An accident I had today:

I was changing out a chemical feed pump at our cooling tower and was disconnecting the pump discharge line. Well, before I had the line off, it blew and showered me in sodium benzotriazole in a 1% NaOH solution. It shot me in the face and then across the back as I instinctively turned away. I immediately went to the chemical shower and eye wash station to get cleaned up. I felt like an idiot.

The pump discharge should NOT have been pressurized, but there was a block in the line that caused the problem I was there to fix so the line was charged. I was an idiot for not checking.

Anyway, I'm fine, but my prides a little hurt. I had all my PPE on and that saved it from getting in my eyes...WEAR YOUR SAFETY GLASSES.

What are your guy's stories? Lost fingers/hands, etc?

If i didnt die from my screw up id tell you about it....

While working as a tool & die apprentice, I knocked over a few highly polished mold cores....they probably had $16,000 worth of man hours in each one.

Not sure if that junked them or not Some parts were not allowed to be welded and re machined....they get junked when shit happens

We call it "making boat anchors"

Running a CNC punch press and loaded the tooling wrong in one station... A .490" Square punch and a .25" Round die



You can put a square peg in a round hole with 33 tons of pressure.....once

I was diluting some antibody one day and spaced out on my units.  The stock was at 5mg/mL.  I had previously written down that I needed 1.1ug/uL which is equivalent to 1.1mg/mL just expressed with smaller units.  I accidentally diluted down to 1.1ng/uL (1.1ug/mL), and there went $2,800.



Another screw up was while I was programming the freeze dryer to run over the weekend.  I set the vacuum to 0 mTorr instead of 2 mTorr, started the run and went home.  The freeze dryer could never attain 0 mTorr so it wouldn't initiate the freeze dry protocol.  There was $5,000 worth of enzymes and was lost that weekend.

IT asked my boss why I'm on ARFcomm so much...

We were doing interdiction ops against merchant vessels in the Red Sea.  The ship that was supposed to be challenging approaching merchants dropped the ball and the vessel went unchallenged.  As it wasn't challenged, it sailed silently on by.  Our ship noticed that this ship went unchallenged and we kicked it into gear to run it down.  

We challenged them via radio and told them that they had to be inspected.  The merchant ship stated that we didn't have any right to board him and that he wouldn't be stopping.  As we were closing the gap, we continued to go back and forth with them, us demanding that they return for boarding, them telling us basically to FOAD.

We eventually upped the ante and said that we were going to put a 5-inch round into his engineering spaces if they didn't return.  They returned.

The Commodore was unimpressed with the ship that screwed up and let this happen.

How's that for a work screw-up?

I lost the better part of 150K one time. Then 210K more recently.

Oh, wait a second. I didn't lose it. The motherfuckin' bank lost it. Only took me a week to convince them on the first 150K (which happened to be over Christmas week, worst holiday ever). The second 210K I was at least smart enough to figure it was them. Still took me a bunch of bounced checks and 3 days to prove to them THEY lost it.

Never admitted it either time. Not even an apology.

My boss knows what happened and trusted me the entire time. My books are good and I know this shit to the penny. I took on one of the largest banks in the world and proved their Ivy Leaguers wrong up and down that corporate chain.

Sorry, they are pissing me off today.

Designed a new product and was really excited about it.  Thought it was ready to go.  Held a meeting with everyone, including the owner and CEO.  3 minutes into it our purchasing manager (a woman) asked how you're supposed to put it together.  I said, "It's simple."  I took it from her in order to demonstrate it, but ended up failing hard and embarrassed the shit out of myself.  It couldn't be assembled.  

Years back, when I was 19 and managed to score a job at the Pentagon, I went with a co-worker to troubleshoot some Assistant Secretary of Defense's BlackBerry.

He was in the office, working, while we were toying around on his computer to get it fixed.

Wanting to show off, I mapped a network share containing our install files to a local drive, and started telling my co-worker about how the security here was laughable, and how easy it was to get around that simple little UNC path prohibition policy they had in place.

"Dude, shut up!"

"I mean what are they thinking?  Okay, so I can't go "\\servername\sharename", but I can say "\\servername\sharename is now drive x:" and it works!  Who the heck designed these policies anyway!"

"Matt, shut the hell up!"

"Huh?  Why?"

"Just STFU!"

"Okay...."

So we get the job done, and on the way back to our office I ask him:

"Hey, so, what's the deal?  Why were you telling me to shut up back there?"

"Dude....  Jesus Christ...  You were in there talking about how terrible the network security was in front of the guy who approves the policies that the security is built around!"

"Uh... So... You mean..."

"Yeah, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for OSD/C3I over-heard you saying that his policies are 'swiss cheese bullshit'.  Godfuckingdammit, Matt!!"

I barely escaped with my job after that one.

That story also won me tickets to a National's baseball game from DC101.  They lost.  Of course.

_MaH

Bank of America - I refuse to even do business with them

While working in a small office (about 30 - 40 people), I was explaining to someone how easy it was for a chair to roll into the power switch on the server.  And then I accidentally did just that and crashed the office.  Whoops.

I can neither confirm or deny your assumption but yes, you are absolutely right.

I see their reputation precedes them.

A guy I work with came into my office and said a lady was on the phone in HIS office (she had the wrong number-should have called me) and wanted to know about some paperwork- if it was processed yet etc.

So he is standing next to me and I look at him and say, "When is it going to be done? How the f*ck should I know."

Then he hands me the cordless phone that he has in his hand inches away from my mouth and says, "Tell her yourself."

In my defense I am NEVER a bitch- I was just playing with him because I didn't know he had the phone- we are tight.  So, I quickly told him to tell her that she had the wrong number at to call 'me' at the right office- when she did I kissed her ass and got her paperwork done ASAP!!!

Later- I listened to the recording of his phone call with her and I could clearly hear  myself talking shit in the back ground, she says to her friend, " he just asked a girl if my paperwork is done and she said "How the f*ck should I know' !!"

Woops

When I was 19 I worked as a CNC operator, making pushrods for Cummins diesel engines, among other shiity things. The bench had a dial indicator for OAL and OAL and such for the puchrods and you measured each one as they came out and then measured random ones with mics which the company provided for new guys.I came in grabbed the pattern part to set the touch indicator thing that was setup to measure each pushrod as it came out and make sure everything was good so I could start running pushrods. I found out the next day that an entire 12 hour shift worth of rods were all under enough to be worthless.

     So they were junked. Foreman asked me what the hell happened, and then asked me to show him what I did. I went to the pattern parts grabbed the one for the pushrods went back to the bench and put it in the touch indicator and then read and verified the numbers that were on the laminated card next to the setup. Ran a rod measured it and it came out good according to the indicator setup and the mic I used he miced it and it was off. Checked the tool and it looked fine, swapped the bit and ran another one, same thing. re-checked tool holder, apparantly a small chip had gotten behind the tool holder and was pushing the tool out. Gave me 9 kinds of hell and was screaming and shit. I said look man, I am a 19 year old kid with exactly 2 months in machine work and the first month of that was cutting stock to feed these machines with a band saw and then a month of running a face and centering machine. That was literally the extent of my training, we were for the most part machine button monkeys.  I make 6.50 an hour working in this shithole, what do you expect me to do? The mics and shit you provide us with are junk and everyone will measure the same part differently based on who measures it. I realize I have no idea what i am doing, you as the boss should maybe realize you counted on a guy that had no experience or training to do the job of a machinist is fucking stupid if he has no machinist experience. We talked to the shop manager and he said well it was the fault of the tool and you but more the tool. Watch what you are doing and buy a good set of mics, I was like if you wanna pay for them awesome, if not I am not spending a weeks pay on a tool you want me to have. I never got my mics. Later that night the foreman scrapped a jet turbine worth over 60 grand when he went and took a piss or something, the tool broke on the CNC like 30 seconds after he walked away.

we worked 7 days a week 12 hours a day with 2 10 minute paid breaks and a 30 minute unpaid lunch. We asked multiple times to ease of the amount of hours and were told we couldn't because we had too many orders to fill and not enough people working.
I made it another month and one day I woke up and never showed back up. I found out a week after I quit they went to 4x10 schedules. Best thing I ever did was walk away from that deadend job.

Running lines at a candle factory... still not sure if the little Chinese lady feeding votive molds on one line thought the line was ON and flipped the switch thinking she was turning it OFF, or if she turned it OFF and I turned it back ON, or if we both just walked out and forgot about it... but one way or another, came back from a 15 minute break to find a small mountain of wrecked votives on the floor. Unsalvagable product, probably ~980ish wrecked votives and the wax had to be tossed on account of contamination (dirty floor).

Whoops.

I backed a full size semi tractor into the landing gear of the trailer when it slid on the snow and I missed the king-pin.  Broke the gear right off.  Oopsie.  

I reported it, and the trailer was back in service a couple of days later.  No fall-out ensued.  I guess I got one freebie.  I wasn't even a driver, I was a dispatch manager, and was helping out the idiot truck loader who didn't know how to drive...I guess I showed him.  

This Yankee Candle?

Just guessing because I see the NH location and their HQ is in MA, about 20 miles from the NH border...

_MaH

I thought I made a mistake once



But I was mistaken I didn't make one.

I have posted these before, but by far my biggest work screw up.

From a former life as a sprinkler man.

Had 25 people working for me.  Sent two out to change out a riser in an office building.  A riser is a 4-6" pipe you see in the stairwells, going straight up to feed sprinlkers on each floor and a hose valve for the Fire Dept.

So they get to the 5th floor, removing clamps holding it in place and the thing shoots through the hole like a torpedo and takes out a metal desk, landing dead center and bending the SOB.  The guy at the desk wasn't very happy.

Another time I am in an office building making changes to a plastic piping system.  Turn on the water and I have a leak from a cracked fitting.  One man in the control room to silence the alarm.

OK - so when you start, you call the alarm Co and give them a code, tell them to ignore the alarm as you are working and will call it back in service when you are done.

OK - so I call the office, tell them to hustle out with a new fitting.  Go outside and wait.  Fitting shows, it's like 5:30 p.m. and I sent the other guy home.

BAM - can't get back in the building, locked all up.  BUT I get someone's attention and they let me in.  I make the repair and turn the water back on - so I have to walk down and silence it - BUT, that one's locked as well.

So I walk the halls and the freakin' alarms are honking so damned loud and vibrating, some actually fall out of the wall, held on by just the wiring.  I call everyone to let them know what's up and nada.  Ok - so I figure they have a working fire protection system and I can't do shit about the alarm anyway, so home I go.

Next day I find out a cop drove by, saw the strobes, heard the alarm and called the fire department.

They came and basically beat two HUGE glass doors - they had to be 10' tall - off the hinges and then tore down the interior doors to get to the alarm panel.  All for nothing!

Same building - drove a truck with a ladder rack in a parking garage all week to the top, no problem.  Packed up on Friday and tied  the ladders on the rack.  Made it all the way to the exit before the ladders were splinters and the rack was bent all to hell.

I can't recount all the times I called the system in as "Out of Service" only to turn it on and hear the fire trucks.

One time in Baltimore City - the F'n panel was so complex, I had the owner turn it off.  Sure enough, after I restored water to the system and was packing the truck, I see BCFD walking  the street in full gear, axes in hand - all looking for a fire.

I told them it was a false alarm and they asked my name.  I said they didn't need my name, but I could take them to the guy they they needed to talk to, which I did . . . then I promptly hauled ass.

Worked on a building at the corner of York and Timonium Road.  Water valve was way around the back.  Turned it on, looked for leaks and when I turned the corner, every employee of every store in there was outside standing on the corner and in the distance you could hear the fire trucks coming.

Then there was the genuis landlord that turned off the heat on an upper floor as it was unrented in the winter.  I worked the basement and when I turned on  the water, I saw drips coming through the ceiling.  I thought that was kinda strange as I hadn't been on any upper floors.

So I shut off the water and walk up the hill to see a fucking waterfall coming down on every store in the strip.  It was like something in a movie.

So they tried to pin the blame on me and I was lucky enough to find the iced and busted fitting because they had turned off the heat.

Then there was the guy who pulled a fitting on a building with a fire pump . . . never good.

Or the other genuises that turned off the heat on a building with a fire pump.  Fitting busted off the ends of the lines, water pressure knocked out the windows and sprayed all over the roadway, forming ice and causing major accidents.

Funny how the sound of someone dragging plastic on a jobsite sounds just like water hitting the floor.  Fun times

I worked on a chemical system for water discharged into a creek. I didn't reset the controller properly when finished and untreated water went down stream for a day or so. Our water quality guy notified the Office of Surface Managemant (United States Department of the Interior) and they fined the Co. $25,000.
I was disciplined. It was the one time my supervisor went to bat for me or I might have been terminated.

The best screw up story I've ever heard was one a truckdriver told me just this past Spring, he was up around Schenectady? or in that area hauling a trailer and at some point a wire was hanging too low and his trailer caught it and he actually began tearing down high voltage power lines, he felt a bit of resistance and looked in the rear view mirror and saw a sheet of fire behind his truck, transformers etc...he caught the road on fire...this happened a few years ago and it was covered in the local news, tons of fire and police called to the scene. Amazingly, he was not found to be at fault for that and is still driving.

From a former life on a can-making factory.

Steel-Tin can . . .

So they ask me if I want some OT - all I have to do is drive a scrap tub or two over to the can line and collect up bad 1 gallon paint can bodies, then release the handle and dump them in the openn top scrap trailer.

So I grab the biggest SOB I can find, sit on that tow-motor and figure I am gravy.

Then the thing gets full and I go to dump it.

To the loading dock, pull the handle and all the flattened can bodies fly out and overshoot the open top trailer and land in the parking lot, barely missing several cars.

WTF - I spent the rest of the night picking up slippery assed can bodies off the parking lot.  Tried a shovel, a pitchfork - nothing but hands worked at all.

They came looking for me and had a good laugh.  I had to bust ass to get the shit cleared up before the entire shift ended.  They never asked me again!

Where to begin?

3 weeks ago, I dropped the bar on my chest while bench pressing. No real reason. It was my normal rep weight, I wasn't struggling. My wrists just gave out and 225 pounds landed on my sternum. I'm just barely starting to feel better.

Lots and lots more. Like the time I almost burned down my bosses house with a propane torch. (accidently)

I work in N. AZ as a second job clearing beetle trees.5 years ago it was like a epidemic,we had 7-8 guys up there helping us,anyway we had to cut a big ponderosa like 150' high and 3 and a half feet thick.I had everyone move their vehicles off the road,but we were running out of space.We had 2 dump trucks and about 5 pickup trucks all crammed in a corner so the tree would not hit them.I hooked up the cable to the backhoe and got ready to cut.I saw the last truck in the little cluster from the top of the hill,I told the guy he had to move it but he would not listen.

 This tree had been dead for a long time,rotten to the trunk,so anything could happen.I got done notching it and again I had a bad feeling,I asked the worker to move his truck to the bottom of the hill,again he would not do it.The tree was leaning uphill,so I had the tractor hooked to it.Finally I said "fuck it" and dropped it,and as luck would have it it split in two on the way down,guess where it landed?The entire top half of the tree sailed right and landed on the roof of this guys brand new F350.It crushed the roof down to the seat cushions,not a good day.

Never had a workplace screw up worth talking about. Now free time screw ups, well, that's a different story.

Nope, Alene.

ETA: Don't work there anymore, the HR director absolutely hates my guts. She told another prospective employer I didn't work there. Luckily said employer didn't believe her bullshit else I would probably have pursued legal options if possible. Scratch that one off the references list...

I was late with my homework and tried to sneak it in the professor's file...but he saw me and then started a shitstorm with my classmate.

:)

Hax

due to a decimal place error I "lost" a few hundred thousand dollars in is stamps that was not caught until the nightly report went to the USPS  The funny this is that we were WAY more worried about it USPS said it happens all the time


 

http://www.ak47.net/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=1086028&page=2

When I was a kid, I worked in a hardware store. One day, I cut a length of rigid copper pipe from a stock length on the pipe rack. I pushed the cut end of the stock pipe back on to the rack with my thumb. As I was walking back up from to the customer, I felt something wet on my hand, and just wiped it on my jeans. It still felt wet. I looked down to see a nice clean ring of blood-oozing opening on my thumb!

See me after class.



 

 

Not mine but my old boss.  Best one I can think of:



We used to be an ISP.  He wanted to delete some old email addresses from our customer email system.  He had the list of user ID numbers that he wanted gone in a text file.  He wasn't a SQL guru or anything, plus he was working from a linux command line, so the best way he worked out how to do it was to write a script to create a string of commands like this:  delete from Users where userid = XXX and to pull in the userIDs from the text file as the XXX.  So the result was it generated a list of commands like this:



delete from Users where userID = 3

delete from Users where userID = 7  etc, etc,



The problem was that his text list had column headers in it.  The column header for the field he was pulling was "userID."



As a result, the first command he generated was delete from Users where userID = userID.



He ran it, and it deleted every email account in our entire system.  All 50,000 of them.



And of course, that database was enormous, and we had no backup system that could hold it all.  We had a RAID array in case of drive failure, but we had no copies of the data.  It just so happened that he had made a special, one-off copy of the data just the week before to be sent off to a new site we were going to be hosting the data from.  (They did a physical copy since transmitting it across the net using our connection back then would have taken forever.)  He had to have that copy airmailed back to us so he could restore from it.  As a result, we lost a few days worth of email.  If we hadn't had that one-off copy, we would have lost EVERYTHING, and he would have lost his job.

I'm a rookie cop still in F.T.O......take a fucking wild guess

Back in the good days of my youth I was a volunteer FF.
One call I was driving the aerial ladder truck.  My partner and I (only two on the crew) pull up to our turn and it's tight, so I have to make it like a 3-point turn.
I pop into reverse and the BIG/LOUD air horns start signallying "GTF out of the way, this bitch is backing up."  I wait 15 seconds for anything behind me to move, and make my turn.  I'm sure you can see where this is leading.  
After the fire call, highway patrol walks up & asks if I was driving the truck.  I say "yup."  He tells me that I backed over a car (with the bucket) when I made my turn and ended up screwing up the hood of the vehicle.
Turned out it wasn't just any car, it was a Sheriff heading to the call.  
I guess quick thinking on my part saved the day, because I asked the highway patrolman if he could read the inscription on the bottom of the bucket:   "KEEP BACK 500 FEET."
He looked at me, smiled, and said "Don't worry, you're good."
Never heard another word about it.  
 
 
 

I once shipped 6,000 laptops to a very large customer at multiple international locations, and not a single one of them had a built-in modem they "claim" they asked for.  (despite having reviewed the final specs by multiple people on their side prior to executing the order).

I was running an Amada turret punch and put a .25" x 40." rectangle at 0 degrees and the die at 90 degrees.  Ouch!


Vulcan94

I was handing off some unused demo to a guy who was too prideful to let anyone know he didn't have a clue what he was doing.

I had everything laid out nice and flat and safe on two different tables for him to come by and inspect before he took possession.  One table has all the charges and the other has the firing system components.  Easy enough.

This dude comes up, looks over the hand receipts and the tables full of goodies and signs it.  

I guess he was in a hurry, because he proceeds to dump everything into a big aviator kit bag.  I mean he's just two-hand-shoveling it all in as fast as he can, MDI, a spool of det cord, small sheet charges, thermite grenades, C4 charges, all of it.  Oh yeah, the firing systems aren't protected.

Read that last part again.


Luckily, I was able to stop him before he really started piling all the charges in on top of the firing systems.

I took out my whole power plant on my second week on the job as a plant operator.

A mechanic wanted me to take out an air compressor so he could work on it. I had set this job up a dozen times before as a trainee, and it was a very simple task. I cruised down to the breaker room, and glanced up for the correct breaker, saw a tag labeled "Instrument AC yada, yada, yada...". Being I was in a hurry, I tripped that breaker, and rolled back into the air compressor room. I was puzzled as to why the compressors were all still running. Then the realization hit that somehow I had opened the wrong breaker. About that time, I heard all my alarms and horns start sounding off. The alarm horns sounded in my head like they were saying "DUMBASS .....DUMBASS.....DUMBASS". Those horns were loud too. Especially loud since all my noisy plant equipment was shutting down at the time.

Turns out in my haste, I didn't open the "Instrument Air Compressor" breaker....I had opened the "Instrument AC Transformer" breaker, killing AC power to all my instrumentation in the plant, thus tripping the plant. God, did I feel small. I tore myself up so bad over that. I just knew I was going to get fired. My boss came over, and when we got the unit started back up, he asked me what happened. I told him it was on me, and how I was in a hurry and opened the wrong breaker. He told me, "Well, I bet you never make that mistake again. You're beating yourself up way harder than I ever would about this. Shit happens, so learn from it and carry on. Be more careful, and don't do it again." That was the best boss I ever had.

Now, whenever I walk by that row of breakers, I just shake my head and laugh a little, and remember to be more aware of what I'm taking out.

Hey, a fellow Amada operator..



We called that "crossing the dies", and yes I am guilty of that also. General manager was a good guy and understood shit happens, as long as it wasn't continuously happening.  The machine I ran was an Amada 357 Vipros that was over 10 years old. Amada makes some damn fine machinery.





 

Bent the ejecter plate on a 50k $ plastic injection mold. Replaced the bushings and clamped the piss out of it to staighten my fuck up. It was in a 140 ton Battenfeld

Not my screw up, but a series of fuckups to learn from.

Worked for a .com. The .com laid off the lower level "sys admin" guy at a satellite office that housed an important server. The company had invested around $3 million in the server and it's data.

Soon the backups were failing, and no one was assigned to monitor it.

Eventually an errant developer accidentally the whole thing and there were no backups newer than 8 months old. About $2 million was lost in an instant.

Lessons:

1) always transition your layoffs (duh, this was managment hubris fault)
2) document retention practices, enterprise risk management style. (Assets = gold, income = silver)

;)

Hax

 

I was the supervisor on duty when we jacked a EMB145 (a airplane) into a dock.

My boss was pissed but I never got wrote up. Was about 50K in damage.
Pic of damage

I worked for a car dealership years ago reconditioning vehicles. I just finished washing a brand new truck in the automatic car wash and was in the process of having it blow-dried by the blowers when a salesman entered the wash behind me. When the wash started up, it slung dirt and water on my truck. I was irritated, since proper etiquette was to wait until the whole bay was clear, so I decided to shut the dryer off on the salesman. As I exited the vehicle, I apparently did not put the shifter into park. When I turn the selector switch off, I see something out of the corner of my eye, it is the 40K+ truck accelerating in reverse with the drivers door open! I dove for the brake pedal, but not before the door peeled forward against the support beam of the car wash. I ruined the door and even bent the rollcage. The problem was the truck was already sold and was to be delivered in under an hour. Luckily, we had another just like it on the lot.
I was told I would have to pay a $1000 deductible, but I never had to pay.
That is what I get for being spiteful.

As a apprentice Machine tool repairman I've luckily only had a few screw ups.

Was repairing a very large Blanchard grinder which consisted of removing the table and saddle, in the process of putting it back together I forgot to put the limit switches back on which controlled how far the table/saddle is able to go. While test running the machine the table/saddle overtraveled and was stuck at the end of the ways, luckily only damaging the metal guards. Took a good 45mins to unstick the machine

I also had a few near screw ups/embarrassing moments. Forgot to remove the not in use draw bar from a Bridgeport before running it, once I looked up I seen everyone looking at me with a face. Also forgot to put the drive belt in a Bridgeport, and realized I forgot about it after I tightened the last bolt. Another time I almost fucked up a ballscrew on a Mill when I was trying to remove the screw which would of cost us around $1,000 to replace and a few days of time that we didn't have.

Armada makes some damn huge machinery also, IIRC...  I have never seen one running, but I hear tales

I don't wanna be near one if it crashes...