Your Worst Work-Related Screw-up

Well.. this one time at Enron...

 

I used to work for a company that would send money internationally, usually to Mexico and stuff. I worked in compliance, and certain payers and banks had rules, well this company (I won't say the name but it starts with an H and ends with a C) had a specific rule of how much money could be sent within a 24 hour period. They used a certain bank in Mexico, and we had different rules for that bank. I ended up authorized 2 transactions for $2500 each, when the limit per day was $2500. So the guy sent $5000 in one day.

I had the appropriate documents to authorize but the **** really hit the fan and things between my company and that company got really rocky, really quick. It wasn't our fault, there was a guy in charge who never handed us the paperwork. But I still got blamed even though I wasn't aware of the rule.

I swear I was about to quit, because no one would take responsiblity for it, so I was like F it, I authorized it and I will take responsiblity for it, since I worked with a bunch of p***y supervisors who didn't want to admit it was their fault..

Luckily my boss had my back through the whole ordeal.. then... about 6 weeks later, we all got laid off ... haha

 

One time I was in the restroom at work, and I saw a picture of Jackie Guerrido on the floor.....well you get the idea......

 

I used to have a friend who would send me jokes in email. (This is 1994 or so), and I used to forward them on to my team at Origin systems.

Well, he sent me one titled "100 reasons women can't talk" and I forwarded it on to my team without reading it.

Well, needless to say it was NOT a good joke to forward on.....it was extremely vulgar, and one of the guys on my team forwarded it to all the females in our group as well. (Sorry b*stard that he is/was)....

I rushed down to HR to head off the problem - which worked out well, I sent out an apology email explaining that I forwarded it without reading.

Now, I NEVER forward anything without reading.



DD

 

There is no shame in a work-wank. It keeps your morale up.

 

I traded Richard Jefferson, Jason Collins, and Brandon Armstrong for Eddie Griffin.

Sincerely,

Carroll Dawson

 

Worst for me was accidentally e-mailing someone at work about all the "fatties" in our office who "inhale" all the food that get brought into the office..

 

I have made some stupid mistakes at work (first professional job and still there a few years later)... I basically quickly realised that there is a big difference in being capable and DETAILS. Not that I didn't know this previously, but it really was highlighted. Once I sent the WRONG document to a translator service that was changing a site from English to Spanish to offer both languages (US site). Luckily the company translated both the website AND the document, and so I was not in too much trouble. But the original panic that ensued from the client's point of view REALLY scared me as they were due to launch that day. I hate the stress of details, one moment of not paying attention, one small thing that you might do any given day, can make a huuuuge difference...

 

Someone once posted a link here to a commercial that was made but never aired. It was a commercial for a European Ford......called a Ka. Some of you might remember it, it had a cat walking up the hood and windshield, poking his head into the open sunroof, and then getting his head chopped off. Sounds horrible, but it was really well made. The video was hosted by some random person, and the way it was posted here was by link. You clicked on the link, and the video opened up in IE.

I sent the link to my boss with a subject line of "check out this video "and he accessed it in another co-workers office; I then walked over to that office to watch it with them. They had already started the video.

Unfortunately, the video was different. I guess the guy who hosted it was fed up with all of the bandwidth that clutchfans' members were using up, so he replaced the target with another video: hardcore gay p*rn. That is what my boss and co-worker were looking at when I walked in.........I had a tough time explaing that one.

 

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/utDizwteueQ&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/utDizwteueQ&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

I carved a nook under my desk to nap, only to my boss' chagrin.

 

I was running an office errand and I wrecked my boss's car driving down Kirby, when I took my eyes off the road looking at some hottie in daisy duke's bending over by the side of the road. My boss was cool about it though. Well maybe because I left out the part about the chick in the shorts.

 

Much like you will explaining to us, after hearing that story, why you chose the name "pole"........

 

about 4 years ago, I made a couple of errors on a submission that ended up costing my company a $1.5MM slam dunk deal. That sucked

 

It was in October of 2006 (not a very good time in my life), but I was in charge of this one proposal we were doing. It was very complicated and required a lot of forms to be completed. I felt overwhelmed by it and other things that weren't work-related. Well, I had put together several excel sheets for a management review and didn't realize that one of them had a major error in it. This was significant because #1 it was the first time I had screwed up like this and #2 it gave mgmt no confidence in me. Then near the end of November as we were finishing this job up, there was a misunderstanding between my boss and me and I left work thinking I had everything done that needed to be done. Well, he got a call from this lady who gave him **** that not everything was done (she was forgetting the fact that I was going to come in the next day - a Saturday to finish up what was minor stuff) and she gave him hell about it. So, naturally he calls me up as I am trying to go out of town with my wife to celebrate our 6 month wedding anniversary berating the hell out of me. We turned around and came back and I spent an hour basically with my tail between my legs. I tried apologizing to him but he wouldn't have much of it.

What was worse was the next morning we all went to this breakfast thing and my boss along with his wife was working one of the booths. My mother had come and had never met him - he was pretty terse with her. To this day she still comments on how awkward that was. He (my boss) hasn't really said much to my wife these days other than "Hi" (he was the one along with his wife that set us up in the first place to go out).

So the hammer came down and I got a reprimand and had to sign a paper and ****. Luckily for me, my company really doesn't believe in firing people but they will never let you forget when you screw up so you want to quit. But I got a demotion in responsibility at my job and not as good of a raise because of it. What sucked was that we won that job after all despite all the problems. But no one ever said thanks or congrats to me for the hard work I put into it. It is still a sore spot with me to this day.

My boss has had his confidence restored in me but I still feel that there are people in mgmt who feel that I am not as good at my job like I was in the past.

 

Dumb joke.

 

When I was at Topps, I accidentally put a headshot photo of LaVar Arrington on (I believe) Hugh Douglas' card. Arrington's photo, which was cropped super-tight, was unfortunately mislabeled as Douglas, and I didn't stop to double-check it (deadlines, deadlines, deadlines!). Now, normally, this isn't the biggest of deals. (You have no idea how often this happens...) But what makes this case special is that Arrington, at the time, had not (purposely) signed an licensing agreement with the NFL, thus we were forbidden to use his likeness. Long story short, Arrington sued us over the card, Beckett ran a small story on my mistake, and I had to explain myself to the Sports VP. Ultimately, though, it turned out just fine. Because the photo was mislabeled from the get-go by the photographer, I was exonerated of most of the blame. Also, Arrington ended up dropping the lawsuit and subsequently signed a GLA with the NFL. Still, for a while there, it sucked to be me.

As for this card...



(Brandon Puffer/Jung Bong card from 2003 Topps)

... I ain't talking. It wasn't me, though.

 

Where do I start...

Back in the mid 70s, I was a computer operator for one of the largest Savings and Loans in IA (big woop). I was 17 and in charge of the nightly operations. Why would you hire a 17 year old to do that job? Oh yea - my dad was head of the IT.

1) One time I had printed off a bunch of checks. You'd have to run the printed checks through the burster that signs (rubber stamps) the checks and separates them. It was a variable speed and in order to get out of there faster, I turned the burster up as high as it would go and messed up 100s of checks before I could hit the stop button. I tossed those checks in the trash (100s were valid and each was $100-$5000+) and printed off some more. About 2 months later the auditors came to me and asked about a block of checks missing. I told them the story. I was supposed to turn over any "bad" checks over to auditing so they could keep track of all the checks. They just looked at me like I was too stupid to rip them off - which I was.

2) Another time, I was getting out the drawer that contained all the cards (card reader days) to process the nightly job. Each card had to be in a certain order and there were 1000s of them. I pulled the drawer out too hard and the whole drawer came out and all the cards were scattered across the floor. I had to call me boss in to try and reorder all the cards - he sent me home - I wonder why???

3) On my last day, I was drinking Southern Comfort and had too much to drink. They have nightly updates where they had removable disks that were in a rotation pattern. At the end of the night, I noticed that I had put the 2 day old pack on the drive that was expecting current data and visa-versa. Since the files are all named the same, the computer was fine with that but the data of course was not. I just said, oh well, and locked up the packs and left. I still don't know how they ever fixed that little fopa.

Then one time when I was 16, I was working at the gas station\car wash. We had an automatic pull through car wash and we made most of our profits from the car wash. I was taking my brothers new camaro through and I thought I had the car in neutral. Well it was in drive and it drove over the rails and into the car wash machinery. Really messed up his car and the car wash - which had to be shut down for days to be repaired.

And I get mad when my kids screw up - kettle meet pot.

 

Sounds like Mr.Bean episodes.

 

Man...outside of that mistake...working at Topps had to be one of the coolest jobs ever...