Work f*ckups...whats your biggest

[Javajoe]

Years ago while building that POS Parker Post Office by the dam on the CA side my grader raised his end dump up and hit the low power line knocking power out for the dam. Dam guys came rolling up and I pointed to the grader and said that’s who ya need to talk to and then I left back to Riverside lol. 2 days later I come back and the grader had a huge dirt mound around one of the poles. He says he hit the pole and cracked it. Outstanding work

 

[Desert Whaler]

This wasn't me but good for a few laughs . . . We were putting quarry tile in at a Smiths store in Azusa many years ago.
We had a 'driver' in a large steak-bed bring us like 8 pallets of 6" quary tile . . . he drove the truck inside the building and unloaded it all by hand !
When he went to leave the truck had raised up so much he couldn't clear the header , even flattened the tires ! . . . Now you've gotta picture this guy, Tall like 6'5", skinny, super hairy guy with long black hair / beard etc. looking like sasquatch . . . . he went around to all the trades and asked if they could hop in the bed to lower it down !!! Somehow he got them all to agree !!!! . . . so here's this creepy lookin dude driving a steakbed out of a buliding with like 50 construction workers in the back !!!! Looked like something from a 3rd world country !!!!! We laughed our asses off at that one !!!!

 

[rivermobster]

So working on cars there is a whole lot of room for errors. And there are so many ways to get hurt! It's a dangerous profession, but one I have always loved.

Thinking about it these past couple of days, I think this is my most expensive mistake...

Tech at Lexus. Friday late, ready to go home. Last test drive of the day. Being it's Friday at 5 in So Cal, traffic is an absolute mess!

We had test drive routes we were required to take, so I jump on the 10 freeway east. Traffic ain't bad! I'm actually doing 60 getting ready to take the next off ramp and traffic INSTANTLY stops.

I'm on a bridge, with no shoulder, heading for the back of a huge box truck. I slam on the brakes but the anti lock takes over, so now I'm slowing down gently instead of skidding. I don't wanna go head on into the back of this truck, so I try and fit between the side of the truck and the bridge rail.

Nope, not enough room, so I wipe out the left front fender and hood of this farily new LS400. FUCK!!!

I have to pull back into the dealership with this car I just crashed...

The customer got a new car.

I got to feel like a complete POS.

 

[Nordie]

This wasn't a big mess up, but I was doing carpentry in Florida for a year. We were building a house around an old house type of deal. We had just got the rood dried in and they put the flashing in at one of the gable ends it butted the gable and was for the lower roof. There was a lower roof for 1st floor only and I was on a scaffold for the 2 story section on the inside of the house. There was a window that needed to be cut open at the 2nd story portion, what I failed to notice was how high the lower roof came up to this window. We had prefabbed the gable wall and stood it so the rough opening was already framed header and all.

The window guys showed up, and they needed the sheathing cut. No big deal I'll grab the sawzall and cut the opening. Someone somewhere messed up on the dimensions, needless to say I cut right through the flashing almost into the lower roof.

Had to stay on overtime and reframe, sheath, and seal the now raised window. I felt like a dumbass, not to mention I shot a ring shank nail through the palm of my hand. The roofing guys and mostly my uncle were all pretty cool about replacing the flashing.

 

[DC-88]

Back in the mid 2000's during the decorative concrete craze a good friend who is a concrete contractor and I were teamed up splitting a big remodel job where his crew had just poured a new pool deck along with a ton of other stamped/ decorative concrete. It was sealed and looked great , but the client was a bad one and we agreed at the end of the job to remove an 8'x8'section pinned in by columns , and replace it due to a very minor crack which is typical in a spot like that . I knew my buddy had met with the concrete cutter/demo guy to show him exactly which section was to be removed, taking extra care not to make a mess or damage anything else. We were at our kid's baseball game a few days later around 5pm when he takes a call where the foreman from the demo crew told him " man we tried, but I don't think we're gonna quite get it today....maybe a couple more hours in the morning" They had about 90% of the entire scope torn out at that point . It wasn't funny at the time -

 

[HTTP404]

Oh I just remembered one.

I let a 2 million gallon drinking water reservoir go dry. This was before the days of telemetry and smart phones. I forgot to do one of the daily system checks on a saturday afternoon and some of our well pumps failed. So on the hot summer afternoon the reservoir went dry. I was alerted to the situation from emergency dispatch reporting calls from customers with no water. Spent the rest of the afternoon bleeding air from fire hydrants and other high spots.

 

[rrrr]

Got the plans for an apartment bldg. Estimated the job and the stairs were wood. They sent a revised set of plans and said to update our bid. Stairs were changed to steel. 100k plus screwup, however the GC was someone we worked with a lot and and cut us a break.

This reminded me of a screwup by a foreman named Mike that worked for a friend's GC dad, Gerald A. Martin Ltd. Gerry was the GC on the construction of the Sandia Peak Tramway in 1965. Mike was Gerry's nephew.

I was working for Gerry at the time as a jobsite superintendent on various projects in Albuquerque, and didn't think much of Mike's knowledge and work ethic. He routinely smoked weed before work in the morning and at lunch, and his projects always ran behind schedule and over budget.

Gerry won the bid to build three condo buildings in Beaver Creek, CO, just down the road from Vail. The condos were going to face a circular drive, and a creek ran behind them.

Mike moved to Beaver Creek from Albuquerque to run the job. He got busy doing sitework, and when the UG utilities were completed, he set up control lines and laid out the perimeter concrete beams. After they were poured, the slabs were next. They had to hurry a bit, it was already September and the aspens were turning.

After the forms were stripped, the framing crews started their work. The next day, the framing foreman found Mike and informed him there was an issue with the center building of the three. The plumbing stubs in the slab weren't in the wall lines, did not match the framer's shop drawings, and he couldn't make sense of it.

After checking and rechecking the drawings, the mystery began to make sense. Mike had laid out the concrete work 180° from the intended orientation. The slab was facing the wrong direction.

The entire perimeter of the slab was sawcut and jackhammered. After the debris was cleaned up, new forms were erected and the concrete was doweled to tie the new concrete to the old. There were also places where some breakout was necessary to rework plumbing. In general it was a real shit show.

Mike was fired.

 

[RaceTec]

None of mine were as expensive as some of yours. They were just very damn embarrassing! The first was when I worked for Art Carr. A customer had brought in a crazy blown t-bucket. As with most old buckets the steering column runs almost vertically between the throttle and brake pedals. I was moving this high dollar bucket as a semi trailer was backing in. He didn't see me and I couldn't get my big dumb teenage foot from the gas pedal to the brake pedal because of the column, and with my limited thought capacity in panic mode didn't think to use my left foot. Crashed directly into the back of the trailer. The other cost me my first trip to surfers paradise back in the CART days. I was the FNG helping to unload the tool boxes from the trailer to load on air pallets to air freight everything from LAX. The trailer had "tracks" just wide enough on the walls to load the cars on and roll them forward. We had so much crap that they had taken the Snap On top boxes and rolled them on the tracks to the front of the trailer. So here I am rolling a top box on a dolly towards the back of the trailer down the track. Like an idiot I didn't check to see that the hinged section that would connect to the tailgate lift was down. They had raised and lowered it since I went to the front. It happened in slow motion, the tool box starts to tip between the track and the gap in the tailgate and then drops 12 feet straight to the concrete and fucking explodes! It hit right on a corner and even though it was locked just exploded with hundreds of pounds of tools shooting for yards! My buddy the team manager at the time had to calm the guy who's tool box I destroyed down as I cleaned up my mess in front of TONS of guys from multiple teams. Then I got told that my trip was cancelled... Never made it to Surfers Paradise...

 

[HTTP404]

None of mine were as expensive as some of yours. They were just very damn embarrassing! The first was when I worked for Art Carr. A customer had brought in a crazy blown t-bucket. As with most old buckets the steering column runs almost vertically between the throttle and brake pedals. I was moving this high dollar bucket as a semi trailer was backing in. He didn't see me and I couldn't get my big dumb teenage foot from the gas pedal to the brake pedal because of the column, and with my limited thought capacity in panic mode didn't think to use my left foot. Crashed directly into the back of the trailer. The other cost me my first trip to surfers paradise back in the CART days. I was the FNG helping to unload the tool boxes from the trailer to load on air pallets to air freight everything from LAX. The trailer had "tracks" just wide enough on the walls to load the cars on and roll them forward. We had so much crap that they had taken the Snap On top boxes and rolled them on the tracks to the front of the trailer. So here I am rolling a top box on a dolly towards the back of the trailer down the track. Like an idiot I didn't check to see that the hinged section that would connect to the tailgate lift was down. They had raised and lowered it since I went to the front. It happened in slow motion, the tool box starts to tip between the track and the gap in the tailgate and then drops 12 feet straight to the concrete and fucking explodes! It hit right on a corner and even though it was locked just exploded with hundreds of pounds of tools shooting for yards! My buddy the team manager at the time had to calm the guy who's tool box I destroyed down as I cleaned up my mess in front of TONS of guys from multiple teams. Then I got told that my trip was cancelled... Never made it to Surfers Paradise...

Was this with PPI?

 

[DRYHEAT]

Sure are a lot of fuck ups on this forum.

 

[Mandelon]

One of my guys called me and was freaking out that the homeowner was yelling at him. I sent him out to do a little roof repair.

I sent him to 525 East Whatever Street. Turns out he was at 525 WEST Whatever street. I laughed, he was freaked out, and the owner of the house was not happy! At least nothing bad happened. Still funny.

The cleaning guys had some of that Goof Off solvent. Didn't seal it. Walked all over the house....it was dribbling out the can. All over the newly finished hardwood floors. The house was a big Rancho Palos Verdes Estate. Floor guys were able to fix it. But geez that was scary for a bit.

Different job in San Diego. I taped down some Ramboard to protect the new prefinished wood flooring. Used blue tape. Pulling it up a week later....the damn finish came off the wood flooring. I think the manufacturer replaced it.

 

[Riverryder]

Not a work fuck up. But I did a bonehead move a couple days ago with my gas truck. Didn’t realize a trailer was a 2 5/16 ball had my 2 inch on the truck. Went to load My samurai on the trailers and trailer lifted off ball hit the trailgate! So mad at myself. I put my mountain bike tailgate cover to cover it until I can get it fixed.

 

[mash on it]

I stole a car. Accidentally. Red jeep Cherokee to be exact.
Customer walks over from the mall, jeep wouldn't start. Towed it to the station, across the street. About 10 spots down, ANOTHER red Cherokee. Door key fit both red Cherokees (GM style keys, square ign and round door key). Did a really quick swap. No harm, no foul. What are the chances? Back then, about 1 in 12 I've heard.

Dan'l

 

[DirtyWhiteDog]

Late 80's framing a house for 1 of the $35,000 toilet seat aerospace lawyers on the Esplande ,right on the beach w/3'lot lines, in Redondo Beach. Getting late in the day on a Friday, traffic starting to build. Mason working on 1 of the 4 fireplaces needs a load of block on the 2nd floor so they can work on Saturday. I jump in our POS Pettibone, grab a pallet and pull into the street, up on the curb, blocking southbound traffic and attempt to set it on the street facing balcony. I get 2' from the balcony and back wheels start to come off the ground. Boom in, inch forward against the fence and try again. Same results now I've got like 10 cars backed up. Tried like 5 times with a little more success each time, finally I say "I got this " I punch the gas, boom up and out, and the forks land 6" onto the deck, back wheels are barely floating. Me, the mason and laborer stopping traffic are stoked. Once I Let off the gas forks start slipping , pallet of blocks falls 15'to the ground and I'm in the forklift blocking traffic doing a front wheel stand.

 

[Gelcoater]

Not my biggest, but it “was” going to be a boat.

And another.

That’s what happens when you don’t pull the tape fast enough.

 

[Melloyellovector]

Oh wait I forgot a good one, back in 06/07 when we used to do around 500 pools a year 300 or so for a home builder in the desert.
My sells guy wrote contract up for entire project with wrong lot number, it was something like lot 21 and was supposed to be 12 or something like that.
So yes a house in Palm Springs, got an entire pool spa firepit deck etc all for free. He may have paid to add color to his deck out of pocket

 

[SoCalDave]

I stayed at a Holiday Inn once...

 

[4Waters]

It's not a work fukup....

I bought a boat, it's an open tab on what it's costing me

 

[DirtyWhiteDog]

Went on a boating forum, was going to find stuff out about my boat. . . ..

 

[Your ad here]

I never understood this shit and would drive me nuts when I worked for a GC. Fence guys are setting up the temp fence. Let's just throw the fucking panels on the neighboring properties landscaping.

 

[RaceTec]

Was this with PPI?

That one was with Project Indy owned by Andreas Leberle, the only reason I remember his name is he still owes me money!
I did do some work with PPI a little later in my career, I was a whore I worked with or for a ton of people... Good times! Lots of great stories and memories!

 

[Mandelon]

I once ordered new carpet for a house that wasn't supposed to get it. That was a $2500 fuckup.

 

[DaveH]

i designed the harmon tower, at city center in vegas

 

[nowski]

An almost Big F_ _ k up...

Back in my machining glory day's I was machining a Titan IV Rocket Nozzle and there was a power outage prior to starting a finish pass. When the power came back on I did all the pre-checks with the machine with the exception of checking the X axis, an easy feat on a small machine not so easy on a large behemoth machine. Machines rarely jump a grid (2mm) in the Z axis but extremely rare in the X axis. I decided to take my chances and started the finish pass. Something didn't look right from where I stood (on the ground) so I decided to hop on the scissor lift attached to the machine to get a better look some 18' off the ground.

Well s.o.b. the machine jumped a grid in the X axis and was taking to much material off violating the print diameter, I stopped the machine just in the nick of time. Although I cut approx 5 inches in the Z vertical axis out of spec I hadn't entered into the scrap the part zone. The part was submitted to Lockheed Martin for the discrepancy and a re-work plan was put into place saving a near $250,000 mistake.

It takes big balls to machine parts worth a 1/4 of a mil but when I did the final machining on the complete rocket nozzle assembly that was a $4 million dollar Big Balls of Steel experience. Here's a pic of a Titan IV rocket getting loaded on the pad, the nozzle is that little thing on the aft end...

 

[LuauLounge]

i designed the harmon tower, at city center in vegas

I think you were part of the biggest FU on here.

 

[67Charger]

I'll share mine. My screw up on my house that is still costing me money AFTER I sold it.

While selling my house, the buyer had a septic inspection done that came back "all bad". Now, I've had no problems with my system except the occasional over-volume backup resulting from 9 people in a 3 bedroom house. The guy never even pumped the tank, just looked in the cap and said it was deteriorating and then shoved a garden hose down the septic pit (not leach field) and ran it full blast until the pit started gurgling "full" after 35 minutes. $17K estimate for full replacement. After chewing on them for a garbage "percolation test" and failing my tank without even pumping it, even though they had been servicing it for years, I called another company for an inspection on my dime. This guy said he would be out next week and that I should dig up the caps to the tank and the pit so he can pump, wash, and inspect them. Sound more like a real inspection to me so I go for it. My caps don't have risers and are about 3' down so I borrowed my neighbor's mini-excavator to move some dirt.

First thing I do is grab the water main. Pulled it out with the bucket, resulting in 2 breaks. Awesome. 1st break was a a joint 8' to the north. Second was about 25' south where it had evidently already been repaired with a rubber compression union, and also happened to be sitting literally ON the top of the side of the septic tank. I get that shut off in about 2 minutes, but am still baffled as to who thought it was OK to put the drinking water main over a septic pit and tanks. Stupid. I proceed to finding the cap. "Thunk" There it is. I'll just scrape a little dirt off so I can see it. "Whoosh! Splash!" There it WAS. The 5' diameter 3" thick concrete cap fell into the 25' deep septic pit , breaking the concrete walls all the way down.

Recovery: My brother is a GC and is licensed to do septics, so we hatch a plan to rip in a new leach line to replace the destroyed pit and use the dirt to backfill the dead pit's hole. Due to covid, all permits are 8+ weeks out. We tried, but no dice. Septic guy says he'll cert it if we do it to his spec and photo document with him at each step. 36 hours and $2000 later I have the leach line in. Septic guy certs the system and the buyer comes out to see. Buyer is pissed he wasn't consulted on the repair and that we excluded him and demands a warranty. No one warrantees a used system since it can be damaged by the owner in any manner of normal usage situations. We ended up having to issue a notice to perform to get him to sign on the dotted line or else we were dropping him and going with another buyer.

I live in the house for another 2 days and then pull up stakes and leave. I get a call 3 days later that the system has failed and the buyers are getting ready to sue. The ground settled where the pit was and pulled on the main and broke it again, flooding the new leach field, filling the tank, and liquefied the fresh backfill, causing about a 3' wide 4' deep sink hole to form where the pit used to be.

Side note here. We sold the house through a relocation company as part of a moving package that covered all the expenses of selling, so the buyers actually purchase the home from the relo company, not us. This also means that the relo company is on the hook in the event of a law suit, and would pass the costs to defend themselves to the employer, who would pass the cost to the employee since it wasn't covered as normal costs. In other words I have to fix things fast or pick up the tab for corporate lawyers over an unpermitted/undisclosed septic system.

I offer to pay for the repairs. New main line and ground compaction, and sod. They come back saying they had an inspector come out and failed the tank and demand a whole new system. I have no legal standing, so I am now in on the hook for $17K for a new system.

As of today, the system is in and paid for, and the main line repairs are in progress. Buyers insisted on the permits and it cost them over 2 months in delays. Same cost to me either way. All said and done, bumping that cap cost me nearly $30k out of my pocket.

 

[4Waters]

i designed the harmon tower, at city center in vegas

I think you were part of the biggest FU on here.

Agreed

 

[SoCalDave]

In my younger days (early 90's) I had this new company pick up some machine parts for inspection on quote for repairs from my work. A week goes by and they call me and give me a quote of something like $15k. I'm like WTF, no way I'm paying that much for that little of work to be done. Told them I'll be there tomorrow to pick up the parts. I get there the next morning (south central) and they had steam cleaned the parts and took a couple of measurements. The guy gives me an invoice for $3,800.00 for the inspection and I'm like "I'm not paying that". His reply was "then your not taking the parts". I went back to the shop and told my boss what was going on and he ask me if I had an estimate or any paper work that they had picked up the parts and I told him that I had not. He informed me we had no choice but to pay them to get the parts back. So lesson learned the hard way for me but my boss was pretty cool about the whole deal even though I was pretty upset with myself.

 

[DaveH]

View attachment 1044987


Agreed

i didn't really have anything to do with it.

i did however have a neighbor that was working on the project. It was very interesting hearing the story from the GC's perspective. rush-rush-rush...use unapproved plans etc all pushed by MGM to get it done ASAP....cost didn't matter.........the building was 100% salvageable........but MGM didn't want it anymore after the economy tanked but blamed it entirely on construction defect.

 

[Bigbore500r]

Thanks guys, it's nice to read about your fuckups, while im living my fuckup...

Worked till 11 every night this week to get everything corrected. Today it's all done, but now im behind on all the other shit I haven't been doing while handling this. So it's gonna be more late nights, early mornings, etc.

Getting real sick of being the guy who's on the phone with work while my son has practice, or daughter has a soccer game. Or just being the guy who is on the phone with work every second when I'm driving somewhere with my wife and kids in the car.

Every day is an emergency mode day, but I guess after 16 years I should realize this what it is.

The checks always cash.....but fuck i'm tired.

 

[LuauLounge]

20+ years ago, my neighbor decided to add a second story to his home. Got three “quotes” since there were no formal plans. Two quotes were in the 80k range, the other 50. So, demo and framing got completed, contractor says he’s out of money and walks. New guy comes in and finishes. Year later, neighbor discovers that sewer line from upstairs was never connected underneath the house.

 

[attitude]

20+ years ago, my neighbor decided to add a second story to his home. Got three “quotes” since there were no formal plans. Two quotes were in the 80k range, the other 50. So, demo and framing got completed, contractor says he’s out of money and walks. New guy comes in and finishes. Year later, neighbor discovers that sewer line from upstairs was never connected underneath the house.

How did he end up discovering that?

 

[4Waters]

How did he end up discovering that?

I'm guessing it was a shitty situation

 

[Rayson1971]

I broke 4- 6ft mirrors one time when I was an apprentice. By bad luck is almost over. Looking forward to that.

 

[X Hoser]

Does crashing the Chief’s Unit count? Got promoted to Engineer shortly afterwards.

 

[JayBreww]

Does crashing the Chief’s Unit count? Got promoted to Engineer shortly afterwards.

That’s all I had to do? Who woulda thought


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Mandelon]

I had an order of mirrored closet doors arrive. Three or four sets of bypass doors. I tell one of my guys to load them up in the trailer and deliver them to the jobsite. Dipshit lays them all FLAT in the trailer and off he goes. You can guess what happened.

 

[LuauLounge]

How did he end up discovering that?

Noticed an odor on the side of the house......

 

[kurtis500]

Well, when I was a kid my moms big screw up was being a girl scout leader and in charge of ordering cookies. Once the final tally was set she sent in the order sheet for what was suppose to be 20 boxes of thin mints, but she accidentally addeed and extra 0 so we got to keep 180 extra boxes ourselves. Took over two years for my family to finish them off and I dont really care for them now..

 

[Ace in the Hole]

Well, when I was a kid my moms big screw up was being a girl scout leader and in charge of ordering cookies. Once the final tally was set she sent in the order sheet for what was suppose to be 20 boxes of thin mints, but she addeed and extra 0 so we got to keep 180 extra boxes ourselves. Took over two years for my family to finish them off and I dont really care for them now..

I sold $10k worth of BSA popcorn one year...there was a contest to pay for your trip to "sea base" which is the Florida "high adventure camp." I was like 14...I got my free trip lol. My dad had a sales sheet at the hospital, mom was the director of several nursing facilities... $10k is a lot of fucking popcorn. My dad was less than happy about distribution etc. I think I sold 100$ tops the next year thanks for the trip down memory lane.

 

[rivermobster]

This didn't cost anyone anything, but I earned a pretty good ass chewing from it!

I found a rubber stamp that said IMPORTANT SHIT on it at a novelty store one day. I bought a red ink pad to go along with it.

I turned a repair order back to the service writer one day for upsells, and stamped it with my IMPORTANT SHIT stamp.

Needless to say, a visit with my service manger ensued.

 

[Icky]

Thanks guys, it's nice to read about your fuckups, while im living my fuckup...

Worked till 11 every night this week to get everything corrected. Today it's all done, but now im behind on all the other shit I haven't been doing while handling this. So it's gonna be more late nights, early mornings, etc.

Getting real sick of being the guy who's on the phone with work while my son has practice, or daughter has a soccer game. Or just being the guy who is on the phone with work every second when I'm driving somewhere with my wife and kids in the car.

Every day is an emergency mode day, but I guess after 16 years I should realize this what it is.

The checks always cash.....but fuck i'm tired.

I feel for you, I'm that guy as well. Always on the phone, emailing or texting someone. My laptop goes on vacation with me all the time.

 

[Nordie]

i designed the harmon tower, at city center in vegas

I hope not...I allegedly worked on the Harmon tower