‘What was your most awkward workplace blunder?’ – 17 mortifying faux pas that would convince anyone to change jobs

Making mistakes is an inevitable part of life. But when they happen at work, they can feel worse than usual.

Don’t despair if you’ve messed up though, we’ve all done it. u/Late-Explanation-758 invited r/AskUK users to share their most humiliating errors by asking:

‘What was your most awkward workplace blunder?’

And they kicked things off with their own confession:

‘I moved down to London after finally getting my first proper job after uni with a major tech company.

‘Sitting at work on the computer all day suited me just fine but unfortunately I was obliged to attend some meetings.

‘Clients would sometimes come in to discuss projects. If possible I’d sit in the background, doodling while pretending to take notes.

‘One day my boss said an important client was coming in and it was imperative that we make a good impression. He said that one of them, named Tina, was a midget and I was under strict instructions not to make a thing of it. I was little offended as I wasn’t in the habit of being rude to people.

‘Anyway, the meeting went well. I made a contribution and of course made a point of being polite to our guests.

‘Afterwards, I sent a customary email just to say thanks for coming. Then my boss rocked up to my desk looking furious. I asked him what the problem was. He told me to bring up my email I had just sent and to my horror I saw that my opening line was “Hi Tiny”.’

These top replies will probably be left off people’s CVs…

1.

‘In my first month working in a bank I gave away about £16k to a fraudster.

‘I was investigated by the bank to verify it wasn’t an inside job, in case I was working with them.

‘What a way to be baptised in to the world of work after uni haha.’
-EvilTaffyapple

2.

‘I once slept in the office one Saturday night as I was drunk, drinking near the office and couldn’t be bothered to pay for a taxi, my boss had it in for me as at the same time – he was a huge nark who had a boner for rules and I was going through an insane period in my life

‘So, the security guard rightfully mentioned it and my boss pulled me in for a meeting with HR delighted at the prospect of sacking me
During the meeting he directly asked me “why did you sleep at the office”

‘There was a huge pause from me, possibly a whole minute and I replied “I was worried as I was being followed by some guys and I think they were looking to mug me”

‘I worked there for another 4 years while watching my boss visibly age at never being able to correctly put me in a frame’
-cyrilsneered

3.

‘I can’t be alone in signing off an email with “Kind Retards”.’
-Chrolan1988

4.

‘Many years ago I was working reception in an extremely quiet building. The young lad from the next building over came buy to drop off our post. I stood up to collect it and queefed. It was loud. I just want to be clear, thats not like a fart. You don’t anticipate a queef. It just happens.

‘And we just stared at each other. And I wanted to say “That was a queef not a fart!” but I mean which is worse? How do you define that? I had never been in this situation! He looked like he was fighting for his life not to lose it laughing.

‘Our eye contact was uncomfortably long. I took the post and managed to say thank you even though my spirit had left my body along with that queef. His whole body was shaking with laughter by the time he reached the revolving doors. That was over a decade ago and I’m still amazed I managed to not die of mortification.’
-tinfoilfascinator

5.

‘I used to play football manager on my lunch break at my desk. I had a regen called Andy that I had nicknamed Big Mad Andy after the Peep Show character.

‘Sadly for me I was unaware there was a bloke in another office called Andrew who was tall, fat,and had autism.

‘Someone saw and reported me to HR. This lead to an awkward meeting between HR, the director, and me. I had to then explain what football manager was and what regens were and then show them clips of peep show on youtube lol.

‘For any football manager aficionados he was a temperamental 6’5 right mid. The name was very fitting.’
-Moistkeano

6.

‘Worked at an office supplier. Thought I was messing around on a test environment, but I wasn’t. I accidentally set the wallpaper of a customers website to be a tiled jpeg of an oiled pig lying in a seductive pose.

‘They called about an hour later thinking they had been hacked; unfortunately my boss took the call. I immediately realised what had happened and confessed. The following silence of the department stood around my bosses screen looking at the website covered in oiled pigs will be with me forever.’
-Flat-Struggle-155

7.

‘Walked into the office to someone saying hello. So responded. Then he asked how my weekend was, how things have been lately, how my work project was going etc etc all with my giving answers and chatting along… For him to go “hold on, [insert my name] I’m on a video call – can you please stop talking?”

‘Was bloody mortified.’
-MrMooTheHeelinCoo

8.

‘Working at Morrisons when I was about 17 one Saturday. Stacking loads of lemonade onto those plastic pallets they use on the shop floor. Dead busy. I wasn’t far from the end of my shift so I was admittedly rushing a bit and I knocked a bottle off the top corner…

‘It landed perfectly on the lid at optimal launch angle for a mach 3.5 launch straight down an aisle… Right into some little kids chest. Kid went down like he’d been shot.

‘His mum wasn’t happy and got the manager involved, it was obviously a freak accident and the kid was fine just winded and confused why a lemonade bottle had just kamehameha’d into his torso. When his dad got there his only question was… Can I see the cctv footage? Because I bet that was fucking hilarious!’
-SaberReyna

9.

‘Worked in tech support and accidentally asked the customer to send me a screenshit.’
-KangaJen