Boy, ever had a big mistake at work?

Mostly just need to vent. I had a big project dropped in my lap, and I dropped the ball. I thought it was going to be easier than it turned out to be. My boss said, "yeah, you made a mistake, but this was also a massive project that didn't go through the proper channels"

I just took it on because I figured "No big deal, I can handle it." I was incorrect in my assessment. It turned out to be a much larger project than I had anticipated. 
 

Yup, server migration for a large account. Was told to handle Outlook backup personally for VPs and above. The VP that was in our office had her assistant head me off at the pass, assistant said she would take care of it. I was overloaded so I agreed. Flash to post-migration and surprise, surprise, assistant didn't back any of the emails up.  It became a he said/she said thing and they gently suggested I should resign. I was 18 at the time so I took it as a sign to go back to college, which I did!

Well, your boss is behind you, it wasn't well represented and he understands.  Trust me, that's WAAAY better than a big project with a lot of eyes on, and you cut the thing in half.

z31maniac said:

I just took it on because I figured "No big deal, I can handle it." I was incorrect in my assessment. It turned out to be a much larger project than I had anticipated. 

I am so bad at saying that. Especially since after 22+ years of usually working solo, I am not the best when it comes to delegating tasks.  Granted, it doesn't help that I'm often put in positions where I have to work solo, so it becomes an endless cycle.  I can't wait to retire...

Calteg, but I bet your lessoned-learn there was to send an email documentation of the next conversation like that: "I spoke with Y and she will be taking care of migrating the emails of VP "X".  Thank you to Y for your assistance!" ...and CC half the effing company... 

Usually my work mistake is largely connected to me working at a place I actively dislike and shouldn't have joined in the first place.  Sadly this has happened more than once.

I was careless with a forklift and punctured a vessel which caused a hazardous material to be spilled in an area that lacked containment. 
 

Cleanup cost $350,000

914Driver said:

Well, your boss is behind you, it wasn't well represented and he understands.  Trust me, that's WAAAY better than a big project with a lot of eyes on, and you cut the thing in half.

Thanks, that helps me feel a bit better.

We had a long meeting this afternoon and he basically just said, "It is what it is, we will get it handled." It's good to have the people higher up in your corner. 

Yes. I've made some mistakes that have cost over $100k, at least on paper. I made a decision based on the facts I had - usually my decisions like that led us to an average of $20k in our favor. I had a few that I just missed. Luckily my management team knew there would be some losses with the process we had in place. But those misses/mistakes came with the territory, there was no way realistic way to avoid them.

The ones that would and do continue to bother me are of a different nature, probably closer to what you're describing here.

I am extremely good at procrastinating and pushing things off to the last minute. Then I can work extremely quickly and efficiently with good output. Sometimes it means staying up to 3AM to finish it, but I almost always am able to finish it on time. But sometimes I don't. Sometimes I miss the deadlines because of that. I will sometimes just have a completely wrong idea of how much time/effort it will take, or how much input I'll need from others to be able to get the task done. 

The concerning thing was that it has been happening much more frequently over the last 3 years. And now I have an answer of why: I was diagnosed with ADHD 4 months ago. I was able to mask it extremely well, until ptsd+parenthood+pandemic meant I couldn't juggle everything like I used to. Thankfully, Adderall has been extremely helpful for me to not put things off to the last minute. When I had to go without it for about a month due to insurance issues and a national shortage, sure enough, I had started to put myself in a hole and started to miss deadlines and misplace notes... Got back on it and I can function at a high level again. I legitimately don't know how I have had as successful a career as I have without it.

914Driver said:

Well, your boss is behind you, it wasn't well represented and he understands.  Trust me, that's WAAAY better than a big project with a lot of eyes on, and you cut the thing in half.

This has a lot of eyes on it. It's a huge feature for our stuff going forward, I just should have asked for help earlier vs thinking I could handle everything. Sometimes you think you can take on more than you think you can.

z31maniac said:

914Driver said:

Well, your boss is behind you, it wasn't well represented and he understands.  Trust me, that's WAAAY better than a big project with a lot of eyes on, and you cut the thing in half.

This has a lot of eyes on it. It's a huge feature for our stuff going forward, I just should have asked for help earlier vs thinking I could handle everything. Sometimes you think you can take on more than you think you can.

Delegation and asking for help are some of the hardest things for me to do. 

In reply to mtn :

I don't have $$$ amounts, it's more not having all the doc ready for a big feature. This is the first time in my career as a TW, 16+ years I've ever messed up and missed a soft deadline. 

In reply to z31maniac :

You'll be fine then. Feels bad. Most people won't notice and will forget about it in a week, if that long. 

Not... yet.

Once I quoted and won $1,000,000 of stainless steel metal hose assemblies for a large project at my favorite locomotive manufacturer.  I sat down with our team and everyone reviewed the quotation and said to go get the order.  

I did get the order and I realized that I had underestimated the welders  QC team and companies skill level.  We bombed and the stress I dealt with was too much.  I made the highest commission of my life that year but I lost a lot of sleep.  

Here's a general idea.

A few, most expensive was probably a call routing mistake that cost a small business close to $1k in avoidable long distance fees Another one was when a change on a managed web host silently broke a signup page and it wasn't caught for a day or two, which eventually led to a few high rollers going full-Karen on some coworkers at an expo I also briefly worked at a place where a habit I'd developed that was good at my previous job - dropping what I was working on to tend to any new high-priority issues coworkers brought to me - turned out to be a very bad habit at the new job.

pres589 (djronnebaum) said:

Usually my work mistake is largely connected to me working at a place I actively dislike and shouldn't have joined in the first place.  Sadly this has happened more than once.

Think I've done one of these too...

pres589 (djronnebaum) said:

Usually my work mistake is largely connected to me working at a place I actively dislike and shouldn't have joined in the first place.  Sadly this has happened more than once.

Me too! Dealing with the wrong dept for 3 straight years now. Burned out and sick of it. Still no end in sight. I really should leave. I don't get paid enough for covering for someone else on a daily basis. 

Yes.

I retired from a career as a firefighter/paramedic. This particular situation I'm thinking of was way worse than most workplace mistakes.

I worked at a welding shop in Colorado, we scored a nice red iron construction job. The day of install, it was all hands on deck at the jobsite. Crane was rented, pieces were loaded. We were all set to bang it out. My job was to bring up the rear with truck and trailer, with a load of steel up high on racks 6' or so above the trailer. Kind of like those racks you sometimes see above truck beds that allow long stuff to ride above the cab. Leaving the shop, I must have accelerated too hard, because the rack ripped off the back of the trailer, spreading columns and I beams all across two lanes of a busy split highway. 

I was close enough to the shop that I got a forklift, and started re-loading as traffic backed up, and the adrenaline pulsed. Meanwhile, everyone at the jobsite is wondering where TF I am. Luckily, a friend of the boss' shows up to help me, and we get a lane clear.  Cell phones were not entirely commonplace at this point, but I think maybe the secretary called the boss, and a team came back to help (the job site was only 10 or 15 miles away). We got it all reloaded, installed on the job, and returned home that day, but I got a ticket for "loosing my load", and the trailer saw some serious reinforcement on its rebuild.

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) :

Damn! Thats a rough day!

mtn said:

 

I am extremely good at procrastinating and pushing things off to the last minute. Then I can work extremely quickly and efficiently with good output. Sometimes it means staying up to 3AM to finish it, but I almost always am able to finish it on time. But sometimes I don't. Sometimes I miss the deadlines because of that. I will sometimes just have a completely wrong idea of how much time/effort it will take, or how much input I'll need from others to be able to get the task done. 

The concerning thing was that it has been happening much more frequently over the last 3 years. And now I have an answer of why: I was diagnosed with ADHD 4 months ago...

This is me, and ditto I was a mess but able to push through it right up until I wasn't with the stress of family, work, etc. Looked for some help after a come to jesus moment and got diagnosed after a few sessions. I haven't made the jump to meds, trying to do as much as I can with diet, exercise and focusing more on what I'm interested in. Will see how it goes.

It's been almost 30 years since my last big mistake at work.

Cousin_Eddie (Forum Supporter) said:

Yes.

I retired from a career as a firefighter/paramedic. This particular situation I'm thinking of was way worse than most workplace mistakes.

In my position mistakes usually just cost money - more often from simple omissions rather than errors, so it's usually money the client was going to have to spend anyway, it just ends up being more since it was not in the original contract bid. Mistakes that are life-threatening are fairly rare. 

I can only imagine the stress of knowing if you berk up, someone may die - such in the case of healthcare workers and first-responders.

Or in active military leadership, where your decisions will with 100% certainty cause casualties on one or usually both sides. 

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

Cousin_Eddie (Forum Supporter) said:

Yes.

I retired from a career as a firefighter/paramedic. This particular situation I'm thinking of was way worse than most workplace mistakes.

In my position mistakes usually just cost money - more often from simple omissions rather than errors, so it's usually money the client was going to have to spend anyway, it just ends up being more since it was not in the original contract bid. Mistakes that are life-threatening are fairly rare. 

I can only imagine the stress of knowing if you berk up, someone may die - such in the case of healthcare workers and first-responders.

Or in active military leadership, where your decisions will with 100% certainty cause casualties on one or usually both sides. 

At my last job we got a report of an HTML coding error that resulted in people getting unnecessary chest X-rays Too Therac-25ish for my liking...

Screwed up a load shed sequence for a hospital once. Mistake was found when the hospital lost power due to a truck driving through a substation. Generators kicked on and synced like they should, automatic transfer switches worked like they should then one generator decided to E36 M3 the bed. Remaining generators couldn't handle the full load. That's where my load shed design came into play. It turns out i miscalculated a load and caused  half of the active ORs to lose power. Not a great day but nobody died. I had  to answer some very serious questions though. 

We made some oil hoses for the V16 locomotive engine.  On a Saturday our welder welded a flange to a barbed hose nipple then instantly quenched the assembly instantly hairline cracking the welds. 

Assembly never pressure tested the assemblies after crimping the hoses (standard). In fact they never put a caliper on the ferrule to see if they crimped it correctly (they didn't).

The QC guy never looked at the welds or inspected anything.  He just shipped them out and surprisingly they leaked oil and a few ends blew out. 

This brought a dozen customer QC guys to our place and life sucked for 6 months.  My guess is it cost us a $250,000 in extra work and credits. 

As we were an ISO9001 shop it put a spotlight on our lack of a QC and procedure program.