Let's be real, we've all broken rules at our place of employment at one point or another. Whether or not we've gotten caught, that's another story. Toeing the line with your job is not the smartest idea, but there are the rare occasions that we do, in fact, get away with it.
Sammy-J23 asked: What was a situation where you thought, "I'm going to be fired for sure" but it turned out completely fine?
A happy ending.
"A colleague who had just been told he was going to be made redundant sent out a f-you email to a wide slew of the customer base and staff then trashed our development AS/400 (yes, I'm an old guy). He did it by logging on remotely using my login details.
Two months of suspension, suspicion, investigation and me crapping myself until it was finally tracked it down to him. They apologized, gave me a pay rise and asked my not to seek recourse with him as it was in the hands of the police.
He and I discussed it about 2 years later. It was a short conversation."
Is this Flowers for Algernon?
"Worked as a Research Assistant while in college. My boss worked with mice brains and gave me a couple practice ones to learn how to slice and mount them onto microscope slides.
Eventually, she let me move onto the real thing. She literally said "this brain is really important, I've been working on experiments with this mouse for 6 months".
In my anxious state I dropped it down the drain with the water running... She was not happy in the slightest but didn't fire me at least."
Karma came to her.
"Kind of the opposite. I had booked a few "vacation days" to help my mom move to Florida. While in Florida, employer called me six days before I was scheduled to be home and said they needed me the next day, no exceptions. That was 1600 miles that they wanted me to drive nonstop for a 4 hour shift in the afternoon the next day.
I made the trip. I worked my shift. Then they fired me after my shift for no apparent reason (found out later that my boss did this on purpose to prove a point to some fresh blue-blood employees). I was livid, but there was nothing I could have done. However, the employer was a (now former) friend of my mom's and all of her retired Bridge-Club friends.
After the news got out that she had made me drive 24 hours at the drop of a hat simply to fire me (which incidentally cost my mom $500 in movers' fees to finish the move that I wasn't able to), she lost enough of her local patrons that she couldn't sustain the business and filed for bankruptcy less than a year later."
Bullet dodged.
"First day at my first job out of UNI: I pushed my code changes straight onto develop. I landed a great gig as a junior software developer at one of the very few studios in my city, and was loving it, but got distracted when pushing some code. Instead of my feature branch, develop suddenly had this untested bit of fresh graduate muck all over it.
I was freaking out thinking they were going to fire me and give me a fine or something, but they were really chill and understanding about it all. Never made another git mistake again though!"
We've all seen a teacher do this.
Giphy
"I was a teacher, accidentally said the f word in front of the students since they were provoking me. None of the students bothered reporting it to the principal. I felt like I was pretty lucky."
That's a forgiving boss.
"I had a bad jaw infection because of a tooth. The doctor put me on antibiotics and gave me tylenol with codeine. I took two before I went into work and brought the bottle with me.
Well after an hour the pain was still killing me so I took another two. Repeat every hour for 3 hours. Let's just say I could not stand up straight and was really out of it. Someone noticed me wobbling and got the boss. He came over and asked me if I was alright and what was wrong so I told him. He asked me where the bottle was and then took it and locked it in his desk drawer.
He walked back over to my work station with a chair and asked if I was okay to keep working. I told him I was so he set me in the chair and let me continue. Never said a word to me about it after and gave me the bottle back at the end of the day."
Oops.
"I let a guy walk out with about $50 worth of food because it was my second day and I had no idea how to ring up phone orders.
Another time my drawer came up $10 short. I still don't know what happened but I never heard anything about it after that day."
Nice cover.
Giphy
"Worked in the oil-field for a while.
One of the plant operators would sleep all day (for some reason) in his office chair, with his hands/head on the desk.
One day, some of the higher-ups walked into the room. I was pretty sure he was about to get fired.
Without skipping a beat, he said "In Jesus' name, amen" and then stood up to greet everybody. The boss nodded his approval and they all started talking about the plant.
The guy got caught sleeping on the job, and managed to look good doing it."
Speaking to the manager doesn't always work.
"I worked in a call centre for an internet provider and website host. I literally told one of our biggest customers (I believe it was actually the biggest, the dude had a website and 10 links with us) to find another provider, since he was being overbearing and even said it was generally better just to pressure us, the attendants, instead of sending their own technicians to solve internal problems.
Then, obviously, he said he wanted to talk with the manager, and I, very respectfully, denied this, since I was doing my part of the protocol. Then, he threatened to call the commercial sector and talk to their manager himself (a little context here: the commercial was crap. They're pretty much on the customer's side every single freaking time).
I thought it was the end for me... But here comes the plot twist.
The commercial indeed transferred the call to their manager, but he was busy and told them to just transfer to the C.E.O, and oh Lord, they actually did it.
The C.E.O himself told the guy to find another provider."
Yikes.
"I work at a radio station and one time accidentally deleted an entire commercial break and just played news room music on top of it and literally no one noticed."
Bad news, indeed.
Giphy
"I deleted a production database once. It was very bad news. The reason I didn't get fired was because the DBA involved should have checked the request with my boss first. I basically specified the wrong server (I was fairly new) and gave them the production instance rather than the dev instance (dev would have required no authorisation).
The good news is it was backed up of course.
I was praised for owning up straight away and procedures were changed so it wouldn't happen again.
Made me feel sick as hell though!"
That reply-all button is nothing but trouble.
"Was doing work for a difficult customer. Customer emailed several people within my company and theirs, about all the stuff that went wrong in their perception, how it was all my fault, etc. They were actually unreasonable, many things were not my fault, and some things were utter lies.
I did a reply-all and took out all the customer addresses from the "to:"-field, and gave my view on the whole situation to my colleagues (without getting nasty, I stayed professional), etc. Immediately got a call from my superior, yelling at me.
Apparently I forgot to check out the "cc:"-field as well, so my email went to some people of their company.
Got called into the boss's office the next day. Was sure that I would be in trouble. Luckily he wasn't upset at all, agreed that this customer were total a**holes, but I do have to be a bit more careful with the reply-all button.
Lesson well learnt. Always check where your email is going to. When typing a new email, enter the recipients after writing the email."
That's stressful.
"I used to work with older adults with mental challenges. We would do chores together and cook together, you know give them a safe home and help them live in it.
One day I was taking my client to the laundry mat in her complex. She was a bit unsteady on her feet so I told her to wait at the stairs as I took the laundry up then I would help her. She didn't listen and fell straight backwards on the first step cracking her head. There was a lot of blood.
Everything was ok and my bosses understood I tried my best to keep her safe. I was terrified though, head wounds bleed a lot."
$3.50 an hour would've been a sweet deal.
Giphy
"First week in on a business trip with my boss. At a hotel and she asks me to find out if we can use a private area for a conference call. I ask the front desk and the lady:
"We have a conference call we need to jump on. Is there a quiet space we can use?"
"Sure. We have conference rooms. How long would you need it?"
"Only a few hours."
"Sure. It's three fifty".
"Oh wow. Great. What if we used it the whole day?"
"Same price."
So we used that room for 2 days.
I'm checking out and notice a $900 charge. I, in my naivity, assumed she meant $3.50 per hour. No no. $350 per day. Plus $60 per day for water service. Plus tips and fees. The hotel rooms themselves werent even $300 a night.
I checked out at 4am so I couldn't talk to anyone. I tried calling before my flight to straighten it out but didn't get ahold of anyone. It was the only time I was on a plane that hit a lot of turbulence and thought "well maybe it's not so bad if we go down. Then I don't have to tell my boss."
It was fine in the end. We work for a multi-billion dollar company. But man oh man was I prepared to pay that out of my paycheck to keep my job."
Whoops.
"Accidentally broke an $1800 touch-screen POS terminal at the Home Depot I worked at. Even though I only cracked the glass, they had to replace the entire terminal.
Assistant store manager got super uppity and acted like I murdered his mother. I was young and he struck the fear of god into me. He had me quaking in my figurative boots.
The next day, the store manager called me into his office and I thought I was done for. He ended up laughing about it with me and said, "It's okay, it happens. It was $1800, but it happens." Could've been a LOT worse."