I posted this question up on our Facebook page a while back and the answers were hilarious.
What is the stupidest thing you’ve done at work?
I was recently working on a WordPress site and had two tabs open in FileZilla (one to my testing site and one to the client’s live site).
When I was all done and ready to upload the final changes I wanted to delete the (now obsolete) theme folders from my testing site.
Long story short, I got my tabs mixed up and ended up deleting the entire theme for the client’s live site, causing his website to render without any styling at all.
He was very gracious about it and luckily had a backup handy, but it was mightily embarrassing having to own up to what I had done.
I did something very similar. Always a big risk when version control is done manually.
Deleted a clients old website, only to find out that we needed all of the content anyways…
I’ve been pretty lucky really. The worst thing that I can think of is when I sent out an email to a few thousand people with the wrong link in it.
This was back when I was a teacher, but I organized a swimming carnival for an entire school. It took months of planning, and I really tried to design it so that it flowed well. It was a tremendous success … and culminated in me reading out the winning team. The judges handed me the results on a piece of paper, but I was surrounded by lots of over-excited, screaming kids who were all trying to look over my shoulder to see the results, so I had to hold them very close to me chest. I was exhausted, and as I was announcing the results, I misread them, and announced the wrong team as winner.
Once I realized my mistake (with a feeling of horror I can’t describe) I had to wait for all the screaming and cheering to die down before being able to correct myself—in front of hundreds of kid, parents, relatives, teachers, pool staff, and public onlookers. After all that work and planning over months (a lot of unpaid overtime) I was public enemy #1 for weeks, with aggrieved parents etc. complaining about me, damage control meetings etc… (Some felt I shouldn’t have corrected myself, but I just couldn’t do it to the real winners …)
Not a single person said “well done” for the day as a whole. It was all forgotten. 
Ralph - that’s awful! How mortifying.
It actually reminds me of another stupid thing that I did. I was one of the judges of an event called Full Code Press a few years back. It was my job to announce the winner. The Australian team had won, and as we grew up here in NZ calling the Aussie national colours green & yellow, I said “And in the yellow corner…”. The entire room just stared at me in silence until someone asked what I was on about. Apparently Australians call the colours green and gold. I was mortified.
TBH, that doesn’t sound too bad to me, so I’m surprised if it got a bad reaction … although I see how it might cause confusion. Even “in the gold corner” may not have made too much sense, as we don’t necessarily talk about those colors too much (unless the team is actually wearing the green and gold, I guess). The whole “green and gold” thing is pretty silly anyway, as the color IS yellow, not gold. 
They probably would have understood if you’d said “in the green and yellow corner”.
That is a hard one, well maybe when I use to tip lorries and I dropped some expensive stuff which smashed all over! OOOoops
Hehe. It’s the thought that counts, right? 
One time when I was working on a website for a client, [REDACTED].
And that’s how I ended up with a cowboy hat and two chickens in my car.
Hi,
I actually used my bosses name and phone number in registering on a website which got me into trouble.
My worst mistake is, Many times i used to forget to link the appropriate keyword where i need to post the blogs.
Force Flow, I’ve had that exact same thing happen.
Poor Ralph.
Good job, Ralph. That sounded like it was a heck of a task!
Thanks! Finally someone has said well done, after all these years. 
When I see people hounded in the media for some misdemeanor or other (like a politician) I do wonder if we are condemning him/her for one act and forgetting all the good things they may have done.
Yeah, that really gets my goat.
You see some politicians get hung out to dry over a small error that was entirely human and consequently blown out of all proportion by the media just to sell papers.
I’m impressed that your goat even cares about such things.
The other big mistake I made at work was actually applying for it.
O, and there was another time I was acting as a forum moderator, and … actually, forget it. 
You ended up with chickens in your car?
And a cowboy hat