service gas station. One day a guy came in towing a boat to get gas. A guy a couple years younger was working and thought the owner had taken the gas cap off of the boat. He placed the gas nozzle in a fishing rod holder. It is basically a hole in the top of the side of the boat. He
    via u/4x420
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    proceeded to pump about $40.00 worth of gas on to the floor of the boat. The owner was understandably upset.
    via u/4x420
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    a... A well liked director of our art department was leaving for another company. He crafted a beautiful and inspiring message which announced his departure, how much he'd enjoyed working with us and how he was now on to a new adventure. He sent the message to the entire company.
    via u/aleph_zarro
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    One of his junior employees, accidentally replied-all how her life was devastated, she was heart-broken and she was going to be despondent over losing the best lover she'd ever had. He was married, not to her, and had 3 children. The bon-voyage celebration was quietly cancelled. He left, silently, 10 minutes after the reply had been sent.
    via u/aleph_zarro
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    Without understanding the mail system she tried to do a recall-all and sent a "Please don't read the message this is attached to. It was a private message between colleagues". Hoo-boy, that was an interesting day.
    via u/aleph_zarro
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    rhymes_with_chi... Boss kept his fully restored classic vehicle (purposefully trying to stay vague for reasons) in the warehouse. His business, his space, his call. So, every morning the warehouse guy needs to back it out and put it in the parking lot for the day so work can be done.
    via u/rhymes_with_chicken
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    Cue the new warehouse guy. Not really good for much first day; no training and all. Hey, n00b. Go back out bossman's car and put it in the parking lot. You can drive stick, right? Oh, sure.
    via u/rhymes_with_chicken
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    n00b plows the boss' vehicle right in to the side of the neighboring business. boss' brand new GMC Yukon. Still had the paper tag on it (from the dealership). Dude didn't even make it until lunch.
    via u/rhymes_with_chicken
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    [deleted] Back in the dark ages I worked for a small town daily newspaper. There was 1 large discount store that refused to advertise with us, and would only use the other paper in town (our sole rival), which was more of a "weekly shopper" type paper. For unknown reason, store decided to give our paper a chance. Ad ran, and
    via u/[deleted]
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    there in the double truck, full color ad, was "Men's shirts $9.99" - minus the ever-important R in "shirts." Yep. Men's shits. Needless to say, they stuck with the other paper.
    via u/[deleted]
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    Old man in white shirt peers around wall with hand over mouth
    via krakenimages on Unsplash+

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

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    PandaM5 My family started a recycling business. it was a somewhat large business. My grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents, and cousins were all involved. About a week after it had opened, my aunt bought around 50 tons of newspaper. She hadn't checked the prices (they changed quite often)
    via u/PandaM5
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    and bought it about 50% higher priced than what it was selling. It almost caused the business to fail. My grandfather was angrier than I had ever seen him.
    via u/PandaM5
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    throwaway20160... Pushed a corrupt Windows image to every PC on the domain using System Center. Erased the whole university, including the System Center server itself. Recovery was a labor- intensive process. I didn't see the guy doing it, but I saw all the PCs suddenly start formatting themselves.
    via u/throwaway2016052617
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    [deleted] I'm a bartender. And one of my newer guys had been working and took care of a middle aged man in the afternoon who came in with his a young lady friend. The next day when that guy came back with another woman,( his wife) my new guy said
    via u/[deleted]
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    "Oh hey, I figured out where I knew that girl you came in here yesterday with. She went to my high school!" That patron never returned to our bar again.
    via u/[deleted]
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    Admiral_Catbar I work in the television broadcasting industry, and I work with people who have: ejected/rewound a tape that was live on air (this was many years ago) aired the wrong show (not the wrong episode, but the wrong show)
    via u/Admiral_Catbar
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    aired a different channels content (it's all satellites and we get them all on the router) shit happens. no one died or was fired.
    via u/Admiral_Catbar
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    vanbearpigiscom... A mold setter forgot to de- magnetize the injection molding press clamp and tried to pull the 30,000lb mold from the press. The crane basically tried to lift a machine the size of my house off the ground. When the the D-ring broke the crane bounced off its tracks. I was able to feel the ground shake from 1000 feet away.
    via u/vanbearpigiscoming
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    Viking042900 A brand new hospital was built and they brought all the really expensive hospital beds by to start filling the rooms. You know, the kind that can roll in and out of all the rooms when the patient has to go to X-ray or whatever? Well, they didn't build the doors of the rooms wide enough to accommodate the beds.
    via u/Viking042900
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    Resulting in a long delay on opening the hospital while the doors were torn out and fixed.
    via u/Viking042900
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    kllagacy87 I work in library cataloging services and our lead deleted all of the customers information from our database... She's still the lead, believe or not.
    via u/kllagacy87
  • 24
    Suckydog A kid who was working as summer help in our public works was driving back a pallet of Asphalt sealcoating on a 1 ton dump truck to their garage. He didn't secure the load, so when he went around a corner half the pallet dumped over and onto a concrete street. I can still see the sealcoat on that spot 10 years later.
    via u/Suckydog
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    OmarBessa A co-worker friendly asked my salary, I told him. I was making about 3-4x more than him, and he was in a higher hierarchy. Hell was set loose. We were both fired by the end of the week.
    via u/OmarBessa
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    [deleted] Back when I used to work at McDonald's I witnessed a few noteworthy incidents. I spent most of my shifts as a cashier so if there was a mistake with the order or with the food, I was the first one to hear about it. Well, one day I had a customer come up to me and hold out his half eaten hamburger. I
    via u/[deleted]
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    asked him if there was a problem with it, and without a word he lifted up the bun to reveal a half eaten sticker stuck to the patty. Not necessarily the worst mistake I've seen in a workplace, but definitely the weirdest.
    via u/[deleted]
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    AlarianDarkWind11 While in the Navy I worked on the electronic systems on P3 aircraft. We needed to replace a Winchester plug on an aircraft (it's a plugin with over 200 wires that plug into it). The guy I was with walked over to the plugin and cut off all 200+ wires in fell swoop. Normally you would take 1 wire out at a time and transfer it into
    via u/AlarianDarkWind11
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    the new plug. We now had over 200 wires with no idea where any of them went. The plane ended up being grounded for over a month while we had to manually determine where every single wire went to on the plane. And then compare it to the planes schematics. He was permanently transferred out of the shop after that incident into a desk job.
    via u/AlarianDarkWind11
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    reinwall I worked at a Costco for a year and a half and they like to move certain items from one side of the store to another or just offset any item. Well someone had the bright idea to move glass jars of garlic from the floor to the first level platform (basically a higher shelf)
    via u/reinwall
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    now Costco sells things in bulk and their motto is bigger is better. so these are large jars. Naturally someone dropped one and the smell. Dear god the overwhelming smell.
    via u/reinwall
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    [deleted] I was a temp worker in a factory. We would fill boxes of stuff, put those boxes into bigger boxes, stack the boxes onto pallets and take them to the giant wrapping machine that spun around the pallet to wrap it in saran wrap (or cellophane, whatever). One guy took his shitty broken skid full off improperly stacked boxes onto the platform for
    via u/[deleted]
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    wrapping and had his other 2 skids nearby....too nearby. The machine starts and immediately hits one of his pallets, knocking over a bunch of boxes, spilling shit everywhere. The main pallet in the middle isn't stacked well so the cellophane just knocks all the boxes over, he's at the 3rd pallet with the powered pallet-jack under it, He reverses to get it out of the danger zone,
    via u/[deleted]
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    but accelerates too quick and the entire stack falls over... the machine is still spinning and knocking shit over, he's trying to stop his pallet jack and everyone stops working to look at this fucking bozo and everyone lets out a groan because we're all going to have to clean and fix his fuckfest without his help before work can continue (can't keep filling boxes to box and
    via u/[deleted]
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    stack them if we can't wrap them and get them out of the way). He can't help because he's super fired.
    via u/[deleted]

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