Your worst work blunders and embarrassments--Admit them here

[Ringtail Z28]

The worst blunder I ever pulled was running over a customer with a pallet loaded down with 12 packs of sodas that was placed on a tub.

The way this one happened was when I was this time I working at Target on the flow team. The exec in charge placed a pallet of sodas onto a tub, because the pallet jacks were either in use, lost or broken. This means I would have to push a heavily loaded pallet worth of crap without being able to see what was ahead rather than pulling it with a clear field of view. I should have refused and waited for a pallet jack but I was still new at the time and wasn't at the point yet of telling management to screw themselves. So when I when I was pushing this pallet along a customer decided to stop in front of me and I plowed right into her. I could've sworn I was going to be fired but nothing ever came of it.

[blas]

Way too many to name........hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars worth of scrap because I missed defects and passed bad product.....

But most recently, it was being caught by coworkers doing really naughty gestures behind DipShit and Daddy DipShit's backs. Fortunately, these coworkers were good humored and didn't tattle, and apparently security was sleeping and not watching the cameras or didn't have to go back and watch, lol.

Yes..I got caught giving the finger, imitating curb stomping, imitating punching motions, picking up my clipboard and pretending to bash them in the back of the head with it..........

But once my coworkers started laughing, I had to find my composure and pretend I was doing nothing. Thank GOSH no one important saw that.

Edit to add: I really DO NOT advocate doing this. My only defense is pleading insanity....I was so insane at those two points in time that I really did not realize what I was doing.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The worst blunder I ever pulled was running over a customer with a pallet loaded down with 12 packs of sodas that was placed on a tub.

Once when I was in Target, I saw somebody pushing a pallet that had been placed on a flatbed cart.

No way in hell I'd every try that. Pallets are hard enough to control with the pallet jack as it is.

picking up my clipboard and pretending to bash them in the back of the head with it..........

But once my coworkers started laughing, I had to find my composure and pretend I was doing nothing. Thank GOSH no one important saw that.

Edit to add: I really DO NOT advocate doing this. My only defense is pleading insanity....I was so insane at those two points in time that I really did not realize what I was doing.

That's sounding like a pretty good idea to me right now.

Next time I'm doing the furniture audit and Numbnuts ticks me off...*raise clipboard behind his head* "Why I oughta......"

Let's just say I'm getting very very close to that level of insanity regarding Numbnuts right now.

[LifeCarnie]

My worst when I was in the military actually.

I was towing an aircraft maintenance stand (which was made with re-inforced steel tubing) and myself and a co-worker were kind of goofing around, not really paying attention, and accidently tried to tow a fifteen foot stand, out of the side door of a hanger. Unfortunately the height of the door was only twelve feet and I was driving about twenty miles an hour at the time I tried to exit through this door.

I trashed the overhead garage door and the maintenance stand with that boneheaded mistake. Plus, the hanger itself had been bestowed the honor of being declared a national landmark. So the military had to hire all kinds of structural specialists to come in and check out the damage.

We both got REEMED for that one.

[Saydrah]

A tortoise was stolen from a locked enclosure right under my nose My only defense is that the glare from the sun made it impossible to look at the enclosure without eyes burning, so as I stood at the register in full view of the tortoise hex, they were able to go behind it and pry the door off and steal the tortoise.

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

I ran into a wine endcap with a flat.

Yeah, it wasn't pretty.

[Ronald]

Back when I was a young cop (20) we had one 'old' guy working with us who really was the greatest partner anybody could be offered. Even though he was over 50 he still had teen sons and played hockey with them in a rec league.. He was in better shape than any of us young guys. His nickname was Blackjack, for reasons left out.

Anyway we were all having coffee in this restaurant less than a block from our detachment and he was bragging about how much better physically he was than us young whippersnappers. I told him I could outrun him any day, and so we decided to have a footrace from the back of the restaurant, across the paved parking lot to where our patrol cars were parked behind the detachment. (probably 200 metres)

One of the other idiots said 'go' and away we went. God he could run.... There we were in full uniform, running neck in neck right alongside each other across the parking lot, and he started to gain on me... I think that I stuck my hands out in a flailing motion to run faster.... but what really happened was my right hand struck him in the small of his back.... Suddenly he turned into superman thinking he could fly... There he was arms out stretched like he was trying to take off in this perfect diving motion...... until he started to hit the pavement head first... First his forage cap came off, then his arms scraped the pavement.... I stopped right away.

It looked so funny that I started laughing.... Not Jack.... he was MAD... his shirt and cap were totally ripped, and he had blood coming down both arms, off his chin, and his forehead where he had tried to remove pavement. Then he wanted to kill me, and the rest of the guys had to protect me....

We were behind the detachment by then, and the secretary looked out the rear windows and saw what was going on and called the bosses... They all thought they were observing two cops fighting in the parking lot, in full view of the public from the restaurant, etc... and the other guys trying to separate us.

Jack had to go and get stitches.... Neither of us got written up over it, but I had to buy him a new shirt and a new summer forage cap. Everyone agrees that in spite of everything this was the funniest thing that anyone had ever seen happen. The thought of him flying through the air and then diving into the pavement like a bull charging a matador can never be forgot. He was a hell of a partner and a great guy.

[Applerod]

My last job was at a major alcohol retailer. As one might expect, the #1 rule above all else they drilled into us was to check the I.D. of anyone who looks under the age of 35; not 21, not 25, not 30, but 35. This is just one of those rules that is necessary, and monitored very closely by the sheriff's department which conducts regular sting operations in the area. If a store is caught selling to underage people, the store's liquor license can be suspended or even revoked -- which wouldn't exactly be good news for the #1 most profitable store in a company that sells alcohol.
So it was often a delicate balancing act between protecting the store and carding people who look 34. Well, soon after I started working I rang up a lady who looked like she could have been 34 and I asked for her I.D. Oops! Guess who turned out to be 52?? I was 22 at the time, and this lady was beyond flabbergasted and elected to direct her shock not to me but to the older co-worker standing next to me. Actually, most women enjoy being mistaken as younger than they really are (most men do not), but I think I was a little out of the ballpark for that.
After that I learned to be slightly more liberal in my guesstimations of people's ages, though in all fairness I also learned through that job that: A) Most people look their age; B) Some people do not; and C) A few people really do not, as in + or - 10-15 years.

[Iced Coffee Man]

Your worst work blunders and embarrassments

That was probably the time I kicked the door down

[crazylegs]

How could I forget this one...?

At <old job> the doors were solid plate glass (bar the handles) that slid to one end so you had a completely open frontage, no doors, no interuptions. One day, just before left (about a month or so) there was a fire alarm.

We had to close the doors.

The AM was sliding them to me and I was doing the final adjustments (they were finiky to fit). There was one with oyster shape hairline cracks all over it and I knew I had to be careful but the fire alarm was going off and the AM was going nuts...

The damn thing smashed into thousands of tiny pieces, and the noise was huge. My AM and the SM looked at me and I looked at the door. Not one of us was amused in any way shape or form.

My only saving grace was that the door broke in the morning rather than last thing at night so noone had to stay late to wait for maintenance to fit a wooden blank.

[Dreamstalker]

This was the only one at the game store where I was actually involved (as in, I could be seen as partially at fault).

I listed a Warhammer box set for $75 as the price tag said. It sold almost immediately. That was when boss revealed the price on the tag was $175. The price gun was never designed to handle 3 digits, so apparently the superscript "1" used to denote the quarter of the year when stuff arrived in-store (the only use I was told) was supposed to be the hundreds digit.

Eventually the issue was solved, we were able to cancel the original sale (buyer was pissed, but the decree from on high was to NOT honor the sale, I was told the difference would come out of my pocket if I did ) and resell at full list price.