Way back as a line cook I was on saute and it was the season for soft shell crab. I had a full rail of tickets, and 2-14in. saute pans with oil heating up on full blast while I knelt down to grab the crabs from my prep cooler across from the range.
The 'roided up chef stepped over me to get to middle to expedite the rush, and grabbed one of the pans with now very hot oil in them...realizing that they had oil he stopped his motion but Newtons law kept the oil flowing, down onto my bare forearm, hand and how I was positioned my ankle.
The grill guy immediately took a pan of water and splashed my arm with it, rolled down my sleeve and soaked it....and as a bonus being a dumbass I finished the shift before driving myself to the ER. Some good blisters but fortunately no scarring, very little pain because it was kept covered.
Bonus bits: The hotel/golf resort just implemented a drug policy, and if you were injured or did 200 USD of damage you needed to take a drug test, which I did. Policy also stated that you wait 3 days not working for the results.
This was the start of a very busy weekend with a car show on the golf course, etc, and every warm body was needed, I went in to work the next day and if they wanted to send someone else for a drug test because they caused the accident, I suggested the ill tempered redheaded café chef...my results were discarded later.
Bonus bonus, right after the policy was put in place, a manager dropped a chandelier & walked away from his job after 5 years working there instead of taking the drug test.
I haven't had any big mishaps myself, but I worked in a wafer fab and apparently the person who came in to replace me after I quit, dropped a whole box of wafers like a month into the job. Shit worth like $1M.
That said, massive fault on the company for a lack of better procedures handling those, and afaik the person didn't even lose the job as it was an honest accident.
I used to have a boss that told me you never fire the person who made that expensive accident because you know that's one person who will never make that mistake again.
Worst thing in the office place was when some idiot left their window open in the middle of Winter, temps fell below 0F with high winds, and froze the 2" sprinkler pipes running over their office. Flooded most of the 2nd floor then started running through and raining out onto the 1st floor (and then into the basement). And it happened during covid lock-downs so it was fortunate anyone was even in the building to report it.
My own personal oopsie was checking network cabling in a small room, bent over to check things low and then wandered out to check elsewhere... Then noticed there was a LOT of commotion on the sales floor. Turns out I hit the power switch on one of the phone cabinets with my ass and shut down half the phone lines.
Years ago, when projectors were common in conference rooms. Someone was giving a practice presentation before the real deal in front of 80+ audience members. It was just our team of 8 or so the room for the dry run. In the middle of the presentation, there was a terrifyingly loud POP sound as the bulb blew out in the projector. It scared the shit out of everyone in the room. We all laughed after the initial shock wore off.
One of my coworkers stepped up on a table to take a look at it. I was near him and I waited for silence in the room while he was fucking with the thing, and clapped my hands together very loudly, simulating the previous scare. He let out a shriek of terror and clutched his chest. Everyone laughed. Eventually he laughed as well, but said something like "damn, that scared me." Within a week he had a legit heart attack.
He was ultimately okay, but I still think about it. I know I didn't cause it, but for a long time I couldn't shake the guilty feeling that I contributed to it. Oops. Sorry Ken.
A put a hole in the side of a helicopter that left it grounded for a week.
I accidentally tapped it with another piece of the helicopter. I'm happily working on helicopters that are made of metal now, so no more of that nonsense.
Edit: also, honorable mention because it wasn't my fault, but I made a helicopter drop an external fuel tank when it took off... by replacing a light bulb. It was on the button that makes the helicopter drop the external tanks, but there are failsafes so it will only do it in the air. Apparently the internal switch got stuck, so the second the weight was off of the wheels CLONK... and a tank was laying on the active runway. Excellent.
A couple of things come to mind. Nothing really happened with either, but I can't think of anything worse:
First, years ago, when I was active duty army as a 15B Aircraft Powerplant Repairer (in the guard now), I was clipping blades on the first stage of the compressor due to damage. There's 20 blades in the first stage, and you have to clip the one opposite as well to maintain balance. Well, I counted wrong and clipped the wrong blade. The GE rep (representative from General Electric, who makes the engine) was right there and must not have been paying attention. It ended fine, though, just extra work I had to do.
Second, less years ago at my current job as a Diesel Technician, I was doing a warranty repair for a service bulletin. I was still pretty new here, and warranty jobs pay less time, but this was like the third one I had done and was making good time, so I was trying to hurry. It was cold that day, and people complain when you have the bay doors open, so I had it just open enough to raise the cab, which meant the door was almost all the way open anyway. When I had done as much as I could do with the truck in the shop, I lowered the cab so I could pull it out and use our forklift to remove the part. I had forgotten about the door and ran into it. Didn't get in any trouble though, just had to take a drug test per policy, and the door doesn't close right to this day.
Many years ago, I worked in a call center. I was sitting with someone who was new helping them take calls and both of our headsets were plugged into the phone. The trainee was helping a store employee and she was just being awful to him. While she went to get something from the customer, I muted the line and said, "God, what a bitch!" except my finger was hovering over the button and I hit it just in time for her to hear me say bitch. I fully panicked and hung up on her. Nobody ever said anything to either of us and this was back when landlines would occasionally cross, so hopefully she thought that's what happened since she hadn't heard my voice up until then.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that's the origin of why I still don't trust mute or hold to this day. I'm not talking shit until I know that call is disconnected.
Nothing major. In my country when people are fired they are entitled to recieve some money based on how long they've been an employee. One time I overpaid a dude who was fired by some 5k USD or so (converting from my local currency) which is nothing major but my boss was pissed. Luckly I just called him and asked him nicely to return the extra money and he did without being rude or anything.
Edit: just as a comparison at the same company once one of our (corporate) clients sent us the payment for a service twice by mistake, some ~200k USD that they had to pay 1x we ended up recieving twice. By comparison 5k is nothing.
Although this wasn’t the worst, it most certainly could have been, and always comes to mind when questions like this are brought up.
I was on a job site. A half dozen houses were being built simultaneously. I walked too close behind an excavator, which abruptly turned. I nearly got hit in the head by the back end of that thing - which is all ballast and has tremendous mass. I almost got myself sent to the emergency room, and it would have been 100% my fault.
At the moment, I was just glad that none of the guys on my crew saw me pull such a rookie move. I didn’t think about it seriously until I got home that day. That excavator would’ve shattered my cheap plastic construction helmet like it was an eggshell. I could have died.
I didn't actually delete the data but for a solid 1min I thought I had deleted an entire production db of data.
I made a delete then I hit refresh and nothing came. I refreshed again and no records panic started to set in and I refreshed again and still no records. I knew that changes replicated over to our quick backup every min so I picked up the phone and when the guy answered I said I need you to turn off the replication right now I think I just deleted the ministry of health.
After a bit of troubleshooting it turns out the data was fine and my delete worked as intended. The issue was in my client and we checked a few things then gave up. I went for a long lunch after that.
The biggest actual mistakes I've done were all caught by a really good manager i had and so I can't even remember them because they never blew up.
Most recent, but not the absolute worst, was ripping my pants at work. I bent down to pick something up and heard the rip. It was over my crotch region too. Thankfully I had boxers on but was still pretty embarrassed.
Thankfully my boss was cool about it and I just drove over to Costco down the street and got a new pair and changed in the back of my car. He make a joke when I got back which was fine.
Missing my first shift at a large retail store because of a misunderstanding. When I showed up the next week, the manager was furious. Not the best start
Accidentally hitting reply-to-all on a company wide email and more or less stating that I wanted to be transferred to another team.
There was a new team forming elsewhere, and in fairness, it was a great opportunity in a lot of ways. But... I didn't get the transfer until another batch of jobs opened a few months later.