Which one?
When was this? I think I may remember that incident. A 5-year span is sufficient.
Once in a while, certain drugs would suddenly be hard to get, and TPTB couldn’t explain why. Nowadays, it’s because of idiotic patent regulations that make generic $4 drugs into brand-only $1,000 drugs :mad: , and that’s one reason why I don’t work as a pharmacist any more.
nearwildheaven - Not that long ago - maybe 4 years? I work for a specialty pharma distribution company (one of the big ones) and as I recall, a lot of the product was flu vaccine, which isn’t as expensive as our chemo drugs, but when you’re talking tractor-trailer loads, it adds up.
StG
I know a nurse who gave a 10x dose of codeine to a toddler. She misread the decimal point. She also circumvented the required scanning procedure to save time.
mmm
Decades ago I worked for a large company that kept huge amounts of important data on computers.
So they sensibly decided to have a complete backup in a separate building (so far, so good.)
However they chose to use the basement room - and the building was next to a river…
Yup, when the river flooded, so did the entire backup room.
Luckily they could restore the backup from the original (I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. 
)
Flu vaccine isn’t exactly cheap. I’m pretty sure I did hear about this, and it accounted for a later shortage.
Coming from a slightly different angle “biggest screw up” could also describe some co-workers and the fact that anyone saw fit to hire them in the first place, and that’s in every job I’ve ever had.
I worked for over 30 years in chemical plants as an hourly operator. One of the plants employed a chemical engineer from MIT whose family had quite a bit of money. He worked because he wanted to not because he had to.
He and his wife each had a Porche for their everyday car. Usually he parked his car in the lot closest to the offices located at one end of the plant. Occasionally he had to come in on the midnight shift because he was in charge of the pilot plant, where products were tested to see if they could be adapted to production from the research labs. On those nights he had to park in the parking lot at the other end of the plant, where most of the hourly employees parked.
Unknown to him, but well known to all the hourly employees, was the fact that at somewhere between 0100 and 0300 every morning the powerhouse blew their stacks. This put a bunch of somewhat corrosive material into the air. Now the company always denied that this happened and there were some pretty heated discussions about it but most of us needed a job, and it paid well.
The engineer didn’t have this problem. When the ash landed on his Porche and ruined his paint he complained. He originally got the normal run around. He hired a lawyer, the company panicked and suddenly it became “what can we do to fix this.” They ended up painting the car, cost about $7000.00, and they gave him some money for depreciation. The car lost a lot of value being repainted even done with the official Porche paint.
No. No one else was compensated for our fucked up paint jobs. We were told they didn’t want to talk about it.
I once (correctly) designed a mine access road at the standard width of 7.3m. I had the design all finished and ready to go after several weeks of work, when the client came back and decided that they needed to use special vehicles on this road and it now needed to be minimum 7.8m wide and could we widen the design to 8.0m just to be safe?
This was actually pretty simple using the software we had, so I revised the design that afternoon and ran it past my boss… who approved it… and promptly issued the previous version to the contractor, who then built it.
The mistake was only picked up by the County inspector once everything was built. It’s here: Google Maps (the curvy north-south road in the middle of the view).
If two of these trucks meet each other on this road they can’t pass, so the deliveries to and from the mine have to be monitored carefully.
Luckily it was very easy for me to prove that this was not my mistake.
There was the time I accidentally kicked off the payroll cycle a week early. I was supposed to put all the downstream jobs on hold and only run one of the base jobs. I did, really - I even checked the documentation to be sure I didn’t miss anything. If only the documentation were complete…
Fortunately, I noticed that things were happening that weren’t supposed to be happening. I managed to lock one of the key files with exclusive update, and the stream stalled waiting for the file to be freed, contacted my manager, he contacted the vendor to tell them not to process any files they received, and we managed to cancel enough jobs to stop the process.
I couldn’t believe how chill the manager was about the whole affair. It turns out that he, and everyone else on the team, had done exactly the same thing at some time. All I ever heard was an email from the head of department saying “Now you are really One of Us. What took you so long?”
I also worked with a colleague who cost the company about a year and a half of work. This was in the days of Y2K, and he was going to clean up the remediated source code in our test environment. Boy, he sure cleaned it up all right, where “cleaned” = “deleted everything”. And when we contacted the DBAs about restoring from backup, there was a great deal of nervous coughing and avoidance of eye contact. They hadn’t ever backed up the database.
Did I say “colleague”? I meant “former colleague”.
Regards,
Shodan
Not really a major fuckup but something out of the ordinary that I’ve seen happen twice. Both times in chemical plant parking lots. The first was at an employee parking lot where a truck driver had left his trailer. He dropped the landing gear and went to eat in town. The trailer was on a gravel parking lot and the landing gear sank into the ground all the way until the nose of the trailer stopped it by hitting the ground.
The second time was on a blacktop parking area where the semi-truck driver did the same thing. He dropped the trailer onto the blacktop and it sank.
I didn’t see how either one was retrieved. When I came back into work the trailers were gone and the holes were filled.
I’ll share my submarine collision story once again. I’ll do my best to explain all the acronyms and such:
September of 2005. We were in the Persian Gulf on the surface, ahead of schedule and transiting into Bahrain at about 5 knots (very slowly – about 5 mph). The ENG [ship’s engineer officer] was OOD [Officer of the Deck], an unqual [unqualified- not yet fully qualified in submarines] JO [junior officer] was CC [Contact Coordinator, the watch designated to track ships on the surface to help the OOD drive the ship], and it was the midnight watch. CO [Commanding Officer] was asleep (he has to sleep sometimes!), XO [Executive Officer] was CDO [Command Duty Officer, essentially acting CO while the CO sleeps]. I was asleep. It was cloudy or foggy and very dark. At some point prior to 0300, the FTOW [Fire Control Technician of the Watch, an enlisted man assisting the CC] on the scope saw a shape behind us and reported it to the CC- the FTOW (a pretty junior FT3) thought the object had a 0 angle on the bow [meaning it’s headed right for us]. The CC (or possibly the FTOW himself) reported it to the XO, in control. The XO gets on the scope and says “no, it’s 30 degrees on the right drawing right”, or something to that effect. Minutes pass. The shape gets bigger, and the FTOW makes the same report. The CDO disagrees again. Finally someone (I don’t know exactly who) realizes it is heading right for us. The OOD requests a recommended course of action from the CC and the CDO. The CC says he’s working on it, and the CDO does nothing (or at least nothing productive). We’re still going about 5 kts, and being overtaken by a fat Turkish freighter about to run us over diagonally. The events of the next several moments are unclear, but involve the ENG (a little man with an abnormally high pitched voice) yelling “Get away from me!” and a somewhat heroic non-qualified and non-native-English speaking Lookout Under Instruction [Lookout is a self-explanatory watch station- Under Instruction means someone learning the watch] grabbing the Lookout AND OOD and pulling them to the deck of the bridge. Immediately before impact, the COW [Chief of the Watch, another important watch station in the control room] furiously screams into the 1MC [the main ship’s announcing circuit] “Rig ship for collision” (which is when I wake up) and sounds the collision alarm, than seconds later a huge impact that almost hurls me out of my top bunk.
We were wedged underneath the forward part of the 50K ton Turkish freighter’s hull for over an hour, with the blade of one fairwater plane and the rudder wedged inside the freighter’s hull, and our screw banging against their hull with every turn. We couldn’t drive our way out. WEPS [Weapons Officer] was on the iridium phone [fancy satellite phone] the entire time. Finally the EDMC [Engineering Department Master Chief] suggested we lower the ass end of the ship out from under the freighter. So, all off watch personnel go to Shaft Alley [farthest portion aft in the submarine] to act as human ballast and lower the back end of the ship. This lowers us a bit, but not enough. So next we manually open the aft MBT [main ballast tank] vent valves and flood the tanks (BTW- if you’re a submariner, you can recognize what an ENORMOUSLY risky act this is for a surfaced submarine). This works, and with terrible screeching sounds of metal tearing, we get free and limp into Bahrain.
The aftermath- we’re in Bahrain for a month. We actually got to like the place. The Squadron deputy (high ranking officer, O-6, with prior command experience) and his assistant, an O-4, the SQENG [Squadron Engineer], and a mysterious O-5 arrive to “assess” the situation. Just a few days after we arrive, the CO, XO, and ENG are GONE.
There is much rejoicing. The ENG was incompetent in all things and hated. The XO, while not totally incompetent in all things, was hated as well due to his personality. The CO was almost hated, but I still felt bad for him. He wasn’t incompetent like the others – he really knew his stuff, he was just not a good communicator or manager of people. The mistake he made was signing that watchbill- the WEPS had recommended himself (a superior OOD and DH) as the OOD for the midwatch, or a more senior CC, but the CO overrode him, since he wanted the most skilled officers to be well rested for the tricky act of pulling the ship into a crowded port. Again, he was not incompetent- he was just not a very good leader, and had no empathy for the crew. I think he was afraid of the crew, and the crew sensed it.
So we got to know Bahrain. And the temporary CO was an awesome dude, a real gung-ho, cowboy type, who made it fun to be onboard. And the permanent replacement CO, while very low key, was a great guy as well, and very satisfying to work for. The SQENG was cool as temporary ENG.
The long term replacement ENG had a breakdown and quit after a few months, but that’s another story. WEPS, who was/is a great officer, became the new ENG eventually (which he had always wanted), and is now the CO of a VIRGINIA Class submarine out of Pearl Harbor.
One of the plants I worked at had originally been built in the horse and buggy days. It supposedly was an all day buggy ride into town. In the mid 70’s we had a guy retire that had been there 50 years, his first job was to lead the mule with the cart around the plant so it could be loaded and unloaded. Anyway, the roads were very narrow and the bane of many semi-truck drivers.
The worst I saw was a truck making a 90 degree turn, he went as far as he could to the edge of the road before turning just like he should. When he got the cab of the truck around the corner he proceeded as usual. He didn’t see the dumbass engineer, who wasn’t paying attention, try to fit into the same corner going the opposite way on his bicycle. When the trailer started cutting the corner, the engineer ran out of room. He bailed off the bike and knocked himself loopy on a pipe rack stanchion while his bike got ate up by the trailers rear tires.
He was pretty shook up. Understandable. The company tried to say the truck driver was a fault but too many people had seen the engineer riding along with his head up his ass.
Ex-Navy here. Imagine a hangar full of $35 million helicopters, all lined up. Some of them are opened up for maintenance, with nice shiny electronics unprotected, or nice shiny flight control servos unprotected. It is the last weekend in October in Norfolk, VA, so there is a bit of a chill in the air. On this particular Saturday, the squadron was hosting a Halloween party for all of the kids. The party was hosted by the E-6 association, with help from some junior personnel. Just after everyone arrived to start setting up, someone decided to try to find the thermostat to bring the temperature up in the hangar. Well, they activated the fire suppression system, and dumped thousands of gallons of highly corrosive AFFF solution in and on the helicopters. Luckily, with all the people in the building, we could hook up and drag all the birds outside and get them hosed off pretty quickly, but the families started showing up, and there was nothing set up. They got some of the activities set up in an upstairs passageway, but the day was pretty much ruined for everybody. I was there until late that night making sure that cleaning got done and documented on all the aircraft and all of the support equipment that had been exposed. Fun day for all!
Heh. We used to classify the cause of stuff like that as “walking while engineer”. I used to work at the tech center for a not-for-profit that worked to employ blind people; most of the engineers there were not blind, but would regularly wander down the halls engrossed in reading something or just oblivious to the world, and smack into each other. I’d be sitting at my desk, and randomly hear thud “ow.”
Some of the rehab people there were blind, and one of them had a guide dog named Winston. Winston was sweet, but… not very good at his job. He’d wander away to look for people to pet him. And while guiding his owner around the place, would stray off-center and run his owner into walls and doorways and cubicle dividers and such. bang! “Winston!” followed by thud “ow.” All day long.
We had two guys each had an eye that didn’t track right. I don’t know what it was called. Lazy eye?
They were walking down a narrow hallway toward one another, they ran into each other. One said, “Watch where you’re going.” The other answered “Then go where you’re watching”
I used to have a coworker who, well, didn’t care any more. He was ill, taking early retirement, and basically came in to read the paper and shoot the breeze.
After he left, I was selected to clean up his caseload.
It became clear he quit caring years prior.
I remember one case in particular - person was ordered to pay, say $1000/mo in child support. New court order changed that amount to $400/mo. Yet another order stopped charging for a few months, before reinstating at $50/mo. Hey, here’s another order for $250/mo, but this one goes back in time a bit.
We were receiving payments.
Too bad the payments were still based on the $1000/mo order, because the worker never bothered to enter any of the other orders and for some reason, the client never called to ask what as going on.
The client ended up overpaying by THOUSANDS of dollars. The other party was not to keen on returning payments, and the only recourse we had was to remit 20% of all future payments back to the payor. At that rate, it would’ve been years before the overpayment was resolved.
I ended up obtaining a court order setting support at like $500/mo, but the obligor only had to pay $50/mo, the rest was offset by the overpayment.
I wish I could say this was the only horrendous mistake this worker made. Account reconciliations never done, dead clients, missing children, it was as if he stopped all semblance of work a few years prior.
On the positive side, I made great money with all the overtime.
Here is one from my time in the chemical plants. We had a vessel that held 10,000 gallons, it wasn’t a high pressure vessel, but was used under vacuum more than anything. Vacuum made it easier to fill, add powdered materials, and under vacuum you could clear your lines when finished.
The vessel was being used to lower the ppm of sulfur in some oil. Simple operation, charge in the proper amount of oil, add the proper ratio of peroxide, put a nitrogen purge on it, turn on the agitator and sample every four or so hours. We had been doing this for weeks and no problems.
One night while I was at my control room there was a terrific boom then a loud sound that reminded me of a jet engine turning up. I ran outside to see what the heck was going on and over at that vessel was a blow torch, straight up about 50 feet coming out of the top of the vessel. Suddenly it stopped and you could hear it sucking air back in for 5 or so minutes, the blow torch again. Rinse and repeat.
The fire dept showed up and joined us operators staring at the impressive fireworks. No one was too eager to go and do anything with it. We had water on the outside of the vessel and finally could see where the pressure had blown off one of the 4 inch flanges on the top. We shot water into it through there when it was reloading with air. It all finally settled down with longer and longer times between eruptions. We got things under control when we took a chance and got a fire hose in the broken flange and started pumping in foam.
The screw up was way back at the beginning. We all knew that the vessel was made on inconel and normally didn’t have to worry much about it reacting with what we put in it, we didn’t know that one of the few things it would react with was peroxide. The guy that wrote the procedure was not a chemist or chemical engineer, he was an ex-operator and no way would he have known.
That was pretty well the end of the operators being promoted past shift supervisors. The company decided that they couldn’t afford to not have chemical engineers or chemists overseeing production.
Sounds sorta like this, but self-induced: xkcd: Nerd Sniping 
Geesh, I though it was bad when I bought the wrong Mutual fund (missed it by one letter). By the time we sold incorrect Fund and bought correct one we lost 21K. Didn’t even get a talking to. I was really scared for a while.
I was working on a team installing a movie theater. First hint that someone was not too bright ™ was they installed the soda tanks in the booth [lug a 50# tank of CO2 up the stairs anyone?]
Then they sheet rocked the booth.
Any guesses where this is going?
Two weeks later, they got to sheet rock again, after the soda lines were re-run in a cast iron pipe.:smack:
It was quite colorful. And sticky.