Just dropped a clanger at work
Discussion
To cut a long story short I have just screwed up majorly whilst pricing two customers on a huge project and the one that we are meant to be supporting has wiped the floor with me.
So here I am with my tail between my legs feeling a bit of a twit and it got me wondering what najor clangers you guys have dropped at work?
I used to work at HSBC and managed to lose a Corus salary cheque meaning that 60 of their guys didn't get paid on the Friday! The cheque was for something like £35k and it never did turn up!
Oh dear, make me feel better, quickly!
So here I am with my tail between my legs feeling a bit of a twit and it got me wondering what najor clangers you guys have dropped at work?
I used to work at HSBC and managed to lose a Corus salary cheque meaning that 60 of their guys didn't get paid on the Friday! The cheque was for something like £35k and it never did turn up!
Oh dear, make me feel better, quickly!
Edited by Pferdestarke on Thursday 14th January 10:20
Many years ago i was working on some urgent diving umbilicals which consisted of two hoses and an electrical cable layed up into a single cable.
I dropped a gas torch onto the umbilical and managed to burn a hole in one of the hoses. In a panic i tried to repair, ie bodge, the hole with a hot screwdriver. My mate wondered over and said "i think that's the diver's airline".
Cue a fess up to my boss who had to drive that night 200 miles to get the cable company to replace the hose as it was urgent.
Took a while to live that one down!
I dropped a gas torch onto the umbilical and managed to burn a hole in one of the hoses. In a panic i tried to repair, ie bodge, the hole with a hot screwdriver. My mate wondered over and said "i think that's the diver's airline".
Cue a fess up to my boss who had to drive that night 200 miles to get the cable company to replace the hose as it was urgent.
Took a while to live that one down!
When I first got into IT I was bored on night shift and decided to tidy up the server room. This involved pulling out all the cat 5 and re-routing it to tidy it up, now I was careful and only pulled out one at a time so that I knew where they all went.......
Firewalls tend to drop VPN tunnels when they are unplugged
Firewalls tend to drop VPN tunnels when they are unplugged

<Engage geek mode>
Once managed to not include a 'WHERE' statement on a SQL UPDATE command.
Thousands of rows later I was dropping considerable bricks. Fortunately the data could be recovered not from a backup but thanks to somewhat duplicated data in another table.
Thank goodness for innefficient database design
<disengage>
Once managed to not include a 'WHERE' statement on a SQL UPDATE command.
Thousands of rows later I was dropping considerable bricks. Fortunately the data could be recovered not from a backup but thanks to somewhat duplicated data in another table.
Thank goodness for innefficient database design

<disengage>
once worked for a large publisher as an ad sales exec..
boss was out and we were pi$$ing about with mute buttons on the phones when customers called in....
"absolutely no problem" (hit mute) "d1ckhead"
all in tears laughing at how clever we were...
our biggest client calls in from a large ad agency.., I answer......
"yes no problem janet" (mute) "you fat scottish c*nt"
all I hear is a sharp intake of breath followed by "I BEG YOUR PARDON!!!!???"
I panicked and hung up..
looked over at boss's office to see his phone light up, ran the length of the room, picked up (before his seccy did)and pretended to be him (bear in mind at this point it could have been his wife!)
it was indeed the scottish lady.... I listened to what she said.. apologised.. told her it was someone else and that I'd conduct a thorough investigation. I left about a month later
boss was out and we were pi$$ing about with mute buttons on the phones when customers called in....
"absolutely no problem" (hit mute) "d1ckhead"
all in tears laughing at how clever we were...
our biggest client calls in from a large ad agency.., I answer......
"yes no problem janet" (mute) "you fat scottish c*nt"
all I hear is a sharp intake of breath followed by "I BEG YOUR PARDON!!!!???"
I panicked and hung up..
looked over at boss's office to see his phone light up, ran the length of the room, picked up (before his seccy did)and pretended to be him (bear in mind at this point it could have been his wife!)
it was indeed the scottish lady.... I listened to what she said.. apologised.. told her it was someone else and that I'd conduct a thorough investigation. I left about a month later

I've done the deletion of the root of my hard disk (at a customer's site).
I also accidentally sent some licences for our software to a customer's competitor (who were also one of our customers - the guy had the same first name).
I did manage to get someone to erase their database, but they jumped the gun while I was telling them what SQL they needed to do (I was telling them a "DELETE FROM WHERE" clause, and they decided to run the query before I'd said the "WHERE" bit).
My underling managed to drop our company off the internet for 2.5 days when he did a router upgrade. I wasn't very popular for a bit...
I also accidentally sent some licences for our software to a customer's competitor (who were also one of our customers - the guy had the same first name).
I did manage to get someone to erase their database, but they jumped the gun while I was telling them what SQL they needed to do (I was telling them a "DELETE FROM WHERE" clause, and they decided to run the query before I'd said the "WHERE" bit).
My underling managed to drop our company off the internet for 2.5 days when he did a router upgrade. I wasn't very popular for a bit...
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ked up big time at work, and so thought it would be a good idea to browse Pistonheads.