People have been sharing the worst mistakes they made at work – 23 total cock-ups that will make you feel like employee of the month

Having to work every day is bad enough, but do you know what’s worse? The hideous anxiety that is induced when we do something wrong, and it is definitely our own fault.

Reddit user Slow_Mix5034 is feeling this pain, and posted the following on the AskUK page…

‘What are the worst mistakes you’ve made at work?

‘Make me feel better. I fee like everything is going wrong in this project. Not sure if it’s all my fault or if everything has been set up terribly.’

It’s probably not as bad as they think, but lots of people chipped in with comforting stories of their own employment-based hamfistedness, like these…

1.

‘About 20 years ago I made a transfer for £2.5m instead of £2.5k.

‘They did update their procedures to ensure that payments over a certain amount had to be authorised by someone with a little more authority than the admin assistant.’
–rox-and-soxs

2.

‘One of the biggest most expensive fuck ups I ever saw was committed by me.

‘I’m in the RAF, but was deployed to Qatar at a US run airhead. We’d been struggling with a rag order truck for years, and then lo amd behold we got given a brand new pick up. It had double digit mileage, new car smell and air conditioning. What it didn’t have was fuel, so being the lowest rank it was my job to take it to the fuel station to fill it up.

‘Which I did, literally brimmed it with diesel and then set off back. I got about 100 yards and it stopped dead. Tried to start it many times with no success. It was acting like it was out of fuel.

‘It turns out that unlike every other military vehicle I’d ever driven, this one was petrol. And to compound my idiocy, the sticker that told you this was enormous and absolutely unmissable. The van was totally written off before we’d even used it. Cost an absolute fortune too, no idea how much but the MT WO was extremely unhappy, but then they’re almost always unhappy.’
–SteveGoral

3.

‘Got a promotion, two days into the role and the rest of the team was on annual leave or sick etc so I muddled on best I could.

‘Accidentally ended up filing paperwork incorrectly that resulted in a clients £250k investment account being closed, and the resulting case and lawsuit against the company was still ongoing when I left two years later.’
–weeble182

4.

‘Worked in a pub when I was 17-18. Woman ordered a mushroom stroganoff, I put it through as a beef one by mistake. She ate half of it and then asked and I realised my mistake. She was a vegetarian.

‘I still think about it once a month 18 years later. Particularly as I’m a vegetarian too now.’
–Remarkable-Budget239

5.

‘I was working a night shift at a brain injury unit and I broke the entire alarm system so it was constantly ringing. Patients couldn’t use their call bells, bed vacancy alarms were not working and everything was so loud. In the end I had to sellotape a drawing pin into the reset button and all the patients were on frequent visual checks. I was not popular.’
–stabfacestab

6.

‘I caused a 15 minute show-stop in a west end theatre. I was also the only one who could fix it, but didnt completely have the tools to do so.

‘Being surrounded by the whole backstage team, along with production managers and producers, all staring at me while I fumble to fix a mistake I didnt completely know how to fix was the most exposed ive ever felt in my life. Along with having 2000 audience members out front getting antsy.

‘My boss abandoned me that night and I could never forgive him for putting me in that situation, I went through a lot of character development that night, I try not to think about it, tbh.’
–theatre_ghost

7.

‘I sent emails to our entire database when I was trying to make it GDPR compliant as no one had been looking after it for years. Emailed a lot of people whose information should have been deleted years earlier. It was so much drama at work.

‘But I work in a company with many developers and many of them messaged me to tell me big mistakes they had done by clicking one button and not being able to press undo. Made me feel a lot better.’
–OGVictoriaSponge

8.

‘I under charged someone for an expensive tent. They payed £2.79.’
–Stevebwrw

9.

‘I paid a supplier 100k one month which is what we would usually pay them for the year. Thankfully they were super nice and chill so was resolved quickly.’
–imtiramisu2025

10.

‘My back gave way at a critical moment resulting in another guy and I dropping a cinema projector causing tens of thousands worth of damage. I was off work for 2 months on full pay and made a full recovery and had a workplace injury payout too.

‘All safety protocols were followed within normal industry safety guidelines, but my back couldn’t have gone at the worse moment when there was a few seconds gap of when it wasn’t fully secured as we took it off the mount to place it onto the support.’
–CranberryCheese1997

11.

‘The team I left a few months ago just lost $1.4m as they didn’t process a transaction correctly. Pretty expensive.’
–Shameless_Bullshiter

12.

‘I was once working for a large Orange DIY store. I’d just finished up loading the van to the for the day and was walking down out of the warehouse to clock out when I saw a couple of lads in the staff area. I explained they couldn’t be there and shoed them away.

‘As I clocked out a tannoy went out for a staff alert. They’d only walked back into the warehouse and stole the delivery van. Driving out of the gate that I thought I’d locked.’
–EasyPiece