Chatfilter: You're fired! Just kidding, no worries
September 1, 2023 7:42 AM Subscribe
Did you ever screw up at work in a low stakes way that ultimately didn't matter but felt terrible in the moment?
When I was an overconfident 15 year old cart-wrangler at a grocery store I once pushed an unnecessarily long train of carts into the only entrance into the store, ran into a line of carts someone else had pushed in before me, and completely blocked the only entrance into the store. As customers piled up around me, unable to enter the store, I assumed I was done for. In the end, I sprinted around, entered via the exit, dislodged the blockage, and got nothing more than a bewildered shake of the head from the manager on duty. #metafilterfundraiser2023
When I was an overconfident 15 year old cart-wrangler at a grocery store I once pushed an unnecessarily long train of carts into the only entrance into the store, ran into a line of carts someone else had pushed in before me, and completely blocked the only entrance into the store. As customers piled up around me, unable to enter the store, I assumed I was done for. In the end, I sprinted around, entered via the exit, dislodged the blockage, and got nothing more than a bewildered shake of the head from the manager on duty. #metafilterfundraiser2023
Oh easily the biggest work fuckup I've ever had thankfully ended up causing zero problems and didn't matter, but oh my god I sometimes still wake up at night it pops into my head.
One of my jobs is running payroll. An employee's spouse had just died, far too young and quite unexpectedly, and she very understandably was taking some (paid) leave time. The way our payroll system works, if someone is on leave, you have to add them back into payroll manually.
Well, guess what I forgot to do. Yup, I forgot to pay this person her paycheck literally 2 weeks after her husband died. AAAAAHHHHHH
Thankfully I noticed ON the paydate that I had screwed up, got the deposit sent out less than 24 hours late, and probably she wouldn't even have noticed the gap if I hadn't immediately emailed her to tell on myself. But of all the things to screw up, at all of the times, of all of the people...
posted by phunniemee at 8:16 AM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
One of my jobs is running payroll. An employee's spouse had just died, far too young and quite unexpectedly, and she very understandably was taking some (paid) leave time. The way our payroll system works, if someone is on leave, you have to add them back into payroll manually.
Well, guess what I forgot to do. Yup, I forgot to pay this person her paycheck literally 2 weeks after her husband died. AAAAAHHHHHH
Thankfully I noticed ON the paydate that I had screwed up, got the deposit sent out less than 24 hours late, and probably she wouldn't even have noticed the gap if I hadn't immediately emailed her to tell on myself. But of all the things to screw up, at all of the times, of all of the people...
posted by phunniemee at 8:16 AM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
I had to produce a letter saying that somebody was done with their work here. Then right after that, another office got mad at me because they put holds on the person's record which means they may or may not be permitted to finish or not in time (I note in our experience this is a possible maybe situation, if they do whatever they're required to do, they may not be blocked after all), which I had no idea was going on. They wanted to rip me a new asshole. My supervisor, for once, was all "hey, that letter just says that they finished their work, we didn't say anything about them having holds," and for ONCE I wasn't in trouble.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:28 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:28 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was the manager of a tiny community college library a few years ago. We were undergoing renovations, and we had to pack up all of our decor and office supplies and so on and put them in the racquetball court during the renovations. At the time, we had half a dozen cheap busts of historical figures - George Washington and Shakespeare and Mozart and some Roman emperor, that kind of thing. (I would link to something to give you an idea, but they were in fact uglier and cheaper-looking than anything I can find on Amazon, so you will have to use your imaginations..)
I didn't want to store them, I knew they were going to look out of place in the renovated library, so I asked my boss if I could get rid of them, and he said, sure, fine. I would've just put them quietly in the trash, but my coworker who hated to see anything go to waste announced to the entirety of the faculty that we were getting rid of them and they should come pick up a Shakespeare bust if they wanted a Shakespeare bust.
Meanwhile, I went to put more boxes of books in the racquetball court, because we couldn't afford to hire professional movers and I had a week and a half to put 600 boxes of books in the racquetball court
When I returned, the provost was at the library, and she was FURIOUS. Two faculty members - both of whom were retiring in TWO DAYS! - were really mad that I was getting rid of the historical busts, and instead of talking to me about it, they went straight to the provost about it.
I was sobbing. I was already under a considerable amount of stress, as one would be if one had to put an entire library in storage in two weeks with the help of three part-time staff members, and now I had pissed off a bunch of people who I didn't want to piss off (even though as far as I could see the decor of the library wasn't really any of their business.)
Well. The provost calmed down and did a lot of damage control on my behalf, and then the education professor came by and gave me a chocolate, and the biology professor came by and told me that when she was knew she accidentally pissed off some people by cleaning the trash and literal animal corpses out of the biology lab. A year later, when we were in our new space, one of the professors (retired, but still adjuncting) came by and asked me about the busts and I said I would take them out of storage once I found a good space for them. And then I went and got a different job and, for all I know, they may be in storage still.
So that's the story of the time I accidentally canceled George Washington and discovered that office politics in academia are in fact even weirder than I had been led to believe.
(This is not the biggest work fuckup I've ever had but it's the worst one I'm willing to put my name on. And also the funniest.)
posted by Jeanne at 8:35 AM on September 1, 2023 [13 favorites]
I didn't want to store them, I knew they were going to look out of place in the renovated library, so I asked my boss if I could get rid of them, and he said, sure, fine. I would've just put them quietly in the trash, but my coworker who hated to see anything go to waste announced to the entirety of the faculty that we were getting rid of them and they should come pick up a Shakespeare bust if they wanted a Shakespeare bust.
Meanwhile, I went to put more boxes of books in the racquetball court, because we couldn't afford to hire professional movers and I had a week and a half to put 600 boxes of books in the racquetball court
When I returned, the provost was at the library, and she was FURIOUS. Two faculty members - both of whom were retiring in TWO DAYS! - were really mad that I was getting rid of the historical busts, and instead of talking to me about it, they went straight to the provost about it.
I was sobbing. I was already under a considerable amount of stress, as one would be if one had to put an entire library in storage in two weeks with the help of three part-time staff members, and now I had pissed off a bunch of people who I didn't want to piss off (even though as far as I could see the decor of the library wasn't really any of their business.)
Well. The provost calmed down and did a lot of damage control on my behalf, and then the education professor came by and gave me a chocolate, and the biology professor came by and told me that when she was knew she accidentally pissed off some people by cleaning the trash and literal animal corpses out of the biology lab. A year later, when we were in our new space, one of the professors (retired, but still adjuncting) came by and asked me about the busts and I said I would take them out of storage once I found a good space for them. And then I went and got a different job and, for all I know, they may be in storage still.
So that's the story of the time I accidentally canceled George Washington and discovered that office politics in academia are in fact even weirder than I had been led to believe.
(This is not the biggest work fuckup I've ever had but it's the worst one I'm willing to put my name on. And also the funniest.)
posted by Jeanne at 8:35 AM on September 1, 2023 [13 favorites]
In one of my first jobs, a week-long internship, I did lots of printing. I pointed out my bosses that they could save loads of paper by printing double-sided. I was very proud of my little contribution to reducing their carbon footprint.
Then one day, watching a massive print run, I was fascinated by the stream of paper flying from one part of the giant printer to another, and curiously put my finger in the stream. A massive paper jam ensued, that took me all afternoon to clear. And it was impossible to continue the print run from where it left off, with the correct collation, so I had to bin the entire run, and start from scratch. My entire contribution to the environment at that company, wiped out in one fell swoop.
posted by snarfois at 8:49 AM on September 1, 2023 [7 favorites]
Then one day, watching a massive print run, I was fascinated by the stream of paper flying from one part of the giant printer to another, and curiously put my finger in the stream. A massive paper jam ensued, that took me all afternoon to clear. And it was impossible to continue the print run from where it left off, with the correct collation, so I had to bin the entire run, and start from scratch. My entire contribution to the environment at that company, wiped out in one fell swoop.
posted by snarfois at 8:49 AM on September 1, 2023 [7 favorites]
I used to work at the Federal Election Commission processing campaign finance reports. I usually spoke with campaign staff but for some reason, THE CONGRESSMAN wanted to talk to me about the report. I'm pointing out the problems with it and he said, "but the lady I talked to before told me to do it this way."
The lady he talked to before, dear reader, WAS ME. IT WAS ME, I WAS THE PROBLEM.
I did the only thing I could do speaking to a sitting member of Congress, I fessed up and told him that it was me he talked to before and I got it wrong. He as very gracious about it. I was mortified.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 9:12 AM on September 1, 2023 [9 favorites]
The lady he talked to before, dear reader, WAS ME. IT WAS ME, I WAS THE PROBLEM.
I did the only thing I could do speaking to a sitting member of Congress, I fessed up and told him that it was me he talked to before and I got it wrong. He as very gracious about it. I was mortified.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 9:12 AM on September 1, 2023 [9 favorites]
Then one day, watching a massive print run, I was fascinated by the stream of paper flying from one part of the giant printer to another, and curiously put my finger in the stream. A massive paper jam ensued, that took me all afternoon to clear. And it was impossible to continue the print run from where it left off, with the correct collation, so I had to bin the entire run, and start from scratch. My entire contribution to the environment at that company, wiped out in one fell swoop.
When I was young I worked for a little while in a copy shop, and did something similar. I absentmindedly moved one small thing while watching the hypnotic stream of paper and caused a many-tens-of-thousands-of-pages print job to become uncollated and spew out over the floor like a scene in a bad comedy. I was sure they were going to fire me on the spot.
The funny thing (only in hindsight) is that over the years it always those tiny, unimportant things that cause people to completely flip out. I've never had anything but understanding or at worst gentle ribbing from actual screwups. (The worst that I was involved in but by no means solely responsible for, resulted in several millions of dollars basically being completely wasted, highly visibly. There were no consequences for anyone other than some mild shaming; there wasn't even a "lessons learned" meeting or report.)
posted by Dip Flash at 9:18 AM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
When I was young I worked for a little while in a copy shop, and did something similar. I absentmindedly moved one small thing while watching the hypnotic stream of paper and caused a many-tens-of-thousands-of-pages print job to become uncollated and spew out over the floor like a scene in a bad comedy. I was sure they were going to fire me on the spot.
The funny thing (only in hindsight) is that over the years it always those tiny, unimportant things that cause people to completely flip out. I've never had anything but understanding or at worst gentle ribbing from actual screwups. (The worst that I was involved in but by no means solely responsible for, resulted in several millions of dollars basically being completely wasted, highly visibly. There were no consequences for anyone other than some mild shaming; there wasn't even a "lessons learned" meeting or report.)
posted by Dip Flash at 9:18 AM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
I once accidentally shut down the wrong website because grapes.something.example.com and grapes.example.com are far too similar.
posted by belladonna at 9:29 AM on September 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by belladonna at 9:29 AM on September 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
I worked in the administrative center of a large municipal school district where the emotional IQ in my dept was approximately that of a junior high student. To make it worse, the manager managed by denial.
The woman whose room I was moved into never got over the fact that I had infringed on her room. She never spoke to me in five years. Well, she told me not to answer her phone (it wasn't a personal phone, it was a department phone), but she also left without telling me she was leaving.
I spent a good 15 minutes in a Serious Talk summit in the bosses' office for that one, and she never believed me that A-- hadn't informed me (why would she? it's so bizarre) but eventually she gave up and let me go back to work,
(Bonus: A--reported to our boss that I "gave her a dirty look")
posted by Rumi'sLeftSock at 9:40 AM on September 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
The woman whose room I was moved into never got over the fact that I had infringed on her room. She never spoke to me in five years. Well, she told me not to answer her phone (it wasn't a personal phone, it was a department phone), but she also left without telling me she was leaving.
I spent a good 15 minutes in a Serious Talk summit in the bosses' office for that one, and she never believed me that A-- hadn't informed me (why would she? it's so bizarre) but eventually she gave up and let me go back to work,
(Bonus: A--reported to our boss that I "gave her a dirty look")
posted by Rumi'sLeftSock at 9:40 AM on September 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
When I was 16, for my second-ever job in high school, I was a Starbucks barista. On my first day, after the unbelievably cool college-age barista demonstrated how to make and serve a Frappuccino, she had me try and I confidently poured in the mix, the mocha syrup, the ice, and clicked start on the blender. She had half a second to shout NO WAIT- before Frappuccino sprayed wildly all over both of us and the counter, because I had forgotten to put the lid on the blender.
She was very gracious about it, if annoyed, while I tried to melt into the floor. Then that evening the shift supervisor was closing the cash registers and asked me to load and start the dishwasher. Okay, easy! Load dishes, pour in some soap, is this the on button? Yep! Great!
Several minutes later, the supervisor glances up and gasps as a massive pile of bubbles inches its way out of the back room. There were two bottles of soap. I did not use the right one. And this was a large commercial-grade dishwasher, not a little home one.
After staying late to help mop everything up, I slunk home and hid in my bed and reevaluated everything my schools had told me about being a gifted kid.
posted by castlebravo at 10:01 AM on September 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
She was very gracious about it, if annoyed, while I tried to melt into the floor. Then that evening the shift supervisor was closing the cash registers and asked me to load and start the dishwasher. Okay, easy! Load dishes, pour in some soap, is this the on button? Yep! Great!
Several minutes later, the supervisor glances up and gasps as a massive pile of bubbles inches its way out of the back room. There were two bottles of soap. I did not use the right one. And this was a large commercial-grade dishwasher, not a little home one.
After staying late to help mop everything up, I slunk home and hid in my bed and reevaluated everything my schools had told me about being a gifted kid.
posted by castlebravo at 10:01 AM on September 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
I had forgotten to put the lid on the blender.
Pffft, one blender? Puh-leeeze.
When I was that age, I left the door ajar to the tempering cabinet at the ice cream shop where I worked. That's a freezer that holds ice cream at a temperature warmer than the deep freeze, so it's soft enough to scoop when the tub out front (in the dipping cabinet) is empty.
It holds, oh, about 32 tubs of ice cream. It was ajar overnight, because as a Clever Child I was trusted to close up the shop on weekend nights, do the registers, lock up, and go home. (And because the other employees were students at the local university, who bartered their nightly free ice cream for drinks at the bar, two doors down in the mall, and maybe not so reliable?)
I thought I was going to literally die of shame when my boss, Emmy, the most understanding woman in the world, told me. The memory is hazed by mortification, but she probably just took a loooong drag on her cigarette and paused and said, "Don't do that again, OK."
She's wonderful. I emailed her last winter and she remembered us, like 35 years later. She taught me a lot about patience and forgiveness, you betcha.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:14 AM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
Pffft, one blender? Puh-leeeze.
When I was that age, I left the door ajar to the tempering cabinet at the ice cream shop where I worked. That's a freezer that holds ice cream at a temperature warmer than the deep freeze, so it's soft enough to scoop when the tub out front (in the dipping cabinet) is empty.
It holds, oh, about 32 tubs of ice cream. It was ajar overnight, because as a Clever Child I was trusted to close up the shop on weekend nights, do the registers, lock up, and go home. (And because the other employees were students at the local university, who bartered their nightly free ice cream for drinks at the bar, two doors down in the mall, and maybe not so reliable?)
I thought I was going to literally die of shame when my boss, Emmy, the most understanding woman in the world, told me. The memory is hazed by mortification, but she probably just took a loooong drag on her cigarette and paused and said, "Don't do that again, OK."
She's wonderful. I emailed her last winter and she remembered us, like 35 years later. She taught me a lot about patience and forgiveness, you betcha.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:14 AM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
I used to be a freelance video editor for local news, and was probably the youngest person in the whole newsroom aside from the interns. This was back when stories were only broadcast once, not published online to potentially live on forever – thank goodness. I was cutting one of the lead stories about an vicious assault near a bar in town, and we had photos of both the victim and the alleged assailant. Guess who accidentally swapped the photos when editing the story? Thirty seconds after it aired I got an understandably furious call from the reporter, and I just sat in my edit bay completely mortified for the rest of the hour-long broadcast, sure that they were never going to ask me back.
After the show was over, the grizzled executive producer comes over and leans on the doorframe to my room, kind of hiding a half-smile.
"You know what you did?"
"Yeah."
"Will it happen again?"
"No."
"All right then have a good night!"
posted by Molasses808 at 10:17 AM on September 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
After the show was over, the grizzled executive producer comes over and leans on the doorframe to my room, kind of hiding a half-smile.
"You know what you did?"
"Yeah."
"Will it happen again?"
"No."
"All right then have a good night!"
posted by Molasses808 at 10:17 AM on September 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
Mimicking my boss how she walks and talks. Coworkers started giggling...I turned around and she was watching me. She laughed it off but I felt moronic....
posted by Czjewel at 12:31 PM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Czjewel at 12:31 PM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was a technical manager at a very small startup (80 people total) and had 4 people on my team. One guy was a jovial, very Boston, very direct person who didn't mince words but did a fine job. He didn't particularly care about the job and I was Mr. Earnest and took the work seriously. Both of us were in our 40s so, full-grown men and all that.
We had a process and tooling meeting where I was rolling out some new change I'd worked hard on; I think it was a Jira workflow and project for us to all track our work. I was going over the details and he and a younger guy were sort of joking around and getting on my nerves a bit. Keep in mind there are only 5 people in the conference room. So he asked some question and I explained how it would work and he kind of smirked and said, "Ugh, Jira sucks."
So of course I looked over and shouted, "QUIT BEING SUCH A DICK!" Stunned silence. Then "what did you just say to me?" He was a big guy; picture some gritty movie tough guy and that Boston accent. Luckily, violence avoided, HR called, apologies and counseling by HR. I took him for a drink a couple of days later and apologized again and tried to bond but he had clearly put me on the shit list. He quit soon after.
He *was* being kind of a dick, and I did try hard to make it up, but 15 years later I still feel bad about it, wonder if he is doing OK, have occasional guilty thoughts about what a terrible person I am, and so on. The cringe, it burns!
posted by caviar2d2 at 1:03 PM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
We had a process and tooling meeting where I was rolling out some new change I'd worked hard on; I think it was a Jira workflow and project for us to all track our work. I was going over the details and he and a younger guy were sort of joking around and getting on my nerves a bit. Keep in mind there are only 5 people in the conference room. So he asked some question and I explained how it would work and he kind of smirked and said, "Ugh, Jira sucks."
So of course I looked over and shouted, "QUIT BEING SUCH A DICK!" Stunned silence. Then "what did you just say to me?" He was a big guy; picture some gritty movie tough guy and that Boston accent. Luckily, violence avoided, HR called, apologies and counseling by HR. I took him for a drink a couple of days later and apologized again and tried to bond but he had clearly put me on the shit list. He quit soon after.
He *was* being kind of a dick, and I did try hard to make it up, but 15 years later I still feel bad about it, wonder if he is doing OK, have occasional guilty thoughts about what a terrible person I am, and so on. The cringe, it burns!
posted by caviar2d2 at 1:03 PM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
One summer I interned with the Air Force.
One of my little jobs was to look research a whole bunch of manuals to find a little bit of information from each one. So was looking up the manual in the library, taking it to the little copy machine, copying a page or two, and so on for maybe 200 or 300 manuals. I was maybe 1/20th done and I would have ended up with a slightly thick folder full of just the bits of all those manuals that I actually needed.
After a little while, the archive manager calls me over.
"Hey, you're using up our entire year's budget for the copier in one day. Don't do that. Just fill out this form for each manual you need, we'll have the print office print one up for you and send it right over."
Well, their copier was some bizarro thermal copier that used a special kind of thermal paper. It probably did cost a dollar or two a page for each copy. This was probably ultra-cutting-edge technology from like 25 years earlier, but by this time photocopiers were available everywhere and cheap, like 5 cents a copy.
Well, everywhere but the Air Force, that is.
So I requisitioned all those manuals.
A couple of days later a GIANT pallet of paper shows up at our office. We had to take over a whole giant WALL of bookshelves to hold all those manuals, sort of like a whole aisle of a library.
I pulled out our 1-2 needed pages from each manual and we proceeded with our project.
The entire project came to nothing (we were trolling the entire purchase list for high buy dollar items that might be wildly overpriced, like the $2000 toilet seats, and that we might save millions by putting out to competitive bid. We sorted through literally thousands of different items and found literally zero candidates for massive, or even reasonable, savings).
After a few days someone came from the print office and carted away the entire giant pallet of printed manuals. They took them off somewhere to be recycled.
I'm pretty sure I did in fact save the Air Force money (or at least, the manual archive's copier budget) by printing like 2000 pounds of paper manuals, then discarding them all 2 weeks later, rather than copying a couple hundred single pages.
But it sure seemed crazy as all get-out.
posted by flug at 1:17 PM on September 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
One of my little jobs was to look research a whole bunch of manuals to find a little bit of information from each one. So was looking up the manual in the library, taking it to the little copy machine, copying a page or two, and so on for maybe 200 or 300 manuals. I was maybe 1/20th done and I would have ended up with a slightly thick folder full of just the bits of all those manuals that I actually needed.
After a little while, the archive manager calls me over.
"Hey, you're using up our entire year's budget for the copier in one day. Don't do that. Just fill out this form for each manual you need, we'll have the print office print one up for you and send it right over."
Well, their copier was some bizarro thermal copier that used a special kind of thermal paper. It probably did cost a dollar or two a page for each copy. This was probably ultra-cutting-edge technology from like 25 years earlier, but by this time photocopiers were available everywhere and cheap, like 5 cents a copy.
Well, everywhere but the Air Force, that is.
So I requisitioned all those manuals.
A couple of days later a GIANT pallet of paper shows up at our office. We had to take over a whole giant WALL of bookshelves to hold all those manuals, sort of like a whole aisle of a library.
I pulled out our 1-2 needed pages from each manual and we proceeded with our project.
The entire project came to nothing (we were trolling the entire purchase list for high buy dollar items that might be wildly overpriced, like the $2000 toilet seats, and that we might save millions by putting out to competitive bid. We sorted through literally thousands of different items and found literally zero candidates for massive, or even reasonable, savings).
After a few days someone came from the print office and carted away the entire giant pallet of printed manuals. They took them off somewhere to be recycled.
I'm pretty sure I did in fact save the Air Force money (or at least, the manual archive's copier budget) by printing like 2000 pounds of paper manuals, then discarding them all 2 weeks later, rather than copying a couple hundred single pages.
But it sure seemed crazy as all get-out.
posted by flug at 1:17 PM on September 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
My first real job after graduate school was in the university library and I had a nice little office with a window and everything. The previous occupant had put a tall file cabinet in front of the window and I wanted to move it, so I pulled my desk away from the wall to start to make room. Unbeknownst to me, the power cord to my computer was wrapped around the desk leg and when I pulled the desk, it yanked not just the plug but the entire outlet out of the wall. I heard a loud POP and saw a bright arc of current flash in the outlet. All the lights in the office went out, and then I gradually realized that all the lights, computers, and everything electronic in the entire area went out. When the electricians eventually found my office as the source of the fault, I learned that power had gone out on 2 entire floors of the library building. They were puzzled as to how a single fault in an outlet could have caused that, but they patched it back up and turned everything back on. Two weeks later, I impulsively decided I now wanted my desk to face the newly-exposed window, so I pulled out the desk again ... and yank, POP, spark, the entire pattern of events happened again. This time, the electricians came directly to my office with my boss in tow, and I sheepishly admitted that, yes, I once again was doing some "decorating." My boss sighed, and told me to just stop moving furniture on my own, and left it at that.
posted by majorsteel at 2:30 PM on September 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by majorsteel at 2:30 PM on September 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
@majorsteel, your story reminds me of a dark tale from my own past employment history wherein I accidentally popped loose the metal toilet paper roll holder in the office bathroom with the perfect force and trajectory that it sailed through the air and landed directly in the bowl. As I stood up and worked up the nerve to try to fish it out, it... autoflushed, vanishing irrevocably. I spent the next 3 months or so roiling with guilt and embarrassment as tales bubbled up about grave, mysterious plumbing problems plaguing the building and the various heroic efforts to fix them, but I never confessed.
posted by space snail at 3:14 PM on September 1, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by space snail at 3:14 PM on September 1, 2023 [16 favorites]
In my mid-20s at my first real job, for which I was definitely not technically qualified for, sys admin at a magazine in London.
A Big Boss was over from the San Francisco head office. He wanted some bigger RAM put in his little Apple PowerBook Duo. They were tricky things to open but I'd done it before, so sure.
Putting it all back together I severed a thin ribbon cable that, I think, connected the trackball or keyboard. Ugh. Nothing worked. I knew nothing about where to get these things fixed, especially Right Now because he was important and needed to do work.
I called the very nice people we spent a lot of money with buying Apple stuff, and they gave me the details for a little place. I called them, they squeezed me in, I took it there and – oh my god I was so relieved – they were able to replace the part right then.
Big Boss was nice and remarkably understanding, and it could have been worse.
posted by fabius at 6:12 AM on September 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
A Big Boss was over from the San Francisco head office. He wanted some bigger RAM put in his little Apple PowerBook Duo. They were tricky things to open but I'd done it before, so sure.
Putting it all back together I severed a thin ribbon cable that, I think, connected the trackball or keyboard. Ugh. Nothing worked. I knew nothing about where to get these things fixed, especially Right Now because he was important and needed to do work.
I called the very nice people we spent a lot of money with buying Apple stuff, and they gave me the details for a little place. I called them, they squeezed me in, I took it there and – oh my god I was so relieved – they were able to replace the part right then.
Big Boss was nice and remarkably understanding, and it could have been worse.
posted by fabius at 6:12 AM on September 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
My summer job before university was two weeks of admin vacation cover in the catering ordering/cash office at a nuclear dockyard, followed by about six weeks of making sandwiches when the person whose vacation I was covering came back. It was my only ever nepo baby job; my dad was the divisional head of HR, which for some reason included catering.
Part of the sandwich prep job was running the giant industrial dishwasher at the end of the day. When I was trained on how to clean the dishwasher, I had it drilled into me that it was Very Important never to turn on the heating element of the dishwasher without the water running at the same time. Otherwise, the heating element would overheat and burn out, and those things were very expensive to replace.
Of course, one day weeks later, I realised I'd drained the dishwasher and then somehow managed to turn on the heating element without the water running. I realised this when the heating element began to steam and make a weird smell. I got the water running immediately and used the interior hose to hose it down all over, and that seemed to do the trick. Obviously I was panicking the whole time and for several days to come that I'd damaged it irreparably and there was only a matter of time before someone found out and I had to pay more money than I'd made all summer to replace the thing I broke...but I don't think I actually broke it, because that day never came and the dishwasher continued to function. I never made that mistake again, though.
posted by terretu at 8:16 AM on September 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Part of the sandwich prep job was running the giant industrial dishwasher at the end of the day. When I was trained on how to clean the dishwasher, I had it drilled into me that it was Very Important never to turn on the heating element of the dishwasher without the water running at the same time. Otherwise, the heating element would overheat and burn out, and those things were very expensive to replace.
Of course, one day weeks later, I realised I'd drained the dishwasher and then somehow managed to turn on the heating element without the water running. I realised this when the heating element began to steam and make a weird smell. I got the water running immediately and used the interior hose to hose it down all over, and that seemed to do the trick. Obviously I was panicking the whole time and for several days to come that I'd damaged it irreparably and there was only a matter of time before someone found out and I had to pay more money than I'd made all summer to replace the thing I broke...but I don't think I actually broke it, because that day never came and the dishwasher continued to function. I never made that mistake again, though.
posted by terretu at 8:16 AM on September 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
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posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 8:14 AM on September 1, 2023