Have you ever done something at work - by mistake? (training, federal)
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I also had a staff member send a confidential internal email which chided a client....to that client by mistake.
Lol I wonder if that was my old company on the receiving end. It was before I started but I heard a story about a company we used and one of the employees hit reply all forgetting our main operations email was still copied. Said some pretty nasty things about how we were a bunch of idiots or something along those lines.
As a low level supervisor at the time, I happened to go into work one Saturday morning and as I walked into the office to get something I noticed a bunch of copies on the printer. This caught my attention because this kind of thing never happens. To my shock the papers were extremely confidential and told the story of major changes coming to the management structure and compensation in our company. The file was printed from arguably the most tight lipped upper management guy in the plant. Of course I looked at everything and then worried for days that someone might have seen me!
I work for a fairly large company (around 2,000 people in my local office). I often take my laptop home after work and am online late at night with my co-workers from Asia when they're starting their day.
Our company got a new HR system where employees can log vacation or sick time requests and view their payslips online. I'm online at home and accidentally clicked to "print payslip" and it goes to a massive printer in a shared office space. I thought about going in to the office at 10:00 PM in my PJs! I sent an email to a co-worker who starts their day before the crack of dawn and hope he doesn't make extra copies and spread it around the workplace. How embarrassing!
Have any of you ever done something similar? Like, OMG, I can't believe I just posted / printed / emailed that, and can't take it back!
PS: for those of you who say to cancel the print job.. it was one page and zipped through the queue so fast I couldn't cancel it.
That's unfortunate. In our system the print job is held in the queue until the employee is physically in front of the printer to release the print job from the queue. This is an increase in productivity and security. Otherwise, employees would have to run to the printer to grab sensitive output instead of batching it up and releasing it from the queue when they are there to take the printouts. This way printouts aren't lost because someone else might pick them up by mistake.
I work for a fairly large company (around 2,000 people in my local office). I often take my laptop home after work and am online late at night with my co-workers from Asia when they're starting their day.
Our company got a new HR system where employees can log vacation or sick time requests and view their payslips online. I'm online at home and accidentally clicked to "print payslip" and it goes to a massive printer in a shared office space. I thought about going in to the office at 10:00 PM in my PJs! I sent an email to a co-worker who starts their day before the crack of dawn and hope he doesn't make extra copies and spread it around the workplace. How embarrassing!
Have any of you ever done something similar? Like, OMG, I can't believe I just posted / printed / emailed that, and can't take it back!
PS: for those of you who say to cancel the print job.. it was one page and zipped through the queue so fast I couldn't cancel it.
Meh, no big deal. If you were sending an email to a co-worker complaining about what a jackass your boss was and how incompetent his boss (who approves all wages and raises) was and you clicked on send "All" that could be a costly mistake.
I've seen worse - like someone printing layoff lists on the wrong printer.
After getting a very NSFW photo in color and high resolution printed out on my networked printer a few years back, I have always paid attention to that. I let the very nervous woman shred it that showed up in my office about an hour later.
Quote:
Originally Posted by markjames68
I also had a staff member send a confidential internal email which chided a client....to that client by mistake.
Yes. Bigger issue than printers. Some people seriously need email etiquette training. "Reply All" is sometimes a really bad idea.
I clicked on the thread because of the title.
"Have you ever done something at work - by mistake?"
It made me think about a co worker that accidentally got some of her work done once, by mistake.
This is why printers should require a log on or a badge swipe from the user before anything prints. Besides your benefit information being out there; you're SS# is also available for all to see. Including the cleaning people.
Yep, my mistake was to take six young skunks out of a box and put them into a crate. Their mother had been killed by a car.
They were so sweet and it didn't even cross my mind that they would spray. Whoops!
I worked at our local Humane Society when I was in my 20s. All our wild animals were put into a small room in crates until they were released or treated, or put down if they were injured. I was working alone in the kennels near closing time, was fairly new, and didn't know any better.
The next morning when the first worker arrives, the dogs go crazy barking in the other room, wanting to go outside to do their business. OF course all the barking dogs scared the spray right out of those babies.
The whole place stunk like skunk. I had some evil glances at me the next time I worked (a few days later). By then, it still smelled, but not nearly as bad as the first day.
That's unfortunate. In our system the print job is held in the queue until the employee is physically in front of the printer to release the print job from the queue. This is an increase in productivity and security. Otherwise, employees would have to run to the printer to grab sensitive output instead of batching it up and releasing it from the queue when they are there to take the printouts. This way printouts aren't lost because someone else might pick them up by mistake.
I had a managing director send an excel spreadsheet containing the salary info of everyone under her to a distribution list. She then followed it up with another email telling everyone not to look at the earlier email.... so yea, if you didn't see the original email, you got a second reminder to look at it....
To the OP - if this was your only/biggest mistake, I'd think you take too little chances. Making mistakes or failing shouldn't be avoided. Not learning from them or repeating mistakes is a whole different story...
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