Worst thing you've done in a job without being sacked?

[Jattdogg]

31 minutes ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Cos you were sacked?

Lol no.

[TheStig]

As a very young man I worked part-time at a slightly posh grill bar that shared kitchen and premises with a restaurant next door. Had to deice the cooling system and managed to jam a screw driver through the ice and into the tube allowing the  the cooling liquid for both places to flow onto the floor. The boss was not much pleased and warm beer was served for the rest of the day. I kept my job.

[Tielemans63]

At the start of my teaching career I was summoned to the Principal's office. I was told not to worry about it, however a student had accused me of calling him a ****. 

 

The Principal told me that I didn't need to panic as the lad had a long history of making false accusations about staff and was in the process of being permanently excluded anyway as he had made a really serious claim about another teacher that had proven to be a total fabrication. He was permanently excluded the next week 

 

 

For clarification, I absolutely did call him a stupid ****. 

 

 

It was one of those rare moments where the filter between brain and mouth failed completely, and I was so agitated with this kid, that it just came out and one of his mates heard it....turns out it was not as 'under my breath' as I would have hoped.

 

Absolutely no regrets btw. This lad went on to commit some pretty grim crimes as an adult. So if anything, I was right about him being a ****.

[Sly]

8 hours ago, notnow john said:

Am I the only one who was actually sacked for a mistake ??

You all seem to have got away with far bigger balls up than I was dismissed for.

What did you do? 

[CrazyKopCorner]

I backed into a lamp post outside the depot in the company van.

 

Also forgot I was in a Mercedes Van and nearly took the roof off when going into a car park. Had streaks of black and yellow paint on the roof of a blue van. 🚐 

[adam1]

Worked in a bookies. A mate who knew a few faces and had warm info told me he fancied one running in Ireland later that day at a decent price.

 

Funnily enough the losing slip draw (win a £20 free bet) was brought forward and my mate won it after placing a 5p rfc on two outsiders (he was on average a £100 punter).  Just a coincidence.

 

The £20 goes on this horse and it wins. I scoop a couple of hundred from my share. 

 

 

 

 

[The Year Of The Fox]

Once got sent to a job in London lodging out. Got told to meet the others at the hotel early next morning

 

Arriving at the hotel (Premier Inn Barking FYI) I took a turn left too early and ended up in an empty Tesco car park. I drove under the barriers into the car park, and could see the hotel through the trees.

 

Did a sweeping big U turn and went under a different set of barriers to exit. The barriers must’ve been at a slightly different height to the ones I’d drove under initially and my roof rack gets snagged on them, almost pulling the barriers out their stanchions 🤣

 

I’ve jumped out in a blind panic, stood on the rear bumper to see the damage. Rear bumper falls off under my weight 😂

 

Ran back to the drivers door to call the others, and the van door handle came off in my hand 🤣🤣

 

You genuinely couldn’t write it.

 

Two of the lads turned up and the barrier arms were linked with about 6” of chain. One of the barriers had gone under my roof rack, and the other had gone over it 

 

We had to cut the leg off the pipe rack, one lad hanging off the barrier that was under my rack and another stood on the roof pulling the other barrier up, whilst I drove forward.

 

Obviously Tesco staff started arriving at this point- it was probably about 7am

 

I work for a small firm and word had got round all the lads by approximately 0730.

 

Told my boss my door handle had come off, but didn’t say why. Told me to take it into the garage on the Friday. Asked the mechanic to whip the roof rack off and straighten out the huge dog leg in it 

 

Thought I’d got away with it, until another blokes van broke down the same day mine was in for repair

 

He wasnt ITK as to what had happened that week, so essentially grassed my roof rack up to my bosses.

 

Nothing ever got said to me though

 

That was 2012, and I still work for them now 

 

This probably won’t sound funny to anyone else, but I’m giggling over it as I type 

[notnow john]

2 hours ago, Sly said:

What did you do? 

Well, I was working for a well known pie maker (fluer di lys) as a maintenance engineer when I got my 

genitalia caught in a pastry roller.

 

And she only got a written warning !!

[Silebyfox_89]

I'm my last job I raised a PO to a supplier which has a lead time of 6 months and manufactured in Italy.

I attended production meetings for 3 months telling them it on track and not to worry.

Hence to say I missed the order amendment from the supplier (the day after I sent it). 

Blagged it for 2 months with various excuses until I was forced to come clean when the vendor forward the email to a colleague.

Safe to say I had to own up infront of 2 company directors and about 10 other people testing my antiperspirant.

Survived with a verbal warning.

[DennisNedry]

In my first job after leaving school I worked my way up to a sort of contracts manager for a building company, and I never really knew what I was doing.

 

One lowlight, when organising the refurbishment of the living accommodation above a pub, I ordered a shower cubicle for the bathroom. I hadn't even considered the thing wouldn't fit up the narrow staircase. The phonecall from the plumber informing me of this, and that they'd left it on the path outside, was an awkward one to field in the middle of the office.

 

You can imagine the boss' reaction when this cubicle ended up in the office's stores as it was not returnable. 

 

That balls up pretty much wiped out any profit on that job. 

 

I left not long after. I wonder what happened to that shower.

Edited Tuesday at 21:04 by DennisNedry

[TommyK]

On 28/04/2025 at 18:08, Sly said:

I was a graduate for a large machinery manufacturer in the early 00s.

 

I sent something to Mexico, instead of the US by mistake on a RORO boat. But that alone cost us about £20k. 
 

That in itself sound “that bad” but it was worth around £3m 

 

I couldn’t then get it re-exported, so I had to sort road transport from Mexico to Texas which came at another expensive cost. 
 

This took weeks and the customer was telling me he was losing 1000’s $$$$’s per day. 
 

All in all, all was forgotten as I was a good egg and generally the only person able to use a PC, as I changed everything to excel / email, to stop the reliance on a bloody fax machine!!! 

Well that just won't catch on. Fax machines will be around forever. 

[filthyfox]

Had a Tommy in a work vehicle...   not saying what the job was though!

[los dedos]

1 hour ago, filthyfox said:

Had a Tommy in a work vehicle...   not saying what the job was though!

School bus ? 

[filthyfox]

13 minutes ago, los dedos said:

School bus ? 

Jesus no!- that's worse!

[Claudio Fannieri]

6 hours ago, filthyfox said:

Had a Tommy in a work vehicle...   not saying what the job was though!

Is that how you ‘came’ by your username, excuse the pun 😂

[Foxmeister]

I was temping for the council in 1990, it was a particularly hot summer and 1 of my jobs was to ring through the readings from the weather vane, I got the readings and rang them through only to be told I needed to do the temperature in C not F.

 

I couldn’t be arsed to go back and vaguely remembered the formula for converting and rang it through again. 

Unfortunately I’d got it wrong and when I got home it said on local news that it was the hottest day ever recorded in Leicestershire in the village of Nailstone. 
 

For over a decade I dreaded extra hot days because they’re always say it was the hottest one since 1990. The record was finally broken for real in 2003 and I could start to enjoy summers again.

[sishades]

In the 90s I worked as an image analyst for an offshore exploration company. It was my job to retrieve, process and analyse images from boreholes relating to geological formations and makeup. I also had to ensure that the image was rotated according to magnetic north. I did the job, ran off the prints complete with direction tadpoles indicating fractures,, holes etc and sent them off to Maersk. A short while later my boss (a nuclear physicist)  had the prints rolled out in the conference room with a puzzled look on his face. I explained the processes that I had done to do this job. He looked at me and said that he pre rotated the borehole images before I got them. This meant that Maersk were spending millions looking in the wrong direction. His last words on the matter were that we should keep this to ourselves. 

[ElusiveEd]

Being "ordered" to hang 2 hanging wardrobes by a stuck-up, pretentious husband and wife who informed me they were going to attend their son's wedding and these were "the Chanel and Christian Dior clothes they had chosen to wear" 

 

They p*ssed me off with their attiitude towards myself and my colleagues so I found a biro I had seen lying around, pulled the nib out, squeezed a load of ink out, roughly put the pen back together and slipped it into the lady's hanging wardrobe. 

 

I can't tell you how I felt but it was even better than I expected as I watched them later disappear off to their hotel.

 

Didn't get sacked because I kept it to myself but karma really is a b*tch! 

 

Edited 20 hours ago by ElusiveEd

[sishades]

In the same job I mentioned earlier I was living in Yarmouth working for Atlas Wireline Services and was also a season ticket holder. I went to all games home and away. For mid week games I would sneek out and go off to the footie. After returning from Bristol City on a Tuesday (300 miles there and back) my brother told me that my boss called and wanted to know where I was. My brother had told him "he is half down the A47 by now"!!! Oh shit I thought. I got to work early a few hours later and went straight to his office. To my surprise my boss said he did not mind me bunking off as long as I told him before I left. I stayed with them for 6 years. Mike Grammar, you are a legend!!!