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11. I scream, you scream…
I used to work at Blue Bell Creameries in Alabama. Cream and sugar are stored in huge, swimming pool sized tanks, (about 25 of them in the whole factory) and it was my job to clean the tanks after they were drained for ice cream production. I would remove the tasting valve, scrub the door, and hook it up to the cleaning line (as opposed to the cream line) To do this, I must wait til the tank is empty, else I would be opening a golf ball sized hole in the bottom of a multi-thousand gallon tank of ice cream.
Welllllllll (Can you guess what happened next?) I got to a tank I was informed was empty, and proceeded to take of the tasting valve. Slowly, I unscrewed the ring that kept it attached. Ice cream leaked out, which it usually does because there is a residual bit of it left in there after running the tank.
More ice cream flowed, and it was obvious there was more behind it, but it was flowing too much for me to screw it back on. The pressure increased, and shot the valve off and pushed me to the floor. It took 6 grown ass men to put it back on there, but not before I lost $10,000 in ice cream >.<
12. Chuck E. Cheese
I used to work at Chuck E. Cheese and was taking a pizza from the kitchen to the customer. At the time, it was extremely busy and there were little devils running everywhere; and this lady was at the far end so I had to zigzag through the games to get to her. So after successfully maneuvering through a bunch of games and small children with two pizzas on my hands, I came within 10 feet of her table and thought I was home free. Well turns out there was a 2 year old kid crawling right in front of me. I tripped on the kid, the pizzas went flying and hit another kid, and both of the kids were crying because I stepped on one and nailed the other with pizza. And before you think this can’t get any worse, I then had to deal with the parents…that part alone still makes me shudder to this day. After about 45 minutes of yelling at me, they pressure my manager to fire me. My managers a cool guy so he said no, but he pulled me aside and told me he would have to pretend to go bat-shit crazy on me to make the parents happy. He did and it was the finest acting I have ever seen a non-actor pull off. It even scared me for a minute. I continued working in that hell hole for another year before I left for college.13. Nascar
Working the races was probably the most boring four hours of my life as it required listening for the lead into commercial breaks, switching the feed to our local commercials for a couple of minutes, and then switching it back to the race. I would usually watch TV or browse the Internet throughout the entire race.
At one point I switched to commercials and completely forgot to switch the race back on. So after a few minutes of commercials, the station went completely silent and stayed that way for about twenty minutes until I realized it was way too quiet in the studio. A minute or two of dead air was enough to get us in trouble; twenty minutes should’ve gotten me fired, but it was NASCAR so nobody noticed…
14. Bless you
I was working in a sterile hood when a massive sneeze hit me out of fucking nowhere. The force of it caused me to duck my head under the hood and blow mucus everywhere inside. The whole lab froze and eyes slowly rolled my way in disbelief like this. I contaminated every sample and they had to call in an outside company to resterilize.
15. You’ve got mail
I worked in a mailroom right out of college for a fairly large company.
We often times had Overnight, Next Day AM packages that HAD to be there or apparently the world would explode. I was responsible for getting these to the drop boxes before pick up time, which means I had to take them with me when I left work and drop them off.
Well one Friday, had one of these urgent letters. Left work and completely forgot about it. It sat in my car all weekend. Got to work the next monday, the CFO and several upper management were literally freaking out cause the letter didnt arrive (got yelled at, etc). It apparently was a half a million dollar check that this company was waiting for or they were going to take some kind of legal action or something.
It turned out fine, but I wanted to die at the time. Been there.
16. Bankrupt
Worked as a student in a bank-agency.
I wasn’t 18 yet, so I wasn’t allowed to be at the front desk (some insurance-issues), basically I was doing paperwork in the back. Once, a customer wanted to enter, but one can’t just walk into a bank, you have to ring a bell, and have an employee open the door for you by pressing a button under the front desk.
Long story short, he rang, all employees were busy, so I went to press the button. I check under the desk, shit, 3 buttons. The man was looking at me, looking pretty pissed by the waiting-time, so I just press a random button. Turns out it was the motherfucking alarm button.
17. Snake
I work at a pet store. I accidentally threw a snake away. I was cleaning the bedding and didn’t see him buried in his. I dumped it. 2-3 days later my department manager brought it back to me after finding it in the receiving garbage. Somehow I didn’t get in trouble. Snake was fine.
18. BEEEEW
I work in a theme park, and on this particular day, I was manning the control booth. I was sitting in the chair, which was a rolling office type chair, when I decided I wanted to stand. I hopped down and somehow managed to propel the chair into the wall with my ass. The chair slammed directly into a fire alarm, and the lever ended up getting depressed AND pulled down. By a chair. I stared at it in horror for a moment, but nothing happened- until suddenly: “BEEEEW. BEEEEEW. BEEEEW.”
Yup, I set off a fire alarm. With my ass. So when you have a fire alarm at a ride, you have to cycle all of the guests clear of the attraction, kick all of the guests out of the queue, and then evacuate all of the employees while you wait for the fire department to come and give you the ok to resume normal operation. Once we had gotten the venue fully evacuated, I was freaking out. I figured I was in huge trouble, what with inconveniencing several hundred guests and wasting the fire departments time and all.
I came clean to my supervisor immediately- I mean, I was the only person in the control booth, it would be obvious that I had done something, so better let her know of my clumsiness before she thought I had had a more sinister agenda. To my great surprise, she started laughing hysterically and told me not to worry about it.
The ride ended up being close for like an hour and a half, and during that time, I had at least 7 or 8 managers and supervisors from around the park come and make fun of me.
I think the best part of the whole situation, though, was that after the incident, my supervisor and I decided there should be a cover over that fire alarm, so we gave a call to the safety department. We never did get a cover, because apparently a room full of engineers and the man in charge of safety resort-wide spent hours trying to fling a chair at that goddammed fire alarm, and not ONE of them could recreate what I somehow managed to do in one try. With my ass.
I still get shit for that one, and it happened nearly 2 years ago!
19. Bad waitress
I was a craptastic waitress for a summer in university. Seriously. You did not want me waiting your table.
Story the first: Just fresh out of “training”, I’m tending to a pair of women at brunch. I notice an almost empty coffee mug. Out of the goodness of my heart, I decide to refill it without her asking. As I’m leaning over with the coffee pot, I hit it against a ledge of a separator thingy… coffee sloshes out of the pot and all over the woman. Woman is livid. I am humiliated.
Story the second: It’s a busy night, and I’ve been slammed (given too many tables). For some reason, I am also told to tend to a table of eight persons, one of which is the restaurant’s general manager. Hoo boy. Cue me fucking up everyone’s orders, bringing them wrong food (which fucks up the orders of other tables), nearly spilling something on a child, etc. etc. At the end, the general manager has a word with me and actually tells me it’s not my fault, the manager for the night should have realized how busy I was. I nearly cried in front of him.
Story the third: Family slyly requests slice of cake to celebrate birthday of their son. They repeatedly ask me to make sure that it is peanut-free because he has an allergy. I talk to the kitchen, and reassure the parents that the cake I’ve recommended is peanut-free. Deliver cake. Kid needs puffer almost immediately after taking a bite. Fuck.
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