16 employees share the worst mistake a new coworker ever made at their job.

Being the new person on a staff always comes with some awkward learning curves, but try not to become the cautionary tale in the training manual for all future employees because of a dreaded espresso machine incident...

So, when a Reddit user asked, 'What was the biggest mistake someone new at your job made?' people were ready to share the funniest accidents, miscommunications, or bold errors the new person made at the office.

1.

They told a boat the wrong height of the bridge. The top of the boat went away... - whatever-silly

2.

They stacked donuts on top of one another when heating them in this conveyer belt type machine. The donuts and machine caught on fire… - bbbest

3.

I work at a zoo and we have some pretty dangerous animals--lions, a tiger, grizzlies (oh my). So every single employee has to carry on them a can of super strength bear mace (like the kind you can't just go buy at a self-defense store). This stuff is made to stop a raging [insert any animal here] in its tracks, and can cause skin irritation and even nausea without even touching you.

Anyway this one seasonal girl saw a can sitting by her computer at the main lobby; it says across the front 'COUNTER SPRAY', as in like 'counter attack spray', but she thought it was counter as in 'indoor counter-top/computer desk spray.'

So long story short we had to evacuate one of the largest buildings in the zoo (also the only building where we could sell tickets). It was so bad, people on the third floor of the building were having trouble breathing before they even got word of what happened. - BassyClastard

4.

Putting salt in the cinnamon sugar. Normally cinnamon and sugar is mixed together to make cinnamon sugar which goes in apple scrolls and coffee scrolls and on cinnamon donuts. Anyway this silly human mixed salt and cinnamon together. It all got put out the front and people were buying it and coming back very angry! - [deleted]

5.

Broke the copier with his a*s. - Mg42er

6.

She heated her food inside aluminum foil in the microwave. The sparks of light and smell didn't phase her, she considered this normal. - CommentatorPrime

7.

A girl took a break in the middle of a lunch rush and started making out with her boyfriend in the dining area in her uniform. - g2f1g6n1

8.

He did a tire change, and put the tires back on, but only tightened the lugnuts a few times by hand loosely (they're then supposed to be secured with a torque to whatever setting). But he forgot to do that, so the customer is driving down the highway when they finally come loose and the tires just fly off... Yeah... Yeeeaaahhhh...... - Aza_kitten

9.

On my first day, I backed my boss's customized pickup truck into a fencepost. - dairydog91

10.

When I was a stripper a fellow stripper new to the club sharted in a lap dance, apparently due to some medication she was taking. I think it was a pretty big mistake. - [deleted]

11.

I work in IT. We had a guy around September of last year who vehemently refused to look anything up. He was a stubborn older guy who thought he knew it all. The CEO of one of our clients had an iMac in his office that wouldn't boot up at all. The new guy was sent in, and immediately declared it FUBAR.

The guy trusted his judgement, and bought a whole new iMac. I don't remember the issue, but it was a 20 minute fix in safe mode when he brought the iMac back to our office. His excuse was 'I didn't think Macs could do that.' We lost that client, and Dave got fired. - [deleted]

12.

Well, firstly they were late on the first day. Following that, after about an hour, then they asked how to open the program they said they were proficient in operating, which was required for their job... - Dick_spasm

13.

Dropped another employee from the top of a climbing wall as they were being taught how to belay causing them to break their back.

Same year, another girl hitched a horse incorrectly her first week on the job; the horse got spooked, reared back and with her hand still holding the hitch, her finger got cinched in the hitch she tied and she lost a finger. She came a few months later and worked the front desk instead. - cstruiks

14.

They don't bother to train anyone they send to wash dishes at my work. They just throw them in the pit and tell them to do the job. Sometimes that leads to catastrophic what-the-hell-do-I-do related failure.

One thing that is never explained is that you are supposed to change the dishwater in your machine to keep the dishes actually coming out clean, because the machine reuses the same water over and over. One line cook got sent into the pit on my day off. Never changed the water once. By 8pm the white plates were coming out butter-colored and speckled with ash.

Rather than figure out something was amiss and ask how to fix it, he instead took to wiping down each individual plate with a rag so that the slime wasn't as obvious. Then sent them out to have people eat food off of them. - FrosthawkSDK

15.

I used to work for Geek Squad. A new guy got confused and reformatted the wrong computer. Customer was understandably pissed. The store ended up having to pay a couple thousand dollars to have his data retrieved by a professional data recovery service - [deleted]

16.

He couldn't find the opening of a garbage bag so he used some scissors to make his own. What a surprise that was when I pulled out the bag and the contents stayed in the container while the bag was in my hands. - Tostificer