Boy, ever had a big mistake at work?

While (failing) at teaching apprentices something I ended up signing for bad work on a pump. I watched them bend the first 10% of some lock tabs, and they did great, later one ended up out of it's element along with the fastener it was supposed to encapsulate.

Huge to do about it, pulled 5 boats off of patrol so my previous work could be checked. Mine were flawless, but I still failed, my apprentices and our employer, on the last one.

berkeley.

The blame eventually went to the training department and not me. That style of lock tab is now taught and bares my name.

The blame was all mine and I will never accepted that fail.

berkeley.

In reply to Datsun310Guy :

For a significant portion of my time at my current assignment I was sharing space with the 3rd party weld inspectors for the project, so your experience hits home.  For better or worse, FDA documentation requirements are pretty stringent, so we have volumes upon volumes of inspection documentation for every process pipe in the system. 

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

The big question to the "experienced" welder was why did you dip the welded parts into water?  He really had no reason.  

I took the "jump the kerbs" high speed rally car line on a slow cooldown lap in a street car, which meant I drove over the kerbs instead of jumping them. Cracked the oil pan on the original FM V8 car at our Summer Camp track day.  No damage other than a  car that was out of comission, an oiled track and a red face. I fixed it later but the damage was literally done.

OK, nothing compared to some here but it was a bad day because it was all down to me failing to think, while doing something I'm supposed to be good at, all in a high profile situation.

At least I wasn't the one who blew up a race car engine on the test day before a week-long event...

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

Cousin_Eddie (Forum Supporter) said:

Yes.

I retired from a career as a firefighter/paramedic. This particular situation I'm thinking of was way worse than most workplace mistakes.

In my position mistakes usually just cost money - more often from simple omissions rather than errors, so it's usually money the client was going to have to spend anyway, it just ends up being more since it was not in the original contract bid. Mistakes that are life-threatening are fairly rare. 

I can only imagine the stress of knowing if you berk up, someone may die - such in the case of healthcare workers and first-responders.

Or in active military leadership, where your decisions will with 100% certainty cause casualties on one or usually both sides. 

A previous job where I worked with cranes, we had many more internal checks. As you can imagine, any issue with docs meant EVERYONE involved with docs (myself, devs, PMs, etc) were all going to court. 

This was just one of those things that got away from me.

You mean like bailing out of a jet that was still flying?  

I have never done anything that bad.

Almost knocked my own car off a lift once.  But it didn't fall.

AFAIK I have not done anything horribly bad after that.  But I work in a parts department now.  I did drop a 24F battery years ago.  What a mess that was.

Had a check valve fail on a 4" oil line used for pumping cooking oil throughout the French fry plant. I was repairing a different valve that the actuator was acting up on, in a boom lift, 20' in the air. The first warning I had that something was wrong was an ominous gurgle from the valve flange, shortly followed by a fountain of oil gushing out of a 4" valve right next to my face. I got covered in 95 degree cooking oil, and by the time we located a block off valve back by the storage tanks, there was about 10,000 gallons of oil on the ground. 
 

Oof. 

Wasn't my mistake but very familiar. A caisson driller landed some high rise building columns on a "lens" of rock down in the ground... that was NOT the bedrock they were supposed to bear upon.

The lens rested on some slightly compressible stuff. A very expensive (well into $XX,XXX,XXX figures) remedial analysis, design and construction scramble followed - but multiple years later lawyers are still growing the final cost.

I'm deliberately being vague for "reasons". Hopefully I can tell the story in detail someday because it's really pretty interesting the way it started and developed and finally resolved.

In reply to preach :

35 years later and I feel you.  Let me tell you about that time I was in charge of inspecting the o ring grooves on the shaft seals for one the older boats we had in the yard drydock.  Might take a beer or three.  Thank dog that 11GTCS was a meticulous little berkeleyer and drew lots and lots of pictures in his notebook.  The short version is "when NAVSEA gives you inspection documents for the current version and the one you're looking at is over 30 years old, there might be some differences. " 

In reply to Recon1342 :

I had a purolator oil filter that had a bent thread and I started up the 200SX and 3/4 of a quart of oil spilled onto the garage floor - a big mess but I can't imagine 10,000 gallons?

In reply to SoonToBeDatsun240ZGuy :

That was a long day. When I started working on the line, it was drained and clear. Due to some funky valving, the oil was able to find its way to my location through the failed check valve. Turns out the air in the line was the only thing holding it back. 

All the time. Dumb typos, bad hires, putting good hires in the wrong positions, all bad and all part of the job. Worst was probably posting a very hateful reply to someone here after I'd had a couple glasses of wine on a stress-filled night early in the pandemic--not an excuse, more a cautionary tale. I gave myself a long suspension after that. Now I treat the internet like a car: I don't use either when I'm drinking.

Margie

When I was stuck on graveyard shift, I once spaced out doing a grind and weighed out 1000 too-little grain on a batch of 5,xxx lbs. My brain had shut off and I just saw the last 3-digits.

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

You know you didn't have a good night if you don't check to see what you posted in the morning.

Now I treat the internet like a car: I don't use either when I'm drinking.

Margie

THAT is true wisdom!