Sometimes, somebody makes a mistake that seems to push the human limits of stupidity. Sometimes, that person is us. From near-fatal miscalculations to simple bone-headed errors, these mortifying mistakes prove that everything really can go wrong—and there's no "undo" button to fix them. Want to feel good about your own screwups? Then read on.
#1 Top o' the Morning
When I was 10 or so, I woke up before everyone in the house (it was like 7 am) and decided I would sneak into the pool. I was waist deep in the water before I saw the alligator on the other side of the pool.
#2 Petri Problem
Yesterday, my girlfriend and I were driving and I mentioned culturing bacteria in a petri dish. She said, "You mean, peach-tree dish." She was flabbergasted when I proved to her this wasn't correct. She's still upset. Even though last week we went through this same ordeal with windchill vs. “windshield” factor.
#3 A Large Oversight
A larger lady came into my ER for abdominal pain. She had a look on her face that I'd seen before, but I couldn't quite place it...until I put an ultrasound probe on her belly. "Congrats," I told her, "You're going to have a baby! Today!" She was stunned She didn't believe me until I showed her the nine-month-old baby head trying to push its way out of her on the sonogram.
#4 Let’s Call a Square a Square
About a year into our marriage, my wife and I bought a dining table and chairs. It was our first “real” furniture! My wife was so happy, she posted pictures on Facebook and wanted her mom to look. Well, her mom commented on the phone that it was a nice “oval table.” Wife is immediately upset. "You didn't look," she says. "Yes I did!" her mom insists.
"It's not oval, it's rectangular." "No, it's an oval, I looked." Wife finally gets her mom to actually go look for real. Her mom sees that she is incorrect. But it gets even worse. She creates this gem: "Well that's what I call it!" “Um, you call rectangles ovals?" This has become a running gag for us. Whenever we lose an argument, we always end it with, "Well, that's what I call it!"
#5 Shred the Evidence
I pulled what I thought was my expired credit card out of my pocket, and ran it through the shredder at work. It wasn’t my credit card. It was my government ID card, which I also need to log onto my work computer.
#6 A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
My family and I were watching a program on TLC about cavemen. There were actors dressed up like cavemen doing caveman things, as the narrator explained the scientific theories of what they thought their lives were like. My sister was just in awe watching this. Mouth slightly open, eyes open wide. During a commercial break, she asked the room, "How did they get the cameras back then?"
#7 This Isn’t the BBQ You’re Looking for
I invited a friend over for a BBQ. He didn’t know anyone and has never been to my house but seemed really eager to go. So, I was a little irritated that he was almost two hours late. I was just about to text him when I happened to look over my neighbor’s fence. What I saw made me burst out laughing. See, the neighbor was also having a BBQ...
It was like it happened in slow motion. I saw my friend in the neighbor’s yard chatting up some old lady. Our eyes locked. I saw the realization literally hit his face. I still laugh about it. I swear the guy turned white!
#8 It’s the Little Things
I scored an interview for a dream job. I did all of my research about the company, bought a new suit, the whole shebang. I gave the man interviewing me a firm handshake, answered all of his questions easily, and felt pretty confident. After finishing the otherwise flawless interview, we shook hands again, and I said, "Thank you sir." To my horror, she replied: "It’s Ma'am."
#9 The Mac Daddy of Mess-ups
At the first advertising agency I worked at, one of our clients was an oil drilling company. I was working on some very standard ads for them, one of which had the headline, "FASTER, FARTHER, DEEPER." I made a typo that caused the ad to read, "FASTER, FATHER, DEEPER." Thankfully, my Creative Director caught it before it went to the client.
We all had a big (nervous) laugh about it and the original ended up on the creative department's wall.
#10 Mr. Postman
I used to work at a call center for a popular gift company. This one couple calls up and says "We need to cancel our order!" I look it up, and tell them UPS already has the order to deliver it. Then they tell me the horrific truth. They say, "You don't understand. We are sending this to our son and his wife. We accidentally put his ex-wife's name on the card."
Obviously, that was gonna ruin Christmas. I was finally able to call UPS and get them to not deliver the package.
#11 No Kids Allowed
My place of work has a 21 and over policy after 9 pm, and a group of people walked in. I immediately assumed they walked in with their child because I couldn’t see her over the counter. So I said, “Hey guys, I’m sorry but we’re 21 and over right now.” It turns out she had dwarfism. Oh my lord. I was so incredibly MORTIFIED.
#12 His Loss
I left a huge folder for a multi-billion (yes, that’s a “B”) lawsuit on the subway. Some homeless guy finds it, calls the opposing attorney, and ransoms the darn thing. Luckily, there was nothing in the file that wasn't secret or not public record. Yes indeed, I was fired.
#13 The Mix-Up
When she was younger, my mother came for a routine pregnancy exam at the hospital. It wasn't her usual gynecologist because they were on holiday. As the replacement enters the room, she's waiting with her two feet in the stirrups, wearing the typical hospital grown with the opening at the back. He revealed the instruments for the exam.
My mother was a nurse. She recognized the instruments, and she knew something was wrong. They were abortion instruments. She questioned the doctor about it. His response was chilling. He stiffly said, "Well yes, as you know the baby is gone, we need to remove it." At this point, she realizes they've mixed up the files...but she's just getting started.
Shee threw the biggest tantrum in the history of tantrums. My dad usually picks up the narrative at this part of the story, "I saw your mother storming out of the exam room, she passed by me as she was howling, ‘WE GO, NOW!’ with her clothes in her hands and her exposed butt." It's a great image, and that doctor probably never lived it down.
#14 The Original Captain Underpants
When I was a young kid, we had a pajama day at school. Well, I always just wore my boxers to sleep. So guess what? I showed up to school in pretty much nothing but underwear. Why my mom allowed me to go in that way and even drove me there, I have no idea. It was the most embarrassing day of my life, and the school had to call my parents to come pick me up.
#15 Good Luck Explaining This One
I connected my phone to the car Bluetooth to play music during a road trip with four of my friends. For whatever reason, as soon as the Bluetooth connected, it immediately played the last video viewed on my phone. Yup, It was an adult video. Yup, still haven't been allowed to live that one down.
#16 Worst Trade Ever
I work at a slick entertainment company in LA where every executive has an assistant. The head of the company has had floor seat Laker tickets for the past 13 years. The waitlist for those tickets is over a decade long. One day, the executive told his assistant that he also wants four non-floor seat tickets for a certain game. This is when the nightmare began.
Assistant thinks he means instead and switches his floor seats for non-floor seats, releasing these precious tickets forever. The executive screamed so loud that the floor above us came down to make sure everyone was OK—I am not joking. Apparently, the tickets were worth over a MILLION DOLLARS and he gave them away for free.
The executive had to shell out for other tickets but not the same ones, so now every game he goes to he has to stare at the people in his precious seats.
#17 Bad Math
I offered to pay for the bill on a first date with a gorgeous girl. She insisted to pay half. I didn’t fight it, but I only had a large bill so I did some mental math, pocketed her money and put my bill in. Anyway, long story short, I did the math wrong and ended up fleecing 20 bucks from her. She sarcastically said, "thank you," and I thought she was being sincere. I'm an idiot.
#18 That’s Not Tomato Sauce…
I worked at a pizza place, and one night the oven guy went rushing past and mumbled something about someone taking over an oven. So, I went over and started cutting pizzas without really paying attention to what I was doing. Ten minutes later, the oven guy comes back with his hand all bandaged up and blood all over his arm.
He had cut his hand badly on the pizza knife and bled all over everything, but because the blood looked a little like grease and I wasn't paying attention I continued cutting pizzas with the bloody knife and cutting board. Many people had human blood all over their pizzas and I didn't have the balls to go own up and tell them.
#19 It Runs in the Family
Was at a friend's brother's 21st birthday party and was standing around talking with some other guys. On the driveway, a bunch of girls were dancing to the music. It was a really chill night. But it was about to get a lot chillier. The guy next to me said to the guy on his other side "How about the rack on that blonde chick?" The other guy replied, "That's my daughter.” The first guy mumbled something and left at a brisk walk.
#20 Perfect 10
Fun story, while my wife was having her c-section for our daughter she overheard one of the nurses say "there's only nine," and my wife thought they were talking about my daughters fingers or toes. So she's freaking out that our daughter is missing a finger or toe, and I keep assuring her that our daughter was perfect, which she was.
We found out about ten minutes later that the nurse was talking about the surgical tools that were supposed to be accounted for, and one of them was missing. So my wife got to spend the next two hours in x-ray because they thought they had left a tool inside her and stitched her up. They found the missing tool, not inside my wife, a couple hours later, so that was a relief.
#21 The Truffle Shuffle of Shame
In seventh grade, some girl was wearing a Goonies shirt. I had no idea what it was, but it looked like a punk band or something and she was preppy, so my emo self tried to act offended and said, "Do you even listen to the Goonies?"
#22 Runaway Driver
I was working on one of those TV shows where you do stupid things in public and film people’s reactions. In the skit we were doing, a man would be jogging with a stroller containing a life-like baby doll, and I was going to hit him with a car. The jogger was wearing bright green—they dress funny on these shows so that you don't mix up the cast with pedestrians. So, I'm cruising up to the stop sign in a beat-up old ford, my adrenaline is really pumping.
This was my first time actually being involved in a skit. I see the bright green jumpsuit, and I rev it. But when I realized what was happening, it was too late. I hit the wrong guy. It was just some dude jogging with his kid. I realized what happened when the guy I hit didn't jump onto the hood the way you're supposed to in these stunts.
I honestly don't remember anything about the incident after that, I was in shock. The dad had a few broken bones, the baby was fine. Needless to say, there was a huge settlement paid out. I'm currently pursuing an unrelated career.
#23 It’s All Fun and Games Until...
One day, I was taking a long leg cast off of a kid who was about three years old. After I got the cast split open, I started to pull it off, and the Mother suddenly said, "Oh, his toe fell off." I chuckled and replied, “Nice one,” thinking she was joking. She gave me a really angry look. It turned out that the kid had been in the cast because his small toe had been nearly amputated and then reattached.
The doctor was hoping that what tissue was still connected would be enough to vascularize the distal portion. It wasn't. The kid's toe had rotted and fallen off. Whoops.
Pxfuel
#24 Sweet Disaster
We order a small snack for our coffee and as it's arriving at the table, he pulls out his Nokia phone. Trying to make a lighthearted joke, I say, "MAN, that has got to be the oldest phone I've seen in a while." I really dug it in, trying to break that awkward first date wall. Well, it turns out that it was not a Nokia, it was something much more embarrassing. It was his insulin pump.
#25 Three's Company
Boyfriend finally convinces me to have a threesome after months of begging. I finally agree, and our mutual friend comes over. Things get hot and heavy, and when he starts being with her, he moans “Man, you feel even better than usual!” Everyone freezes. He tries to tell me that he was thinking about me while being with her, and that it just felt differently...
However, she felt so guilty that she confessed on the spot and begged me to forgive her. We don’t really talk anymore, but last I heard she had been dating my ex for over a year.
#26 Lucky Pull
Dentist here. I was performing a simple extraction and preparing for the case when I didn't realize that I had the X-ray flipped the wrong way the whole time. I was viewing the film backwards and pulled out the wrong tooth. When I realized my mistake I started freaking out, only to find out that by some dumb luck, the tooth I extracted had to go as well.
#27 An Old One and Not a Good One
This was in high school. She invited me to her house to have dinner with her family and I didn't know them very well yet. The conversation turned to names we thought were old-fashioned and ugly-sounding. We all threw out a few like Gertrude, Bertha, and Eugene, and then I said the one thing that ruined everything.
I said, "At least that one's not as bad as Deborah!" I used my ugly voice and everything. Her mom's name is Deborah. Her grandmother was also at the table with us.
#28 Planning Ahead
A girl I know got a nose job. When I complimented her on her new look, she said: "I didn't do it for me—I just didn't want my kids to be born with big noses."
#29 Funny You Should Say That...
One of my animal shelter buddies messaged me some text and two pictures over Facebook. I didn't scroll up to the text; I only saw the one pic, which was a very funny looking dog. It was a fat Chihuahua that had a very bewildered look on its face. I replied "LMFAO" and then forgot about it. A couple of hours later, I looked again. I actually scrolled up that time and saw the text. That's when my horrific mistake dawned on me.
It provided backstory to the picture of the funny-looking dog. A man had passed and my friend was trying to rehome his two dogs…to which I had replied LMFAO. So, I'm an idiot. I tried to explain and apologize, but I still think she's a bit salty about that.
#30 Sharing Isn’t Caring
My ex husband was my mistake. I had joint accounts with him, and when he left me he cleared them, including a loan from my grandmother. Left me with absolutely nothing. I had to borrow money from my parents. I paid for the divorce with the promise that his parents would pay me back because he was a jerk. It's been 11 years and I haven't seen a penny.
#31 Got off on the Wrong Foot
Part of my job is processing new employees. We had this one new guy that just so happened to be in a wheelchair. He came in early on his first day, and I helped him with some paperwork. Then, he came back to my office in the afternoon and said, "I think I got off on the wrong foot with you." Thinking that he was making a self-deprecating joke to kind of address the fact that he was in a wheelchair, I laughed and said "Good one!"
He just looked at me, blank-faced, and said, "What do you mean?" The dude really thought he had done something to make me angry earlier and was trying to apologize! I did my best to awkwardly back-pedal by saying, "That's funny you think I was mad. I wasn’t at all!" He was still looking at me funny when he left the office.
I literally spent a week cringing every time the phone rang because I was sure I was getting called into HR.
#32 Pain in the Neck
I dove into a pool and broke my neck, but my big mistake was thinking I just pulled a muscle or something...so I kept partying. There are pictures of me with a bag of frozen peas on my neck, taking a shots. All while my freaking neck was BROKEN. Once the disc popped out because I was PLAYING CHICKEN WITH SOMEONE ON MY SHOULDERS IN THE SAME POOL HOURS LATER, that's when I realized that maybe something was wrong.
One emergency spinal fusion surgery, five days in the hospital, three months bedridden, and I'm good as new. I totally should be gone or paralyzed.
#33 And Then There’s Darrell
I accidentally mixed up an inside joke with the wrong friend group, with disastrous results. Friend group #1: The “joke” was when someone calls and asks who’s all there, we would add Darrell to the list of names. Darrell wasn’t a real person. The joke wasn’t really funny, and made no sense out of context, but I guess that’s why it was an inside joke.
Friend group #2: I was hanging out playing some drinking games with a bunch of people who I hadn’t hung out with in a while. It was a kind of get together to remember a friend they had who had recently perished in a car accident. I didn’t know him that well, but I was always down to party. Anyway, the phone rings, and the person who answered started listing off names.
Sorting my cards for another round of President, I offhandedly said, “heh and Darrell!” It was the typical record-scratch moment where everyone stopped and looked at me. Except it was even more awkward than that. Darrell was the name of the friend who had just passed. This happened in 2002 and I still think about it all the time.
#34 Jerry, Jerry!
I was hanging out with a friend, out walking, and we ran into someone he knew from a while ago. They chatted for a minute, and then my friend asked, “How’s Jerry doing?” Without missing a beat, his friend replied, completely deadpan, “Oh he's dead.” I burst out laughing, and the guy looked at me as if I was the most inappropriate person in the world. He was not joking. Jerry was gone.
#35 Nailed It
I still have nightmares about this date. When I was about 20 or so, I got a date with a girl who I really liked, she was exactly my type and I couldn't believe my luck. We met in a local pub for a few drinks and things were great. I was getting all the good signs with lots of hand touching and the like. An hour of pure bliss went by and I needed to pee.
After washing my hands, I went to the hand dryer only to find that it didn't work. I wanted to dry my hands because I wanted more of the hand-holdy stuff. Then I had the single stupidest idea of my life. I thought, "I can fix this!" and put my hand inside the nozzle of the dryer. WHY!? WHY!? Obviously, I got buzzed by the electric heating element, fell back, and cracked my head on the wall.
I didn't get knocked out but I needed a few minutes to sort myself out before going back. I didn't have the guts to tell her what had happened; dumb idea number two. I had a banging headache and I wasn’t quite right. Not much later she made her excuses and left and turned me down when I asked her for a second date. A year or so later I found out she had told her friend that she really liked me, but I went to the toilet and came out acting really weird and she "wasn't up for dating someone on drugs."
#36 To Be Fair, TV Is Pretty Complicated
A girl my dad dated for a while. Even while dating her, my dad would say she was dumber than a bag of rocks. One day, she sat down to watch a movie with my dad. The movie was all about this guy and his twin brother. She sits and watches the whole thing, no interruptions. At the end, she turns and asks, "So there were two of him?"
That would explain why she always had the TV turned to a music channel. Apparently, she couldn't follow normal TV or movies.
#37 What a Bonehead
I was the resident doing a craniotomy for a patient with a brain mass. It's a procedure where a window of bone is removed from the skull, the brain surgery is performed—in this case, removal of the mass—then the bone flap that was removed is replaced. The mass came out easily enough and we finished up the surgery without any issues. But the worst was yet to come.
Then my co-resident picked up the bone to put it back in the skull—and promptly dropped it on the floor. That day I learned there is a protocol for cleaning the bone flap so it can still be used. The patient actually did well, but my colleague has never been able to live that one down.
#38 After Me, the Flood
I was a second-year lifeguard. Though I knew everything. Well, I didn't. One day, I did my duties wrong and didn't shut all the pool valves off. I looked out the window—and my blood ran cold. The entire library parking lot next to us was flooded. The maintenance men said it cost the city over $800,000 to fix my problem.
#39 Speed Cart Driver
I was in a French supermarket when I was three years old. To keep me entertained, my parents supplied me with one of those little shopping carts you occasionally get for kids. I quickly showed why you don't always find them around anymore. Naturally, my little shopping cart was, in fact, a racing car, and I was its small but determined driver.
We went whipping round corners, evading shelves by mere inches, it was wild. However, my control wasn't what I thought it was, and as I went in for a turn into the aisle, I lost control of the cart. Off the cart and I went straight into the wine shelf. I watched as this long aisle of wine wobbled back, and then slowly came back forward, sending all the wine bottles crashing down onto the floor. It was everywhere.
#40 What Time Is It?
One time I woke up late for school because my alarm didn't go off. I am incredibly blind without my contacts and just glanced at the clock and was very late. In a furious panic to try somehow make it to the bus, I put my contacts in, dunked my hair in water and grabbed my backpack and jacket as I sprinted to the bus stop.
It was the time of year where it's dark outside well into the morning, so it was still pitch black. No one was at the bus stop, so I figured I missed. I still waited for quite some time in case it showed up. When I realized I was so late it wasn't coming I walked back to my house, knowing I would have to wake my mom up to take me to school.
Fortunately, when I walked through the front door, she was already up and waiting for me! I thought she'd figured out what had happened, but she greeted me with, "WHERE THE HECK HAVE YOU BEEN?!?!" I responded that I was sorry, but late for the bus and needed her to take me to school. She glared at me, and that's when I realized what really happened.
It was actually something like 4 AM. I had somehow misread my alarm clock in my state of panic and tried to explain that I really did think I was late and was really at the bus stop. She just assumed I had snuck out with friends the night before and was just coming home, something I had been doing off and on for a while at that time. So, I was grounded for sneaking out, when in reality I just woke up too early to go to school.
#41 Hey Tough Guy...
I was at a bar, chatting with some friends. My girlfriend was across the room sitting with some other friends. Some drunk dude showed up and started getting handsy with her. I jumped up, pushed him away and yelled "back off." When he turned around, I realized the terrifying truth. He was like twice my size and not in a fat way, in a tall and muscular way.
I mean I did the right thing, but if the bartender hadn't leaped over the bar and jumped in between us immediately that guy would have wiped the freaking floor with me. The moment the dude turned around I thought "Geez, this is gonna hurt."
#42 A Super Screwup
Back in high school, I had a job as a web designer at a small webshop servicing non-profit organizations. My bosses didn't let on that I was as young as I was, and they handled all the face-to-face client meetings. My job basically entailed designing and preparing the website for our clients. One of our big clients was the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation.
I sliced up the site and put in filler text, knowing full well that only people coming from our internal IP would be able to see the development. I should mention that my company was small, close-knit, and had a great (albeit vulgar) sense of humor. Rather than going the standard lorem ipsum route, I did the worst thing imaginable.
I instead filled in something along the lines of "Herp derp I'm Christopher Reeve, I drive myself with a straw. Weaknesses include kryptonite and falling off horses." It got worse, but I'll let your imaginations fill in the blanks. There were about four paragraphs of filler text. I came into work after school one day and all three of my company's owners/my bosses were waiting for me.
I thought they were pulling some prank, but they asked me to come into their office. At this point, I knew something was definitely up. My boss: "Chris and Dana saw the site." Me: "What? Who?" Him: "CRPF. Chris and Dana Reeve. The director wanted to show them the progress. Apparently he didn't check before he showed it to him in person."
At this point, I think my stomach hit the floor and kept going straight on to the Earth's core. My boss told me he'd let me know what the next steps were, but just to know that I was in deep, deep trouble. Anyway, I didn't get fired (despite how adamant Dana Reeve was about that fact) and I had to write an apology to the Reeves.
I found out later that Chris actually had a pretty solid sense of humor and thought it was funny. RIP, Mr. and Mrs. Reeve.
#43 A Lovely Teacher
A teacher whose name I don't even know at my son's daycare said, "Bye, love you too," after I told my son, "Love you buddy, have a good day," on my way out. I'm pretty sure she had a morning full of cringe.
#44 Both Sides Now
I was at a wild Halloween party a few years back. One of my good friends puked himself into a coma and fell asleep on the couch. Obviously, we took this opportunity to draw a massive dong on the right side of his face. The next morning, we were all chilling in the basement when my friend comes downstairs and we all bust out laughing at his face.
He asks what's so funny and we try to play it off like we were just laughing about something else, but he wasn't fooled. He assumes something is on his face so he goes up to a mirror and checks only the left side of his face before saying, "Alright, you guys are good." For whatever reason, he didn't check the right side of his face, which was almost entirely covered with a rather impressive dong.
Being the good friends that we are, we didn't tell him until after we went out for breakfast.
#45 Can You Feel the Stupidity Tonight?
A few years ago, I was traveling in Kenya and a few of us shelled out for a safari. Our guide was great and at one point said all the names for the animals in Swahili—the word simba is lion, for example. An American tourist then asked, “Did you always call them that, or did you decide to change it after The Lion King came out?”
I really wanted to apologize to the tour guide at that moment, who had to respond with respect to that guy.
#46 Lost in the Slots
I made $700 on a slot machine. I had been drinking and had to use the washroom so I made my way to the bathroom without thinking. And then after I was done, I sort of just wandered off and started playing a different machine. I didn't realize my blunder until much later. It hit me like a brick that I had forgotten to cash out before leaving the machine. Never got it.
#47 Absolutely Mental
Back in high school a group of friends and I decided to explore an abandoned mental hospital. We got up to the roof and we were hanging out enjoying the view. We saw some plastic looking things on the roof. A couple guys started breaking them, so I full-on sprinted at one and jumped on it. Turned out they were sky lights...
I immediately began to fall through before one person grabbed me and stopped me from falling four stories.
#48 All Gassed Up
I had a part-time job as a teenager at a Yamaha dealership that sold dirt bikes, ATVs, motorcycles, and stuff like that. I was told one day to deliver a Raptor to some address. Well, I loaded the ATV up on the trailer and took off in the truck down the road. I noticed that the truck was low on gas so I pulled over and filled her up.
I made it about 1.5 miles down the road and the truck started running funny and eventually cut off. I figured out my mistake too late. See, I had put gasoline in a diesel truck. I was fired about four days later.
#49 Slumming It
When my dad passed, I was given his house 2+ hours away. At the same time, my wife and I had a newborn and were working full time. So I let my lifelong friend move in for monthly rent. His girlfriend started staying the night once in a while at the house, and then more often. If I had known what she would do, I'd have kicked her out on the spot.
He and his girlfriend had falling out. He left and stopped paying rent as we discussed. I sent family over to check on the house and apparently someone's living there. I check on house that weekend. It's my friend's now ex-girlfriend living there. She asks for one week to move all her stuff out that I didn't even know was there. I saw OK...I really shouldn't have.
This let her have a full 30-days in the house, so now I need a full eviction to get her out of my house. I was not allowed to enter the house. She ended up doing about $40k damage to the home, took a lot of my dad's belongings that were hidden in the attic, and cost me an insane amount of time driving back and forth. It took two years to get her out.
#50 Tinder Stack
I accidentally left a stack of paper coffee cups next to the stove. Well, you can guess where this is going, but you'll still have no idea how bad it was. The restaurant burned down, and absolutely nothing in it was recoverable. There was several hundred thousand dollars in damage for equipment alone. Needless to say, I was fired and then under investigation for quite a while afterward.
#51 Forbidden Snacks
I found an AC cord with exposed wires as a kid. It didn't connect to any device; it was probably just a spare part. Being a child at that time, I thought I could "eat electricity" so I plugged it in and just chomped the wires. Naturally, I was exposed to 220V of electricity, and it was strong enough that I couldn't pull away. I passed out after what felt like five minutes.
When I woke up, I already had discoloration on my tongue, so it was probably not a dream. I have a theory that all the events in my life after that are just a simulation and that I actually didn't survive that incident.
#52 Buckle up, This Is One Wild Ride
This happened to my friend. So this guy, Dan, is a good guy overall, but he can be kind of a jerk. Well, Dan, who was a medic, used to insist that not using all the cot seatbelts when he was riding the ambulance was fine. He was written up a few times, but nothing would change his attitude. So one day, we get dispatched to a very obese lady who has fallen down.
This poor lady needs to go get checked out at the hospital. 10 of us put her on a special sheet they make, get her out to the ambulance, package her up, and send them off to the hospital, with Dan of course insisting that two seatbelt straps are fine instead of five. As we are heading back to the house, we suddenly hear the dispatcher, in a panic, trying to contact his radio.
The dispatcher is saying “2389 ARE YOU OKAY?, 2389 ARE YOU OKAY??" At this point, she activates the emergency tones, and asks again “2389 ARE YOU OKAY?” So just about everyone and their grandmother knows that something bad has happened, and after the tone activation, we hear the driver get on the radio.
He’s screaming “Dispatch Medic 19 we need help at the intersection of XY”…and then nothing after that. The driver couldn't see what was going on in the back so until he heard the emergency tone, he had no idea something had happened. At this point, the radio lights up with the Chief, Deputy Chief, and Duty Chief responding from HQ.
We are thinking the worst, but nothing beat what we saw. We arrive and notice the two officers that beat us there are beet red, and we can hear cursing, and screaming. At this point, I knew everything was going to be okay because I could recognize the voice. I come around to the back of the ambulance, and this is what I see: A pair of soaked blue uniform pants and boots, covered by a very large, incontinent woman.
What had happened is that the driver took a turn, the weight of the patient snapped the belts as Dan was kneeling down, and he ended up pinned to the floor. Unluckily for him, the movement also caused the huge lady to pee on him. He could only reach his emergency button, which in retrospect is good for him, because otherwise he would have been found like that at the ER dock.
#53 The Butt of the Joke
My husband and I had an inside joke. Whenever someone lost something, the other person always asked, "Have you checked inside your butt?" I was in a meeting at work in my conservative and traditional corporate office one day, and a co-worker said, "I can't find my pen." Without any thought or hesitation I quickly responded, "Have you checked inside your butt?"
#54 Special Delivery
Someone at work decided to break the "don't use non-encrypted flash drives" rule and copied all of the payroll information for the company to his personal flash drive to take it home. Then instead of driving 30 minutes back to the office to upload the data, he decided to put it in a regular envelope and mail it back to the office. All that made it back to the office was an empty envelope with a hole.
#55 Eurotrip Gone Wrong
I was driving from Italy to France to meet my husband. It was supposed to be a 12-hour drive, but once I got to Rome, I made an awful realization. I forgot my passport at home. I had to turn around and double back mid-way through the drive. Definitely not one of my finest moments, and I was not a happy camper by the time I got there.
#56 An Incompetent River Flows Through It
I had an employee who was working night audit (hotel). I was the manager, so he called me when I was on-call and told me that a guest complained about water dripping from the ceiling in his room on the first floor. Uhhhh did you go up to check on the room above it? "No"... How long ago was this? "Like a couple hours ago."
I've never flown out of bed faster. I threw on some clothes and made it to the hotel in record time. By the time I got to the second floor, I could hear a WATERFALL. The source of the water was, in fact, not the second floor. Nor was it the third floor. No, no... it was the FOURTH FLOOR. We had the water shut off earlier in the day for work that was being done on the pipes.
A guest got angry and checked out because it took too long for the water to come back on. Apparently, they had tried to turn on the bath and didn't think to freaking turn it off. So, the bathtub overflowed for god knows how long, flooded the room, and the room underneath it, and the room underneath that, and finally the room underneath that.
As it turns out, my idiot employee had moved someone from the room on the third floor for the same thing, but he didn't think to check on it. Instead, he decided to call me when a second guest, now on the first floor, complained of the same thing. THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of dollars of damage.
#57 Beyond Remedy
I work in pharmaceutical manufacturing. A co-worker of mine accidentally threw away a filter used to sterilize. A really important filter, since we needed it to test, verify, and sell our products. Like, the company searched through a local landfill desperately looking for it. The filter was never found and the entire lot was thrown out. Millions of dollars down the drain for one tiny little filter.
#58 Leaf It to Me
I accidentally left an Asiatic lily plant out in my apartment when I went to work. When I came home, I noticed my cat had chewed a bunch of leaves. I immediately looked it up online and saw that lilies are extremely toxic to cats. I had to rush him to a 24-hour emergency vet. My big floof made it out alive and I couldn't have been happier he was ok, but the whole ordeal cost me close to $3,000.
#59 Going for a Ride
I was walking into a dorm building with a friend one time, and she saw one of our friends coming into the dorm a few hundred feet behind us. She decided to scare him, so she hid behind a big pillar right near the entrance. The guy walked through the door, and she jumped onto his back, grabbed him around the neck, and started smacking his butt, yelling "Giddyup, Cowboy!"
The guy flipped out and got my friend off of his back. At that moment, her blood ran cold. It was not our friend, it was just some random, strange guy. My friend turned bright red and ran up the stairs without saying a word. From then on, that guy would see her sometimes in the halls and say "Hi, Cowgirl" and she was always way too shy to reply.
#60 A Small Drop
A friend of mine in the RAF dropped a radar system that he was due to install onto an aircraft. It was £500,000 instantly in the bin.
#61 Do Not Touch
In the middle of the night at the hospital where I used to work, the entire staff of the Cardiovascular Operating Room gets paged in because this one guy was tanking fast. It turns out that his heart was just totally shot and he needed a transplant, but our hospital wasn't qualified to do transplants and we didn't have a donor heart. Cue technology.
We did have a device similar to an artificial heart that could sustain the guy for a few days until we could get him to a hospital with more resources. The nurse goes to open the device to give to the surgeon, and accidentally touches a sterile part with her bare hand. Now the entire thing is considered contaminated, and they have to go open another one.
They cost about $100,000 apiece, and the contaminated one just had to be thrown away.
#62 The Floor Is Lava
I remember organizing my room when I was 10 or so. I had a lava lamp on the verge of falling off my cabinet; I didn’t notice until I heard a loud shatter on my floor. For some reason, my brain thought it would be a good idea to pick up all the shards. I jabbed my foot with a huge piece of glass. When I woke up, I was stunned.
I came to in a hospital bed. Turns out when I passed out, I hit my head on the cement floor, cracked my skull partially open and was bleeding profusely. I got taken to the hospital. My family thought I was a goner.
#63 That's Censorship
I was sending an "adult" link to my girlfriend and accidentally shared it to my Facebook wall instead of in a message. I don't know how, I must have been tired or something. We're talking some really bad stuff here. I didn't even realize I'd done it until the following day. I woke up to a message from Facebook telling me they'd auto-removed my post, thank GOD.
#64 Prefix Trouble
When someone said their food was too hot, a friend suggested putting it in the microwave on defrost to cool it down. I guess he figured anything with frost in its name automatically meant cold…
#65 Lost and Found
I was at a holiday party at a friend’s house I had never been to, in a swanky neighborhood I was unfamiliar with. There were completely illegible house numbers plastered somewhere illogical. I parked on the street and had to walk through those newer construction townhomes with ridiculously long staircases and two-inch tall house numbers.
Heard a party going on and thought, "Welp, this has to be them, who else would be having a party with this many people over?" I Waltz right in, say hi to the dog, start chatting with various people, grab a drink and start thinking, “Hmm. I should recognize at least three people here. I wonder where they are?” Then it hit me. I was not in the right house.
The hosts were super cool about it, knew my friends and pointed me in the direction of their actual house. I met up with my friends and regaled them with this story of confusion. It was wildly embarrassing, but swiftly forgotten after a few drinks.
#66 Buy Low, Sell High
I bought stock from a company I worked for. When the stock went down, I purchased more stock. Then, when the stock when down again, I perceived this as a buy opportunity and bought more stock. The company ended up going out of business. In total, I lost $14,000. Yes, I was an incredibly enormous idiot. I hated myself for years.
#67 Nice Save
One time I went to send my buddy a picture of this girl I matched with on a dating app. Derp no. I accidentally sent it to her instead. Talk about freaking panic mode. Felt like the biggest creepy tool ever. My saving grace was that the picture wasn’t just of her, and had some of her friends in it. She texted, “Why did you send me this?” My mind worked at the speed of light to recover the situation.
I responded with “Who is the girl to your left? She looks super familiar. What’s her name?” even though I had never seen her in my life. My buddy still rips me to this day about it.
#68 Shower Solution
When I moved into my apartment out of college, I forgot that shower curtains were even a thing. I spent about a month cursing how wet the floor would get when I took a shower and then dutifully wiping it up with paper towels to prevent mold. This happened every morning. I went to a Bed Bath and Beyond and asked a cashier if they had anything to prevent water from getting on the floor for showers.
She thought I was talking about bath mats and pointed me to the bath section, where I rediscovered shower curtains.
#69 Uno, Dos... Oops
In college, I was applying for a co-op internship at some big corporate company. Of course, like all applicants, I wanted to make myself sound as appealing as possible. I decided to change “Familiar with basic Spanish” to “Proficient Spanish Speaker” on my resume. The job didn’t have anything to do with speaking Spanish as far as I knew, so I figured it was a harmless fudge.
Well, I get to the interview. Everything starts out seemingly going well. Until she says, “Oh, you speak Spanish! That’s great!” She said, “We’ve been hoping to find someone to help in our South American division. Let me grab my colleague.” Before I could respond she leaves the room and quickly returns with a woman who is clearly of Latin descent.
The original interviewer says to her “This is him; he says he speaks Spanish well.” I’m sweating at this point. The Latina lady looks at me and immediately starts going off in full-speed Spanish. I could tell she was asking me questions, but have almost no idea what she’s saying. I tried desperately to remember anything left in my brain from high school, but think I just stammered, “Si” a bunch of times while smiling and nodding like an idiot.
Eventually, I just said, “Sorry I’m a little rusty, it’s been a while.” She just gave me an annoyed look and left the room. Needless to say, the rest of the interview was pretty awkward. A decade later and that remains the only job interview in my life that I didn’t get an offer from. Valuable lesson learned that day: Don’t put anything on your resume you’re not prepared to potentially get called out on.
#70 Clearly Unattached
I have a really bad habit of typing an email and including, “please see attached” before actually adding the attachment. I’ve sent a lot of emails like this, usually noticing right away, and re-sending. I was emailing a resume once, and said, “please see attached resume” and of course didn’t send it. They told me as much in their next email.
I responded with something like, “Sorry for the inconvenience, I should have looked more carefully before sending that email. Please see attached resume.” I didn’t attach the resume. I didn’t get the job.
#71 Flying Fish
Many years ago, I owned a pub. I went upstairs to the house area to find all the lights were off. I flicked the trip switches to turn the lights back on.. I then heard running water in the fish tank in the lounge, turns out it was broken and was spilling water over the wall socket. Instinctively—and very stupidly—I went to turn off the wet plug.
As soon as I touched it, got sent flying over the back of the sofa. I don’t know how I’m still alive to this day.
#72 A Town Called Malice
I got lost driving in upstate New York by myself once, at 1 AM. I took a wrong turn trying to get to Route 17, and wound up in a little town that clearly wasn’t where I wanted to be. It was a bit foggy and my phone (EVO) was constantly rebooting—I didn’t have a GPS. Nothing was open. Streets are completely vacant. No signs of life at all. But it got even creepier.
When I was driving around trying to find a way back to the highway, I noticed that there were tuxedo shops everywhere. It seemed like every other shop was a tuxedo shop. Why would a town need so many tuxedo shops? It got to the point where I was in a near panic state. I started driving faster through this little town, counting tuxedo shops.
I stopped counting at 15 and concluded I was the protagonist in a Twilight Zone episode. Panic set in. I drove. Anywhere. Anywhere where there wasn't a tuxedo shop. I turn around and just keep going. Finally, I see the highway. I drive the wrong way up the ramp, cross over the median and get the heck out of there. Traffic rules would not stop me; I was not going to be trapped in some odd little town seemingly in the middle of nowhere that consisted of only tuxedo shops.
I was picturing every person coming out wearing tuxedos trying to get me to stay. Forever. I finally escaped and got to my destination. I didn't tell a soul about it for about a year. One day my wife and I are driving the same route and I tell her about the strange little town where all the shops were tuxedo shops. That’s when I found out the truth.
Turns out I was driving through Tuxedo, NY.
#73 Studying Hard
I was attending a school that did a raffle for free housing each year. It was a big production with prizes given out throughout the night. with the big prize of free housing for a year given out at the end. I stayed for most of the night, but decided to study instead of stick around for the drawing. Guess who was called out first? You had to be present to win.
#74 Do NOT Call This Guy With a Medical Problem
Firefighter-Paramedic/Nurse here. I dropped a newborn baby. What it sounds like really. As soon as the sucker popped out, she was quite slippery and fell out of my hands right onto an ambulance floor as I was handing her to my partner. In the end it was okay, but the mother freaked out entirely, understandably of course.
#75 An Awkward Coincidence
On my first date with my wife, we started talking about tattoos. I have a rule that if I have an idea for a tattoo, I sit on it for a while to see if it’s something I truly want. I mentioned this to her and explained how glad I am that I do this because otherwise I'd be covered in Tool (the band) tattoos or some, "other dumb stuff."
Little did I know, I'd just messed up big-time. She rolled up her sleeve to show me that she had the lyrics to one of their songs tattooed across her arm. Oops!
#76 You Had One Job
Back in the dark ages, I worked for a small-town daily newspaper. There was one large discount store that refused to advertise with us, and would only use the other paper in town (our sole rival), which was more of a "weekly shopper"-type paper. For unknown reasons, the store finally decided to give our paper a chance.
Ad ran, and there in the double-truck, full-color ad, was "Men's shirts $9.99"—minus the ever-important R in "shirts." Yep. Needless to say, they stuck with the other paper.
#77 Ashes to Ashes
One time, my husband called me at work, "Babe, you're going to be so mad! I made a mess but don't worry, I'll fix it!" I just sighed because he is basically Lucy from I Love Lucy. I wasn't prepared for what I saw when I got home. Our living room was COVERED in grey powder. Meanwhile, my husband was completely filthy with a trash bag, a broom, and a super panicked look on his face.
Turned out, he'd decided to help around the house and wanted to clean the fireplace. He just decided the best way to clean it would be to stand in front of it with a trash bag and use the leaf blower to blow the ashes in. Spoiler alert: that doesn’t work. I didn't want to hurt his feelings but I laughed so hard at him. He deserved it.
#78 Moving Into the Friendzone
When I was 14, there was a girl I started talking to who I just clicked with, pretty much my first real friend in high school. After a while, I got a crush on her and some of my other friends would always joke about how we'd be a cute couple. High school freshman stuff essentially, and each time we'd shrug it off as a joke.
One day right before lunch is over we're just chilling and talking, I forget what it was about, but as the bell rings she just kinda awkwardly asks, "Hey OP you wanna walk me to class?" Now at this point, most people would have alarms going off in their head, "This is your chance," but not me. Me, being the fantastic student I am, simply said, "I can't, I'll be late to class."
And walked off after that. I get to my next class and then it hits me, and I immediately tell my friend, who just looks at me like I'm a dummy. Long story short, friend-zoned, and to this day I still get the occasional, "Hey OP wanna walk me to class?"
#79 Accidental Damage Fees
When I was a freshman in college, I came back from a party drunk and decided to watch something on my laptop. When I tried to close it, it didn't work. Rather than try to figure out why, I just shoved on it harder till it closed. It turns out my headphones were in between the keyboard and screen, and I had broken the screen.
#80 The Mile-High Flub
I was an airline Duty Manager in the Operation Control Centre. I was like the Maytag repairman: I only worked when there were problems, and my job description was to save the operation, meaning: find solutions where there aren't any. One September, Air Canada crews went on strike, so my airline lent two aircraft with full crews to operate Air Canada flights.
That's minus two aircraft for my fleet. On Sept. 2, a terrible tragedy occurred: Swissair 111 went down off the coast of Peggy's Cove. Less than eight hours later, one of our flights en route to London did an emergency landing in Halifax because there was smoke in the cockpit—same thing that had happened to SR111, except ours was a different aircraft type and only a minor technical problem.
Because of all the media attention, the aircraft had to be grounded for over 36 hours to make sure everything was all right. That's a total of three aircraft that I can't use. From that point on, we went into full crisis management. My phones were constantly ringing and I had to solve each and every single problem. When a crisis like that occurs, we're bound to forget certain things.
For operational purposes, the crew that was supposed to fly the aircraft back from London to Toronto was sent to Lisbon to fly dead-head onto Toronto. Only, the Lisbon flight was subsequently canceled and it was the Lisbon World Fair...there wasn't a single hotel room in the whole city and around. The crew purser, Marie, kept calling me asking me what to do.
I kept telling her that I was trying to find a solution. To this day, I can still hear her sweet little voice: "Berg, it's Marie, We're stuck in our uniforms, sleeping on the floor of a McDonald's. I'm a bridesmaid on Saturday. I have to get back. Please Berg, I have to get back." But I made things so much worse. I was so busy, this one got by me.
The crew came back the following Wednesday and she missed the wedding. I still feel extremely bad about it, especially because she was so nice about it. She never freaked out and she kept her crew calm and they just waited...
#81 Down the Toilet
I was carrying a toilet by myself after having painted the bathroom. I got caught up in the drop cloth and fell on the toilet, smashing it, and a piece of the porcelain cut into my knee. My father was there with me and immediately took me to the hospital as the bleeding was pretty decent. The doctor told me that the piece missed an artery by 1/4 of an inch.
#82 Consider Me Plucked
My first job when I was 16 was at PetSmart. I had been working there for a few months when one night I was cleaning out the bird/small animal habitat. The procedure was to haul a ShopVac into the little room and vacuum up the spilled bird food/seeds/litter. Easy peasy. So, I'm cleaning out the cage with the cockatiels in it, when one of them decides to investigate the loud sucking machine. FWOOMP. The bird is gone.
I opened up the canister, no bird. I take the hose off the tank and, bird. I used a box cutter to rip the hose in half so I could get him out. So, this freaking bird is missing feathers and is bleeding and I am in tears. I run to my boss crying and say "IJUSTSUCKEDABIRDUPINTHESHOPVACHESGOINGTODIEIAMAHORRIBLEPERSON." He takes one look at me, then the bird, and starts laughing.
I ended up driving him to another PetSmart that had a Banfield vet in it; he laughed and gave the bird some fluids. My coworkers named him Hoover and he lived in quarantine in the back of the store for months until his feathers came back.
#83 Nepotism Doesn’t Work, People
I lost my father's company three million dollars in assets due to a typo. As an 18-year-old intern.
#86 Having Your Heart Ripped out
My brother is a surgeon, and during part of his residency, he had to work in the pediatric unit. He was working with two newborns. One was getting much better and fighting for life. He was going to make it just fine. The other baby was hours from passing on. He wasn't going to make it. My brother was in charge of informing the families.
My brother realized about 15 minutes later that he had mixed up the families. He told the family with the healthy baby that their baby wasn't going to make it, and he told the family with the dying baby that their baby was going to be just fine. He then had to go back out to the families and explain the situation to them.
How devastating. To be given a glimmer of hope and have it ripped away from you not even an hour later. That was most upset I've heard my brother. He felt destroyed.
#85 Gone Fishin’
When I was a teen, I worked at a full-service gas station. One day, a guy came in towing a boat to get gas. A guy a couple years younger was working and thought the owner had taken the gas cap off of the boat. He placed the gas nozzle in a fishing rod holder. It is basically a hole on the top of the side of the boat.
He proceeded to pump about $40.00 worth of gas onto the floor of the boat. The owner was understandably upset.
#86 Well-Oiled Machine
I had a Miata that I loved. One day, I noticed my oil gauge was doing wonky things. It was jumping from 0 pressure to normal randomly. I actually drove back to where I was parked to see if there was oil on the ground. Nope. I looked it up and everyone said, “Oh, don’t worry about it." Oh, how I regret listening to those fools.
Apparently, a lot can happen in between oil changes because one day, maybe two months after my oil gauge started acting up, I’m driving and suddenly, “TICK. TICK. TICK. TICK. TICK,” like the loudest ticking I’d ever heard. I gave it a rev and it went, “TICK. TICK. TICK.TICK.” I drive it home and check my oil levels. It's at 0.
I refilled my oil and prayed that somehow it would go away even though I knew it wouldn’t. I knew it was bad and my car didn’t have much time so I drove it to the DMV to get my motorcycle license to have a way of getting around while I figure out what’s wrong. As I pull into the DMV parking lot, I heard a loud crack and then my car turned off. Goodbye car.
#87 A Black and White Issue
I was officiating a soccer game of 15-year-old boys. The teams’ respective colors were RED and WHITE. There was one African American boy on the Red team. As the game progressed, it got more dangerous and out of hand. At half-time, I informed both benches that I would be calling the game tight, and that the next flagrant foul would not go unpunished.
30 seconds into the 2nd half, the African American boy had a hard foul. I blew my whistle very aggressively and yelled, "TAKE A REST BLACK!" After realizing what I had said, I immediately tried to correct myself. I stumbled over every word. The damage was already done. One player on the other team said to me, "Not cool dude.”
#88 Inside Jokes Are Not Outside Jokes
At work (on my personal email) I was emailing my best friend who was Polish, and we often used “polak” as a joke. Me being part Italian, I also referred to “greasy Italians.” Sent the email to my friend. Then I looked again, and my stomach dropped. I realized I had typed it up in the wrong email window and had sent it to a client.
#89 Don’t Mess With the Internet
I think my CEO wins this. I used to work for a telecom company and our CEO went to a site to look at our new fiber optic shelter. While going around the shelter, he accidentally stepped on fiber that was transmitting more than a quarter of the data of our country. All our country had outbound connection problems for 18 hours. It affected more than 10 million people.
#90 Spam-a-Lot
I once worked for a music PR company. My first job was to send a promotional email out to about 1,000 journalists. I forgot to BCC every one and instead just CC'ed them. 90% of the mailing list unsubscribed. As you can imagine, those 1,000 journalists were this PR company's bread and butter. I…did not keep my job for long.
#91 Call the Po-Po
My current boyfriend and I drank a lot on our second date, then took an Uber home. The next day, we went back to get his car and surprisingly, it wasn't there. He was so devastated because he just bought it recently and now it was gone. We filed a police report. The process took forever and just generally sucked. The real story stunned us.
We walked to his friend's house nearby and there was his car, perfectly unharmed. He drank so much the night before, he forgot he moved it before our date. Now, once in a while when we're trying to find our car in the grocery store parking lot or wherever, one of us will say, "It's stolen, call the po-po." Never going to live that one down.
#92 Crystal Clear Idiot
I broke a champagne flute at a wedding once. It was one of the bride and groom's matched set. I was picking up cake plates and saw the glass on the edge of the table, told myself, "Be really careful, that's at a bad spot," and then proceeded to tap it just enough to knock it off the table to the ground, shattered. The glasses were crystal and a family heirloom passed down through their Jewish family from before the Holocaust.
I have never felt more guilty or terrible in my life. I still think about it sometimes and want to curl up in a ball and die.
#93 Slippery When Wet
Oh God…here goes. Working at McDonald's three years ago, little kid spills coke on the floor. I happily wander over to clean it up. Mop that stuff up lightning fast with a smile and everybody is happy. Go behind the counter and retrieve the “slippery when wet” sign to place over the newly-cleaned area, and when I get there, distracted by something, I slip!
My foot slips out like a javeline and kicks a baby's high chair, the baby's head whiplashes against his table so hard both of his shoes fall right off. I just stared in horror at the family. I place the sign down like an idiot and run back behind the kitchen for my dear life. Then I proceeded to crack up in the most maniacal nervous laughter accented with breaths of horror. What had I done?!
#94 A Teacher Gets Schooled
I'm a teacher. I had a particularly difficult student who gave me a very hard time on an unusually hard day, early in my career. After class let out another colleague stopped by and without thinking, I said, "Nobody wants ("that difficult kid") in their class! It's hopeless." I turned around and went white as a sheet. He was walking in the room to apologize and heard me.
However withdrawn and difficult he was before this, it multiplied tenfold, and I felt terrible. I tried to apologize to him, but he didn't want to hear it. After that, I didn't breathe a negative word about a child on school grounds. As an educator, you have to learn sooner or later that your students are the ones who get to act like children. Not you.
#95 Alert the Authorities: I’m an Idiot
When I was working at a liquor store, we had a super-serious alarm system that was ultra-sensitive once you activated it and locked up. Once you set it, you had 60 seconds to get out and lock up. My first time closing, I set the alarm and left, then realized I left something on the counter. I ran back in to get it, then ran back out and locked up again, thinking everything was cool.
As soon as I got to my car, the freaking thing started blaring "ALARM! ALARM! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! CALL THE AUTHORTIES! CALL THE AUTHORITIES!" over and over again. People a mile away could probably hear it, it came out of a PA on the outside of the building as well as one on the inside. I freaked out and went back into the building and called the security company and they had to verify my employment and walk me through turning the alarm off.
I then had to call 9-1-1 to let them know that I messed up and already talked to the security company.
#96 No Really, Oh No
Working in an online gambling chat room. Dude comes to take me off my break and comes in the room. At that point, a player had told us his brother had just passed on so I said "Oh No!" Dude taking my place sees this and gives a big "OH YEAHHHHHH!" kool-aid guy style.
#97 Always Check the Decimals
I very nearly injected a premature baby that had Down Syndrome with ten times the amount of Lasix I was supposed to give him: I had put the decimal in the wrong place when I did the math on the dose. That baby would almost certainly have been a goner if I'd given it to him. I had the liquid drawn up in the syringe and had the syringe actually in the port ready to push through.
Then, I looked inside the chamber and realized how uncharacteristically full it seemed. Paediatric IV doses of anything are simply tiny. I was supposed to give him 0.1 mls, and nearly gave him 1.0mls. I needed a very large cup of tea after that.
#98 Save Some Cringe for the Rest of Us
A female friend of mine–to whom I was admittedly attracted–had been expressing her reservations about an upcoming vacation with her family. Though it wasn't being overtly presented as such, the trip was meant as a way of re-solidifying her parents' marriage, which had been more than a touch rocky at the time.
They would all be driving from San Francisco to a small town in Northern California, where they'd stay at a bed-and-breakfast inn for a weekend before continuing northward for some unknown destination. In keeping with the alleged purpose of this so-called vacation, two rooms had been booked at the inn in question.
To her dismay, though, my friend discovered that her mother would be occupying one room, her father would have the other, and that she and her sister would each have to bunk with one of their parents. This was worthy of lament on its own, but it was made unforgivably worse by the verbal diarrhea that I offered in an attempt at providing comfort:
"Aw, it won't be so bad!" I told my friend. "Your father will probably enjoy sleeping with you." A moment passed before I realized what I had said. Then, with a feeling of growing horror, I tried to explain myself. Suddenly, I made it 10 times more awkward. "Wait, I didn't mean it like that!" I hurriedly said. "I mean, like, he's probably sick of sleeping with your mom."
"No, wait, I mean... I just mean that he wants to spend some quality time with his daughter." If I had stopped there, I might have been able to salvage the situation, but as it happened, I decided that the best course of action would be to keep talking. "I can't say that I blame him, really. I'd love to sleep with you." She and I don't talk much these days.
#99 Major Return on Investment
When I was 16, I briefly dated a girl who was 17. She wasn't in my peer group; she was an "outsider." But she was nice, had curly blond hair. I liked her. She had an old 1970 Cadillac and she let me drive it. I had never driven before, so maneuvering that giant boat on the narrow streets of town was... fun. It all seemed great, but it had a horrific end.
After a few months, my friends were bugging me about why I was wasting my time with this girl. She didn't smoke or drink or listen to hard rock. So I let us drift apart. She turned 18, graduated high school and then won the New Jersey state lottery for $6M. I should have stayed with her. My friends were all bums.
#100 Taking the Fall
So, I work in a cnc workshop, and we often engrave stuff. This particular guy wanted a nice wooden jewelry box for their wedding anniversary with a custom message he emailed me. For some reason, he chose to give the box to his wife at the workshop. Obviously, this is not the most romantic place I can think of but whatever.
The guy's wife starts to look confused and tear up: "you don't remember the date?" Guy turns pale, looks at me, says: "no, I'm sure it's a mistake." Me: "no, I've copied it straight, can't be wrooon...waaait a minute, omg, it's my fault, I'm so sorry, I will redo it right away, no need to pay, please accept it as a gift..."
Wife gets angry a bit at me, but they leave with a different box and the correct date. Guy comes back next day and pays triple the original price without a word.
