What's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done on the job?

Since we have all had stupid bosses.....

Sure, we've all had stupid bosses... until we become the boss. Then we're the smartest guy in the room.
Tell me I'm lying.

didn't notice it was tripped and called the shop foreman over to report that the machine broke. He looked at it, flipped the switch, accused me of doing it intentionally and walked away.

That was my summer job working for the defense manufacturer...I made screws. To be precise I passivated screw blanks between heading and threading. Sounds cooler than it is, passivation means "wash in dish soap in a centrifuge" basically.

Working in a state run facility. Got the shits. I have a bit of a phobia about using public bathrooms at these places I work. So I found what I thought was "safe" one on an unused ward. After blowing it up for what seemed like forever, I finished and walked out. Right into a group of nurses having conference. Musta been 30 of em.

I put my head down and fast tracked it outta there. My face was red as hell. I don't wanna think of the sounds or smells they may have encountered. So embarrassing. Even as I type I'm wincing.

Fajita Grill nachos. Evil made deliciously edible. I still succumb to temptation and treat myself to it.

If you mean strictly job stuff. Well then, I do shit all the time. From leaving equipment plugged in when removing power supply, to playing with an officers metal detector & accidentally wanding our computer. I'm full of dumb sometimes. But my above story is the one that sticks out

We had no guest that day and I was in the middle of finales.

Boss said for me to just set back, the show was so easy it could produce it self.

Well, I fell asleep on the couch in the interview area while looking at the guest list for the next week. While I was pasted out, the crew had some fun. They had found a prop teddy bear and a blanket. Then as we went to commercial they took a shot of me and captioned it. "Shhhh! College kid studying for finals! We'll be right back!"

Lesson learned, NEVER go to sleep in a station full of jokers!

P.S. I have hunted through YouTube, THANK GOD no sign of it!

I was sent out as the crew chief with a brand new principal investigator (PI) with a fresh master's to show him the ropes. One of his responsibilities was to do the background research to identify known (recorded) sites (like burial mounds) before we went in the field. I was out running another job while he did that. Long story short, I got preoccupied recording some stuff with the GPS, he was off doing who knows what, and my crew ran a transect of shovel tests right across a burial mound that I had not recognized, but was recorded.

In the end, I had to go explain/apologize to a inquiry by representatives of several tribes (Iowa) along with our project manager. The new PI quit (taking his office product with him, such as it was) rather than face the music. We ended up having to undergo retraining on the identification of mounds, but really it wasn't that bad, as they respected our forthrightness and acceptance of culpability. I don't think the PI had much of a career, though. Maybe he went back for a doctorate.

Oh, we did not disturb any human remains that we could identify. So that was good...

he had a bad habit of standing behind you, and peering down into your bra

i stood up suddenly, and ka-pow...he never did do that again

she said the baby was four months old .

I was trying to print a calculation book that was like 400+ pages and the copier auto feeder kept eating my pages.

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I had a discussion with my new boss about one of the welfare workers who had given me a hard time for years - and used the "B" word.

Unbeknownst to me she was the wife of a co-worker, which my boss informed me of, and apparently the boss told the co-worker of the discussion.

Next day at coffee break, the co-worker looked at me and said "I hear you don't like my wife".

To this day, I don't remember exactly what I responded, but he didn't beat the crap out of me (he was more than capable) - so I guess my response was civil enough.

He never spoke of it afterwards, and we worked together without incident for the rest of my employment there.

But YEAH - That was embarrassing

CC

in front of everybody. i bounced right back up and hustled out for a smoke in case i needed to cry. some of my employees still give me a hard time about it, but i rib myself about it, so it's all good fun.

At one job, I was having a lot of stress, so at lunchtime one day I went out for a lesson in progressive relaxation and meditation.

When I got back to work, I was so relaxed and uncoordinated that I ended up flushing my sunglasses down the toilet in the ladies room. Had to call our janitor and explain to him what happened. He somehow managed to get them out and kindly asked me if I wanted them back. Uhhhh....no.


At another job, it wasn't what I did, but what someone else did...the boss was out of the office for a bit one day, so there were only the bookkeeper and myself there at lunchtime. The UPS driver showed up and asked if he could use our bathroom (the only one we had) so we figured he's going to take a pee and leave.

NO!

He had a nasty case of diarrhea and stunk up the bathroom and the inner office and then the smell drifted out to the area where the bookkeeper and I were. The bookkeeper left after lunch, and I was there alone when the boss came back and, smelling the disgusting stench, assumed I had done it. Of course, I couldn't tell him that the UPS guy was responsible because he wouldn't have liked that we let someone else use the bathroom.

sigh...

.... I wore mismatched shoes (same style pumps, just different colors).

Also in the good old days before firewalls, was chatting with a gent on Yahoo Messenger using my (rather racy) screen name, got an IM from a co-worker and forgot to flip back to my real name when I replied to her.

Bent over to pick up a box and the back of my pants ripped all the way from stem to stern.

Luckily it was a small shop with only two other employees and the boss just said go home and change. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what he said - it was hard to understand him through the laughing.



Not sure if that beats the time I drove off from the gas pump with the pump nozzle still in the tank. In the company van.

I had the care of two elderly patients in one hospital room. Couldn't figure out why neither of their dentures fit until I realized I had switched them. Doh.

I was a maid at a hotel. Our boss insisted we come in a 7 am, even though we were the weekend crew and people checked out later on the weekends. For the first few hours, we had hardly any rooms to clean, so we'd go around knocking on doors to see if anyone who hadn't marked 'check out' had left (it usually happened that half of the people would leave without officially 'checking out' on our papers). Our supervisor hated us waiting around for rooms to check out, so we had to be proactive and look busy. So stupid, I know, I told them how dumb this is and how it would be so much easier if we just started work at 9 am instead of 7 am. I was just a dumb teenage maid, what did I know?

So, my partner and I (We worked in pairs) listened at the door of this one room that was between 2 check outs. We didn't hear a tv. We didn't hear a shower. We didn't hear any banging around. So we knocked and loudly bellowed, "HOUSEKEEPING!". We waited a few seconds. Knocked and bellowed again. Nothing. One last time, "Houuuuuusekeeeeepiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnng!!!!!!"

Nothing. So, I turned the key and opened the door ever so slowly. I peeked around the corner. Nobody there. I looked the other way. Coast was clear. I motioned to my partner to come on in, looked like the room was empty. So we flung the door open and walked in. Just then a guy who was butt naked came around the corner. OMG! We got out of that room SO fast. Of course being teens we were SO embarrassed but laughed our asses off.

Let's just say after that, we were allowed to go to the coffee room to wait for more check outs if we had no rooms left that were checked out to clean. And we got to start at 7:30 am after that.