Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Work mistakes here and there are inevitable, but sometimes we do something so embarrassing that it sticks with us forever. So, when we shared the worst mistakes people have ever made at work, it prompted even more of you to confess your, or your coworker’s, biggest mishap. Here are some of the most jaw-dropping stories.1.”The CEO of our corporation was named Howard Lance. At our division, we had a Lance Howard working there. Lance’s buddy sent him a TOTALLY inappropriate email but pulled the wrong address off the list and sent it to the CEO. They all got fired, and the whole event became part of the new employee introduction.” Chanakon Laorob / Getty Images2.”Two different jobs, two different skirts, same mortifying wardrobe malfunction. The first time, I was conducting legally mandated survey information for the federal government. I went to a designated respondent’s house, rang the doorbell, and my tie-wrap skirt undid itself and fell to the ground. The woman answered the door at that moment, and we looked at each other and cracked up. She said, ‘Bet you’re glad I’m a woman.’ I was. The second time, I was photocopying records as a bank employee, and my two-button wrap skirt slithered off without my noticing. None of my coworkers said anything, but eventually, the snickers made me look myself over. I had to cross the massive bank lobby in my slip to get my skirt. I’m afraid of wrap skirts to this day.”—Anonymous, 60, Canada3.”I work in law and was sitting in an HOA Zoom meeting that was running late — the equivalent of hell on earth. My husband walked in, and I thought I was on mute and proceeded to tell him, ‘I’ll be off as soon as I’m done with this stupid fucking board meeting.'” Morsa Images / Getty Images4.”I signed up for an ‘executive lunch’ at a summit with my company. If selected, you and others get to eat lunch with a Big Wig and have conversations about whatever interests the group. We got about 30 minutes into the lunch, and the ‘Big Wig’ hadn’t shown up. I voiced this aloud to the group, only for one person to chime in and say, ‘That’s me. I’m the Big Wig.'””I was mortified but had to give myself a little slack. We are a completely work-from-home company, and the only picture I had ever seen of them was a small Teams picture about the size of a dime. I had never met them in person, and the picture was definitely several years old, as they did not look like that anymore. It’s a mistake anyone could make, but I do wish it hadn’t happened.”—jcismybestfriend5.”I worked as a cashier at a local chain grocery store in college. A new location was opening, and they needed help, so I volunteered for a shift. They put me on the express lane, and someone came through my line with a gallon of milk. I asked them if they needed a bag, and they said no. So, in one swift motion, I slid the gallon of milk over the scanner and turned around to put it on the table behind me. The jug was wet, and as I swung around, it flew out of my hand and hit the giant window behind me, breaking the jug and splattering milk everywhere. They didn’t ask me to fill in at that store anymore, lol.” Noel Hendrickson / Getty Images/Tetra images RF6.”I was a supply officer for my division. I ordered what I thought were lamps (lightbulbs). Nope. What I really ordered was LAMPS: Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System, an anti-submarine helicopter. Fortunately, my department head thought this was hilarious and wouldn’t let the chief write me up.”—fancywalrus887.”I was 16 and working in a restaurant where you yelled people’s orders into a microphone, and the workers would get the food around in the back. Someone ordered a chocolate chip shake, and I confidently screamed into the microphone, ‘One chocolate shit shake!’ Everyone in the restaurant could hear the orders. It felt like one of those movie scenes where the record scratches and everyone stops and stares. My co-workers had a T-shirt made for me that read, ‘Home of the famous Chocolate Shit Shake!'” Naomi Rahim / Getty Images8.”I was working in IT, and our VP of advertising asked me to help him with a problem with his PC needing to be faster. I finished clearing the cache and deleting old files on his PC and left. About two minutes later, the IT director called me into his office and asked me what I did to the VP of advertising’s PC. It was then that I realized I had deleted all of the advertising department’s logos and layouts from the PC desktop. I thought I was cleaning up old files, but I actually deleted everything they had created. I was terminated the next day.”—Anonymous9.”I worked the front desk at a hotel. I had a family arrive to check in, and I did my normal spiel, asking what brought them into town. They responded that they were there for a funeral (I can’t remember the relation, but I know it was for a child, so it was not like a happy funeral celebrating a long life). I was, of course, very empathetic and apologetic that that was the reason for their stay, but right at the end, my customer service brain took over, and I cheerfully said, ‘I hope you enjoy your stay with us!’ as I handed over the keys. Immediately, my face filled with horror as I realized what had just come out of my mouth. Thankfully, they were very understanding.”10.”I worked at a law firm in Manhattan when I graduated from college. We had a huge real estate client coming into the office, so people were pretty tense. Someone asked me to grab a banker’s box full of the client’s files. This person owned a significant amount of property, so it was one of many boxes and possibly the heaviest banker’s box I’d ever lifted. The box was on top of a large filing cabinet. When I grabbed it, I bent my knees to lower the box, and my pants split right down the crack.””As this important client turned the corner, it occurred to me that I was not wearing underwear that day, so I sat down, with my legs crossed, in the middle of the hallway, acting like I was reading one of his files.Eventually, I was able to sneak into the bathroom with a stapler and close the hole in my pants until I could shimmy down 5th Avenue to Lord and Taylor. The lead partner gave me $30 to buy underwear, and when I returned, we had a company meeting on dressing like an adult. It was a tough day at the office.”—Anonymous, 38, New York11.”I work from home for an insurance company, so we have multiple Zoom meetings. In our big weekly meeting (100-plus participants), the manager usually starts the meeting, and each team talks for the remaining hour or so about their gains/losses. Well, this time, the manager forgot to mute her mic and proceeded to have phone sex with her husband. Because she was the host, and it was picking up her whole conversation, no one else could really talk. And I mean, it got really, REALLY X-rated. Some of the staff left, but most of us stayed for the giggles, lol. She didn’t realize we could hear her steamy convo until about 30 minutes in. We heard, ‘Wait — oh shit, is this thing still on?’ and then silence. The next day, we got a long email apologizing about the situation, and we didn’t hear from her again.” 10’000 Hours / Getty Images12.”Not me, but my mom. She worked as a lunch lady at a local elementary school. While prepping food for the next day, she left a few pots of boiling water unattended and annihilated a batch of hard-boiled eggs. Luckily, her supervisor had already left for the day. So that evening, my sweet mother bought a bunch of eggs and prepared them at our house. I’m talking massive amounts of eggs — enough to feed egg salad to hundreds of children. Late that night, I, a small child, helped her deliver the contraband eggs through the back door of the kitchen, where the night janitor let us in. I was told to never speak of it again. Sorry, Mom!”—Quinn, 42, Maine13.”I accidentally sent my boss to the Netherlands from SoCal for a conference that wasn’t happening. He got there and texted me, ‘Why am I here?’ He got a few days off before flying to Switzerland, and I felt like an asshole. I am still working for him after 16 years, so I guess my fuck up wasn’t so bad?” Alexander Spatari / Getty Images14.”I went to work after taking prescription painkillers for a ruptured meniscus. I was also on crutches. The day was a huge embarrassment, and I have no idea how I wasn’t fired. In the space of eight hours, high as a kite on meds, I tipped a hot cup of coffee down the back of my boss’s neck as I tried to get to my desk with the full cup and crutches. I also worked in a lab, and my workspace was separate from my office desk. To get to my lab space, I had to go up two steps and then through a very, very heavy, pure glass door, which was controlled by a keycard entry system.””When I was returning to my desk from the lab, I managed to fluff opening the door as I had to balance on one leg while leaning over to scan my keycard and then pull open the very heavy door before it locked again and then get through the heavy door on crutches while still high. I basically dropped the door, which closed in front of me, while I was trying to move through the door on one leg.I did that cartoon comedy thing where I smooshed my whole face against the door and then slid down the door to the floor, making that ‘eeeeeee’ sound as I went, just as my boss decided he needed to come into the lab from the other side and witnessed the whole thing.Hours later, I was using the gender-neutral bathrooms and forgot to lock the door. My boss walked in as I was trying to stand up on one leg and yank my underwear up at the same time.Seriously, I don’t know how I was still employed at the end of the day. Though they suggested I take a few days leave!”—gussierd15.”I was working at a financial institution as a teller back when it was required that withdrawal and deposit slips be filled out first. Unfortunately, I suffered from frequent migraines, and sometimes the migraines were so debilitating that I made errors. My boss had a hard time believing that migraines were a reason to call in sick. On one particular day, I was suffering from a terrible migraine and mistakenly filled out every deposit slip as a withdrawal and vice versa. So, at the end of the work day, the branch was completely unbalanced, and everyone had to stay late to fix every single one of those mistakes made over an eight-hour shift because the branch couldn’t close until it was balanced. I was allowed to call in sick for migraines after that.” William Taufic / Getty Images16.”I worked in customer service in a new team that answered incoming emails. The manager wanted to beta-test a new feature, so at different points through the day, he’d have us log out of the live email queue and into the beta one and fake-answer emails so he’d get the data he needed. Most of us wrote a quick one-line response and hit send to get through the task quickly. The responses didn’t go to actual customers, just back into a test queue, so it didn’t matter if the response was accurate — there just needed to be something.””One coworker came back from her break and was told to do her beta-test emails before getting back to work. She dashed them off and then got back to the live emails. Except the emails she responded to were not in the beta queue; they were actually from the live queue.Instead of responding with some basic info, she responded with a lot of swearing and telling customers what she thought of their requests, and signed off on them as ‘Cindy, the Fucking Email Queen.’ She had a lot of explaining to do that day to the manager and the customers!”—grant10101017.”I was in my 30s and had just been hired as the office manager at a prestigious architecture firm in Washington, D.C. I hadn’t gotten my first paycheck yet and was broke. While at work, one day, I realized I had no toilet paper at home. I was wearing a pleated, above-the-knee silk skirt that day with tights. While in the bathroom, I thought I would sneak a roll of toilet paper home with me. Not having my purse with me, I made the regrettable decision to sneak it back to my desk by walking with it under my skirt tucked between my thighs.””After walking past several architects’ desks, I thought I had safely made it back to my desk when one of the architects came up behind me and told me quietly that the back of my skirt was caught in the waistline of my tights. This meant that my entire backside, including the roll of toilet paper between my thighs, was clearly visible to everyone I walked past on the way to my desk. Needless to say, I straightened out my skirt, grabbed my things from my desk, left the office immediately without telling anyone, and never returned.”—Anonymous, 57, Maryland Peter Dazeley / Getty Images18.”When I worked fast food, I didn’t realize one of the sweet tea dispensers had already been filled (when I went to grab a barrel, someone had already filled it up). When I got back, I tossed the whole new barrel (around three to five gallons) into the already full dispenser. Tea shot everywhere in the middle of the lunch rush in front of every customer and my coworkers. To say I was embarrassed would be an understatement. I was banned from working the tea station for a while.”—magicalphone37What’s the worst mistake you or someone you know has ever made at work? Tell us about it in the comments, or fill out this anonymous form!Note: Some responses have been edited for length/clarity.
