We all make mistakes.
It's simply human nature.
But that doesn't mean we don't often find ourselves frustrated when other people make mistakes.
Particularly if these other people are our colleagues, resulting in having to clean up the mess they created.
Redditor xk543x was curious to hear about some of the worst, or most inane mistakes made by unreliable co-workers, leading them to ask:
"What's the dumbest mistake you've seen an incompetent co worker make?"
There's a reason we keep the boys away from the girls
"At a Petco all the Guinea pigs were in a big plexiglass enclosure with a center divider."
"Boys on one side and girls on the other."
"An employee decided that all the long haired Guinea pigs should be on one side and short haired on the other."
"It took forever to sort them out and all the females were pregnant."- PumpkinsDad
Dangerously negligent
"Social worker here."
"We’re supposed to see clients who live with families once a year."
"A mom of a kid kept calling her worker but got no answer."
"Mom called the on call worker who discovered the assigned worker had logged the visits in and made thorough notes."
"The mom said she never saw her in two years."
"This led to her whole caseload being audited and then they found she had logged a visit with a client who’d been dead for months."
"While being audited, her supervisor decided to do a surprise visit to the client she was supposed to see."
"She never showed up and logged in the visit the next day."- ShiroHachiRoku
Slow and steady... gets you fired
"Had a guy take a cover off the base of a radar unit which had like 40 bolts holding it on."
"Gave him a ratchet wrench to do it."
"Half hour later I go check on him, only had about 10 off. "
"Watched him a bit."
"He would take it off each time to move it for the next turn!
"Showed him how a ratchet works."
"Never assume people know stuff." - User Deleted
Sloth Dmv GIFGiphyOld Faithful!
"Tried to cool down hot oil, in a chute, all ready to be emptied, with a nice big bucket of water."
"I heard 'THOMAS NO' only to turn around and see a GEYSER of hot oil shooting towards the ceiling before it hit and splashed down around him."
"Nobody was hurt some f*cking how."
"The chute that the oil was in was on wheels and had a wooden handle, it absolutely didn’t need to be cooled lol."- Ohiolongboard
How to make a bad situation even worse
"I worked on a golf course during the summer."
"Area with lots of poison ivy."
"Two of my coworkers were instructed to weedy a river edge area."
"If we encounter poison ivy, we either stop what we are doing or go get full suit protection with respirators."
"These dumba**es were weed whacking in the thickest poison ivy I had ever seen."
"No protective suit or glasses or respirator."
"I roll up and notice what the hell they're doing and point out all the poison ivy everywhere."
"They were aerosolizing the oil."
"They both ended up in the hospital on steroid to prevent their death because of the oils they inhaled."- Onwisconsin42
"30 days has September..."
"The designer, creative director and head of production all missed that there was an eight day week on a calendar."
"We sent 10000 copies of a useless calendar to a client."
"Rightly so, they refused to pay for it."- atot806
animation domination calendar GIF by gifnewsGiphyIsn't that why they call it long division?
"Not a mistake necessarily, but I once witnessed our chief accounting officer, and our only accountant; it was a small company, type in values into two Excel cells, pull out a calculator, add the two numbers together in the calculator, and then type the answer in a third cell."
"She had apparently been doing this for years, with sheets consisting of thousands of rows."
"I explained how to use formulas and copy them but she apparently forgot because I saw her doing the same thing again months later."- zachm26
Isn't that what these pockets are for?
"When I worked construction, there was a guy who showed up with nothing in his tool belt except a small bag of peanuts in one pocket."
"He didn't stay around too long."- Incredible_mango
eat season 15 GIFGiphyThis is how much I care about my job.
"I used to work at a dealership."
"I was the guy who parked all the cars on the lot and made it look organized."
"I had access to every car on the lot, as long as the key for it was not lost."
"Attached to the dealership was a very small parking lot just big enough to hold about 5-6 cars with room to maneuver."
"As long as you knew what you were doing, you should be able to maneuver our CX-9, 3 row SUV, with relative ease in and out of its parking space even if there are a few extra cars in the lot, which happens from time to time."
"One day, towards nearing the end of my shift, a saleswoman went to borrow one of the test drive vehicles, a midsize sedan, for a reason I can’t remember."
"The job allows us to use just about any car to travel between lots, go for lunch, etc. but it is kind of encouraged to take a used car since it’s not as big of a deal if anything were to happen to them."
"Some time goes by and the saleswoman returns to the lot and attempts pull into the parking space."
"Virtually every dealership backs their cars into parking spaces so that the front of the car faces the public, this saleswoman did not do this."
"What’s more is that she turns too wide and scrapes the adjacent car and the damage is visible."
"She gets out of the car and walks inside like nothing happened."
"Normally, I’d be livid at the amount of extra work she just gave me, but seeing as I clocked out, I figured that was someone else’s problem to deal with before the dealership closed in 2 hours."
"Fast forward to the next day when i show up for work and I kid you not, the car is still there as she left it."
"I thought that was shocking until I realized that the saleswoman LEFT THE CAR ON the entire time."
"The real kicker is that I got replaced maybe a month or two after this happened."
TL;DR: Car Saleswoman crashes test drive car and leaves it as is for 12 hours.- SuccessfulRoad5574
car turn GIFGiphyHad he ever been in a kitchen before?
"Working in Hospitality, new worker around 23 yrs keeps to himself , but doesn't seem to understand how everything works."
"He's cooking in the kitchen and decided to grab a cooking tray from the oven without gloves and then burning his hands."
"He did these two more times, before eventually realizing hospitality not for him."- Lamoose2018
Never a dull moment...
"This will probably get buried but too good not to tell."
"When I did my internship at a hospital, one of the administrators was working her last week before her pension."
"In this last week she left candles on her desk burning after her shift and the whole wing burned down."
"Luckily nobody got hurt."
"Not a great way to end your career."- CalvinWeirFields
Let's hope he washed his hands again...
"I was a temp at a factory and we got a new batch of temps with some real dummies partway through the summer."
"My best exchange with one of said dummies came after he said he was confused by 'those fancy weirda** urinals in the bathroom'.”
“'What are you talking about?'”
“'I mean it’s like the communal birdbath thing and everyone pisses at the same time'."
"'It was weird man'.”
"Birdbath… the sink!?"
"'You pissed in the sink?'”
“'Ooooohhh, well that explains why that guy was washing his hands in it'.”- jmradus
Wash Hands Health GIFGiphyPump first, pay later... much later...
"A guy went to fill the work van up with the fuel card."
"We said just check they accept that card before you fill up."
"He went and asked if they took the card and they did so he filled up and drove off thinking all was good."
"Anyway police were called and he had to go back to pay."- Past-Squirrel8286
Oblivious arson?
"At a corner 24 hour fast food restaurant with an expensive cardboard box bundling machine."
"The machine was inside a chain link fence with the dumpsters, general garbage, cooking oil, etc."
"On truck day a new employee was tasked with taking half a semi’s worth of boxes out to the cardboard recycling machine."
"He was supposed to break the boxes down flat and slide them into a slot so that they would lay flat ready to be bundled up."
"Instead he forced opened the top of the machine and tossed the unflattened boxes in."
"The dumpster was quickly overflowing and he just kept tossing up boxes on top of the pile until there was a mountain of boxes covering everything."
"The fenced area was soon full and as it was just a few feet from the side wall of a fancy furniture showroom on one side and a 6 foot high privacy fence for a residential area behind garbage area the the boxes were then piled between the showroom and the wood fence as well."
"Seeing this manager sent the new guy back out to 'clean the boxes up' properly only to have to call the fire department a few minutes later."
"Yes the guy set fire to the pile."
"We had a spectacular grease fire, black smoke from the melting dumpster lids looked like burning tires."
"The area had to be evacuated, and the cross streets were closed for hours."
"The fire department was able to save the furniture store though its wall had heavy damage."
"New guy was arrested for arson."
"He said 'How was I supposed know that was not a burn pit'.- Crazy-Hippo6299
Fox Tv Fire GIF by Bob's BurgersGiphyExtra thrilling, thanks to incompetent employees
"I used to work as a zipline tour guide."
"Our weight limits were between 50lbs and 300lbs, but at 220lbs we switched you to a magnetically limited trolley to control your speed."
"I was working with a newer guide, who was currently sending people down one of the fastest lines, where I would catch and detach them at the bottom."
"On one of the last sends in the group, I notice that one of the customers (around 285lbs) was going way too fast."
"My coworker had put him on the wrong trolley."
"That man fully compressed the spring bank meant to slow down any larger riders, which usually compressed halfway at most, causing the spring to all detach from one another and sending the man a quarter of the way back up a 1500ft line."
"He eventually rolled back in and I apologized profusely and proceeded to cuss out my coworker over the radios."
"Eventually he sent down the next group, he sent a 60lb kid down on the mag trolley meant for 220+, instead of his 200lb self."
"This resulted in the kid stopping 200ft short and me having to climb out and kick him in."
"It was a miracle he didn't get fired after that, but he did go on to continue f*cking up, and continue staying employed."- UpstairsSilly1738
Maybe a little guidance and help was all it took to put these colleagues on a better path forward.
But one imagines the only path these less-than-star employees found themselves on was right out the door.
Do you ever wonder what it must've been like to experience major events throughout world history when reading about them in text books?
But if you take pause and actually think about it, we're living through many newsworthy current events that succeeding generations will be talking about long after we're gone.
Reading about them online or in newspapers is one thing. But seeing them happen unfold before our eyes is another.
Curious to hear from those who'll have anecdotes to tell in the future, Redditor "What is the most historically significant event you witnessed IN PERSON?"
People recall the natural disaster events they've witnessed.
Tremors
"1964 Good Friday Earthquake 9.2 Richter. Was a boy in Cordova, Alaska at the time."
– KitchenLab2536
"My father was skipper of the USCG cutter stationed there. He was inport, and when the quake struck shortly before 5:30pm, he and my mom gathered me and my three siblings on the front porch. At first, it felt like the house was crumbling at the foundation, but on the porch we could plainly see our whole world was shaking. I remember watching telephone poles swaying, and the wires snapping and crackling in the street. The quake lasted about five minutes initially. My dad got his ship underway to avoid the tidal wave which was sure to come. We had several aftershocks in the coming weeks, some of which were quite strong, though nowhere near as strong or as long as the quake itself. I was seven at the time."
– KitchenLab2536
Collapsing Freeway
"October 17th, 1989. I watched the 880 Nimitz freeway collapse during the San Francisco earthquake. The Honda in front of me had the upper deck crush her front-end engine compartment. The mother and her daughter were shaken up but completely fine."
"I was driving a convertible Triumph Spitfire, which was scratched up slightly from debris. However, I walked away unscathed. Aside from the fact I pissed my pants, which I didn't notice until much later."
– CatDaddyWhisper
Thar She Blows
"I sat on the roof of our house and watched Mt. St. Helens erupt less than 100 miles away."
– stinkykitty71
"This must have been fascinating and terryfing in equal measure. What a thing to witness."
– runrossyrun
"It was amazing! The ash that covered everything like snow was interesting to kid me, but less so to my parents."
– stinkykitty71
People recall seeing major catastrophes as a result of malfunctions or judgement errors.
Bomber Crash
"The b-52 crash that led to changing what large military aircraft are allowed to do for airshows."
"I didn't see the plane, but immediately saw the fireball. It was just a perfect, bright red turning to black mushroom cloud."
"Fairchild is a nuclear air base and there were a few minutes there where I was sure the world was about to end."
"A few years before a KC-135 doing the same thing crashed near the school while we were in class."
– goffstock
Tragic Takeoff
"I was standing on my front porch watching the launch of the Challenger."
– StarChaser_Tyger
"Was riding in my parents car to a basketball game in the next town over in north texas when we saw a shooting star and thought that was neat."
"It was the Columbia..."
– Misdirected_Colors
Demolition Gone Wrong
"The failed implosion of the Zip feed mill in Sioux Falls, SD in 2005."
"They hyped it up, sold tickets to it, had a big 'BOOM' marketing thing, and broadcast it live on TV."
"The explosives took out the main supports on the first floor, and the rest of the building above it just plopped down 10ft or so and came to a rest. It was a massive failure, and was a funny little blurb on news stations around the world that day. Definitely not major news, just the rest of the world taking 20 seconds to laugh at us."
"The building sat like that (the leaning tower of SuFu) for quite a while until they figured out how to safely demolish it."
"Here's a clip of the failed demolition."
– KitchenBandicoots
These well-known historical events were seen by very few who are alive today.
Historical Remnant
"The tumbling of the Wall in Germany… along with people selling bits and pieces of it on tables in lobby in front of commissary and px in the following weeks and months. I had picked up a chunk about the size of an oreo and kept it… has blue spray paint on the flat side. Wonder if anyone is buying them now?"
– SingedPenguin13
Major Upheaval
"I would have to say the LA riots. I lived about two blocks from where it started. I was on my way home from school and saw someone throw a brick through a window. I didn’t even wait. I just started running the whole way home."
– Scarlaymama0721
Day Of Infamy
"9/11, I could SMELL the collapse of the towers."
– go4tli
"A friend of mine was there. One day in the warehouse we worked in together there was an odd electrical burning smell. He stopped in his tracks and went 'this is what 9/11 smelled like.'"
– mantistoboggan287
I didn't physically witness the fall of the World Trade Center but I was living in New York City at the time.
However, I did see the smoke.
I was living up north in Washington Heights at the time and knowing what happened, uncertain of what was to come, and seeing the plumes of smoke from the attack site was the most ominous sight I've ever seen in my life to date.
Have you ever lived through a historic moment or witnessed something sure to be noted in history books? Let us know in the comments below.
