Mistakes at work

[RandytheHelpfulPineapple]

So I just made a royal spreadsheet summing error for work. Basically, two internal estimates are going to look like night and day $900k vs. $1.7mm. The first was given as a pre-lim a month ago, the second is a final, hard number. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and explain how the first was $300k short because of a summing error, and how I handicapped construction costs nearly three times lower than what a contractor cited me today. Yeesh.

This is the first time they gave me an estimate to do. Needless to say, I'm feeling two foot small right about now. So tell me your historically bad errors from work, and make me feel better. (No; dipping the pen in the company ink doesn't count, but they're still entertaining and appreciated).

[Joe Norris]

Re: Mistakes at work

Hey man, I hear you...Been there


February after I started, I did the exact same thing...I had double checked the numbers and confirmed them...so I never checked again....somewhere along the way, I had done some cutting and pasting and didn't even think to check my numbers afterword.

At the balance meeting we were showing a 10% variance compared with the typical 2.5%....underpaid the third party about about $250K and undercharged the producers by the same amount

Definitely a shot to the ego...required hours of work to fix and was an overall PITA (did find some issues with the system because of it...so I claim that's why I did it...haha)

You'll be all good when it comes down to it...and the best thing is, you'll never make that mistake EVER again

[Hoopo]

Re: Mistakes at work

I accidentally left a steamer in the ladies room the boss used. Mea culpa.

[Jayhawk1977]

Re: Mistakes at work

I shorted our 2011 budget by $650k...all new headcount for expansion. Yeah, the I effed it up and admitted it once found. Doh! I've learned through my years that although it sucks most people welcome the honesty with admitting a mistake.

[RandytheHelpfulPineapple]

Re: Mistakes at work

[quote author=Jayhawk1977 link=topic=2686.msg30527#msg30527 date=1292290916]
I shorted our 2011 budget by $650k...all new headcount for expansion. Yeah, the I effed it up and admitted it once found. Doh! I've learned through my years that although it sucks most people welcome the honesty with admitting a mistake.
[/quote]

Yeah, I felt really crappy last night, but I decided to just own up to it today. Dude was understanding and respected my honesty. I feel relieved, but I have lingering doubts if I'll be given another estimate any time soon.

[SnackMantis]

Re: Mistakes at work

I work for a marketing agency and my job involves a lot of social media work. About three weeks into my job, there was a story going around on Twitter about a company that handled a customer very poorly. I went onto their Twitter account and they were sending out this really obnoxious canned response to people asking about the story. I sent them a message on Twitter that said something like "The canned response you're using to address this problem is very transparent and laughable." About thirty seconds after I sent the tweet, I thought about it, decided to delete it and went on with my day.

Maybe four or five hours later, I got called in to my boss's office. The social media manager for that account saw the tweet even though it was deleted, went to my profile, saw where I worked (I listed the organization in my profile at the time) and sent the message to her CEO. Apparently they were a former client of ours and had recently sent us an RFP a few weeks prior for more work. After talking to my boss, he had to go to our president and explain what had happened. My president told my boss that he wanted me fired. I think my boss had to beg to keep me on and for about two weeks I was in a limbo state where I pretty much had all of my stuff packed up, ready to be fired.

...That sucked. The president was able to smooth things over with the company and my boss really went to bat for me. I still feel really dumb and terrible about it though. I've made tiny editing mistakes on my work here and there but never anything that put my company in any sort of jeopardy.

[RandytheHelpfulPineapple]

Re: Mistakes at work

[quote author=SnackMantis link=topic=2686.msg30728#msg30728 date=1292390939]
I work for a marketing agency and my job involves a lot of social media work. About three weeks into my job, there was a story going around on Twitter about a company that handled a customer very poorly. I went onto their Twitter account and they were sending out this really obnoxious canned response to people asking about the story. I sent them a message on Twitter that said something like "The canned response you're using to address this problem is very transparent and laughable." About thirty seconds after I sent the tweet, I thought about it, decided to delete it and went on with my day.

Maybe four or five hours later, I got called in to my boss's office. The social media manager for that account saw the tweet even though it was deleted, went to my profile, saw where I worked (I listed the organization in my profile at the time) and sent the message to her CEO. Apparently they were a former client of ours and had recently sent us an RFP a few weeks prior for more work. After talking to my boss, he had to go to our president and explain what had happened. My president told my boss that he wanted me fired. I think my boss had to beg to keep me on and for about two weeks I was in a limbo state where I pretty much had all of my stuff packed up, ready to be fired.

...That sucked. The president was able to smooth things over with the company and my boss really went to bat for me. I still feel really dumb and terrible about it though. I've made tiny editing mistakes on my work here and there but never anything that put my company in any sort of jeopardy.
[/quote]

Holy carp. That sounds terrible. I bet the boss is on the Christmas card list this year, huh?