What's the worst that's happened at work? The most costly or ruinous done by you or a fellow employee? I've done several over the years. When working at a despicable junk mail firm, I mailmerged thousands of letters that didn't quite line up right in the envelope window and so came back to the company as undeliverable by the mailbag load. Had to reprint and remail at their cost. That would be the most expensive. More recently, in my current job, I got the wrong box and sachet from among those on the worktop and served an old boy a lunch of steaming hot strawberry milkshake with a side of buttered toast fingers, which he dipped in it to eat. He did complain halfway through that it seemed a bit sweet, and when I looked more closely at the box I realised what had happened, but it was too late not to front it out and I just said something about having put a drop of milk in it, so I wouldn't do that again. He slurped up the rest of it in any case. Won't have done him any harm. It's probably all one powder anyway until they add the flavouring further down the production line.
For noteable spectacular cockup by other, I would like to nominate young fogey management apprentice lad who someone left in charge of Euston station. He was scrawny, posh voiced and about 23. He wore pinstripes, big glasses, a ****y bow tie (I kid you not) and severe dandruff. He definitely thought he was a cut above the ruffians who worked there and he intended to rule in the classical Tory imperial style - by decree and deaf to more experienced advice. Well one fine morning, the job fell in the cart and we had a lot of late incoming arrivals. Young Mr ****ybow applied his fine classical education to the problem and decided to use the incoming Manchester Pullman stock for the outgoing Holyhead boat train. In vain did we try to counsel him against doing this, but we were waved away with an elegant hand and a puff of dandruff. "No, no. I shall stick with my decision.". Well he was the boss and we were simple employees, so we carried out his orders. The Manchester Pullman stock was the pride of the railway. It was painted a special silver and was luxury first class throughout. It only did one weekday speedy almost non-stop journey each way London to Manchester and back for the well-heeled business man and lady. The stock also had (uniquely) inward opening doors, which meant under safety regs you had to have a steward on each coach, but that didn't bother them so much as the results of Paddy's duty free luxury 4 hour pish up along with the fact that the stock could only be electrically hauled and the wires run out between Crewe and Holyhead, thus flattening the batteries completely on each coach. The set was out of commission for weeks. We heard he had to go for an "interview at the board" and then he got moved on. I should Google the chump. He's probably bloody chairman by now.
Many, and I mean many years ago I was responsible for the Northern line starting an hour late. I was in charge of telling the power guys we were off the track and fell asleep on a platform. Thank **** it was a Sunday morning.
Many years ago, as a teenager, I worked (for a year, as a temp) for IBM in Rayners Lane, and I sent 4 big boxes of printed data to Sea Containers Ltd, when it should have gone to Ocean Containers Ltd, 4 big boxes to Cathay Pacific when they should have gone to Ocean Containers Ltd, and 6 big boxes of data to Sea Containers Ltd when it should have gone to Cathay Pacific. Two of those companies were the fiercest of competitors, and the data contained customers details, bank accounts, payment terms, the whole works. IBM smoothed it over, but I understand it cost a months data processing costs. Couldn't get away with it these days. The most aggrieved was Ocean Containers Ltd, and I ended up joining one of it's parent companies.
Once mergerd a very large conference call of Ford top bods delivering an important announcement with an eqaully important conference all being held by Lotus. An interesting few moments occured before I disconnected a few hundred lines.
Received a collateral call Friday 12th 2008. Agreed to pay even though the positions had bounced back during the Friday. After, all can just call it back from Lehman on Monday
I was doing a job for Bet Fred at Old Trafford for a Champions League match in 2008. I set a system up to import the odds from their main database which was fine except for the scorecasts which exponentially screwed up the odds instead of multiplying and applying the contingency factor. Luckily no one had the winning combination as a non striker scored the first goal but had Man United won 2-0 there would have been some very awkward arguments with punters, the game finished 1-0. I looked silly but I got away with it.
Had a job where we would frequently rotate hire cars that were then used as pool cars for the whole office. A running joke was to turn the volume up on the stereo to the maximum and then pull the keys out of the ignition whilst the radio was still on so that the next person to get in would jump out of their skin when they went to drive somewhere. So I joined in the fun and forgot that I'd set up this master prank. Had been in a meeting when I walked past one of the big bosses coming out of our office. Got a cuppa, sat back down and then turned to a mate and said "so what did Boss X want then?" to which he replied "just wanted to borrow one of our hire cars to go to a meeting". Turned to start doing an email then suddenly panicked and asked which one. "The brand new Focus Titanium". Yep, that one. Ran to the window of our office on the second floor just in time to see him walk across the huge car park, get into the car, get ear blasted by Kiss FM, panic and drive it forwards straight into another new hire car. Had to just admit it and hope for mercy. Was helped out by colleagues who said we'd all be doing it, so got away with a massive bollocking and nothing formal.
In my previous job, I trained up the assistant that I'd been campaigning for for a year. I was promptly "let go". This "genius" that was "more useful to the company than me as he was qualified" decided that my calculations and painstaking step by step method were unimportant and too time consuming, so he went his own way and developed his own method After a couple of weeks I returned to the office to collect my belongings and payoff and to also "have a 5 min chat with him" as he "had a few questions". In a week he'd cost the company more than 2 years of my salary. I banked my severance pay quick and didn't pursue the company legally. Needless to say the company were rescued from financial ruin a year or two later when bought out by a rival.
I once lost my rag with a computer and shoved the monitor much harder than i meant too; it fell off the desk and the cables dragged the computer, keyboard and mouse with it. The whole lot ended up on the floor and the office fell silent. I also once reversed a work van into an open inspection pit. My best was setting light to the chairman of the companies barn. He used to get the engineering apprentices to do stuff around his farm - fixing tractors and stuff. We loved it, it was much better fun than spending time in the training centre. He had this big old D8 Cat earth mover we were rebuilding as a project and I was doing some welding on it. Anyhoo one thing led to another, some sawdust caught light, then the barn, then the Cat! I thought I was going to be fired for sure. I'll never know to this day why I wasn't, but it might have been something to do with the huge insurance claim.
We (I) were having a major problem getting a 'dye' to 'stick' to 'something' we were trying to monitor by spectrophotometry (as well as the usual electrochemical methods). By a strange coincidence it came up in a conversation I had with one of my ex-colleagues from the RCA who was a textile designer and mentioned something they used to called 'mordants' to make dyes 'stick' to fabrics. I investigate these mordants and work out what a non-toxic one would look like and go on ChemSpider (a chemical internet search tool) to see if anyone manufactures it (so I don't have to synthesise it). I find 3 big (local) pharma companies who sell it (but only in bulk amounts of 50kg) so I do the usual and ring to ask them nicely for a sample (I need 1ml) - oddly, they get really shirty and say no (virtually all companies will normally give samples). So I go down the list of suppliers on ChemSpider to the smaller ones and there's a Dutch one, I speak to them on the phone and they will sell me 10ml but I'll have to order it and pay for it then and there - fair enough it's only 40 euros which I'll claim back through petty cash. One week later the package arrives addressed to me at my lab. As does a joint Customs and Excise/Drug Squad task force. I then have to explain to them, my line manager, the head of the research institute and the university's PVP (in turn) WTF I was doing buying GHB and having it delivered to the lab...
