Ever screw up at work?

[mashani]

A long time ago in a place far far away, I was working on some app. We had a link to send an email from a template based on certain criteria. We had temporary development templates. One of them read something along the lines of "Dear #*$&h#$, you can't drive for #&*$." and then went on from there. Long story short, the development template got um... shipped... live... people sent those emails LOL for a few days before we caught it.

Then there was the famous "this should never happen, *&$&% did you do to get this Z&%#&$ to happen" message that was in a bit of code that should never have happened.

So... how's that?

[monsteroyd]

@Mashini - Same type of thing only they showed up in a demo to the president of the company. Thank God, he was an old coder with a sense of humor.

Monty

[jivex5k]

Everyone makes mistakes.
That's why pencils have erasers.

[RickBeer]

Many, many years ago coded an endless loop into a program. Got to meet the head of IT when they summoned me back in on a Friday night. Found the problem immediately, fixed it. Ate up all of core memory in the mainframe. Got transferred to IT-Payroll right after that.

Only mistake I ever made at work, otherwise I am perfect. Just ask the people I tell you to ask...

[LouieMacGoo]

Years ago I worked in a hospital ER. On my night off I got a call asking me to come in because it was extremely busy, so of course I went in. As soon I got there one of the nurses handed me a body bag and tags and asked me to prepare a patient to go to the morgue. I did as I was asked and move the patient to the morgue to free up the room for another patient. Several hours later we get a call from the funeral home stating that the tags that had been stamped with a patients name did not match the wrist band on the patient. I had assumed that the tags were correct and didn't bother to double check them against the wrist band. The funeral home brought the patient back I had to identify the patient and put the correct tags on and write up the incident. It was not a good thing and it could have been a lot worse if the funeral home hadn't caught the problem early on. I ended up getting a write up for not following procedure and got a 1 day suspension without pay!

I learned a lot of lessons that day including that, because I had a good work record and work ethic it saved me from being fired because they knew it was out of character for me to be that careless.

[duff]

@Mashini - Same type of thing only they showed up in a demo to the president of the company. Thank God, he was an old coder with a sense of humor.

Monty

Oh that just reminds me. I was working for a Japanese automotive company as a co-op student and after my 4th month there I was placed with a team of competitive researchers that would analyze the market/engineering trends of the vehicles making their debut at NAIAS. Then we had a presentation that was delivered to all the special people in the company including the board of directors. At the end of the presentation one of the directors started speaking to a translator called me up to the front of the meeting and then proceeded to ask me "What means this word transsexual?". I'm sure I turned bright red and I thought the translator's eyes were going to pop out of his head.

It turns out that Microsoft Word was spell checking transaxle into transsexual and I missed it.

[Chuck N]

I used to work as a sheet-rock hanger. I was on the ceiling crew putting the sheet rock up on the ceilings. All I ever did on that job was "screw up".

Thank you! Thank You! I'll be here all night. Don't forget to tip your bar-tenders and waitresses.

[monsteroyd]

That needs a badap-bing on the end.

Ya know it took me a second to see how you 'screwed up'. When I did it (in the 1970's) we used glue and nails. It wasn't until way later we started using a screw gun on wood. (Of course we always did with steel studs.)

Monty

[DaYooper]

If you dont fail from time to time you arent trying hard enough.

Ive worked in automotive most of my life and I can tell you the companies with cultures of yes men and people too worried to fail are the ones that have went down the tubes in hard times since no one would take a risk for fear of being spanked by their boss. The trick is not to screw up too many times in a row since you need at least 10 "atta boys" to make up for one "oh sheeeet," and secondly when a failure does happen you manage it in such away that it doesnt bring everything down around you.

To failure!