Tell your best work related screw up story!

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oh yeah, i heard about somebody at a local stereo shop doing the saaaaaammmmeee thing. i dont remember what kind of car it was though.
 
Ive done that too. Drilling holes to mount a pair of seats and suddenly I smell gas. :eek:ops:
 
Many, many, years ago in the small town that I live in there was a service station. It was run by a guy who drank a little bit, even at work. One day a gal from out of town stopped to get gas. She asked if he had a restroom. He had been drinking all day, and when she asked him, he thought she said whisk broom. He thought she wanted to clean the floor mats after getting gas. He said, "If you wait till I'm done putting gas in here, I'll use the air hose and blow it out for you."
I don't think she ever came back for gas again. True story. Ray
 
ahahahah thats great adam

ok i'm still in school and such and i work at the local zkota(its like a fancy hardies) anyways the guy before me who was cook threw down some chicken strips along with another set in a differnt vat(frier) so the buzzer goes off and i grab the wrong one for the wrong timer, and i handed out COLD chicken strips....it was bad :cwm10: must have been a monday
 
when i started working as a mechanic i worked for this really really anal guy who picked over the most rediculous things and had some kind of obsessive compulsive discorder. I was doing a head gasket on a dodge minivan. it was the DOHC 4-cylinder cant remeber the displacment. anyway the day was over and i figured it's my job, im leaving, so i left a shop rag in one of the cylinders to soak up the pool of collected anti freeze overnight. i knew i'd removed it in the morning and finish the job in an hour or so...so i thought.

i get back to the shop in the morning and for some reason the machine shop finished my head and called the shop later the previous evening. my boss had stuck around and picked up the head and put it on the car, torqued down and everything. you can see where this is going.

at first i thought to myself "he had to see the rag and take it out. he's not that dumb. and why did he work on my job anyway?" I was wrong. i was trying to turn over the engine to get it at top dead on #1 and only got a quarter turn out of it before the rag bottomed on the head. to make matters worse when i removed the head he someone cocked it while putting it on the dug the dowel pins into the aluminum head and one in the block. i couldnt get them out to fix them without heat so i turned into a day long project that i got yelled at for.

i can laugh about it now. but i could have killed him.
 
Back ground, Local repair shop here in Mid-Missouri.

Installing custom dual exhaust on a 2000 Dodge Durango, We were having one helluva time getting the left pipe to be bent right over the axle. We tried several differant things but still no luck, It still would hit the floor of the Durango and cause a "THUMPING" noise.

So I got the bright idea to get the Hot wrench and heat the pipe so that we could bend and pull the pipe to where it needed to be. Well I got the pipe glowing red and another guy moved the pipe, IT WORKED!
We were able to get it to the right place and it looked real good.

Untill another employee walked up and pulled down real hard to see if it still hit. In the process of pulling down on the rear bumper it pinched the "PLASTIC" fuel line between the pipe (rememer its glowing red) and the floor. This caused a nice little fire to start and gas to pour out of the tank.
As soon as I said fire, We had fire running out of the tank as if it was a water fall. 5 people ran for fire extinguishers and 5 people sprayed them at the same time causeing the thinkest mess you have ever seen.

We were able to finish the exhaust, Repair the fuel line and detail the car by days end. The paint was not hurt.
 
I always refer to thius handy little helper:

flowchart.jpg
 
Had a side job with my 13 year old son to clean up a lot that had a mobile home on it.
I parked the truck near the front door and loaded all the block and wood in the bed, as I walked around the truck the ground dissappeared under my feet.
Seems the Ceptic tank gave way..my son laughing like hell was no help..I fell up to my nads in sewage. My son said it looked like I had learned to fly the way I came outa there.
I rode in the pickup bed home while Son drove. When I got home I took an alcohol bath on the back porch, wife and son laughing their tails off.
I told the wife "nothing important got wet". :color:
 
While driving for a Tow Company that had alot of accounts with Dealers etc.. P.G.and E. was one of them. They had just purchased 20 new trucks and were having the nav and computer systems installed by some computer company. Here they had 20 new GMC's lined up both doors opened going from one truck to the next installing the monitor and keyboard bracket's on the dash. Every single one of them, then they installed the boxes under the seats. They were smart as they had disconnected the batteries so they didn't arc when they hooked up the power to the puters and fry anything. So they hooked up the battery and tested the puter and nav system and had no problems. Or so they thought, when they went to start the trucks for some strange reason there was smoke and a slight smell of burnt ozone. They had screwed threw the dash into the main harness and smoked the main ecm, sensors, trans controllers, and in the midst of trying to start the trucks sent power through the ground system of the new nav and puter system. It smelled so good in the 19 trucks out of 20. They didn't try to start the last one. At least they caught on.
 
30 years ago I was a crane operator at a large salvage yard. I was about half way completed the loading of a very sharp NEW looking MAC truck when everyone decided to go to lunch. Well, this was a rather very large boom crane which had to have all 4 stabilizers down for any operation. I shut her down and went for lunch with the boys. During this time I wasn't told, but some repair dudes came and removed one of my stabilizers for repairs without telling anyone. On returning, and of course from my line of sight I can't see the legs. (Hay I left them down) Well, I went to swing the boom with a load about 1 ton close by the truck and........(**** Happen's). The crane fell over and the boom took out the new 100,000 truck as the load also fell and crushed the bed. The cranes main boom was ripped from it's joint and about 200 gallions of hot hydraulics went everywhere. The cab I was in was like a little coffin, but all was fine (saved by a gas tank at that!!). I never got into ****, they blamed the repair company for not tagging or stating anything. However...."I" think through all this, that's why the walkaround your machine first law was invented :roll:
 
in the late 70's i worked in a chevy-caddy dealership.
myself and another mechanic were dicussing a problem
directly across the shop from a center post lift used to do undercoating.
we watched as another wrench drove a new cad onto the lift
and proceeded to lift it. as the lift topped out it shuddered causing
the cad to fall forward, off the lift into a wall. it then turned sideway and
fell on its side between the wall and lift. it crushed his toolbox and
shook the shop.
nobody was hurt and it was determined that the car slid off due
to undercoating buildup on the lift pads.
it wasn't funny at the time because of the screaming management
and osha investagation.
now when i see the guys i worked with we laugh our butts off. :drinkers:
 
I think mine would have to be the day i broke off a manifold bolt on a dude's Nova, Man he was pissed lol i was only 17 at the time an told the dude it'd be REALLY hard to get them off with out them breaking, Needless to say after that i ended up cuttin the heads off an taking the rest of them out with vicegrips an tappin them one size up , added about anther 5 days of worth of work to my list but in the end he was happy to have his car back with a set of shorties.. :thumblef:
 
I should feel foolish in even saying this...
Yes, I'm a idiot...The :book: didn't say I "couldn't" turn the band adjustment pin out too far. It just said back off the locking nut. And...of course it fell apart ((inside)). Now I have no 2 and very little 3. No wonder I drink... :drinkers: :drinkers:

My fault, but :wack:
 
When I was an apprentice panel beater we had a brand new ss commodore (up market sports car) come in for repairs & I was asked to pick it up from the suspension guys were it was getting a wheel alignment.I pulled out of a side street & was skidding from gutter to gutter overtaking cars in my lane & oncoming traffic sideways as I went.I got back to work & parked the car.Soon after my boss came down absolutly furious with me.It seems one of the cars I overtook sideways was the customer who owned the car & they followed me back to work.
Another time it was very hot 45 degree celcius day & we were moving a repaired car into the panel shop for reassembly & the foreman thought he would play a joke & run in with fire hose & put the wind up the boys,only problem was I took it a step to far & ran around behind him & turned the hose on.Everyone ran away from the car & it rolled through a wall.OOOPS.
 
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