Brutal "I Messed Up" Moments
Making mistakes is unavoidable...but these people messed up really, really badly, and it makes for some unforgettable stories.
1. A Good Samaritan
I was a bank teller working the drive-thru at my branch. I had a fat stack of cash in an envelope, roughly $3,000, that I had set aside for my manager to take to the vault because my till drawer was already full.
I was just going through the motions and there was some guy who needed a cash withdrawal.
While I was on auto-pilot, I made a HUGE mistake.
I sent back his tube with the envelope containing $3,000 instead of the few hundred he was withdrawing. The worst part was that I didn’t realize my mistake until about 10 or so transactions later.
I immediately called my manager and just said, “I messed up big time.” I couldn’t even remember which account the transaction was made on, so I had no idea who to call.
He could have kept that money and we would have never known. Luckily, he was a good Samaritan and he came back into the branch.
He asked for the manager, saying: “I believe there was a mistake, I was given way too much money but I noticed it wasn’t taken out of my account.
I don’t want your teller fired over this!” The issue was resolved in under an hour and I’m forever thankful that guy was a good person.
Shutterstock
2. Traps In Aisle 4
In my 20s, while working at Home Depot, I walked by an aisle full of pallets of doors.
As soon as I passed through, chaos ensued. All of the doors came crashing down, as well as the pallets. No one knows how it happened, but I'm pretty sure I was the one that put the pallets there a few days prior. Damages were in the thousands.
Luckily, no one was hurt; but I still think about all of the traps I left in that place.
3. Nick Of Time
Doctor here. During the first surgery I ever scrubbed into in my surgery clerkship in medical school, I accidentally impaled the patient's liver with a tool called a trocar. Just for some background, in laparoscopic surgery, typically three small incisions are made and surgical tools like a camera (laparoscope) are inserted in order to perform the surgery.
After making the initial incision, a trocar is placed to widen the hole and facilitate the passage of tools.
Basically, I misjudged how much force I would need to push the trocar through and I very slightly nicked the patient's liver. I immediately began to sweat and fog up my eye protection, thinking I ended the patient.
Luckily, the injury was very minor and I didn't hit any major blood vessels. The surgeon cauterized the area that I hit to stop some minor bleeding.
A few weeks later, we saw the same patient again to take out her gallbladder and she was perfectly fine.
4. Canine Chaos
I almost ended my dog an hour after adopting her. I had just brought her home and I took her for our first walk.
I've owned dogs before, so I wasn't particularly stressed; plus, we had bought a few collars for her ahead of time, so I tried them on and went with the one that fit the best.
The walk was fine until we ended up beside a busy road with no street lights. She was getting riled up, wanting to chase the cars, which I obviously wouldn't let her do.
She looked back at me for a moment, and then in one fluid motion, she slipped out of her collar and sprinted onto the street, chasing cars.
I've never felt so helpless, watching her stand in the darkest part of the road with cars doing 60 mph, rapidly approaching. They definitely had zero chance of seeing her and I had about 30 seconds to save her.
I ran after her, but every time I approached, she just ran away, thinking it was a game.
I had this rising nausea as I was sure I was about to watch my dog lose its life.
I did the only thing I could think of: I ran full sprint away from her. She saw me running and chased me all the way back to the sidewalk. When she got there, I just hugged her and stayed with her until I caught my breath.
She's fine and we walk her with a harness now, but that was the worst feeling of my life.
To this day I get flashbacks about it.
