At some point or another, we have all done something at work that we regret. And sometimes, that thing we did can be...well, just the worst thing we've ever done there.
Recently, I stumbled upon a decade-old Reddit thread that tackled that very topic. In the thread, user AmadeusCrumb got straight to the point and asked: "What is the worst thing you've ever done at work?"
The thread went viral with over 10k comments from people sharing the most terrible thing they ever did at work. So, I decided to roundup some of the best and funniest replies:
1. "Working on a building site during the initial strip out phase I needed to use the toilet. Went for a crap, hit the flush, and returned to the site office only to hear yelling from downstairs. The plumber we'd contracted was standing in a puddle holding the soil pipe he was disconnecting and had poop on him and the floor. No one had thought to put up a sign not to use the main toilets. So basically, crapped on the plumber at work."
2. "Accidentally outed a guy who was cheating when his wife called in his meds and I asked if he also needed his Viagra filled. Apparently, she wasn't the one benefiting from it. I was a newbie in the pharmacy and felt moderately bad about it."
3. "One of my roommates told me this story. He was working at the parking garage in Universal Studios Florida during the peak of summer. He got bored with his coworkers, and at the start of the day decided to direct every single white-colored car to the third floor of the garage. By the end of the afternoon, the entire third floor was a sea of white cars. The next shift was pissed as shit because they had to work extra hours since people were having a hard time finding their cars."
4. "I'm a server, and I had this table full of really mean women. They talked down to me the entire time and basically treated me subhuman. One of them wanted their food in a box, and while I was bitching about them in the back, I accidentally threw her food out. After the other server walked away, I scooped her sandwich out of the trash and put it in a to-go container and brought it back out to her. I felt like a huge bitch, but I don't really regret it too terribly much."
5. "I worked at a vegetarian restaurant in college. There were vegan options upon request. A couple of times, I would get a vegan customer who would be rude or mean. If that happened, I just wouldn't mark that the meal needed to be vegan. Then I'd get, 'This is the best dish I've ever had here!' Well, yeah, it's because it has ANIMAL FAT IN IT!"
6. "I was gchatting with my wife and told her that there is a dress that makes her cleavage pop out like crazy...except I had accidentally clicked my boss's name and sent the message to her instead. Almost immediately, she turns around and says, 'Um, what?!' Awkward conversation ensued, but we all got a good joke out of it."
7. "Working in a ticket sales booth at Six Flags. They left me there for eight hours despite my having to pee for the last five of them. Finally, I peed in the vacuum tube (pneumatic tube) which takes the money to the counting room. At the end of the day, people were wondering about the tiny droplets on all the canisters."
8. "I worked at a grocery store. One of my coworkers is deaf in his left ear, and this dumbass customer was on his left side, yelling at him to give her bags of ice from the freezer. He didn't hear her until she was yelling obscenities at him and calling him names. She then decided to just ask me for help. I politely obliged, already scheming as to how I was going to ruin her day."
9. "I used to work in a law firm. I left a file in the mailroom, and the mailroom sent it to the opposing side. I no longer work in a law firm."
10. "I deleted over 750K data points from a medical database because I missed the '=' in my statement, and it just assumed I meant the whole database. My company paid out $10,000 as a settlement for time required to re-enter the data. TL;DR: My boss paid $10,000 in damages for a database typo I made."
11. "At work we communicate through Skype. There was a coworker I kinda flirted with. We would ask each other questions, and the other person had to answer honestly. I asked the guy whether he had chest hair, but instead of sending it to him, I sent it to my boss. Fortunately, my boss laughed it off and told me to go back to work. I still cringe at the memory."
12. "I worked a job right out of college that I had to travel 300-plus days a year for. I got per diem and a company credit card with literally no limit. The company book keeper was a woman in her mid-40s who hated her husband. I proverbially dipped my pen in the company ink not two months into employment. For the next two years, I kept her happy, and she overlooked the charges to my company credit card ranging from $200 dinners, hotel suites, strip clubs, casinos, and Amazon.com."
13. "My first job was as a dishwasher at a small cafe. One morning a huge container of glop was sitting on my work area. I worked around it and cleaned and dried everything I could. An hour went by. I ignored the thing for as long as I could. Finally, I had to deal with it so I scraped all the gray mush into the sink and scoured and polished the stupid thing. Only then did the owner bustle in and say, 'Where's the soup?' I was embarrassed, the owner was mad, there was no soup du jour, but nobody tried storing food in the 'to be washed' section ever again."
14. "Worst thing I ever did, ever in my life, was when I worked at a cafe. I was running out orders and bussing tables, and I was just learning how to hold the tray properly with my left hand. So I get an order: one cappuccino and one strawberry milkshake, for a mother and her little girl. As I get to their table, I put the coffee in front of the woman, then unbalance the tray and accidentally spill the milkshake. All over this 7-year-old kid. It was her birthday, and they were her new clothes and shoes. Man, even her feet were just swimming in milkshake. Horrifying."
15. "I didn't babysit one of my subcontractors well enough, and they burned a condo down — one day before the job was done. It was 50k in damages. No injuries, luckily."
16. "I was working at an extremely busy gas station with a line out the door. The woman came in going right to the front asking for directions. I said I would be glad to help her, but let me get through these paying customers first. (I was the only one there, and this is before Google Maps.) Well she would not stop yelling about it and interrupting. So, finally I asked where she was going. She said the name of a mall that was literally down the street. I gave her directions to another mall 20 minutes away."
17. "I used to work at a distribution center for a big box store. One day we were unloading a truck full of TVs. This was pretty hard, slow work, loading them onto metal pallets. About mid-morning my manager comes over and says, 'We get paid for quantity not quality, unload these things faster.' That day I probably broke at least 50 TVs throwing them from the truck onto the pallet. I kinda felt like I was sticking it to the man every time the pallet rail would bust through the front of the TV box and obviously go straight through the screen."
18. And lastly: "While working at a national accounting firm that has 2,000-plus employees, I emailed a picture of a kitten to the CEO, every partner/head honcho I knew, and my coworkers late at night. Alcohol was involved. No one ever reprimanded me. I left the firm (for other reasons), but from what I hear, people still talk about it."
You can read the full thread of responses on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.