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Work Mistakes

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surrey jim

Not in Surrey
Aug 2, 2005
18,162
Bevendean
Can't believe I'm going to admit this. This happened several years ago.

I work in PR, and a colleague emailed me and asked for a list of contacts of which she would approach with and email a press release. I copied about 250 contacts (let's bear in mind this included national news and business editors) into the email rather than attach it in it's current form (an Excel doc) or paste it into the body of an email. So when I replied to her "just send it to these chumps", I copied in the 250 journalists...

You know when you instantly realise what you've done and you go all hot and get the empty feeling in your stomach. Multiply that by 10 and you'll get what I felt at that point. To know that 250 journalists had just received an email from me saying "just send it these chumps...". ****ing hell.

It wasn't long before the emails started to come in ripping it out of me and some national journalists can be quite precious and therefore quite spiteful. Joel Hills, high profile in my line of works on Sky News, commented on Twitter about how annoying my email was and got a lot of reaction from other journalists. A lot, I might add, were quite sympathetic towards me and told him to stop complaining. The problem was I think some of them thought I was a junior exec who was there on his first day when, in reality, I had actually just won a significant industry award and was doing ok'ish! In the end, I emailed them all individually and apologised unequivocally for my mistake. I must admit a lot of them came back and said it put a smile on their face and some even said that the journalists complaining "are just morons".

Needless to say I won't be doing that again.

Not sure what system you use for email. The outlook 'recall a message' has come in very handy in simalar situations to this, for me.
 




Ninja Elephant

Doctor Elephant
Feb 16, 2009
18,855
Not sure what system you use for email. The outlook 'recall a message' has come in very handy in simalar situations to this, for me.

Would you mind kindly talking me though how to "recall" a message? Some would argue I sent a whopper last week. Got the desired result, but in hindsight could have been worded better.
 


Dec 29, 2011
8,204
Can't believe I'm going to admit this. This happened several years ago.

I work in PR, and a colleague emailed me and asked for a list of contacts of which she would approach with and email a press release. I copied about 250 contacts (let's bear in mind this included national news and business editors) into the email rather than attach it in it's current form (an Excel doc) or paste it into the body of an email. So when I replied to her "just send it to these chumps", I copied in the 250 journalists...

You know when you instantly realise what you've done and you go all hot and get the empty feeling in your stomach. Multiply that by 10 and you'll get what I felt at that point. To know that 250 journalists had just received an email from me saying "just send it these chumps...". ****ing hell.

It wasn't long before the emails started to come in ripping it out of me and some national journalists can be quite precious and therefore quite spiteful. Joel Hills, high profile in my line of works on Sky News, commented on Twitter about how annoying my email was and got a lot of reaction from other journalists. A lot, I might add, were quite sympathetic towards me and told him to stop complaining. The problem was I think some of them thought I was a junior exec who was there on his first day when, in reality, I had actually just won a significant industry award and was doing ok'ish! In the end, I emailed them all individually and apologised unequivocally for my mistake. I must admit a lot of them came back and said it put a smile on their face and some even said that the journalists complaining "are just morons".

Needless to say I won't be doing that again.

Chumps? It could have been a lot worse :)
 


yxee

Well-known member
Oct 24, 2011
2,521
Manchester
Work was slow at some unnamed store one day so being an idiot, I set myself a challenge of racking up the biggest bill possible on the till. I repeatedly scanned champagne bottles until a customer came in, and forgot to cancel the order. I thought if I threw the receipt away it would be fine, but the supervisor came in very puzzled and asked why the till was down by about ten thousand pounds.

Not my brightest moment
 


Nibble

New member
Jan 3, 2007
19,238
Years ago I was doing security at a house Michael Caine was having built in Leatherhead. I was in a portacabin on night duty and a guard dog was dropped of for me for the evening. It was the dog's first night and I didn't have any experience with him. It was chucking it down outside and I had cycled to work and got soaked so had my shirt off drying on the back of a chair. I felt sorry for the dog as it was getting soaked outside. I let it into the cabin and gave it some hot dog sausages I had with me. Then it turned very, very nasty for some reason and started to attack me ( I didn't know at the time but the dog was bonkers and wasn't to be let inside). I had experience of guard dogs but not mental ones. It had also been trained to go for anything on site that wasn't wearing the specific uniform. My uniform was drying on the chair.

I managed somehow to get around it and get out of the cabin, locking the door behind me. However I was now stuck outside in the sheeting rain with no shoes or socks or top on. The dog was going beserker inside. The site was about a mile up a private road in the middle of nowhere but I remembered there was a petrol station a bit down the road so I trudged down there and asked to use their phone but remembered I didn't have the office number on me so I gave up on that one and resolved to go back and face the dog, try and get it under control. As I was walking back, soaked, a police car happened by and they contacted the security company. After they had finished laughing. I returned to the cabin and peeked through the window to see the dog had wrecked the place and destroyed about 2 grands worth of surveying equipment that was stored in there. It had also shat all over the place.

A bad night for nibble.
 




Springal

Well-known member
Feb 12, 2005
24,785
GOSBTS
Not sure what system you use for email. The outlook 'recall a message' has come in very handy in simalar situations to this, for me.

Recall only works if all parties are within the same organisation, and using Exchange with that functionality enabled.

Nothing worse than seeing a 'recall' to a mail that has gone to a large amount of external parties.
 


itszamora

Go Jazz Go
Sep 21, 2003
7,282
London
Recall only works if all parties are within the same organisation, and using Exchange with that functionality enabled.

Nothing worse than seeing a 'recall' to a mail that has gone to a large amount of external parties.

This. Immediately piques one's curiosity.
 


Years ago I was doing security at a house Michael Caine was having built in Leatherhead. I was in a portacabin on night duty and a guard dog was dropped of for me for the evening. It was the dog's first night and I didn't have any experience with him. It was chucking it down outside and I had cycled to work and got soaked so had my shirt off drying on the back of a chair. I felt sorry for the dog as it was getting soaked outside. I let it into the cabin and gave it some hot dog sausages I had with me. Then it turned very, very nasty for some reason and started to attack me ( I didn't know at the time but the dog was bonkers and wasn't to be let inside). I had experience of guard dogs but not mental ones. It had also been trained to go for anything on site that wasn't wearing the specific uniform. My uniform was drying on the chair.

I managed somehow to get around it and get out of the cabin, locking the door behind me. However I was now stuck outside in the sheeting rain with no shoes or socks or top on. The dog was going beserker inside. The site was about a mile up a private road in the middle of nowhere but I remembered there was a petrol station a bit down the road so I trudged down there and asked to use their phone but remembered I didn't have the office number on me so I gave up on that one and resolved to go back and face the dog, try and get it under control. As I was walking back, soaked, a police car happened by and they contacted the security company. After they had finished laughing. I returned to the cabin and peeked through the window to see the dog had wrecked the place and destroyed about 2 grands worth of surveying equipment that was stored in there. It had also shat all over the place.

A bad night for nibble.

We have a winner! I sure this could be made into a short film.
 




daveinprague

New member
Oct 1, 2009
12,572
Prague, Czech Republic
Oh, how long ago was this? I have worked of and on in the Amex network team since 97, maybe we know each other. And no, I won't grass you up! :D

Before you mate....
was there from 79 - 89... I think the work all went to AT&T after I left there..im sure theres a few i remember still knocking about...
Used to work on shift with Martyn Blyth bless him, who passed away a couple of years ago....Arthur Burnett, and our supv was Bob Sommerfield..
Think Andy was VP...he probbably went onto bigger things though...
 


surrey jim

Not in Surrey
Aug 2, 2005
18,162
Bevendean
Would you mind kindly talking me though how to "recall" a message? Some would argue I sent a whopper last week. Got the desired result, but in hindsight could have been worded better.

You work at Amex right? You need to have full outlook - not the web version.

Open the message you wish to recall from Sent Items folder, click recall this message then 'delete from recripicants (sp) inbox'. once this is done you will get a success or fail message in your inbox.
 


Janbha

New member
Dec 5, 2008
2,345
Hove
Years ago I was doing security at a house Michael Caine was having built in Leatherhead. I was in a portacabin on night duty and a guard dog was dropped of for me for the evening. It was the dog's first night and I didn't have any experience with him. It was chucking it down outside and I had cycled to work and got soaked so had my shirt off drying on the back of a chair. I felt sorry for the dog as it was getting soaked outside. I let it into the cabin and gave it some hot dog sausages I had with me. Then it turned very, very nasty for some reason and started to attack me ( I didn't know at the time but the dog was bonkers and wasn't to be let inside). I had experience of guard dogs but not mental ones. It had also been trained to go for anything on site that wasn't wearing the specific uniform. My uniform was drying on the chair.

I managed somehow to get around it and get out of the cabin, locking the door behind me. However I was now stuck outside in the sheeting rain with no shoes or socks or top on. The dog was going beserker inside. The site was about a mile up a private road in the middle of nowhere but I remembered there was a petrol station a bit down the road so I trudged down there and asked to use their phone but remembered I didn't have the office number on me so I gave up on that one and resolved to go back and face the dog, try and get it under control. As I was walking back, soaked, a police car happened by and they contacted the security company. After they had finished laughing. I returned to the cabin and peeked through the window to see the dog had wrecked the place and destroyed about 2 grands worth of surveying equipment that was stored in there. It had also shat all over the place.

A bad night for nibble.

That made me chuckle , and i bet until now , Not a lot of people knew that ....
 




u'vebeenamexed

Whateverhappenedto.......
Sep 23, 2011
1,107
Hove-By-The-Sea
My mistake has an Albion theme.

Many years ago I used to work for a large company that also had a Midlands base. We used to book out cars from the company car pool and take them around the country however the company insisted that due to insurance reasons they could only be used for business (A to B) and no personal mileage was allowed. This rule , of course, was regularly flouted by everyone.

I used to try and arrange my trips up to the Midlands to coincide with the Albion playing there in midweek. This time we were at Wolves and I travelled the 30 miles to the game - we won 4-2. However, on the way out of Wolverhampton I got caught in the football traffic and in front of me was a very large Mobile Home/Camper van. While static in the traffic , for no reason, the van slowly started to reverse and before I could hit the horn it had backed into me. In the dark I could see there was some damage to the company car and no damage to the van - the guy driving was Canadian and said he had reversed up so he could see a roadside sign better!

My dilemma was that I couldn't report the incident as it would get back to my company that I was using the car to follow the Albion around. I told the guy to not worry about it and he very gratefully drove off. The next morning I inspected the car in my motel car park and the bonnet had an impact crease and the radiator was slightly buckled. I drove back to Brighton and parked the car in a secluded spot in our large company car park with the front of the car facing outwards. I returned the keys and did the paperwork in the car pool offices and said nothing about the damage. Within a couple of hours the car pool manager stormed into the office shouting at me that I had pranged the car - I just denied it and said the damage must have been done within the last hour after I had parked it ! This was well before the days of CCTV - and I got away with it.
 


Bry Nylon

Test your smoke alarm
Helpful Moderator
Jul 21, 2003
20,573
Playing snooker
Several years ago now ...

Called to a chimney fire at series of barn conversions early one Sunday evening. Pull up outside and two of the crew go inside to deal with the fire place. Meanwhile two of the crew pitch a ladder to the chimney stack and carry aloft a hose reel. The driver moves to the back of the appliance to operate the pump and I stand just outside the (open) front door, in-line of sight of the crew inside, the crew on the roof and the pump operator so I can co-ordinate operations.

The crew inside empty out the hearth and request a steady stream of water down the chimney to cool the flu and the chimney breast which are showing as red-hot on the thermal image camera. The crew on the roof duly oblige. The message comes back from inside that the water is having little effect - more pressure required. Again, the crew on the roof oblige and bollock some more water down the chimney.

At this point I notice the door to the adjoining property swing open and a middle-aged couple stagger out onto their lawn in a cloud of steam, like contestants from "Stars in their Eyes." Yes - they'd been happily sitting in front of their log burner, watching Antiques Roadshow, when we'd pulled up, poured 100 litres of water down their chimney and turned their sitting room into an instant sauna.

Still, at least their faces were as red as ours...

Ooops.
 


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