What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made at work? People are coming clean on Twitter and it’s both hilarious and comforting

We’ve all been there: despite our best efforts, and sometimes because of them, we’ve all made mistakes at work.

Maybe you were responsible for an unfortunate pricing error? Or you maybe you accidentally deleted 40,000 contacts from a marketing database, permanently?

For business owners, the consequences of making a mistake can be huge; we’re talking, affecting-the-future-viability-and-success-of-your-business huge. And they can often come with a big price tag.

Or, maybe you’re in the same boat as Bill Gates, and your mistake was missing a big business opportunity.

Whatever your error was, there’s bound to be feelings of regret. And you might tell yourself that no one, ever, in the history of the world, has made the same mistake as you. It makes getting back on your feet and back to work all that much harder.

So it can be helpful to know there are actually, in fact, plenty of people, all over the world, who have made as big of a mistake as you at work. And now, thanks to Twitter, we can find out what those mistakes are.

Last week, Twitter user Steve Doherty asked people to share their biggest on-the-job mistakes.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made at work? I once accidentally erased a section of the master tape for a Radio 4 Afternoon Play. It still haunts me.

— Steve Doherty (@SteveDoherty1) February 27, 2020

While many of the responses were laugh-out-loud funny, they were also deeply comforting. You are not alone and no one is perfect, certainly not at work.

21 years ago I reviewed a Meat Loaf gig for a newspaper without attending the gig (I was ill/an idiot). An hour after publication the paper called to inform me that the gig had, in fact, been cancelled. I was sacked. The Sun wrote a piece about it. The headline: “MEAT OAF”.

— Sarah Dempster (@Dempster2000) February 27, 2020

I’ve said on here before – years ago I left a cell in a spreadsheet empty instead of inserting a “1”. This led to eight million dollars being spent drilling an oil well in the North Sea that shouldn’t have been drilled.

— Count Mysterioso (@MysteriosoX) February 27, 2020

Many years ago when a #studentnurse, I worked on a care of the elderly ward. I tried to manage time better by filling a sink and putting all the patients false teeth in together to clean. I did a fabulous job cleaning them until I had to give them back to their right owners ????

— bex rippon (@bexrippon) February 28, 2020

You know when put something in a super safe place and forget where that super safe place was? I did that. With a client’s cheque for over €500k. Problem was, I forget where the super safe place was. I still don’t know. ????

— Dee (@gingerbreadmiss) February 27, 2020

Accidentally deleted an entire day’s worth of orders from the Debenhams website. So the money had been taken, but they had no idea who for or what for. Don’t let developers access live databases!

— some guy (@JamesMcCormack) February 27, 2020

I once emailed the CEO of a FTSE100 corporation to tell him I’d be home at seven, I’d pick up some pasta on the way, and that I loved him.

— Mike Maddox (@MikeMaddox10) February 27, 2020

I once tried to print a large document 180,000 times which lead to both me and the printers having a meltdown, it took IT hours to solve.

— Aletta ???? (@Lettybird) February 27, 2020

NOW READ: What I learnt after accidentally deleting 40,000 clients from my email database

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