you ever do anything at work you just couldn't believe you did?

[thresher]

Well, I just did. I work for a wheelchair and scooter company and we mail out 4 million pieces of mail a month. I am in charge of that and the marketing part (IE designing new flyers). Well, I just designed the new flyer (my first ever) and I was very proud of my work. It went to proof and to print last week and I finally got my first copy folded and ready to go this morning. Well, ****E! Five minutes ago the president of the company comes to me with the flyer and shows me a GLARING typo on the front page!!!! He says "just change the piece" because he has no idea we went to print last week. He thinks the piece he is holding IS the proof. We already ran 500,000 pieces.
i feel sick.

[blueindian]

www.monster.com

j/k. damn that sux. i've definatly done some stoopid things at work before.

i was writing a program that, among other things, would delete from a database. well, stupid me left out the where clause, so when i tested it it delted every record. fortunatly it was a dev database, so it didn't matter in terms of data, but it sure did matter in terms of lost time.

[faither]

Originally posted by thresher
Five minutes ago the president of the company comes to me with the flyer and shows me a GLARING typo on the front page!!!! He says "just change the piece" because he has no idea we went to print last week. He thinks the piece he is holding IS the proof. We already ran 500,000 pieces.
i feel sick.

I feel sick for you. My advice...Suck it up and tell whomever needs know. Take your lumps and try to move forward. Hopefully, the people you work for view mistakes as learning opportunities.

[mcs328]

Originally posted by blueindian
www.monster.com

j/k. damn that sux. i've definatly done some stoopid things at work before.

i was writing a program that, among other things, would delete from a database. well, stupid me left out the where clause, so when i tested it it delted every record. fortunatly it was a dev database, so it didn't matter in terms of data, but it sure did matter in terms of lost time.

Didn't happen to me but this guy at work (who was fired later on) started doing testing in out production database after we made it clean what were the dev, test and prod database instances. Ugh...and he was a new hire from ORACLE!!! He couldn't normalize a table to save his life. Glad we canned him...he was taking credit for my work and I'm a junior developer. Another reason we let him go...our boss saw the work I was doing and he couldn't explain the work he said was his but copied from me.

Man..what was he smoking.

[DankNstickY]

Originally posted by mcs328

Man..what was he smoking.

heh... the dumbest thing i did at work goes along those lines.

i sat at my desk, and took a hit of ganja while sitting there. it was only one puff, but still, it smelled a little after.

i couldve gotten fired.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Originally posted by blueindian
i was writing a program that, among other things, would delete from a database. well, stupid me left out the where clause, so when i tested it it delted every record. fortunatly it was a dev database, so it didn't matter in terms of data, but it sure did matter in terms of lost time.

A co-worker did that - at a client site - on the client's live data! It resulted in a bunch of people sitting idle while they restored the backup...

[attgig]

database query....

did a begin tran, but forgot the commit tran...
blocked the database for the whole night.



with boss....

a couple months into the job, boss comes over to teach me some stuff...
i do the head nodding thing....falling asleep - not paying attention cuz i'm trying too hard to stay awake...


btw, did that second one a few times.

[Jenny]

Originally posted by DankNstickY



heh... the dumbest thing i did at work goes along those lines.

i sat at my desk, and took a hit of ganja while sitting there. it was only one puff, but still, it smelled a little after.

i couldve gotten fired.

Hello?? McFly?? You could have been ARRESTED!

lol

[irwin]

Originally posted by thresher
you ever do anything at work you just couldn't believe you did?

It wasn't at work, but I still can't believe i did it.

Watch 6:27 through 7:27 of this

[Cantacuzene]

I've never really f***ed up on a job but I've done things slightly unethical. I've used my jobs in order to get myself extra profit on teh side. I didnt do anything illegal I just used certain policies and privledges to make some extra cash. It may sound shady but when you work for $5.50 retail job trying to pay for a car and you are 16 you gotta make ends meet.

[thresher]

That was SOOOO worth the wait! Are you starting a world tour anytime soon? If so, I could design your flyers!!
Take care all and thanks for the kind words,
Thresh

[TERRIBLETOM]

Originally posted by thresher
Well, I just did. I work for a wheelchair and scooter company and we mail out 4 million pieces of mail a month. I am in charge of that and the marketing part (IE designing new flyers). Well, I just designed the new flyer (my first ever) and I was very proud of my work. It went to proof and to print last week and I finally got my first copy folded and ready to go this morning. Well, ****E! Five minutes ago the president of the company comes to me with the flyer and shows me a GLARING typo on the front page!!!! He says "just change the piece" because he has no idea we went to print last week. He thinks the piece he is holding IS the proof. We already ran 500,000 pieces.
i feel sick.

I've done some really foolish things more so when I was younger, only god knows what I was thinking. Sorry to hear about your dilemma. I can only imagine what your feeling.

[InfiniteNothing]

I was working at a copy place and I was supposed to cut a stack of paper with the paper cutter into thirds. Well I cut the first third off and then I cut the other 2/3s in half but I cut it along the wrong axis so I cut the other 2/3s in half. I got away with it by having some of the guys print me out some new ones.

[Paymaster]

First job. I was 17. I had been there about 2 months. It was on a farm, so they had some gas tanks there that they used to fill the tractors.

Boss/owner gives me the keys to his Mercedes and tells me to fill it up. I drive it over to the tanks. There are two of them, and they are not labled. One of them is locked, so heck, I guess I'll use the one that isn't locked, right? The nozzle didn't fit in the cars filler pipe though. I had to kind of hold it at an angle and pour very slowly to fill it.

Boss drove the car a few miles to where it completely died. I had filled his tank with diesel. His car takes unleaded.

[TERRIBLETOM]

Originally posted by Paymaster
First job. I was 17. I had been there about 2 months. It was on a farm, so they had some gas tanks there that they used to fill the tractors.

Boss/owner gives me the keys to his Mercedes and tells me to fill it up. I drive it over to the tanks. There are two of them, and they are not labled. One of them is locked, so heck, I guess I'll use the one that isn't locked, right? The nozzle didn't fit in the cars filler pipe though. I had to kind of hold it at an angle and pour very slowly to fill it.

Boss drove the car a few miles to where it completely died. I had filled his tank with diesel. His car takes unleaded.

That's a bummer, but here's another story along those lines, A woman came into the station to have her Mercedes filled. it was full serve and she asked for the cheapest. We tried to explain to her that her vehicle took diesel which was a bit more, she insisted in the cheapest in this case regular unleaded so that's what she got. Talk about being stubborn.

[irwin]

Originally posted by Paymaster
*insert diesel/unleaded mixup story*

Were you fired? Did the guy get mad? What happened?!!?!

[TERRIBLETOM]

Originally posted by passwird


Were you fired? Did the guy get mad? What happened?!!?!

I worked in the shop and it was another coworker who had done it at her request and the car didn't go two feet before the thing stalled. He wasn't fired and I DON'T think he should have been, she was the one who insisted, I think the owner drained her tank and charged her.

[irwin]

Originally posted by TERRIBLETOM
I worked in the shop and it was another coworker who had done it at her request and the car didn't go two feet before the thing stalled. He wasn't fired and I DON'T think he should have been, she was the one who insisted, I think the owner drained her tank and charged her.

I wanted Paymaster's response, but your's was cool too.

[Hunny]

Re: you ever do anything at work you just couldn't believe you did?


Welllll...nothing earthshattering...no wrong copies...no paperwork booboos...no database screwups...no gas attacks...but seeing it happened today...and I think its funny...I'm going to tell you:

...during lunchbreak at work, I eat with 3 women, one being my boss...we all get along great...and because its only us 4 eating we tend to talk "girlee things" ...so...as we're finishing up, we all stood up and because I'm the "breast" girl you'd have to know to understand that one...I put my hands on my breasts and said in my normal tone ...."Look!!I really think they are growing" as I carefully rubbed each one ..."my bra is getting tighter" and stating how heavy they feel..blahh blahh blahhh...and so we were laughing about my breasts and the part you don't know , talking freely because we're usually alone...and as we walked through the open door to get our things, there was the maintenance guy standing smack dab in the doorway poking around doing something in a garbage can ...talk about feeling like an idiot...he never looked up or acknowledged us as we came through...
I think I would much rather have screwed up someones database...

Where's that candybar when you need it

[sho.gun]

Originally posted by Hunny
Re: you ever do anything at work you just couldn't believe you did?


Welllll...nothing earthshattering...no wrong copies...no paperwork booboos...no database screwups...no gas attacks...but seeing it happened today...and I think its funny...I'm going to tell you:

...during lunchbreak at work, I eat with 3 women, one being my boss...we all get along great...and because its only us 4 eating we tend to talk "girlee things" ...so...as we're finishing up, we all stood up and because I'm the "breast" girl you'd have to know to understand that one...I put my hands on my breasts and said in my normal tone ...."Look!!I really think they are growing" as I carefully rubbed each one ..."my bra is getting tighter" and stating how heavy they feel..blahh blahh blahhh...and so we were laughing about my breasts and the part you don't know , talking freely because we're usually alone...and as we walked through the open door to get our things, there was the maintenance guy standing smack dab in the doorway poking around doing something in a garbage can ...talk about feeling like an idiot...he never looked up or acknowledged us as we came through...
I think I would much rather have screwed up someones database...

What the...

Is this normal ladies? You all do this right?

[rajatQ2]

heres an embarrasing one, i was working at a company doing IT when i was 17, so like 4 years ago, and we had to meet with the Vice president of the company, because the head of IT got fired and he was the next one up in the heirarchy.

The meeting was about setting up a server to notify us if the firewall or UPS went down, so for whatever reason this machine has to be outside of the firewall, and we were talking about buying a new computer. So, me, being the bright one, goes "Why dont we use Jeff's Quake server??"

Jeff was my boss, and it was lucky for me that the VP didnt know what a "quake server" is... our whole group turned red, me the most, and ended the meeting asap

[LPMiller]

oh hell, I've pulled many a boner.

Lessee.

Once I had to set up the awards for a teleco in our database. The dollar value of the awards was supposed to be 100 dollars, somehow I screwed it up and set it for 1,000. 11 people got checks for 1,000 dollars. Luckily, the client wasn't pissed.

This wasn't really my mistake, but once we went to press with 1 million certs for Visa Rewards. Turns out the database, randomly, would print off zeros on the certs instead of an award value. While we qc'd every 7th sheet normally, this was printed on a roll and unfolding it to check the sheets would wreck the certs, so we were told to check the reports - only the reports printed correctly. Caught that sucker just in time before we mailed, but we had to reprint the whole run. The programmer later lost his job, as it was one in a line of pooch screws.

Of course, his boss wasnt' perfect either. We had to print off a run of 70,000 statements. He wanted to test something first, so did a test run of production data. Said it was fine, and he went ahead and printed off the production run. Come to find that he printed off 70,000 sheets with the words "Test Run, Not for Mailing".

Then there are the times you get it half right. In one day I saved the client thousands of dollars by catching a huge error in their data that was for all intents and purposes, highly random. On that same day I printed off a huge run of statements that awarded way too many points to users, in a mistake I should have caught in QA. But I was just so excited by the error I had caught...

Hmm, this is making me look bad, but I was at the company for 11 years, so I had my good days. At least 3 of them, I think.

Point is...you work for any length of time, you'll screw the pooch. Learn and move on. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a printed flyer or whatever go through 50 people in marketing and creative, as well as professional proof readers, and still end up going to production with some glaring spelling error that should have been caught at the proof stage. Sometimes the brain just puts in the word that should be there, missing the error altogether. It's amazing, and one reason why I'd never go back to that business - I'm just not detail oriented enough for that sort of work.

[GraingerGuy]

This didn't happen to me....but it happened to a friend.

He worked at the front desk at the dorm that I am living in, and he wasn't suppose to sleep at the desk in case something happened. Well, the head RA (sorta his boss) came out to go running and he saw that this deskworker was asleep. So, he went and turned the phone ringer up really loud and called the front desk. Scared my friend out of his mind! His exact words were, "HOLY HOOZIES!" and then he anwsered the phone only to see the head RA laughing his head off....