re: What's the worst you've ever messed up at work?

I was tired one day and leaned against the counter without looking, my hand pressed the round red button and blew up a small middle eastern village.

Ooooops my bad

My patient was supposed to receive 120 lamotrigine 100mg tablets. The technician counted out thirty 150 mg lamotrigine from an almost empty bottle that looked similar. Threw that bottle away, and poured in ninety correct 100mg on top. When I checked the bottle, I did not notice the larger tablets on the bottom because they look almost identical. When the patient took the larger tablets it resulted in a 200mg overdose because she takes them four times daily for epilepsy. The patient had a seizure and was hospitalized for 2 days. This was the only error I've ever had that resulted in harm in 8.5 years of practice. I felt horrible about it. My company paid all her bills and gave her $2000 for the bad experience. The patient understood how it happened, forgave me and still fills all her prescriptions with me. My company also forgave me and was very supportive. The end result: I am far more vigilant and so grateful to the patient and my employer. I could've been sued to bankruptcy or fired.

I was a chief engineer of a government agency involved in scientific research.

We failed to factor in temperature variances which were outside design considerations for a particular part of an engine. One of our assets unexpectedly performed a TEF (Total Existence Failure) 46,000ft above the surface.

Our program was put on hold for 36 months as a direct result of the TEF. It was quite a challenge getting everyone back to work.

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We failed to factor in temperature variances which were outside design considerations for a particular part of an engine. One of our assets unexpectedly performed a TEF (Total Existence Failure) 46,000ft above the surface. Our program was put on hold for 36 months as a direct result of the TEF. It was quite a challenge getting everyone back to work.

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Quite the FeauxPaw.

:rimshot:

Added an extra $0 to an already huge figure in a letter to a vendor whoops

I manage a big chunk of our enterprise software so my job is to clean up the messes. I also am in the privileged position to pass blame elsewhere because no one else in the company knows how this shite works "oh that's been wrong since implemenation..damn consultants"

I was driving like an a-hole with the sign on the truck and some lady called to complain. Told the person I was flipping her off.

I flipped her off again and told her I'd be sure to dicipline that driver.

If anyone remembers a pic that made the email rounds several years ago of a guy wearing a teddy and sticking his junk in the exhaust pipe of a Range Rover. My first job out of college I got caught sending that picture to the secretary on company email (this was 2004 and my first job, so I did not know not to do that). Secretary was fired for something else, and a 60 year old woman went through her email and came across that picture. That 60 year old woman wouldn't look me in the eye for a few months and she told her 17 year old high school granddaughter who worked afternoons to stay away from me because I was a pervert.

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That 60 year old woman wouldn't look me in the eye for a few months and she told her 17 year old high school granddaughter who worked afternoons to stay away from me because I was a pervert.

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Hmmmm

Had a pick up truck stacked over the cab with flat cardboard boxes from appliances. Drove across a railroad track overpass with a nasty bump. Dumped the boxes all over the road.

Broke a water main beneath the valve at 8pm on. Saturday night, bosses wouldn't answer my panicked phone calls. Dumped water until Monday morning. Large parking lot, drainage ditch and road were flooded.