12 Epic Fails That Became Office Legends

month ago

Sometimes mistakes that happen at work seem like a nightmare to us but then become a good story. Someone confuses price tags and sells a piece of jewelry for pennies, and someone sends an important letter to the wrong recipients. This article has stories of people whose work failures are hard to forget.

Scroll till the end for a cool bonus.

I work at a boutique, and my manager accidentally mislabeled 2 necklaces, switching their prices. Wouldn't be a huge deal, but one of the necklaces was $200 and one was $1,400. I sold the one labeled $200 about a week later (not having any idea), and then got in trouble for it after my boss saw the $200 necklace marked as $1,400 lying around. How it was my fault, I'll never know, but according to her, I should have "known" that the little rhinestone-looking things on the necklace were real diamonds, and that I should have recognized it was worth more than $200. Yeah. © tinykuhn / Reddit
My dad always tells of a story when he (an electrician) plugged in some wires backward and blew up a $10,000 piece of equipment. His boss was really cool though and told him "Just consider this a $10,000 investment in your education." © thebassoe / Reddit
I'm an assistant. My second week on the job I took my boss's $2,000 personal computer to get repaired. When I was bringing it back to his house, I dropped it and cracked the screen.
Thank God it was a small crack and my boss is the most chill person on the planet, I genuinely thought I was going to get fired but instead he just happily started using it again and said it was no big deal since it still worked. © CaptainFa**ole / Reddit

Had a buddy that was constantly asking me for a referral to my company. I wouldn’t do it because I knew he was lazy. One day he went on his own and filled out an application and wrote my name on the top. I had no idea. The next day the sales manager came up to me and said, “Hey, I hired your friend.” I asked him why on Earth he would do that without talking to me first. He said, “Well, he wrote your name on the app so I figured you recommended him.” He lasted 3 months. I got problems for many months after that with employees coming up to me and saying “Your friend…” and telling me whatever he screwed up that they were trying to clean up. © Friend-of-thee-court / Reddit
Forgot to turn the sign to "Open." The coworker found out after he came out, asked why the place was empty, and watched 5 people come to the door, stop, turn, and walk away. I was hungover and stood at the counter like a zombie for an hour and a half having watched many people walk up and away. Coworkers greeted me until I resigned with "Are we open?" © skummelgutt / Reddit
Kid's names have always been a problem for me, and I am a teacher. I was on a school trip and talking to a mother who was helping us look after the kids, and she started talking about how her daughter liked my lessons and such. She was all "Becky is always saying how much she enjoys French, bla bla" and I had absolutely no idea which one her daughter was and I think she realized I had no clue. I felt so unprofessional! In my defense, I had just started teaching that class made of 35 12-year-old girls, all called Stacey, Becky, Jessie, Josie... © Unknown author / Reddit

I used to be a product merchandiser for Coca-Cola a few years ago. Basically what I did was go to grocery stores, meet the driver, drop the delivery stock on the shelves as fast as possible, and get to the next store, repeat. On my second day on the job I was stocking 2L bottles at this mega grocery store, running a bit behind because the order came in late so I was moving fast. Dropped a bottle of Sprite on the floor, and it hit cap down. That little bastard shot up in the air and cleared 4 aisles. Luckily it didn't hit anyone. On my last day of working for Coke same thing happened, except this time it went flying straight for the cash and nearly hit some lady in the head. As I headed to the back room to get a mop, every employee was lined up applauding. One of them offered to clean it up as it was the funniest thing he'd seen working at the store and that was the last bottle I stocked working for Coca-Cola. © szrap / Reddit
It was my first-day flying solo as a manager at Burger King (training manager not shadowing). It was a Sunday morning. A lady had called in a moderately sized order to pick up. I made sure we had it ready to go and thought all was well. It had been about 15 minutes past the time she was expected to arrive to pick up the order. Soon it was 30 minutes and the 3 or 4 bags containing the order were still sitting on the heat chute. By this time breakfast had closed (at 11:00 a.m.). About another 10 to 15 minutes later I figured she probably wasn't going to come in, so I threw it out. As luck would have it, she showed up just after the food she had ordered went into the trash. When she asked for her order I had to politely tell her that since her order had been sitting on the heat chute long past the time she was due to pick it up I had thrown it out. She gave me the iciest stare anyone had ever given me. She didn't say a word and then she walked back out. I can't say it was necessarily entirely my fault since the food was long past its shelf life as she had come in so much later than when she was expected. Since I was the only manager on duty and it was my first day alone I wasn't sure what the protocol was for holding late call-in orders (call-in orders were not common), so I had to just make a judgment call. © dwc1970 / Reddit
I was working valet at a very famous hotel and resort in Wisconsin. One lady was headed home to Chicago. One lady was headed home to Milwaukee. Both drove identical red convertible rental Mustangs. Not only did I put the wrong women in the wrong car. But they had each other’s luggage. © Nwrecked / Reddit
I used to work for a telecom company, and our CEO went to a site to look at our new fiber optic shelter. While going around the shelter, he accidentally stepped on fiber that was transmitting more than quarter of the data of our country. All of our country had outbound connection problems for 18 hours. It affected more than 10 million people. © msc1 / Reddit

I was working on a TV show that was broadcast all over the world. One day they brought me 5 tapes from a very complicated shoot (involving a helicopter!). And I lost them. Our company had to refilm the episode, which cost the company a lot of money. And then the real kicker is that as soon as they had shot it again, the original tapes turned up. © ayothrowawayo / Reddit
The CEO of my very large company accidentally emailed all of our departments the week before Christmas that “because of our hard work” we would get the entire week of Christmas off. It was only supposed to go to one higher-up department. Thanks to the error they decided to give us all an extra week of PTO to use in the new year. It was awesome. © d****melgibs0n / Reddit
Accidentally deleted the e-mail accounts for my entire organization... Stopped the command once I realized what happened but by that time it had wiped out 3/4 of the mailboxes, including both of the owners' accounts. That was a dark, dark day... © Unknown author / Reddit
I worked in a bakery and wrote on cakes. I had a person order 2 cakes to be written on and picked up the next day. Well, I did it and put both in the cooler. The bad thing is that one was an ice cream cake. So, it melted overnight all over the cooler. That was a fun mess to clean the next morning. © Winter_Soil_3857 / Reddit

First day of the internship at the warehouse, night shift, no bosses. I'm learning, and getting to know the team. I'm sitting with an operator, we dispatch the drivers. Suddenly, a man in glasses and a hat appears in the window, "How are you? Oh, we have a new addition to our team!" I asked him his surname, and he hesitated but then named himself. I check the list, "You're not on the list, we'll finish the shipment and take you in." He was even more shocked but didn't argue and left. I didn't see him until the morning. In the morning, I went to the personnel department, and there was a woman talking to a colleague. I said, "I need to register. Let's solve my work issues first, and then you can continue." The woman was also confused, but she gave me the documents. Later, that man and the woman from the HR department came up to me. They see me and start laughing. "Let's meet," he says. "I'm the general director, and this is the branch manager." I start mumbling apologies, and they laugh, "All you auditors are the same. It's a calling, that's why we hired you." © LediBag / Pikabu
I used to work as a host in a restaurant, and sometimes I had to work at the bar for night shifts. I stand, rub glasses, and put them under the counter. There are a lot of glasses, especially "old fashion" ones which were put in stacks of 4. I put the next stack... and something goes wrong. Either I put it wrong, or I pushed it slightly - and the domino effect begins. 25 or 27 glasses scattered across the floor. So, I went to the storage room, took new ones, and just put them in place. A couple of days later I quit. I don't regret the broken glasses. They didn't pay me anyway. © B**nBody / Pikabu
In the first year of college, I decided to find a part-time job - my scholarship was not enough. I got a job as a nurse in the operating room. Summer, warm evening, music from the dance floor in the park coming through the windows... And I have to work. I decided to cheat! I put on an act, "Oh, my stomach! I can't work..." I thought they'd let me go and I'd go dancing. But the head nurse wasn't impressed. She gave me a pill, told me to lie down on the sofa, and said, "Lie down until there's no surgery." That's when it dawned on me that such things wouldn't work at work. Since then, I have never been absent or late. I learned my lesson for life. © Luna Nord / Yandex.Zen