40 People Share The Worst Mistakes They’ve Seen Someone Make At A New Job
Every oddly specific workplace rule has a person behind it. Someone did something so unexpected that management had to document it and explain why nobody should ever do it again.
You read “do not use truffle oil to mop the floor” and think, surely we could’ve left that one unsaid. However, it seems we could not.
These stories in this AskReddit thread are full of employees who contributed a little something to the next version of the training manual. Some were nervous beginners who needed more guidance. Some had the dangerous combination of very little experience and no questions. All of them, their coworkers remembered what happened, and now the rest of us get to feel better about our own work history.
1. Payroll Went In The Wrong Direction On Christmas Eve
On a Friday, Christmas Eve, all of us employees were off for the holiday. The new accounting lady, entering direct-deposit payroll for the first time, entered the information incorrectly.
Payday comes, and everyone in the company had their paycheck WITHDRAWN from their account instead of deposited.
People were out Christmas shopping, cards were being declined, and everyone’s accounts were messed up. My auto insurance bounced.
The owner called each employee, about 20 people, and offered to give us cash to get through until Monday. The company ended up paying everyone’s overdraft fees and other charges.
The accounting lady cried nonstop from that Friday through Monday, when she could finally fix everyone’s accounts.
2. Michael Jordan Was Having A Very Good Six Months
A guy went through training to become a bank teller. They learned how to open family trusts, and the trainer had them put Michael Jordan as an example beneficiary.
It wasn’t until six months later, when a customer noticed, that they discovered he had entered Michael Jordan as one of the beneficiaries for every trust he opened.
3. She Fired Him In Half An Hour. He Eventually Came Back With A Clipboard.
A guy started at my work and fell asleep on his first day while reading standard operating procedures. His new boss had made him come in at 4:30 a.m. to match her schedule.
She walked in and said, “Hey, wake up!”
He apologized and said, “This stuff is just so boring.”
“Really? Because I wrote those SOPs.”
She told him she didn’t want the job to interfere with his sleeping schedule and fired him within the first 30 minutes.
A couple of years later, he showed back up as an auditor for one of our customers. He was now spending the day auditing the boss who had fired him.
He scrutinized even the smallest details. The audit went so badly that his company eventually started buying from a different supplier.
Her decision ended up costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
4. “Counter Spray” Was Doing A Lot Of Work On That Label
I work at a zoo with some pretty dangerous animals, so every employee carries a can of extra-strength bear mace.
One seasonal employee saw a can sitting by her computer in the main lobby. It said “COUNTER SPRAY” across the front.
She thought “counter” meant countertop or computer-desk cleaner.
We had to evacuate one of the largest buildings in the zoo, which was also the only building where we could sell tickets. People on the third floor were having trouble breathing before they even heard what had happened.
5. Tech Support Was Much Closer Than He Thought
I had a new guy ring me for some tech support. He didn’t like the answer I gave him, so he gave me a mouthful of abuse and slammed the phone down.
We worked for different departments in a global company.
I don’t know where he thought I was located, but the ten paces that took me straight to his desk must have been quite a shock.
6. That Was An Expensive Way To Make The Floor Slippery
Someone mopped the floor with truffle oil instead of floor cleaner and bleach.
Needless to say, they didn’t last much longer.
7. The Garbage Bag Came Out. The Garbage Did Not.
He couldn’t find the opening of a garbage bag, so he used some scissors to make his own.
What a surprise that was when I pulled out the bag and the contents stayed in the container while the bag was in my hands.
8. The Customer Ordered One iPod And Received A Business Opportunity
Accidentally shipped a box of iPods instead of one iPod.
Yeah, the customer “lost” the rest somehow.
9. “As Fast As You Can” Needed A Little More Context
Didn’t check the aircraft type before assigning a speed.
Told an F-16 to “maintain best forward speed,” which caused a sonic boom over a major metropolitan area.
10. Training Mode Was A Huge Hit With Customers
Someone I know, couldn’t have been me, worked in retail and accidentally put their register into “training mode.”
It acts normal, but when you tender a transaction, nobody’s card actually gets charged.
They processed about six or seven transactions like this. It cost thousands, and there were literally no repercussions, except the bosses told him not to do it again.
11. The Paper Shredder Had An Exceptionally Productive Night
One of the things the night shift has to do is shred all the papers in the shred boxes.
The new girl shredded everything in our boss’s inbox.
To be fair, it wasn’t marked at all, and the inboxes looked just like the shred boxes.
12. The Boss’s Sarcasm Made It All The Way To The Caller
I am a dispatcher. When I was new, I took a call for a cat in a tree.
My boss said, “Ask them if they’ve ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree.”
Apparently, she was being sarcastic.
13. He Picked The Wrong Kid To Yell At
We had a 17-year-old doing work experience at our engineering firm. That same week, a relatively new employee had joined our team from another office.
The new employee asked the kid to prepare some photocopies for an important meeting that afternoon.
The kid wasn’t told what to do and ended up breaking the machine badly enough that we needed someone to come out and fix it.
The new guy lost it and started swearing at him, calling him useless. Everyone could hear it across the office.
Our director overheard and came to investigate.
It was the director’s son on placement.
The new guy disappeared pretty quickly.
14. The New Hire Took A Different Career Path At The First Intersection
On my first day with a construction crew, I was supposed to meet my supervisor at the local McDonald’s and follow him to the site.
They had hired two new guys, me and someone else. The boss pulled up in his truck and told us both to follow him.
We followed him through the parking lot in our own vehicles.
Boss turns left. I turn left.
New guy turns right and drives off the wrong way.
We never saw or heard from him again.
Cell phones didn’t work in the mountains where we were, so you had to meet people in person. Sometimes I still wonder about that guy.
It turned out to be the best construction crew I’ve ever been on. He has no idea what he missed.
—Anonymous
15. He Found Something Orange In The Wall And Made A Very Expensive Assumption
I worked doing audio-video installations. We were in a school system and asked the new guy to pull a wire from the first floor to the fifth floor through a cable chase.
Typically, you push a fish tape through the path, attach the cable, and pull it through. Fish tapes are usually bright pink or orange.
The new guy went to the first-floor closet and saw what he thought was the fish tape, but it was stuck. He couldn’t free it, so he cut it and attached the new wires.
Then he headed upstairs to pull it through.
He couldn’t find the fish-tape spool anywhere. On the second floor, he noticed the orange material was running down a different cable path.
Then our site lead walked in carrying the actual fish tape.
You know what else is bright orange and runs through walls? Fiber.
He had cut the district’s data-backbone fiber to use it as a pull string.
16. His Wife Had Already Warned Him About This
When I was an RN in the ICU, we got a fresh crop of residents every July.
On one resident’s first day, I helped him put in a central line. He inserted it and told the patient, “All done!”
He was not all done.
I made an excuse to speak to him outside the room and quietly explained that he needed to suture the line in place. He didn’t know how, so I talked him through it.
We went back in, he put in the sutures, and there was no harm to the patient.
Afterward, he pulled me aside and said, “My wife is an RN. She told me nurses would save my a**. I just never guessed it would be on my first day. Thank you.”
17. The CEO Called A Bluff That Wasn’t There
The CEO decided to “call the bluff” of a client.
It wasn’t a bluff.
They took their $15 million in business and walked away. That was about 65% to 70% of the company’s overall business.
18. He Knew A Shortcut. The Road Had Other Plans.
A new driver was hired and thought he knew everything. How to get places, all the back roads, no need for a map.
After heavy rain in Nevada, traffic on I-15 south toward Los Angeles was backed up for three or four hours.
He decided to take the old road, completely ignoring us when we warned him that it no longer existed. It had literally washed away.
About an hour later, I was sent to the state line in an empty bus.
He had gone completely off-road and gotten the coach stuck in a four-foot ditch. It took about three massive tow-truck cranes to pull it out.
I was the rescue bus.
19. One Digit Turned Into A $15 Million Problem
At my old job, this was called the Perfect Storm.
I worked in a call center for an oil field. The foreman would call in, we’d enter an order number, and our trucks would be dispatched to pick up the oil.
One employee entered a number incorrectly by one digit. Instead of picking up oil in the eastern part of the state, the trucks picked it up in the western part.
This time, the oil awaiting pickup contained hydrogen sulfide. The foreman had left for the weekend, and the oil kept pumping until it overflowed onto the ground.
The EPA had to assess the damage, and the company was fined. A neighboring farmer’s soil was contaminated, so the company also had to compensate him for crops he couldn’t grow.
It became a $15 million-plus mistake because one digit was off.
20. The Copier Was Not Built For That
Broke the copier with his butt.
21. The Résumé Had Skipped A Small Detail
First, they were late on their first day.
After about an hour, they asked how to open the program they had said they were proficient in using.
Knowing how to use it was required for the job.
22. She Found A Way To Save Time. Unfortunately, It Was Reading Time.
I’m a teacher, and last year I witnessed a mistake by someone who had been teaching for nearly 30 years, mostly as a music teacher.
They had moved into classroom teaching. One day, they asked how things were going, and I said I was having trouble fitting in all the subjects and standards.
The teacher said, “Do you know how I’ve saved a lot of time? I’ve stopped teaching reading.”
I laughed because I thought they were joking.
They were not.
They had decided teaching reading wasn’t “worth it” and replaced that time with music.
I believe their students had the worst reading scores in our school. Their class was temporarily taken over by the school’s reading coach.
They are still employed.
23. His Phone Got A Six-Month Stay In Security
He wanted to charge his iPhone, so he plugged it into a secured computer that wasn’t supposed to have anything connected to it. Ever.
Security took his phone and kept it for six months while it was forensically examined.
During that entire time, he kept paying the bill for a phone he didn’t have.
Eventually, it was returned, and he was upset that all the data had been wiped.
—Anonymous
24. The Customer Was Very Proud Of How He Got The Number
A month into my new job, I gave the GM’s personal cell phone number to a customer.
The customer had bullied me into it, leaning over my desk and threatening me while his wife distracted the other customers.
He called the GM and bragged about how he had gotten the number from me.
The GM was furious and told him never to come back.
Later that week, he sat down with me, heard my side, and explained what to do if it happened again.
I’m still here four or five years later, but that will always stick with me.
25. He Replaced The Computer Before Trying A Twenty-Minute Fix
I work in IT. We hired a guy who refused to look anything up because he thought he knew it all.
The CEO of one of our clients had an iMac that wouldn’t boot. The new guy went in and immediately declared it beyond repair.
The client trusted him and bought a new iMac.
When he brought the old one back to our office, it turned out to be a 20-minute fix in safe mode.
His excuse was, “I didn’t think Macs could do that.”
We lost the client, and Dave got fired.
—Anonymous
26. The Donuts Were Only The Beginning Of Her Evening
They stacked donuts on top of one another while heating them in a conveyor-belt machine.
The donuts and the machine caught fire.
I work at a cinema, so burning things happens regularly. The poor girl was not having a good day, though.
Later that night, a faulty machine left her covered head to toe in mango frozen yogurt.
27. A Boat Went Under The Bridge With Less Boat Than Before
They told a boat the wrong height of the bridge.
The top of the boat went away.
28. The Supplies Were There For A Reason
I worked at a beach park in college. A new hire was trying to make a career out of it, so he did everything thoroughly and quickly.
The supervisor sent him to clear foliage from a boardwalk near some dunes. Much of the foliage was poison ivy.
He was given gloves, shears, and a bucket.
Fifteen minutes later, he came back to the station. He had decided he didn’t need the gloves or shears and pulled the poison ivy out with his bare hands.
His hands were swollen and bright red. The supervisor rushed him to the emergency room.
His first job when he returned was learning to identify poison ivy.
29. He Fixed The Machine Himself. Five Hundred Boards Later, Someone Checked.
I worked at an electronics manufacturing company. One step involved running completed circuit boards through a router to separate them from a larger panel.
A new guy had been there three or four days. I set up the router, showed him how to run it, and checked the first few panels. Everything looked fine.
After I was sent elsewhere, the cutting bit broke. Instead of asking for help, he replaced it himself.
He used the wrong bit.
It cut the edge off a component on every board, and he didn’t notice until he had finished more than 500 boards.
Each damaged component had to be removed and replaced by hand. It was an expensive mistake, and he was let go the next day.
I felt terrible because he had no experience changing the bits. He was trying to show that he could solve problems, and it backfired.
30. The Dishwashing Instructions Were Apparently Optional
They don’t bother training people they send to wash dishes at my work. They just throw them in and tell them to do the job.
One thing they never explain is that you have to change the water in the machine because it reuses the same water.
A line cook got sent in on my day off and never changed it.
By 8 p.m., the white plates were coming out butter-colored and speckled with ash.
Instead of asking how to fix it, he wiped each plate with a rag so the slime wasn’t as obvious.
Then he sent them out for people to eat off.
31. The Coffee Cups Joined The Wrong Load Of Dishes
I worked in a salon. One girl filled a big sink with detergent and washed our hair-color bowls with the coffee cups.
We ended up throwing away the cups because we didn’t want to risk exposing a client to traces of the chemicals.
We had made it very clear that there were separate sinks and that the two shouldn’t be mixed.
The detergent wasn’t the problem. The color bowls were.
32. His Friends And Family Discount Was A Little Too Generous
A new employee at my retail job started putting items in customers’ bags without scanning them.
She hadn’t even passed her three-month probation.
Apparently, she started doing it for family, then friends, then acquaintances, thinking we couldn’t track it.
That turned around quickly when the police escorted her out one day.
33. The Fencepost Met The Boss’s Truck On Day One
On my first day, I backed my boss’s customized pickup truck into a fencepost.
34. The Wrong Computer Got A Fresh Start
I used to work for Geek Squad. A new guy got confused and reformatted the wrong computer.
The customer was understandably upset.
The store ended up paying a couple thousand dollars to have the data retrieved by a professional recovery service.
—Anonymous
35. Three Days Of Training Met A Very Expensive Machine
I was a press operator at a factory making structural parts for Hondas. I was three weeks into the job through a temp service and had only received three days of training.
We were behind schedule, working six 12-hour days a week, and everyone was stressed.
A sensor went off and stopped the press. I checked everything, thought it looked fine, and restarted it.
After four rotations, my coworkers stopped the press and showed me a part made from two stacked sheets of metal.
Three of the dies had cracked in multiple places.
A few days later, I learned the lost time and damage cost $22,000.
I wasn’t fired because one of the sensors was faulty, though I should have spotted the doubled sheet.
I quit a few weeks later because I never got proper training and hated that my low output was causing overtime for everyone.
36. The Freezer Mistake Was Easier To Fix Than The Staff’s Reaction
A new guy left a freezer door propped open overnight and ruined thousands of dollars’ worth of food.
The boss shrugged it off, gave him a lecture, and told him not to do it again.
Sadly, most of the rest of the staff bullied him about it until he quit a week later.
37. That Drill Found Exactly The Wrong Thing
Drilled through a wall into a gas meter.
House evacuated.
—Anonymous
38. The Tire Change Was Missing One Important Step
He changed the tires and put them back on, but only loosely tightened the lug nuts by hand.
He forgot to finish tightening them to the proper torque.
The customer was driving down the highway when they finally came loose and the tires came off.
39. The Elevator Mirror Was Not A Good Place To Practice
A security guard decided to play quick draw in the mirrored elevator.
He shot a hole through the door.
He handed his gun to the night desk operator and sat there, unable to hear, until his shift ended.
40. That Mistake Came With A Hundred-Year Deadline
They dropped a radioactive source while drilling an oil well.
That area is now sealed for the next 100 years.