Things you've destroyed at work

[Wh33lhop]

My very first job when I was 15 was at Baskin Robbins. The dipper cases out in the front of the store where all the ice cream is have a light in them that we turned off at night. This was controlled by a 3 position rocker switch. All the way up was light and freezer on, middle was light off, freezer on and all the way down was both off. One night, either the girl I was working with or I flipped it all the way down. Melted 40 gallons of ice cream totaling about $500. We both got fired the following week.

Ha. I worked at BR as a teen too. The owner was this 70 year old dude who always referred to his ES300 as "the Lexus," pretended to love kids but got pissed when we didn't try and upsell to a shy 3 year old who came in with two bucks in change that was obviously his own money.

Fuck that guy.

[Sputnik]

Sat in a '97 viper gts that was sitting for 2years so I was put in charge to burn out the old gas.....Over revv'd it for 5 minutes straight and blew the coolant tank to shit.

Some fatass in my class was once and fell, then grabbed the shop table to pull himself up and ended up spilling $1200 of racing pistons and connecting rods on his face and on the floor....LOL

[mikeedler]

did a bedplate gasket on a 2010 Cooper S--- on the test drive the motor ate itself.

also totalled a HMMWV when I was in the Army- drove it off a 15 foot cliff at about 20mph following a tracked vehicle in blackout drive.

[AndrewBird]

Ha. I worked at BR as a teen too. The owner was this 70 year old dude who always referred to his ES300 as "the Lexus," pretended to love kids but got pissed when we didn't try and upsell to a shy 3 year old who came in with two bucks in change that was obviously his own money.

Fuck that guy.

You know, my manager was kind of similar. Guy was always smiling this weird smile, even when he fired me. He made us practice scooping too, so that we could scoop the exact number of ounces we were supposed to. Uptight about everything like that. Margins must be low in the ice cream business.

[ZekeTheSneak]

I have to say I'm jealous of your job. I would kill to get into the shipping area for some photography....

just go buy a twic card very easy. I just wish the roads were better. The port of tacoma roads are so fucked I cant drive my e30 there.

[mrcheezle19]

i accidentally let the smoke out of a 4-20 ma loop calibrator, which cost about $1k to repair.

it wasn't me, but when I first started working, one of the operators was trying to repair the throttle control linkage on a small 1000 hp turbine. He figured he could hold it steady while another guy replaced the linkage...well, that didn't work too well, because he ended up overspeeding the thing and blades came flying out right next to their heads. yea, that was an incident report and about a $300k fix.

Not sure if weed reference or just coincidence...

[defaultName]

I drove an S2000 through a fence.



Backwards.



At about 60km/hr.



While partially airborn.



1 hour before it was supposed to be delivered to a customer.



Wasn't that much damage surprisingly...

[ttrousdell]

just go buy a twic card very easy. I just wish the roads were better. The port of tacoma roads are so fucked I cant drive my e30 there.

Even with the TWIC they usually ask you why you are visiting and if you say "to take some cool shots" they will probably laugh and tell you to get out. Plus the twic is what 200 dollars? I got mine a few years ago so i'm not to sure of the price anymore. Props on working in a container terminal. I worked on a container ship the last few months and i always thought it was cool how they were able to organize all the activity that takes place there. Some of the ports use remote controlled vehicles to move the containers now.

Where i worked dude left discharge valve for a screw compressor closed after starting. $25,000 to fix that. Sensor for our oil mist detector gave a false reading and triggered a shutdown of our main engine. Ship drifted into the side of the canal we were going through. Had to have specialists come and inspect engine and divers were almost called. That was several thousands of dollars. On another ship the fuel return for the engine was send back to the diesel tank when it was burning heavy fuel oil. Contaminated some 2000 gallons of diesel.

[ZekeTheSneak]

Yah they are not cheap, I have found plenty of cool spots from the curb but have yet to take any photos. Yah getting a car into a terminal is damn impossible until I become a foreman hehe

[mrsleeve]

I have my TWIC. I dont remember what it cost, as I was reimbursed by my employer but 200 sounds about right.

[samurai pizza cats]

i am not admitting to anything

[Eric]

When I was ammo in the AF, I dropped a container of live AGM-88 missles from a forklift that's tines were over 9 feet in the air. The stack that the top container was coming off of was at the end of our operation area, and the container landed on top of a fire extinguisher. Sitting in the forklift, I watched the container fall behind the stack of other containers (they are designed to be stacked up to 6 high) then immediately saw white smoke pouring out all over the place. Seriously sucked up some seat cushion at that moment.

I grabbed a picture of the punctured container, and I still have the smashed up fire extinguisher!
I'll try to find the few pictures I took before we evacuated 4,000 feet, evacuated the nearby German village, closed an active military runway, and diverted planes to the other base in Germany. Total cost of the dammage was almost $1.2m, but the added cost of the evacuation was over double the actual dammage to the missiles.

[dnick]

When I was ammo in the AF, I dropped a container of live AGM-88 missles from a forklift that's tines were over 9 feet in the air. The stack that the top container was coming off of was at the end of our operation area, and the container landed on top of a fire extinguisher. Sitting in the forklift, I watched the container fall behind the stack of other containers (they are designed to be stacked up to 6 high) then immediately saw white smoke pouring out all over the place. Seriously sucked up some seat cushion at that moment.

I grabbed a picture of the punctured container, and I still have the smashed up fire extinguisher!
I'll try to find the few pictures I took before we evacuated 4,000 feet, evacuated the nearby German village, closed an active military runway, and diverted planes to the other base in Germany. Total cost of the dammage was almost $1.2m, but the added cost of the evacuation was over double the actual dammage to the missiles.

fucking pics!!!!

[Jand3rson]

I'd say about this time or so last year (I'm a cable installer BTW, for those that don't know), myself and a crew of about 3-4 other guys were working on a resort hotel outside Redmond, Oregon called Eagle Crest. We were going to be retrofitting all 300-some odd rooms with HD boxes for all the new HDTVs. Before that could be done, we had to pull in a new trunk cable to the main cable distribution room, to provide better signal strength for all the rooms.

So one of the guys on the crew is up in the attic-space above the 3rd floor of rooms, scoping out the route that the new cable would take through the attic space into the distribution room. Three of us are standing in the hallway waiting for him to come back out so we can get started.

Suddenly, we hear something very audibly snap/break, and start to hear this massive rushing sound. We though that maybe he had broken a ceiling joist or something and slid down a wall. But the rushing noise got louder and didn't stop. Within 5 seconds, the guy in the attic space comes FLYING out of the hatch that goes up into the attic, and RUNS out of the hallway (we found out later to find maintenance), and then around one of the sprinkler heads, and around several overhead lights, here comes the water. And I'm not talking about a drip or a small steady stream. I'm talking it is POURING water out of every available opening in the ceiling space. Gushing, like a dam had broken. Within a minute, it's pouring down the walls, coming down through the drywall into an office and several rooms surrounding the main break.

It turns out that he had brushed his knee past a junction point in the high-pressure sprinkler system lines that had not been properly glued and installed, and when it blew, the full capacity of the fire system depressurized, and the ceiling above the break subsequently flooded, and when the drywall couldn't hold the weight anymore, it failed and the water then came down all 3 floors to the ground level outside. Standing out in the parking lot, you could see water just cascading down the windows of lower level rooms like a waterfall.

Luckily, companies like the one I work for are insured against accidents such as this, and since it wasn't directly his fault, due to the bad installation of the fire sprinkler system, we weren't held liable. But that is, to this day, the largest, most expensive fuck-up I've ever seen at work.

[dannyyisntt]

I've gotta say there's some pretty funny stories in here. Always something worse I suppose.

Btw for those that are interested, I updated the first post.