# What were the biggest screw ups you've been aware of at work? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 24, 2017, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-screw-ups-youve-been-aware-of-at-work/797145 "2017-09-24T04:11:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Dr.Girlfriend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.girlfriend/32/193_2.png) [@Dr.Girlfriend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Girlfriend)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2017, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-screw-ups-youve-been-aware-of-at-work/797145/81 "2017-10-01T16:44:48Z")
I might have shared this story here before back when I was working for the Bosshole. We had a forklift for the warehouse that only a few people were trained to use. The boss’s douchebag son was not one of them but he decided he would use the forklift anyways. He managed to run the forklift into a support beam in the warehouse, take out a stack of shelves, and almost run over one of our summer help teenagers in just a few minutes time. If it had been anyone else they would have been fired on the spot, but douchebag kid could do no wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2017, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-screw-ups-youve-been-aware-of-at-work/797145/82 "2017-10-01T17:48:12Z")
> [@Dr.Girlfriend](#): > > I might have shared this story here before back when I was working for the Bosshole. We had a forklift for the warehouse that only a few people were trained to use. The boss’s douchebag son was not one of them but he decided he would use the forklift anyways. He managed to run the forklift into a support beam in the warehouse, take out a stack of shelves, and almost run over one of our summer help teenagers in just a few minutes time. If it had been anyone else they would have been fired on the spot, but douchebag kid could do no wrong. It happens with even worse results sometimes. We had an incident in a sister facility a few months ago where a forklift driver ran over a coworker. It didn’t kill him but it did amputate his legs. That is certainly horrible but the result for the rest of us was that we all have to wear florescent yellow safety vests at all times from now on. I have my own office and I try to dress nicely but you wouldn’t ever know now because we all look like road crew construction workers. The first thing I have to do when meeting visitors like salespeople is to outfit them with a bright orange safety vest that loudly identifies them as an outside person even if we are just going into a conference room. That is on top of the toe protectors that I call clip-clops that make you sound like a Clydesdale when walking if you don’t have steel toed shoes. I am sure hard-hats will be next even during meetings. All of that came from one idiot that wasn’t paying attention. We already had good safety procedures in our facility already to protect against such accidents and we never had one but corporate policy always leans towards CYA. ---
**Author:** ![Annoying\_Buzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Annoying\_Buzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annoying_Buzz)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-screw-ups-youve-been-aware-of-at-work/797145/83 "2017-10-02T01:21:45Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Looking over all these threads I wonder how it is that almost all of the screw-ups are in IT? Don’t plumbers or electricians or … make mistakes? Or are they just not as colorful? Advertising. Here’s the one I posted in one of the earlier threads. Still makes me smile. We were making an advertorial section for a major business magazine, which consisted of interviews with about 20-odd CEOs. One agency had been hired to do the interviews and write the articles, while our agency would handle production (design, layout, etc) plus copy editing the writers’ work. The boss of the writers’ agency was kind of a prima donna, even though the quality of their work was fair at best. We sent back one article with extensive fixes (several things flat-out wrong and many more that were just sloppy), which resulted in an angry letter from the boss saying that they were the writers, we were the hired help doing the grunt work, and we were not to tell them how to do their jobs. Up to this point, manuscripts would go through us before being sent to the magazine and the CEO-interviewee for review. This time, however, she made a point of cutting us out of the loop and sending it to everyone directly, only including us as a BCC. Since we’d have to put it in the layout anyway, we opened up the article to see how it was. The writer had included his comments in red text throughout out the article. A bit sloppy-looking to send to a client, but no biggie. Except that his comments included a lot of rude potshots at the CEO (“I guess that’s why their cars are such shit.” “Does this moron even listen to himself?”). As icing on the cake, the final comment was “[co-worker], please remember to remove the comments before sending this out.” This was sent to everyone. All the involved staff at the magazine (who’d hired them), the CEO of a major car company and his whole PR department. And because they’d tried to slight us by adding our names in the BCC field, we had absolutely no involvement in it at all. After that, we once again were in charge of copy-editing, and they were very quiet. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-screw-ups-youve-been-aware-of-at-work/797145/84 "2017-10-02T17:08:07Z")
State Government contract worth approx 50M to replace a large chunk of infrastructure. Got so pear shaped the Department and contractor agreed to walk away from the table…after paying said contractor nearly 30M and a legal stipulation what we’d never say anything bad about that contractor. (Later experience with contractor makes me think that that’s REALLY their business model - get paid for never executing on a contract) We then proceeded to have a $2M project just to see what we had. So, $32M in and no changes to existing IT infrastructure. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-screw-ups-youve-been-aware-of-at-work/797145/85 "2017-10-02T18:48:52Z")
> [@robby](#): > > There was one that involved another submarine (not mine) in my squadron that was also stationed in Groton, Connecticut. The submarine in question was heading out for a six-month deployment, which involved proceeding from the submarine base down the Thames River and out to sea. > > There is a railroad bridge crossing the Thames River that was supposed to raise up when submarines passed under it. However, at some point the raising mechanism failed and it was several months before they got it fixed. In the meantime, it was determined that submarines could _just_ make it under the railroad bridge with about 2-3 feet of clearance above the sail (formerly referred to as the “conning tower”) so long as all masts and antennas were lowered. > > Note that surfaced submarines usually have several masts and antennas raised, for various purposes including communications, ventilation, etc. They also usually have one or both periscopes raised, because they supplement the lookouts up on the bridge at the top of the sail. > > A few minutes before passing under the railroad bridge, the Officer of the Deck (OOD) gave the order to lower all masts and antennas. The OOD (as well as the CO and lookout) all looked behind to ensure that all masts and antennas were retracting. They then turned their attention back forward to the upcoming railroad bridge. > > What nobody noticed was that one of the periscopes had not fullly retracted. (This was because the operator down in the control room had not fully rotated the periscope lowering actuator. As a result, the fairing that housed the scope had retracted, while the actual periscope had not.) > > Nobody noticed that anything was amiss until about 15 seconds before going under the railroad bridge. That was the point that the lookout noticed the periscope sticking up. There was a frantic order given to “LOWER NO. 2 SCOPE!!” but it was too late. :eek: They went under the bridge, and crushed a multi-million dollar periscope, essentially destroying it. :smack: > > The sub subsequently made it into Long Island Sound and promptly turned right back around to head back to port to have the periscope replaced. The sub left for deployment again the next day without incident. > > Rumor had it that many wives, girlfriends, and significant others were quite surprised when sailors who were supposed to be away for six months unexpectedly returned home after the aborted initial departure. Some of these reunions were happy ones. Others reportedly were not…which led to break-ups and divorces. ☹ I remember this … mrAru’s silly sub story - idiot officer on a Sturgeon class out of Norfolk decided he wanted to see what a button did, so he did a fast flood on a ballast tank. Thereafter he was referred to as Fast Flood Floyd. What a wing nut. Hm, back in the day for me, I can remember a couple of the warehousemen deciding to take the [yard horses](http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/Mzc1WDUwMA==/z/WsYAAOxygPtS-qaX/$_3.JPG?set_id=2) and play off road in the back storage yard, sinking both of them above the decks in the mud. I also remember being rudely awoken from a nap I was taking in the ‘vault’ [secured storage for expensive metal stock for my machine shop] because the boiler blew up in the room next door. I was never so thankful for 5 foot thick walls as that day … And while working as a renta-tech working nuke plant refits, a company known for freezing pipe to isolate valves so they can be repaired sort of _didn’t_ so when they cracked the valve, it dumped lovely radioactive coolant so that I got rained upon … nothing like getting burnt for the year on one contract [hey at least they paid me for the lost jobs at $35/hour and $95 per diem =)] When working for a major alarm company, the Montreal office went dark, which shifted all the calls to Hartford CT - we had Latinos, we had Thai, we even had a couple Urdu speakers. I got more overtime because I was the only person fluent in French … I also remember when the server crashed during an update and we had to go manual - every alarm signal printed out, and several people had to pull the printouts, cut into single signals and distribute them to the operators and we had to deal with them without any computer help at all. Not fun. Same company had pretty much every alarm blow surrounding a major city harbor when a film production company ‘blew up’ a ship in the harbor. Every glassbreak for 40 square blocks cooked off. Oops. [And for extra fun, the hold up buttons scattered around the call center were not well isolated and at least once a month someone would accidentally trip a hold up alarm. Nothing like heading out for a cigarette break and coming face to face with a SWAT team …] And finally, while working for a waste stream management company, my first solo Sunday shift the morning shift manager calls in light up because the grease recycling truck driver ‘dumped used oil all over the parking lot’ - so I call the company, no driver had been there or even in the town for several weeks. They said they would send out a crew to clean up the spilled grease. Then I go a call from the fire department telling me the flow alarm in the storm sewers had gone off, so _they_ sent a crew out to investigate. It all culminated in the idiot manager going next door to the Home Depot, renting a power washer and hosing his parking lot into the storm drains, grease detergent and all. The restaurant got fined for discharging illegally into a storm drain, polluting the Avon River with said discharge, and charged for a proper clean up by a haz mat company. The manager was now of of a job, I had a couple hours of putting my hazmat training to use by knowing who to call and what to arrange, the State got some money from the fines and a happy boss who didn’t have to come in on sunday and hold my hand through a difficult set of calls. [It was actually fun, gave me something to do other than sit waiting for calls to come in.] Oh, and what caused it? A couple kitchen monkeys were taking a 5 gallon bucket of used grease from the fryer out to dump and spilled it. If _anybody_ had just dumped a bag of kitty litter on the spill it could have all been avoided. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-screw-ups-youve-been-aware-of-at-work/797145.md?page=4)