Biggest workplace blunders?
As the topic suggests, I want you guys to write about some of the craziest shit you've ever seen happen to you or someone else at the workplace; it can be any job. 3 2 1 go!
I guess I have one. When I was working at Walmart (you know, back before they got rekt), I had to unload a dairy truck one night. Anyone who's worked retail before probably knows how precarious the pallets within those trucks can get. This one was so bad that it took us nearly two hours just to pull like a dozen pallets, because there was this really weird ice/milk slushy mess encompassing like 75% of the truck. We had to pour a bucket of warm water onto the floor, sweep the debris into the holes in the truck bed where it would land outside, and then slowly pull out a pallet each time. It was so bad that the guy who was my manager at the time referred to it as a "truckload of fail".
I guess I have one. When I was working at Walmart (you know, back before they got rekt), I had to unload a dairy truck one night. Anyone who's worked retail before probably knows how precarious the pallets within those trucks can get. This one was so bad that it took us nearly two hours just to pull like a dozen pallets, because there was this really weird ice/milk slushy mess encompassing like 75% of the truck. We had to pour a bucket of warm water onto the floor, sweep the debris into the holes in the truck bed where it would land outside, and then slowly pull out a pallet each time. It was so bad that the guy who was my manager at the time referred to it as a "truckload of fail".
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Then again, not all of this happens within a week... It's a safe job and I'm making it seem more dramatic then it is. Lol
Man, I work outside/overnight at a trucking company as a forklift operator. I've been there a good while and I love it. I could write a book on all the shit I've seen. People ripping fork blades through the side of trailers. People blowing roofs off the tops of trailers with the mast of the lift. People busting hazardous totes and spilling dangerous liquid everywhere. People getting hit. etc
Then again, not all of this happens within a week... It's a safe job and I'm making it seem more dramatic then it is. Lol
I watched a kid blow through a loading dock door and land a fork lift 5 ft below. Between the garage door ripping off and the fork lift landing below it was insanely loud. Some people just shouldn't operate the fork lifts.
Story doesn't end there, the other place rebuilt the engine. First trip out, I was taking it easy, breaking-in the new parts and after about 6 hours it's just fucked, loud pop and hiss as the air compressor went went out and the engine got super loud and had exhaust coming out of it (this is a cab-over truck, so this all happening like 6 inches under my ass so you definitely notice it), then I coasted it down a hill and into the parking lot of a conveniently located fire station out in the BFE (really nice area actually) of Licking County, Ohio. Even though I camped out in the truck that night, it was less stressful that second time and was a relatively relaxing time.
I was almost in an adult film once. I was doing some out of town work where I met a girl, gave her my hotel ## and said to come by later. She comes back at 3AM banging on my door, me being 95% asleep I open the door and a whole bunch of people rush in with video cameras. She somehow got naked in 2 seconds and flung herself at me, and then I had to awkardly tell everyone to leave. I just remember it wasn't smooth at all telling them they had to leave. Only like 20 mins after they left did I realize what happened, and had to quickly pack up after to catch my 6AM flight.
...That wasn't exactly the kind of response I had in mind when I made this topic, but I fucking love it. It's so great.
1) The warehouse stored everything on pallets with metal frames which would be stacked on top of each other. They came in two heights and there was a set ratio of 3 taller ones to 2 shorter ones in a stack. Some rocket scientist in the front offices decidled they could get more stuff stored away if they changed the ratio to 4 tall to 1 short. The fork lift drivers said it was going to be a problem since they already had trouble seeing at the tops of the stacks and there just wasn't much clearance at the top in any event. Sure enough a few weeks later one the fork lift drivers hit the fire sprinkler system with a pallet - right over a section with clothing etc. Now only did the company lose all of those goods but they had to pretty much shut down everything because everybody and their brother had to help clean up the water all over the place.
2) The manager was a clown - he would drive around in an electric golf cart and sneak up behind people and criticise them for whatever. You could never hear the cart since it was pretty quiet and the warehouse was very noisy at the best of times. One day he had loaded it up with visiting big wigs from upper Potsylavania (or wherever) and had parked a few feet behind one of the fork lift driver. The forklift driver backed up, rammed the golf cart, tipped it over and sent the "dignitaries" (along with the ninny host) sprawling all over the place. No one was hurt so it was funny as all hell to see happen. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people.
3) When rail cars came in they were randomly assigned. The guy next to me had a car from Hasbro (normally a desirable load since the boxes were fairly small and light) . (He was on probation for marijuana possession - which back in 1970 was a big deal - feeds into the story though.) I heard a bunch of yelling and I stepped out to see what was going on. The manager was yelling at the guy who was crawling around under the rail car. The manager assumed he had gotten stoned. So they packed him off to the clinic for evaluation. They assigned someone else to the car and pretty much the same thing happened. They had used too much glue on the cartons at the factory and in the closed environment of the box car (which had sat outside for a couple days under the Minnesota sun) it had reached dangerous levels. They dragged the car outside again and let it air out with the doors open for a couple of days. They then set up outside to open the cartons and price the stuff before sending it out to the stores.
A few years after I started my career as a Software Engine, I eventually became a "manager" of an industrial Manufacturing Operating System. One day I had to come into the office a little early, kick everyone out of the MOS and then apply some database updates. For those who don't know what an MOS is, it's basically a HUGE software application/database that runs an entire manufacturing company. Billing, accounting, sourcing, production lines, inventory management... everybody uses the same tool, just a different portion of it for their specific job. This software IS your company.
Anyway, I was being... err... lazy, I guess, and I was reading through some of the admin scripts that were provided by the system, hoping to find something that could assist me so that I wouldn't have to right-click on 20 stale sessions, click close, and wait 10 seconds each for them to be closed. What luck! I noticed there was a script entitled "Disable All Accounts". I took a snapshot of the Accounts table and decided that after I ran my updates, I'd re-enable all accounts. Easy!
Now, here me out. You can't/shouldn't disable ALL accounts in any database system. The reason is because if you disable all accounts, including the root admin, you've basically created a chunk of worthless binary data and you would be locking up the system in such a way that it would become completely, and irrevocably worthless. So what would be the point having a script that actually locks out everyone and everything? I was assume it locks out everyone BUT the root admin, which is what I was. So, using root admin, I ran the script... and was immediately kicked out by the application.
I swear, I was about 27 at the time and I felt like I was about to have a heart attack. Even worse, my manager wasn't in the office yet and he had the hotline priority codes for support so I had to so painfully wait for him to get to the office, break the news and basically tell him that he needed to let everyone know, up to the CEO that I shutdown an entire near-billion dollar company. What was worse was due to the nature of the script, we couldn't even restore a database back-up because the account that would do the restoration WAS FRICKIN DISABLED!
In the end, the entire office, less marketing, and two manufacturing plants were shut down for a couple hours and likely cost the company some where between $500k-1m. After everything was fixed, I walked into my bosses office and was basically ready to resign. He laughed at me and said "Mistakes happen... but don't let that ever happen again." I respect this guy more than anyone else I've ever worked with business. Ray was a Grade-A manager and he really did understand that it was a mistake.
As an aside to all of this, part of my work was fixing (legitimately) broken accounting numbers and processes. On that day I may have cost the company easily half a million dollars but in years to come, I'd fix broken commission systems and find mistaken inventory numbers. All totaled, fixing just those two broken systems probably made the company multiple millions of dollars, so I feel like my net value to the company was certainly a contribution.
Still... if you ever see a script entitled "Disable All Accounts" don't be an idiot like me and just run it. It's probably a useless script that will brick your entire company. I swear the thing was put there by some power-monger, sociopathic DBA...
I was almost in an adult film once. I was doing some out of town work where I met a girl, gave her my hotel ## and said to come by later. She comes back at 3AM banging on my door, me being 95% asleep I open the door and a whole bunch of people rush in with video cameras. She somehow got naked in 2 seconds and flung herself at me, and then I had to awkardly tell everyone to leave. I just remember it wasn't smooth at all telling them they had to leave. Only like 20 mins after they left did I realize what happened, and had to quickly pack up after to catch my 6AM flight.
The first funny one that comes to mind is when I worked the 24 hour overnight shift at Hardee's and we mainly got drunks through the drive through etc. One night, these 2 gorgeous chicks pull up to the window, the one in the passenger seat had her top down just starting at me cupping her goods. I know that's mild to some of these stories, but made that shift a whole lot better!
One time at the car dealership a guy caught 2 sales guys doing it in the back of a new car. Both the dudes had wives, so it was crazy. The guy that found then came and got everyone, and we all went out there to see. By the time about 30 people showed up the guys doing it realized what was going on, man their faces were priceless.
Pretty sure Corey just won the thread.
I must have forgotten to sign this celibacy agreement. Email me if you want proof Ooooooo
Edit for clarity: That last sentence should probably read "I got a raise *despite* showing up to work drunk." But, the story is more fun if I allow myself to imagine my drunken antics winning the bid.
Several years back, I was working as market data analyst for several major retail chains -- retail buyers are... well a special breed. We're talking about folks who usually have zero sense of humor, and are all business. Anyway, I overslept the morning before a big meeting, rushed to get ready, and stopped by the fridge to grab a drink on the way out the door. At the time the only thing convenient was a 3/4th full 1-liter bottle of Sprite that my girlfriend at the time had left in there. I grab it, barely awake and head in to the office. I was still waking up, was really thirsty, and chugged the whole thing down in the 15-minutes it took me to get there. By the time I got to the office I started feeling funny. Really funny. Then I realized I was so buzzed I could barely walk straight. After a bit of investigation and a phone call home, it turned out at the party we had the weekend before someone had managed to break the neck off a bottle of Vodka, and in an attempt to salvage it, my girlfriend had poured the remainder into an empty Sprite bottle and forgot about it. I have no idea how/why I didn't taste the Vodka while chugging it; I can only assume because I was still only half awake and rushing, or maybe there was enough actual Sprite mixed in? By the time the buyers showed up to the conference room, the Vodka had time to hit me and I was so drunk I could barely sit up straight. Rather than play it off and try to focus through the meeting, I decided it would be a good idea to just announce the story to the entire group of buyers and my dumbfounded bosses, explaining I was too drunk to do the meeting. Then I stood up and walked out of the conference room and went to wait for my girlfriend to pick me up in the parking lot. I was absolutely sure I had lost my job, and probably ruined the cross-market multi-million dollar contract for my employers. However, my boss calls me that afternoon to let me know to come back into work in the morning. Turns out the buyers all had a great laugh, it turned a stale meeting into a memorable event, and they tentatively landed the contract before the meeting was over. The contract meant a bonus for my team. So -- quite literally -- I got a raise due to showing up to work drunk.
Edit for clarity: That last sentence should probably read "I got a raise *despite* showing up to work drunk." But, the story is more fun if I allow myself to imagine my drunken antics winning the bid.
That happened to a buddy of mine before finals in college. We took the orange juice in the fridge and mixed it with vodka for a party and only drank like half of it. He woke up in a rush and grabbed the jug and started chugging. Only thing he said was this orange juice is bad.
Anyone who's worked retail before probably knows how precarious the pallets within those trucks can get.
fuck ain't that the truth. Sometimes there would be pallets with loose boxes scattered around and on top. Since I was the youngest guy there my manager asked me to climb over the pallets of boxes and throw stuff to him so we could take the pallet out.
Another time, I was asked to clean some tv screens above the cashier's. I couldn't reach them, and all we had was a ladder that's supposed to be against a wall. A different manager said "oh yeah just climb on up, I'll hold it" that time I said no. Well actually I told them they are insane if they think I'm going to do that.
At the same job, I regularly delivered pizza to a brothel. I never saw anything, so it's not that interesting.
At another job, I accidentally dropped a $10,000 piece of equipment that I was unloading off a truck. It broke in half. The repair bill was about $1500.
I remember thinking, as I saw it sliding towards the edge of the lift...oh good, there's a stopper thing at the edge (2" little metal wall, whatever you call it). That will stop it. Nope. Tipped right over.
One of the ladies looks at me and says "I'll just sit on it."
I tell her that's probably not a great idea, and she blows it off, hops in the back of the truck, and sits on the load. Three or four of us are standing at the door watching as the truck pulls off and out the gate.
Oh, they had to go 20 some miles and she was in it for the long haul.
I was working at an elementary school when we had a party for the kids and their parents. I had put together a slideshow/music presentation for the "graduating" 5th grade class. After running the projector for the night I was left wheeling the whole cart back to the office where we'd normally keep the setup under lock and key. But I'd been locked out. With no where else to put the laptop and projector I tucked it away in a corner of the stage behind the curtain and went home for the weekend. I completely forgot about it by the time I came back to work and a few days later no one could find the projector. Turns out someone stolen both the projector and the laptop. For some reason no one seemed to remember that I was the last person to have used the cart, and I didn't volunteer the information.
Such a badass, I love it.
At my last job, they let me break things with a sledgehammer. That was interesting.
We found this dead rat at work in the women's bathroom. I told this one guy to take care of it and it's been weeks. I'm holding my ground. We had to put up an out of order sign today. I heard he's thinking about calling the health department. Smdh
*spits drink*