have you ever completely fucked something up at work?
 

well, don't feel too bad. this is what happens when rocket scientists fuck up:


so, what have you fucked up at work? anything this severe?

my second day on the job i accidentally introduced the forks of my forklift into a 14 inch lcd tv, but i don't feel half as bad as i did before i saw this. :D

There is not a saying in the world that can grasp what one of those technicians must have felt...

"That sucks" comes to mind but is obviously not enough to cover the event :lol:

Me? I haven't done much jobs in my life. Biggest screw up I can remember is having to be bailed out twice driving a cab. (got stuck in the mud, my fault :o )

Haven't done anything nearly that bad....but what I lack in quality I've definately made up for with quantity

Best memory: in university, had a summer job in a warehouse...co worker was driving the fork lift with the forks about 10 feet off the ground, tried to leave the warehouse...failed miserably and drove into the bay doors.

and it only cost us $22,000,000! not bad NASA!

Very bad luck...

I wasn't directly at fault, but had an incident at work about 15 years ago.

I worked in software tech support at the time for mainframe machines and got a callout at something like 2:00AM, some mainframe would not boot.

I called the tech at the customer site and went thru diagnostics to find a particular card was interfering with the bootup. I asked the tech to unplug the card and try to boot the machine. The machine would no longer power on.

So now we try to diagnose why that's happening. It turns out the tech had only partially unplugged the card and connections were still made to the card, but now to incorrect points and the result was to burn something out. Oops. Fortunately this was one of the smaller mainframes, only costing something like $100,000.

I told the tech to get back to me after they fixed the machine.

That's the only time I remember burning out hardware trying to fix a software problem.

Arrange an early meeting for one of the directors.

I was meant to be attending too. I was heading part of the meeting.

Clean forgot.

By the time the I'd got into work he'd left my meeting to attend another. Someone said to me aren't you spose to be in a meeting? I said Oh shit and rushed in for the end.

Let's see, I've brought an entire network down, lost data, fried hard drives, motherboards, modems and other assorted equipment. It's all in a days work for Dan, the LAN Man! :crazy:

Note: I have got better at my job. Haven't destroyed anything in at least 5 years.

Nothing for me that cost quite as much as the above, but I used to work in an Italian restaurant and spilled a 55-gallon container of tomato sauce I had just finished making.

I forgot to order lunch once... realized it on the weekend, called up the caterers and got it all settled. Phew.

I hate my job.

The only word that comes to mind when seeing that pic is "D'oh!!"


I have never screwed up anything that bad, but I did a pretty good job cleaning a PC once.

I was working on a PC in one of the maintenence facilities here at work. When I opened it up it was packed with dust, so I asked one of the workers if they had an air line so I could blow out the dust. He said "yeah, over there" and pointed to some hoses.

Well, apparently not all of the hoses were air. I grabbed a water hose unknowingly and hit the inside of the PC with water. Oops!!

Even though the PC was not on at the time, it still damaged some parts. I had to end up replacing the network and video cards. Everything else dried off.

I still get teased about it now and then. "Why didn't you just take it through a carwash?"

Was riding home on a Friday night from work when I realized that I hadn't sent in peoples time sheets.
Without them 20 people wouldn't be getting pay checks.
I went in that weekend and called the overnight delivery service.
Luckily one of the councilors was there so I could get them signed.

I'm in the middle of screwing something up right now.

I've been given instructions to read through some dense materials, then find a way to create a project, using the theories set forth in the materials. Sound confusing? It is. I have no idea how to continue and no assistance from anyone.

I can to TFP to clear my head a little. Light a candle for me.

Still, not as bad as that whole satellite thing. Ouch.

Damn.. that Really sucks! I have yet to get a real job, and in my part-time experiences I've been pretty lucky thus far. I've had a few jobs where things could have gotten pretty bad for me.

Worked for a gallery at this gathering for glass enthusiests(sp?)
and some of the pieces were worth anywhere from 10-50,000.. heh The sound of broken glass is not good in this environment=P

I was 14 years old, working in construction. The forman told me to back the company pick-up truck ('66 Merc 4yrs. old) out of the way of a concrete truck. So I jump in the truck, look out the back window, crank the wheel over and stomp on the gas. Drivers licence? Whats that? As the front of the truck swings over, the front bumper of the truck catches the corner of the portable toilet. In 1970 they were made of plywood. Luckily, it was vacant at the time as there was nothing left of it but a pile of "wet" lumber. Of course, the piece of plywood jammed in the bumper had to have the roll of toilet paper attached, which unrolled in the wind. I went to find the forman so he could fire me, but he and the rest of the crew were laughing so hard they couldn't talk so I kept my job. However, I was known as "The Shithouse Kid" for the rest of this summer.

every day

a long time ago in one of my first jobs,
I stratched the side of one of the partners sports cars.

I was laid off the next morning.

I haven't done any mistakes since that were my fault by stupidity.
I have caused one recently, where it was necessary to bring down the system to correct it,
however that was because of misinformation within the app documentation.

When I worked at the power generation plant for my company I was the operator for the 50 ton crane, an art I learned while in the Navy.

You can tear up some stuff with a 50 ton crane in short order.

One day we were putting the rotor back in a 100 Megawatt generator. A several hours long ordeal of easing the rotor shaft in with just inches to spare and sliding the inside end on a block of teflon. I would move the crane a little and the crew would push and shove the rotor along.

Long story short, I pushed the wrong handle, the in/away handle instead of the left/right handle thusly swinging the rotor into the highly delicate windings of the generator. Several weeks later, and an unknown amount of dollars later, it was repaired and I helped reassemble it.

The only reason I am still with this company is that the station manager understood that occasionally accidents happen. He sent me right back up in the crane. I never did confuse my operating handles again.

Fortunately I've never had any major incidents. Worst thing I ever did was a few years ago, I worked for a small ISP and took down their radius/web server for a few minutes. Let's just say Linux 1.2.13 wasn't too happy about removing a floppy disk without unmounting it first.

A few years back I made a mistake that ended up costing me....well a pic is worth a thousand words:

http://myweb.cableone.net/msjcichon/photo39.jpg

I'm a cabinet maker and was doing a dropcut on a tabel saw (a pretty dangerous type of cut) w/ a 1/4" dado blade and caught a kickback (the piece gets thrown back at you by the blade) while I was still pushing, I ended up ramming my middle finger directly into the blade running it into my middle knuckle, thus requiring a surgical amputation.

oh.. never mind... thought the title said "someone".

I work at Red Robin and i droped a 2 racks of glasses once. 36 in total. lucky i didnt have to pay for any of it. but it was a lot of broken glass.

My first day with my fork lift license. I'm working at a Compaq warehouse. They tell me to load a trailer with some servers. I open the dock door. Open the trailer door. Jump on the rabbit and start rolling into the trailer with the server on the forks headed in first. BOOM! The Proliant slams forward into the trailer. I forgot to put down the dock plate. The driver helped me lift it up. He said it was ok, he just didnt want that server included with his load. I said ok. Just went to the other side of the warehouse and came back with the same server and loaded him up.

Cobalt -- So you're the one to blame if I ever get damaged Proliant servers at work? Good to know.

A few years back, my brother and I had a job cooling down horses for the annual rodeo.
The day after the last performance, we went to collect our pay and ended up offering to help clean up.
While there, we struck up a conversation with the newly crowned rodeo queen.
There were leftover snacks in the concession stand and we received permission to get what we wanted.
The three of us were inside the stand leaning on the counter, talking, when I noticed the string that holds up the swinging panel/window hanging down in front of me.
I had a sno-cone cup in my hand and was collecting the hanging string in it, playing around, when it unraveled from its mooring and slipped loose.
The plywood panel swung down right into the girls face, breaking her nose and causing me to prematurely learn some very strong curse words. ;)
(A sailor had nothing on her.)

I am fortunate to be able to say that I haven't screwed up anything "big" yet. I witnessed a "mistake" on the jobsite once working with my Dad. He does electrical and construction. One of his subcontractors was a total idiot and kept turning on the breakers. We'll you know what happens when you are messing with Hot wires. He got lucky my Dad only melted his phillips screwdriver down to the handle.

Also when I was working as a computer Tech at my college saw an amazing thing that a student in the computer lab did. She tried to fit 3 1/4" disks into ONE drive. Don't know how she got them in but it took me 2 hours to pry them loose very carefully. The drive still worked lucky for her. She even got her disks back with her information still intact. I wasn't even trying to save her disks. She got real lucky.

First, I work for a distributor/wholesaler of among other things, HP/Compaq ProLiant servers. Just last month we got an ML370 in that looked like it had been twisted like a stick of bubble gum. Mind you, an ML370 weighs about 80 pounds with no disks, and most of that is THICK steel.

For the year 2001 I think I personally accounted for half the goods damaged in our production facility by cost. One day I dropped a thousand-dollar DAT drive in a manner sufficient to inflict Non-Operative Shock. Another day my screwdriver slipped when I was assembling some huge server. Little tiny surface-mount resistors don't like big metal screwdriver bits.

At the repair shop I previously worked at, I once dropped a customer's hard disk. The co-worker comment that drew: "You were supposed to FORMAT it, not FLOORMAT it!" At least I wasn't the guy that got dubbed "Sparky".

I was mowing some grass on a tractor when I was about 18. I figured I could get between a utility pole and its guy wire...and was almost right. The rollbar caught the guy wire...didn't pull the pole down, but wiggled it enough to cross a couple wires somewhere up there. I found out later that I had taken out the power to just about the entire township. eeesh.

Very Interesting,

I messed up a Veyvey cabinet actuator (governor) system for a 140,000 horse power electric generator once. The horsepower figure is not a mistype. It was 100 megawatts in size and has a rotating mass of 630 tons. The drive shaft is 46 inches in diameter.

Anyhow I messed up the governor and caused the generator to 'Motor" and draw power fom the electric grid instead of generating power. By the time we got it shut down from the contrtol room I had used $5000 worth of electricity. Needless to say my name was mud (until after coffee break the next day).

I had to buy beer for every one at the plant that night.... Homer Simpson Rules!

Skippy

Ouch. That definetely has to suck for that guy.

"D'oh!"

Forklift driving must be the easiest way to screw thing up. I was driving a fork lift right after I went to work for the government. I managed to drop abt 8 crates of water purification equipment from a height of abt 10 feet. I don't know what the equipment was worth but they wanted to charge me $500 a piece just for the crates. My buddy managed to put the crates back together and I never did pay for anything. Here is the kicker, eventually my buddy Harold ran over my ass with a fork lift so I got out of that business:)

I think cj2112 wins this one :eek:
Ouch!

A bud of mine back in junior high cut his finger nearly all the way off with a bandsaw, they could stitch it up though..

Does sabatoge count? :D

Cj2112, i feel ya man, that sucks hardcore, a classmate of mine in Junior High decided it might be cool to twiddle his pointer finger on the end of a lathe (big spinning thingy that you put a peice of wood in and it rotates the wood around at about 200 RPM, makes it easy to make baseball bats etc) well to make a short story even shorter, he shoved his finger in the hole at the end of the mounting bracket WHILE IT WAS ON, and it just up and ripped his finger off..... = P

And for messin stuff up at work, well i can't think of anything that i've really messed up yet, but my brother almost got kicked out of school for goofing off in the science lab (this is in college) they were experimenting with copacitors (sp?) and he had the neat idea to load one up and get one fully charged (these things are about the size of a bottle of pop with 2 metal heads on one end) well he charged this thing up and held onto the sides and waited at the lab door for about 5 minutes, when the first person walked in, he tossed them the capacitor and yelled "catch!". well, the dude caught it, and was promptly knocked out for about an hour, thing shocked the shit out of him = )

About two years ago I was working at Wendys... I made the mistake of filtering the fryers without turning them off...Lets just say they went up in smoke..there was a big fire and because of the fire retardent we had to close down wendys for like two days..

a $230,000,000 mistake
 

*moderator's edit: this post and some subsequent replies were a new thread that was merged in to an existing subject*

I dont know if anyone saw this, but lockhead martin had a $230,000,000 satalite tip over in there assembly bay.

Satalite

i had a chat with someone that is in the space community and it turns out that they were supposed to put 13 bolts in to hold the satalite in place but only put 3. you think someone would notice 10 bolts not in?

That satellite mishap reminds me of the James Bond film where just after James finds out the bad guys satellite cost $20 million, he pushes it over to crash on the ground.

It's too easy to fuck up with computers. Just about every bug causes big problems.

My earlist fuckup was when I was a lab technician at a high school and left the distilled water machine on on a long weekend. It flooded two floors!

My girlfriend was a researcher at Queen's University and mixed up the methanol and water squirt bottles. She killed all the rats!

d'OH

This is why gangsters should be opressed and not encouraged to obtain a college education.

:thumbsup:

pretty small-scale for this thread, but just lately I managed to hit a light post in a parking at a very low speed while driving one of these:
(edit: linked picture was of a Chevy 3500 Express Van that I do not feel like replacing with another googled image hosted on one of my sites)
did cost $1700 to replace the front bumper and grill, but fortunately I am still a van driver.

oops