Stupid things you've done at work

I had to lower a portacabin onto the back of a wagon a few weeks ago (I'm a crane driver). It was a blind drop, i.e. I couldn't see the area I was lowering it in, so I was acting purely on instruction from a man on a radio. Unbeknownst to either of us the luffing gearstick, which I'd used to bring the load out over the building above the road next to it, had locked in 1st gear.

That meant that not only was the portacabin being lowered towards the ground, as we thought, it was also very slowly going forwards/out from the tower of the crane. We had it lined up to land on the middle of the wagon, but by the time it was almost touched down it was a few feet off centre and none of the berks there noticed until it was too late, and the wagon started tilting to the side, into a busy road.

A frantic emergency stop instruction came through. I told him the crane wasn't moving, but he said it was still going down (sorry, forgot to mention that luffing out also has the side effect of lowering the load) and the wagon was going to tip. I thought he was winding me up, but I reacted quickly enough and killed power to the crane. I then saw the joystick which had locked wasn't in neutral.

It was more the crane's fault than mine, as the joystick shouldn't have been able to stay in a non-neutral position without my hand on it, but in reality I was somewhat to blame for not immediately killing power as soon as he said emergency stop. I was practically discussing it with him, when I should have just acted, so I let the problem persist for a few more seconds than was necessary. Fortunately though, the wagon didn't go over and we then lifted up the load and corrected its position. No injuries or damage in the end, but it could so easily have ended up differently...it was a busy road in a town centre.
 
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done a fair few very stupid things so far and im sure ill do some more as well

I was working late one night building some servers when i first moved into 3rd line support and had just finished racking up the servers and set off the RIS to run and went for a smoke and some food, finished off the installation and went home came in the next morning and got the developers to start using the new box only to find that I had not only built the wrong server but had managed to format a production box as well DOH!!!! managed to restore it back to its orginally state but that really was one of those times you just want the ground to eat you up.

Also was messing about with some mates outside having a smoke and didnt watch where i was going and tripped off the fire escape down 3 steps and end up on the floor in a heap to find that I had broken my wrist :(

Have wandered into the office at 11:30 a few times cause id switched my alarm off rather than hitting the snooze button.

Not done by me this one but a friend of mine but quite a few years ago the virus scanner failed and let a few mail through that shouldnt of and he decided he'd forward the mail onto the email admin but he didnt watch what he was doing when addressing it and proceded to send the mail to whole company, got some very funny calls on the helpdesk that day :D
 
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I shrink wrapped my supervisor up and locked him in the office for an hour.

He couldn't get out of the wrap since it had like 4-5 layers.
 
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Slapped him so hard on the cheek that his face rippled as it hit him.

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Took the mouse ball out of my work mates mouse. Retaliation for him sellotaping the insides of my headset so all I heard from customers was "muffph mufffphmuff".

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ROFL :D:D
 
i worked for a distribution company and we have on a couple of occasions...

filled someones car with packing material through his open sunroof
shrink wrapped someones bike, car, cycle.
shrink wrapped someone who always did the stinker to the side of a pallet and loaded him into a lorry
 
Have wandered into the office at 11:30 a few times cause id switched my alarm off rather than hitting the snooze button.
Done that myself last week, and I've only been there a month and a half :o

Luckily my boss is a bit of a legend and said he wouldn't put it on my probation review papers :cool:


On placement at the minute, working with people who are at least 10 years older than me, most 20-30, and it's pretty depressing. Hopefully after uni I can get a job in a place with a few more people my age so I can come back and tell some stories :p
 
Nothing, I havent had a job yet, but if anything I opened a big bottle of lucozade yesterday in computing, it fizzed up half the bottle emptied onto the desk as it wouldent shut properly :(
 
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