29 of the Worst Mistakes Made by Incompetent Coworkers

If you drop your lighter into a vat of hot oil, let it go
29 of the Worst Mistakes Made by Incompetent Coworkers
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Working remotely at the beginning of the pandemic was a big adjustment for some people. A lot of them dealt with loneliness and isolation, while others struggled with technology and learning how to use Zoom for the first time. 

A Redditor recalled that during the first days of working from home, an engineer at their company had mastered Zoom well enough to enter a meeting and turn his camera on, and even participated in the meeting as he was supposed to. But, apparently, the “mute” button eluded him. When he was done with his portion of the meeting, he switched his camera off, but failed to mute himself. Before long, his coworkers heard him playing Fortnite and badmouthing the company. According to the story, “He only lasted a month.”

Compared to these stories from other Redditors, that’s mild. Behold, more dumb mistakes people have seen their coworkers make below.

ShiroHachiRoku Зу ago Edited Зу ago Social worker here. We're supposed to see clients who live with families once a year. A mom of a kid kept calling her worker but got no answer. Mom called the on call worker who discovered the assigned worker had logged the visits in and made thorough notes. The mom said she never saw her in two years. This led to her whole caseload being audited and then they found she had logged a visit with a client who'd been dead for months. While being audited, her supervisor decided to do a surprise visit
PumpkinsDad Зу ago At a Petco all the Guinea pigs were in a big plexi-glass enclosure with a center divider. Boys on one side and girls on the other. An employee decided that all the long haired Guinea pigs should be on one side and short haired on the other. It took forever to sort them out and all the females were pregnant.
Onwisconsin42 Зу ago | worked on a golf course during the summer. Area with lots of poison ivy. Two of my coworkers were instructed to weedy a river edge area. If we encounter poison ivy, we either stop what we are doing or go get full suit protection with respirators. These dumbasses were weedwhacking in the thickest poison ivy | had ever seen. No protective suit or glasses or respirator. | roll up and notice what the hell they're doing and point out all the poison ivy everywhere- they were aerosolizing the oil. They both ended up in the hospital
zachm26 Зу ago Not a mistake necessarily, but I once witnessed our chief accounting officer (and our only accountant; it was a small company) type in values into two Excel cells, pull out a calculator, add the two numbers together in the calculator, and then type the answer in a third cell. She had apparently been doing this for years, with sheets consisting of thousands of rows. I explained how to use formulas and copy them but she apparently forgot because I saw her doing the same thing again months later.
atot806 Зу ago The designer, creative director and head of production all missed that there was an eight day week on a calendar. We sent 10000 copies of a useless calendar to a client. Rightly so, they refused to pay for it.
Зу ago When I worked construction, there was a guy who showed up with nothing in his tool belt except a small bag of peanuts in one pocket. Не didn't stay around too long.
10s Зу ago | had a coworker who was a guidance counselor at five schools in district. She was supposed to work one day at each school, unless she was called to a school for an urgent case. She would frequently call the school she was supposed to be at, stating she had an urgent case at another school. One day at lunch she was talking about what was happening in her favorite soap opera. This was before VCRs, and the show aired long before the school day ended. The principal was sitting at our lunch table. Не got up,
overengineered Зу ago A grabbed the arm of an intern once, right as he was about to grab a 00 gage (the big wires that feed electricity the whole building) bare handed to move it out of the way to show us a problem behind. It was hot. Не claimed it was fine cause he was only gonna touch one wire at a time. The lead electrician respectfully requested said intern be removed from his sight before turning himself into carbon and paperwork. I agreed with this sentiment and had intern watching OSHA videos for almost 3 days straight as
not-gandalf-bot Зу ago When I was in the Navy, this known dumbass and pathological liar was on armed watch with an М-14 patrolling the topside decks. Literally all you have to do is walk around for 4 hours with a rifle on your shoulder. This dude came back to the Quarterdeck (main entrance to the ship) WITH NO GUN. Не tried to claim it fell off his shoulder and into the water while tying his shoe. How a rifle would fall off your shoulder, pass through your hands that were tying the shoe, and through all three lifelines (like guard
Mr_Frible Зу ago Tried to retrieve his lighter from a deep fat fryer with his hands. boy was that fun to clean up.
theysocool Зу ago The office we worked in was shut down due to covid and the company went 100% remote. A new senior engineer was hired to work directly with our product team and also manage a team of developers. During our company wide weekly zoom meeting after he was done presenting for the company he turned his camera off but forgot to put him self on mute. 100+ people heard this man playing Fortnite and talking down about the company to someone else in the background among other things. Не only lasted a month.
AntonioCalvino Зу ago I worked in a veterinary hospital for a good number of years. One day, unknown to me, some little girl had found a dead/dying seagull with her family and brought it in to see if we could help it, but it has passed by the time they arrived. Our veterinary technician took said bird for disposal but was too busy to deal with it then (like... Put it in the freezer. One minute tops with labeling!), so instead he just packed to box with the dead bird into our storage area with dozens of similar boxes and
RosenBrtt Зу ago I used to work for a landscaping company and over the course of a summer | witnessed one of my со- workers accidentally set 3 different things on fire (a hedge trimmer, a truck, and himself)
Shubabi Зу ago Took the wrong coffin to a funeral. Someone else had to drive to the cemetery with the correct deceased on board, and thankfully they made it before the viewing.
Yaboijustlikesgoats Зу ago Poured sink cleaning solution into the ice cream machine instead of the cream mixture and I had to stop them, they then said I'm sure it'll be fine, it was only a little. No that would poison people. I had to clean out the whole machine top to bottom and refill it. | ended up throwing away nearly a whole bucket full of contaminated ice cream mixture. I would also like to add that the containers didn't look anything alike, the sink stuff came in big plastic jugs with screw tops and the ice cream comes in
LtDirtyBear Зу ago I worked as a Radiation Protection Tech at a power plant that was re-fueling. My job was to sit outside of a contaminated area and if anyone wanted to take something out of the area (tools, etc.) I had to make sure it didn't have any radioactive particles on it. To do this you wipe the tool with something like a tissue and then hold the tissue up to a machine called a frisker. If the needle on the frisker goes above a threshold then the tool has to be cleaned or left in the area. One
sbenzanzenwan Зу ago One volunteer had no computer experience. We showed her step by step how to do her job. She didn't know what a mouse was, how to click on something, etc. We got her up and running. She was pleased with herself, at having gotten the hang of using a PC. Fast forward two hours. Come back to the office and she's in tears I swear I didn't do anything! There were just fish everywhere all of a sudden!! Look at the computer. Aquarium screen saver. After her little breakdown, she had to take the rest of the
SamusMcFizz Зу ago Edited Зу ago My coworker at the bowling alley had to walk down a lane where a group of very young children (maybe 4- 8 years old) were bowling to retrieve a ball that had stopped in the gutter about halfway down to the pins. When he had picked up the ball my other coworker told him to go walk it back down to the children. However this guy had it in his mind that it would be best to bowl it back down at the group of small children instead. Luckily one of the adults with
remembering_things Зу ago | worked for a non-profit that hired a guy in fundraising purely for his rolodex and they couldn't care less about any of his job functions as long as he kept bringing more rich people to fundraiser parties. Well when the pandemic hit and we were forced to go remote, it became clear how incompetent he was with technology, and how he'd been coasting for years in the office by sticking to phone calls instead of email, etc. We had our first major online fundraiser coming up and I warned my boss that this dude had no
barto5 Зу ago Annual sales meeting. Brand new guy is seated next to the CEO. Не proceeds to put his head down and fall asleep on the table. During the meeting. They woke him up at lunch to fire him.
allthefishinthelake Зу ago Was making pizza. Guy broke the pizza board(the thing with the handle you make the pizza on and then slide the pizza into the oven) I found the other one and he lost that. So I told him to make pizzas on one of the plastic cutting boards. Не put the pizza into the oven on the board and just left it. The board melted No more pizza that day
eljosho1986 Зу ago My wife worked at a gas station and found out her coworker, who had been there for years, had been refilling the napkin dispenser by cramming them one at a time through the front slot. She walked up and unfastened the back and apparently his jaw hit the floor. Не had never considered that there might be a better way to do this.
kingcrimson881 Зу ago Working in pharmacy, a pharmacist gave a customer a flu shot and threw the used syringe in the container with the new syringes instead of the container to dispose them. Another pharmacist went to grab a new syringe later on and ended up getting stabbed with the used syringe. Caused a total shit storm.
Зу ago One of my reports missed a 9 AM meeting and when I asked him why he said you said the meeting was at 12, not 9! Of course | was very confused because the meeting invite said 9 and everyone else on the team knew it was at 9. So he sent me a screenshot of his outlook calendar and it turns out he just had all his shit set to the wrong time zone.
panfried540 Зу ago | knew a dude that printed almost a thousand pages of counterfeit dollar bills for a joke or prank. The boss walked in immediately after and wound up behind the back area of the business throwing it all into the burn barrel getting rid of it. Dude didn't last much longer than that
FormerWordsmith Зу ago Removing the plastic wrapping from a pallet of 5 gallon cans of (highly flammable) acetone. Не didn't have a box cutter so he proceeded to melt it with a lighter
elyas_machera Зу ago | worked for TSA in college. This guy was working the X-ray while I was clearing bins. All of sudden bags starting flying through and crashing into each other. He'd fallen asleep, and his big belly was pressing the forward button on the X-ray machine.
jeffers2286 . Зу ago - Edited Зу ago Emptying hot fryer oil into a plastic container. Guess how that went Well this blew up! And yeah it melted went everywhere. What a pain to clean that was. Kid got fired
HeavyMetalSasquatch Зу ago Planted a tree, FUCKING UPSIDE DOWN.

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