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Mistakes at work

Title says it.

I clicked the wrong button on a state web site to file sales taxes and have to pay a $402 penalty.:mad:
Anyone else make these kinds of screw ups?

Back in the 90s I was working at Ogilvy & Mather in NYC. I was instant messaging (remember that) with a friend. I was telling my friend that “my boss (Gina) is a see you next Tuesday” except I mistakenly replied to one of her instant messages, not my friend. I didn’t even bother to wait, just grabbed my bag and left. It was very easy to land on your feet in NYC prior to 9/11. Had a better job in 48 hours and never looked back but did learn a lesson….slow down and remember what mama said…

Plenty of opportunities to make errors in my work. My clients make most of them. One recently paid a settlement one week late resulting in a $60k penalty. This happens a lot. Insurance companies fight over a few bucks and then end up throwing a ton of money away because of their errors.

$402? That’s cheap compared to the cost of an oilfield screw up. Add 2 zeros to the end for a minor screw up. And yes, I’ve had a few. All part of R&D and trying new things…

No monetary losses but several times over a 20 year period I managed to delete all of our students from our LMS/online courses

Easy enough to fix but kinda embarassing

see you next Tuesday...didn't know that one. Oh my do I have use for it....

Quote:

Originally Posted by ramonesfreak (Post 12096995)

I had used the actual word….didnt wanna do that here

Quote:

Originally Posted by id10t (Post 12097008)

No monetary losses but several times over a 20 year period I managed to delete all of our students from our LMS/online courses

Easy enough to fix but kinda embarassing

Scariest moment of my life was when I deleted a production database.

Thank heavens for "rollback".

Oh gosh, I have had some whoppers . Often , in my business, mistakes are ugly ones . Ive lunched a couple of motors over the years . Caught a car on fire, left a wheel or two loose .
Ive managed to never hurt anybody except myself and my check book

Back when I was in charge of label content for an OTC medication I missed a typo in the proof galley. It didn't create a regulatory situation nor did it require any level of notification to FDA but, I worked for a new exec at the time who used it in my next fit rep. It cost me $20,000 in bonuses. :mad:

Scrapped out a semi load or two of aluminum...

Really pi55ed some people off every now and them. Not intentionally.

Yep, but it fortunately never cost me money.

Hmm, deleted a VLAN with all of the corresponding up addresses out of a satellite system that provided data to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Fortunately it was about 2 am and I was able to fix it in less than an hour.
There have been a few other issues about the past 25 years in the IT business.

I only worked at Boeing in Charleston for a short time, but a coworker got a piece of plastic stuck between the upper center fuselage section and the wing box fuel tank. I heard it was not discovered till the plane was on the flightline and it was a $1 million repair.

I don’t think it was my fault, but my boss told me to order roof trusses for a house we were going to build. I soon left the company, and I heard later, they did not start the house, but the trusses showed up. That was a $40,000 mistake

When I was a young EE I did some calculations for transformer sizing at a new manufacturing facility based on equipment my employer was building. The numbers went to our customer, and then on to the local hydro supplier. There were some 'questions' as the hydro supplier thought the numbers were a bit high for the size of the facility, but it went ahead because my customer told them the numbers were calculated by an 'engineer'.

About two months later I realized I had missed a step. At one point I should have divided by the square root of three, and I did not. As a result, the transformer size was about 1.7x larger than needed. We were too far down the road to go back, so I kept my mouth shut and hoped no one would notice. This added costs to the electrical service were significant, six figures for sure.

About a month before the plant was to open, the work was transferred to a different facility 100 miles away, and my error was hidden forever. I believe the building that I mis-sized was never used by our customer, it was sold to a transmission manufacturer. I tell myself the huge power service available made the sale easy...

Sometimes you get lucky and your big errors stay hidden.

I made the same mistake three years in a row.
I failed to change an LLP to a single member LLC when I bought my partner out. Three years in a row I forgot to make the change, paid my taxes late (LLPs have to file in March, single member LLCs file in April) and had to pay $7xx in penalties each year.

We had a trivia question contest and I made the mistake of saying, "Anyone who answers this question gets a free subscription" when I meant to say, "The first one to correctly answer this question...." I had to give away about $2400 worth of magazine subscriptions to the people who responded.

I don't know if I was the one who made this mistake, proofing was supposed to be done by the proof reader, but as the boss it landed on me. We ran a promotion one year and gave a way a free T-shirt with each new subscription. The ad ran in our magazine, and the copy was supposed to say, "Free T-shirt with your new subscription." Some proofreader let the ad run without the "r" in "Shirt."

I've heard of a mall foundation pour being oriented in the wrong direction.

Quote:

Originally Posted by john70t (Post 12097471)

I've heard of a mall foundation pour being oriented in the wrong direction.

That sounds cheap, quick, and easy to fix.

Quote:

Originally Posted by peppy (Post 12096973)

Title says it.

I clicked the wrong button on a state web site to file sales taxes and have to pay a $402 penalty.:mad:
Anyone else make these kinds of screw ups?

Id be trying to fix that . No way Im giving those grifters a penny more than I owe them .

I have found a number to call that I can plead my case and maybe get my money back.
I really don't understand why you would have the option to file the return and not pay the amount owed.

Back in the olden days of film and Silver halide, I worked at a professional photo lab. The number one rule every employee is drilled over and over, NEVER open any door unless you are willing to bet your next paycheck that there is nothing on the other side that can be ruined by light.

Just a little bit of light from an open door can ruin thousand dollar roll of paper, or tens of thousands of dollars in customer film.

I ruined a box of 20x24 paper when I forgot to close the lid on the box properly. That was expensive for the company, but the worst was to ruin customer's film, especially a professional's weekend of work.

Not my error - but someone else's in the company. Business was manufacturing modems - you know - the 54k baud modems. Anyway - packaging was printed in China and in urgent cases- air freighted. Someone missed a typo and the word "Messages" became "Massages". Certainly couldn't release the new product with Massages on the front of the box!
Had to expedite the replacement packaging printing AND pay the air freight all over again. That was expensive!

Most recently thought I was emailing a colleague directly. Turned out to be the entire defense bar in our county. Fkcu. Wouldn't have been so bad but it dimed out someone that had done some shady stuff to both of us.

Also made the mistake of talking with a reporter last December after a client died in the county jail. Told him I was only giving him background. MFer quoted me. He is on the top of the dodo list.

Quote:

Originally Posted by john70t (Post 12097471)

I've heard of a mall foundation pour being oriented in the wrong direction.

Easy fix… Change the building from left hand to right hand. Or vice versa.

Installing an MRI, we had the magnet ramped and I was getting set up to perform SuperCon Shimming. That process makes the magnetic field Homogeneous which essentially means "make the field more smooth" by manipulating the several coil currents.

I was on top and began inserting the shim lead down into the vessel. I did not realize the vessel pressure had gone just a smidge below atmosphere and it pulled room temp air into the mix.

Heard an ever-so-slight air woosh and then the burst disk popped. Helium does not like being liquid and tries to be gas whenever it can. That exchange rate is roughly 800-1 meaning 1 liter of liquid becomes 800 liters of gas within seconds. I was sitting on about 2,000 liters of liquid.

**side note*** As soon as a magnet is physically put in place, we install the venting which vents to the outside. It's 12" diameter stainless steel the entire path.

The magnet quenched. "Oh s***" and the system began rumbling as the helium exited to outside. I scrambled down and met responders at the door stopping them from rushing in.

That one really sucked, but the convo with management was really great. A crucial step was not performed the day prior. Not my fault.

I still felt crappy, tho.

If that had been billable, it would have topped $100k without blinking.

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthewb0051 (Post 12097774)

Yikes. I sent an email to my old boss 4-5 years ago that "a 'customer' was doing XYZ, blah, blah, blah." It wasn't that bad, I didn't say the customer was a dumbaß or anything like that, but it certainly wasn't something that I would have said to the customer directly. But my boss forwarded the email thread to the customer who had scrolled down enough to see my statement and actually responded to it. It was a learning moment. Don't send anything in email that you don't want potentially anyone else to see even if you think the audience is "safe."
Another time years ago, I wanted to gripe about a coworker and chatted my gripe to another coworker, except that I chatted it to the coworker that I was griping about.
Fortunately, in both cases, the language was matter of fact, not particularly inflammatory, and in both cases, while I'd have preferred to NOT have my statements seen by the folks they were seen by, I was comfortable standing behind both statements if push came to shove.

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthewb0051 (Post 12097779)

Also made the mistake of talking with a reporter last December after a client died in the county jail. Told him I was only giving him background. MFer quoted me. He is on the top of the dodo list.

Yikes! Never trust the media!

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcwade (Post 12097863)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1695852793.JPG

Not too bad. Just grab 3-4 guys and pick up the backend and swing it over.. :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by DonDavis (Post 12097841)

Installing an MRI, we had the magnet ramped and I was getting set up to perform SuperCon Shimming. That process makes the magnetic field Homogeneous which essentially means "make the field more smooth" by manipulating the several coil currents.

I was on top and began inserting the shim lead down into the vessel. I did not realize the vessel pressure had gone just a smidge below atmosphere and it pulled room temp air into the mix.

Heard an ever-so-slight air woosh and then the burst disk popped. Helium does not like being liquid and tries to be gas whenever it can. That exchange rate is roughly 800-1 meaning 1 liter of liquid becomes 800 liters of gas within seconds. I was sitting on about 2,000 liters of liquid.

**side note*** As soon as a magnet is physically put in place, we install the venting which vents to the outside. It's 12" diameter stainless steel the entire path.

The magnet quenched. "Oh s***" and the system began rumbling as the helium exited to outside. I scrambled down and met responders at the door stopping them from rushing in.

That one really sucked, but the convo with management was really great. A crucial step was not performed the day prior. Not my fault.

I still felt crappy, tho.

If that had been billable, it would have topped $100k without blinking.

Yikes! But thank goodness for small miracles!

In a couple of the situations that I was party to, I didn't create the failure. The failure was a pre-existing bad/wrong situation that was waiting for a trigger. I just happened to be the trigger. So I didn't cause a problem, I just exposed a pre-existing problem.

In the way back days of networking, you'd have a circuit to connect 2 locations, but to save cost, rather than have 2 circuits, you'd have 1 circuit and the ability to dial a phone line and use that dial up in case the main circuit went down. I know of one instance where a guy was fired because he'd made a mistake configuring the dial up circuit which caused an enormous telephone bill, I think in the thousands or possibly even 5 digits. I have actually seen a phone bill that on printer paper was probably 3-4" thick because of that same sort of issue.

So often at work after an incident, mgmt is out looking for someone to place blame on. And yes, there's often a final triggering event that "causes" an incident, but in complex systems, there's usually a perfect storm of issues and failures before an ultimate failure, so there really is no single person that was the "root cause". The real root cause is more like - system A was in a bad state, system B had an error condition, system C had been disabled, and finally, Bob hit the button in system D that caused the whole thing to come crashing down. But if the first 3 conditions in systems A, B, and C hadn't existed, then Bob hitting the button wouldn't have been a problem or would have been a much different, smaller (non-catastrophic) issue.

https://how.complexsystems.fail/
(note, the following is not the full text of the link, but is excerpts of each of the points)

Quote:

How Complex Systems Fail

(Being a Short Treatise on the Nature of Failure; How Failure is Evaluated; How Failure is Attributed to Proximate Cause; and the Resulting New Understanding of Patient Safety)
Richard I. Cook, MD
Cognitive Technologies Labratory
University of Chicago

1 Complex systems are intrinsically hazardous systems.
All of the interesting systems (e.g. transportation, healthcare, power generation) are inherently and unavoidably hazardous by the own nature.

2 Complex systems are heavily and successfully defended against failure
The high consequences of failure lead over time to the construction of multiple layers of defense against failure.

3 Catastrophe requires multiple failures – single point failures are not enough.
The array of defenses works. System operations are generally successful. Overt catastrophic failure occurs when small, apparently innocuous failures join to create opportunity for a systemic accident.

4 Complex systems contain changing mixtures of failures latent within them.
The complexity of these systems makes it impossible for them to run without multiple flaws being present.

5 Complex systems run in degraded mode.
A corollary to the preceding point is that complex systems run as broken systems. The system continues to function because it contains so many redundancies and because people can make it function, despite the presence of many flaws.

6 Catastrophe is always just around the corner.
Complex systems possess potential for catastrophic failure.

7 Post-accident attribution to a ‘root cause’ is fundamentally wrong.
Because overt failure requires multiple faults, there is no isolated ‘cause’ of an accident. There are multiple contributors to accidents. Each of these is necessarily insufficient in itself to create an accident. Only jointly are these causes sufficient to create an accident.

8 Hindsight biases post-accident assessments of human performance.
Knowledge of the outcome makes it seem that events leading to the outcome should have appeared more salient to practitioners at the time than was actually the case.

9 Human operators have dual roles: as producers & as defenders against failure.
The system practitioners operate the system in order to produce its desired product and also work to forestall accidents.

10 All practitioner actions are gambles.
After accidents, the overt failure often appears to have been inevitable and the practitioner’s actions as blunders or deliberate willful disregard of certain impending failure.

11 Actions at the sharp end resolve all ambiguity.
Organizations are ambiguous, often intentionally, about the relationship between production targets, efficient use of resources, economy and costs of operations, and acceptable risks of low and high consequence accidents.

12 Human practitioners are the adaptable element of complex systems.
Practitioners and first line management actively adapt the system to maximize production and minimize accidents.

13 Human expertise in complex systems is constantly changing
Complex systems require substantial human expertise in their operation and management.

14 Change introduces new forms of failure.
The low rate of overt accidents in reliable systems may encourage changes, especially the use of new technology, to decrease the number of low consequence but high frequency failures. These changes maybe actually create opportunities for new, low frequency but high consequence failures.

15 Views of ‘cause’ limit the effectiveness of defenses against future events.
Post-accident remedies for “human error” are usually predicated on obstructing activities that can “cause” accidents.

16 Safety is a characteristic of systems and not of their components
Safety is an emergent property of systems; it does not reside in a person, device or department of an organization or system.

17 People continuously create safety.
Failure free operations are the result of activities of people who work to keep the system within the boundaries of tolerable performance.

18 Failure free operations require experience with failure.
Recognizing hazard and successfully manipulating system operations to remain inside the tolerable performance boundaries requires intimate contact with failure.

Glad I'm retired and don't have to worry about this kind of stuff anymore.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1695875277.JPG

All the time and I think I remember everyone of them even as I forget more and more of the good things I accomplish. I would like to think my profit to loss ratio is pretty high though.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1695922284.jpg

This is from today's newspaper. Someone made a very expensive mistake. A contractor was preparing the site for a shopping center and they struck a large diameter crude oil pipeline. The shut off valve was a ways away, and 88,000 gallons of crude spewed out. It looked like an old time gusher for a while. It was spewing many feet into the air.

The good thing is the heavy equipment crew that caused it, started building temporary dikes to contain the mess. The contractor is 100% responsible for the cleanup, and the loss of oil. I hope is insurance is paid up, and has good limits.

More important, I am glad I am not responsible for that whoops.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera (Post 12098397)

Someone paid the ultimate price for this one.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/texas-gas-explosion-leaves-one-dead-20100608-xr8a.html

Quote:

A work crew has ruptured a high-pressure natural gas pipeline, triggering an explosion and massive fireball that left one person dead and at least seven more injured.

Cleburne Fire Chief Clint Ishmael said all 13 workers on the crew at the site when the blast took place were accounted for and that one was dead, CNN reported on Monday.
This aerial photo shows the wide area of land affected by the natural gas line explosion in Cleburn.

This aerial photo shows the wide area of land affected by the natural gas line explosion in Cleburn.Credit: AP

The blast occurred about 2.30pm local time on Monday afternoon about five kilometres south of Pecan Plantation, a 5000-resident gated community in nearby Hood County.

Officials said the fire, with flames shooting about 200 metres skyward, raged for about two hours.
Flames shoot into the air after a natural gas line exploded in Cleburne.

Flames shoot into the air after a natural gas line exploded in Cleburne.Credit: AP

The body of a man was found about 200 metres from the blast site about 7.45pm local time, Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford said.

Authorities said workers with C&H Power Line Construction Services of Dewey, Oklahoma, were boring a hole for a power line pole when an auger hit a 36-inch natural gas transmission line.

https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.town...size=400%2C266

I was in my 20's, working at a Home Improvement shop,, carpet, paint, and such.

Driving a forklift, hit the brakes too hard and spilled 35 gallons of latex paint in the parking lot.........

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rusty Heap (Post 12098505)

I was in my 20's, working at a Home Improvement shop,, carpet, paint, and such.

Driving a forklift, hit the brakes too hard and spilled 35 gallons of latex paint in the parking lot.........

I worked at a CO-OP one summer with wife's cousin. After I left the job and moved on... one particular day the cousin was loading feed bags on a truck via fork lift. In a pure genius move, cousin backed the fork lift right off the loading dock (about 5 feet above the parking lot. Luckily he was not hurt.