15 People Reveal Worst Workplace Mistakes

From Redditor u/selfishmacaw:

At Home Depot, a guy was special. When driving a forklift during store hours, you need a spotter with flags guiding you. Not having one means instant firing. This guy drove the forklift into the store with a pallet of cinder blocks, no spotter. He hit a shelf, damaging a cinder block on the bottom. He panicked, seeing he broke a $1.00 block, and sped through, weaving past customers. The manager caught him trying to dump the whole pallet into the garbage chute to cover up. That was his last day.

When driving a forklift during store hours, you need a spotter with flags guiding you. Not having one means instant firing. This guy drove the forklift into the store with a pallet of cinder blocks, no spotter. He hit a shelf, damaging a cinder block on the bottom. He panicked, realizing he damaged a $1.00 cinder block, and sped through the store, weaving in and out of customers. The manager caught him trying to dump the entire pallet of blocks down the garbage chute to cover his tracks. That was his last day.

From a former Redditor:

I worked at Wal-Mart for several years. One morning, I smelled an electrical fire. We called the fire department. They said it was contained, but we needed to evacuate because of the smoke. Most firefighters skip entering due to the fumes. Management said no; employees could not leave.

Eventually, we found out a deli worker decided to "defrost" a package of jalapeño poppers, which go straight from freezer to fryer. He thought letting the whole package sit on the regular high setting for FOUR HOURS would work. We checked; he really did decide four hours was necessary. This is the same employee who wanted to test if the fryer oil was ready... so he stuck his finger in it (severe burns happened).

From Redditor u/wilson263:

I worked a summer job at a corner store in a small neighborhood on the outskirts of town. I trained a new employee, about 20 years my senior, during a night shift. After 6 pm, few customers arrived—perfect for quiet training on all the store's systems.

He started suggesting ways to run things better. We needed fresh coffee for customers (no customers that late, and they weren't buying coffee). We needed fresh cookies. We needed to rearrange all the shelves, etc. I told him to stop, but he refused. The next morning, I told the manager why the store was disorganized and apologized. The new employee got fired right away. We suspect he also stole cigarettes while I was in the bathroom.

From a Redditor:

My husband works in a factory making "corrugated fiberboard" (cardboard, used for shipping boxes). Much of the machinery costs a lot of money.

His co-worker dropped a wrench into the machine and destroyed a $500,000 tungsten carbide corrugating roll.

They did not fire him, but they wrote him up and suspended him for a while.

A year later, he did it again. He got fired after that one.

From Redditor u/jmanpc:

I worked at Circuit City around 2005 installing car audio. A co-worker put a satellite radio in a new BMW, but he wired something wrong, and the car burned down. Oops!

From Redditor u/SHOWMEYAKITTIES:

In cosmetology school, a new student performed her first color job. Her client wanted summer highlights. The student skipped taking a full hair history. She missed that the client had previously used henna. Henna plus bleach causes bad results.

The client's hair melted off. It fell apart like instant mashed potatoes. The hair looked and felt awful. No one saved her hair. This was a total disaster. The student learned from this, but I felt terrible for the client who needed a shave because of the mistake.

From Redditor u/DAVID_FRIGGIN_KING:

I work at a radio station. A board-op who worked here before me accidentally broadcast audio from his computer. This happens often; it's no big deal. Except for adult videos... like this guy.

From Redditor u/mountainsprouts:

A bakery I worked at sold dry health cookie mix for tourists. Cooks mixed and packaged the mix instead of the bakers. They accidentally put cumin in instead of cinnamon. Customers emailed about it. The bakers took over.

From Redditor u/libwitch:

I worked in a mall. A guy in an athletic store two floors up saw a spider in the back room.

He took shoe cleaning spray and a lighter to try and burn the spider. He mostly succeeded, but the spider still ran under the shoe boxes. It was on fire.

The guy thought he would get in trouble. He left the backroom and closed the door behind him.

That incident forced the mall and several stores to close.

From Redditor u/thecatbandit:

I was at a car dealership. A guy brought another man's new, nice, custom upholstery BMW. Their porter hit a pole, denting and scraping the whole side of the car. I have never seen a place so quiet.

From a Redditor:

I work construction, so screw-ups happen often. The biggest mistake happened on a senior-care building. General contractors ignored safety. An open elevator shaft lacked safety block-offs. An unfinished staircase had neither. Two fires occurred on separate days. OSHA arrived and issued fines. The site general stood atop a 10-foot ladder when OSHA walked in. They received about $20,000 in fines. My company avoided fines.

From Redditor u/dumengineer94:

A restaurant I worked at had a computer system flaw. This flaw let staff apply coupons to cash payments later, getting extra tips from the restaurant, not the customer. Everyone, including management, knew about this. One person used the system too much and got caught. Management checked his records to see how much he used the coupons. They found he regularly added extra cents to credit card slips. They fired him on his day off.

Redditor u/Porrick:

A guy marked our whole project for deletion and hit Submit. I spent a full day backing out the changelist. It involved hundreds of gigs of data and hundreds of thousands of files.

The rest of the team made him a T-shirt. The shirt had the changelist number and "Never forget" printed on it.

Redditor u/Walter_White_Walker-:

I worked at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. My office rented Mercedes and Audi cars to the Mercedes/Audi dealership across the street. My boss and I worked Saturday. We forgot we left a Benz in the dealership parking lot unlocked, keys above the visor. Someone took it that night. My boss blamed me, saying I took it on purpose. She was just embarrassed and avoided taking responsibility for carelessness. Her branch paid for the car. Our relationship soured. I quit about five months later.

Redditor u/SalemScout:

We had two large cases of ice cream at the mall shop. The switch to turn off the lights was placed right next to the switch to turn off the freezer. That switch location was very stupid.

I arrived one morning and saw all the ice cream in puddles. My worker, who flipped the wrong switch by accident, was beside herself.

Cleaning up was a mess. Luckily, the company refunded us for the 'damaged' ice cream; we lost nothing.