Most expensive thing you broke at work?

[Thisisme]

I didn't necessarily break it, but a toilet looked like it needed to be flushed so I flushed it. Come to find out it was actually clogged. Shitty water got all over the floor, including the stall closest to me where the guy in it was presumably shitting. He didn't sound happy and I got out of there before he could figure out it was me. I sit on the same floor as the executives and we use the same bathrooms, so I didn't want to have that conversation if I could avoid it.

 

[kirby_fox]

Broke a window in a brand new party bus. It was like $1000 plus $300 for another part and $100 for a shade. Plus it was out of commission so loss of revenue.

 

[Quick]

Had to get my work laptop (MacBook Pro) replaced recently because one of the keys came off. IT department was cool with it, and something that happened to a few people.

That being said, I do have a coworker who spilled a drink on her laptop. IT replaced it since it was toast, and she did it again soon after.

 

[Trouble]

I broke amazon.com for about 15 minutes.

 

[Fall Damage]

Many years ago I worked for a telecommunications company installing phone and data wire. I was on a job in a large lab and there was something that looked like a refrigerator in one of the spots we needed to run a cable. I figured I would move it a couple feet away from the wall so I could get behind it. I just started moving it when an employee stopped me. He called someone else over and they started inspecting what looked like petri dishes inside. He informed me I almost ruined their samples that were worth 7 figures. No harm in the end but my boss was not happy.

 

[EVA UNIT 01]

A pallet of 4ktvs totaling 12k+

 

[Siggy-P]

Not me but a co-worker tried to carry a ton of prosseco bottles on a tray and dropped it all. which is nothing compared to some of the posts here mind.

 

[Rag]

Nothing of monetary value. But, when I worked at Goodwill we had a grandfather clock come in and I knocked it over, smashing it to pieces. A couple of hours later a woman called and asked for it back, saying that it wasn't meant to be donated. Her husband had recently died, and it was made by his father, and passed down to him, and now their children want it.

We told her it had already gone out to the floor and sold. She took it just fine. Figured that would be easier to hear than "I accidentally smashed that shit and it wound up in a trash compactor."

Click to shrink...

Oh wow... that's a rough one. I think you did the right thing though.

 

[meowdi gras]

Honestly can't think of anything of any real value. I'm really not very coordinated, but I'm also an exceptionally careful person. Especially if it's pricey and belongs to someone else. I almost never break anything. (Never cracked a phone screen, for example.)

 

[wisdom0wl]

I did part time at a tennis shop in high school over the summer once
I was learning to string up rackets at the time and some genius handed me a $300 racket with natural gut string and lmfao that shit's handle cracked right off and the string snapped. what a time to be employed

 

[Stranger Things]

Can't think of anything major, but I once dropped a pretty big plastic bin full of tax documents and cracked the handle/lid wide open. Put it back in the cabinet and whistled away. My supervisor saw it the next day and called me out on it. I made some stupid joke and she laughed it off.

Another time was my very first job ever in high school, working at a fast food restaurant. I accidentally left the chicken nuggets in the deep fryer for too long and the whole batch was over cooked. Manager had to toss out like 200 nuggets lmao what a waste.

 

[FaceHugger]

$30k blade server. Dropped it.

Turned out we were able to replace the motherboard and get it back up and running but even that was about $5k in parts and labor. I still have my job.

 

[Deleted member 39374]

a set of cine camera lenses, around $200k value, lid wasnt fully latched so when picked it up the case dangled open and the lenses rolled out

 

[RagingAardvark]

I work in IT. Almost fucked up a server installation that we happened not to have a backup for. Would've cost several thousands to hire the software's supplier to build up the application from scratch. In the end, we managed to fix things at the cost of a sleepless night and an entire department of people twiddling their thumbs for a day. So I guess like $5000 in lost productivity?

 

[Powdered Egg]

Nothing of monetary value. But, when I worked at Goodwill we had a grandfather clock come in and I knocked it over, smashing it to pieces. A couple of hours later a woman called and asked for it back, saying that it wasn't meant to be donated. Her husband had recently died, and it was made by his father, and passed down to him, and now their children want it.

We told her it had already gone out to the floor and sold. She took it just fine. Figured that would be easier to hear than "I accidentally smashed that shit and it wound up in a trash compactor."

Click to shrink...

Lmao quick thinking.

 

[zulux21]

Technically anything I break at work product wise didn't really cost them anything because I work at a thrift store (though obviously lost sale and what not but still). I uh almost broke the floor cleaning machine though.

My Coworker was mostly in charge of using it, but only once a week, and kept the water full and ultimately caused the water to start to smell because it didn't get cycled properly and the floor cleaner is a neutral PH so didn't kill whatever was making it smell.
Well continue this for a few months and eventually as he cleans the floor the whole store starts to stink. So his solution was to just dump a gallon of the neutral cleaner into the machine and it still didn't stop the smell.
Well no one knows how to service the machine in the store, and not only have we somehow lost the manual, but I'm the only person in the store who bothered to read the manual when we had it (side note here, the bottom of the machine is supposed to be taken apart every 2-3 months and cleaned... it hasn't been cleaned in like 4-5 years lol), so I'm tasked with figuring out how to drain the machine and clean it out.

I fiddle with it for a bit, and have a guess of how to drain it, but decide against draining it down the sink in the store as I didn't want to deal with the smell. So I take it out of the back of the store and out the garage door. I forget to account for the fact that the machine is designed for flat floors and clip the pavement as I take it outside with the bottom of the machine which throws it out of whack.

I let go of the machine and go to realign the front, and then realized that I neglected to remember that the pavement on the side of the building was slanted and the machine started rolling away from me. I ran and caught it right before it fell fully into the ditch next to the building, but not before the front end takes another hard hit and I can't get it to line back up right.

I park the machine in a way it can't roll, figure out how to drain it, run gallons of water through the machine to clean it, and then brought the machine back on, again clipping the edge of the garage as I came in while my manager was around. Only then did I react to the machine not moving correctly and tried to fix it again, before telling my manager that something is out of whack and I don't know how to fix it.

They called the company maintenance guy and he was able to fix it. So it's not like it cost anything to fix, but still :P

 

[Nilou]

While I never broke anything at work, quite awhile ago at a previous job at a college bookstore I accidentally spilt a coffee all over 3 college text books damaging then and making them unsellable. Combined they were worth over $1000. It wasn't a good day for me that day.

 

[GraphicViolets]

i might have broke a microwave. i was really depressed and didn't clean it out after i used it and the insides got eaten up over the weekend (which seems pretty weak tbh)

 

[Brinbe]

knocked a thermostat off the wall pulling a skid down a tight hallway

 

[Forkball]

I'm not sure if I actually broke it, but I used to have to haul a heavy ass TV around during company events. This thing must've been purchased in 2004 but was still being used in 2020. When taking it out of its storage it tipped over, and it didn't turn on again. No one saw it tip over so I wasn't blamed, and it was replaced by a TV maybe 1/10th the weight. Best thing I ever broke.

 

[Alcoremortis]

I've broken some glassware over the years, but I don't know how much it cost. Some of the flasks can be like one or two hundred bucks. I'm pretty careful around more expensive stuff, but if I'm losing my grip on glassware, the safest thing to do is to let it fall rather than try to catch it and spill reagents or boiling liquid on myself.

 

[Shyotl]

Triggered a software patent lawsuit between two fortune 50 corporations, all over a trivial optimization(read: fucking obvious and not novel in any way) I deduced and implemented to speed up some UI rendering.

Software patents are dumb as fuck.

 

[Fatoy]

It wasn't my fault exactly, but I was travelling from the UK to Arizona to speak at an event and also pull double-duty as a photographer when I wasn't on stage. I didn't pack the company's DSLR very securely in my luggage, and the body ended up getting broken in transit. I then had to spend a fair bit of the company's money on taxis to drive me around Phoenix so I could source a replacement.

 

[Metalgus]

The bottom part of a case of beers disintegrated while i was holding it and most of the 28 bottles shattered on the ground. I was a clerk at a convenience store about 20 years ago.

 

[Cycas]

I used to work at Lowe's and was 'assigned' to the plumbing department. I hated customer service so I would spend most of my shift doing the hard yards lifting tubs and toilets on the cherry picker. we used to keep the very expensive spa tubs at the top of the huge shelves we had (15ft or more high). One day we had a delivery of about 5 new 4 grand spa tubs. I had just placed the last tub at the top and started to come down on the picker but all of a sudden my cherry picker bumped and lifted a support beam on the top shelf. The whole top shelf collapsed with not only the 5 4k spa tubs but about 20 other types of tubs.

total damage to the stock alone was $35,000.

I kept my job and nobody else wanted to use the cherry picker after that except me...

 

[Lowrys]

Once I accidentally deleted a folder that I thought was just on my PC, but which was actually shared by literally every person in the company - about 5,000 people - who all relied on it for crucial documents.

It was like a moment in a movie. I deleted the folder and thought it was fine, and then about a dozen people near me started saying out loud, "where the X folder?" and I almost threw up on the spot.

Honestly I blame the system for letting me delete it. And me, ofc lol.

 

[BarryFishFinger]

Not me, but a guy I worked with was once measuring up in an art gallery in London, he got up on a step ladder and extended his tape measure along a bulkhead - extended the tape measure a little bit too far and it collapsed and the metal end of the tape went "SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" all down the front of a large painting that was on the wall below. An art gallery employee came over and asked him to be more careful as the painting was worth over a million quid.

Luckily no damage, but still. Twitchy bum time.

 

[FaceHugger]

I work in IT. Almost fucked up a server installation that we happened not to have a backup for. Would've cost several thousands to hire the software's supplier to build up the application from scratch. In the end, we managed to fix things at the cost of a sleepless night and an entire department of people twiddling their thumbs for a day. So I guess like $5000 in lost productivity?

Click to shrink...

A guy got fired at my job for running a single command on a mainframe that essentially bricked it, all because he didn't want to wait an hour or so and thought he could get around the work in some faster way. So he crafted some command he thought would do the job better and ran it.

This was one of those old HP superdomes. We had them around until about 2015 for some legacy apps. I never worked on them aside from like connecting fibre or something to them, but to my understanding they had like 100 virtual machines running on them. All gone, just like that.

Poor guy. But just goes to show, never fuck around if something might break. App owners and programmers can get away with that. Us IT folk? bugsbunny-no.jpg

 

[Tedmilk]

Roller shutter over the main reception outside door.

I was one of the last to leave, which wasn't usual. I thought the roller shutter was manually operated and broke the mechanism trying to pull it down. Got my ass chewed for that one. £300.

 

[StallionDan]

An £8 jar maybe. Or some power tools, but only because they were already well knackered from use, rather than any misuse on my part.

I'm a pretty careful person.

 

[Deleted member 4262]

Triggered a software patent lawsuit between two fortune 50 corporations, all over a trivial optimization(read: fucking obvious and not novel in any way) I deduced and implemented to speed up some UI rendering.

Software patents are dumb as fuck.

Click to shrink...

This sounds.. expensive? Were there any consequences for you?

 

[kmfdmpig]

I broke amazon.com for about 15 minutes.

Click to shrink...

Seriously? That's about $7 Million, I'd guess.

How Much Does Amazon Make in a Year? | Jungle Scout

France fined Amazon €4 million for anti-competitive practices. But we wondered: considering Amazon earns $5 million every 15 minutes, does it even matter?

www.junglescout.com

 

[PrivateWHudson]

$30k blade server. Dropped it.

Turned out we were able to replace the motherboard and get it back up and running but even that was about $5k in parts and labor. I still have my job.

Click to shrink...

Blade server for me as well. Not a drop though. I had one that I was troubleshooting some serious gremlins, and got frustrated when I saw a bent pin on the motherboard. I tried to straighten the pin, and completely wrecked all of the pins (both cpu slots). It was under a support agreement though.

 

[Chadderbox77]

Didn't break as it was already not working correctly, but didn't make it any better - a Polar cutter at work that was 6k to repair.

 

[FaceHugger]

Blade server for me as well. Not a drop though. I had one that I was troubleshooting some serious gremlins, and got frustrated when I saw a bent pin on the motherboard. I tried to straighten the pin, and completely wrecked all of the pins (both cpu slots). It was under a support agreement though.

Click to shrink...

If it was an HP completely understandable. Those mezzanine NICs / fibre controllers / etc tend to bend things, and under heat the CPU pins will curve after a year or two. Dells are a little better.

I'm just glad I don't deal with them that much any longer. 75% of my server work now is Azure or VMware RDSH in which all of the instant clones live in SAN storage.

 

[Soupman Prime]

Probably some glass that shattered when I was struggling to pull in a pallet in a somewhat tight spot, boy was I embarrassed but didn't get in trouble for it.

A month ago I thought I broke the work iPad. Did inventory the day before and I forgot I left it in the freezer. Totally forgot so kept looking for it, walked in the freezer the next day and it was in there. Button was frozen and it just didn't work so thought I was screwed but ended up working just fine later.

 

[Goldenroad]

My foot, but it didn't cost a lot of money since I'm in Canada, it just cost me basically an entire summer in which I was unable to do anything fun.

Other than that, I can't think of much. I broke a couple coffee pots, like 2 days in a row somehow...but they were pretty cheap.

 

[Arrogant PsycHOPathy]

Use to work community casework years back and broke the agency's Iphone 4S or whatever it was one day getting into my vehicle from a work related home visit.

 

[PlatypusDude]

Not sure what dollar amount it would be assigned, but I was the cause of two multi-hour long site outages for the ecommerce site I work at.

To be fair it was my first 100 days and the old system we were on was basically held together by duct tape and bubblegum.

 

[pikachief]

A $2000 light fixture, making a very basic rookie mistake of not grounding it first 🤦‍♀️

 

[LordValhalla]

I use to work at a factory that made moist snuff/dip/chewing tobacco.

There was a part that broke on the production line and they were afraid that metal had gotten into the product. We had to take 6 huge tubs and run it through a conveyor belt metal detector. Spent 6 hours doing that looking for the part. Management told us just to throw it away. We had a lot of time, so we calculated up how much each tub weighed, compared with the size of each puck of dip. We threw away $200K, street price. I'm sure the company price was much lower. But at about 5 bucks a can, we were tossing a lot of product away.

 

[Free Time Hooligan]

A delivery van that cost around $40,000 CAD (I got into an accident).

 

[thesoapster]

Fried a ~$200 motherboard.

 

[PrivateWHudson]

If it was an HP completely understandable. Those mezzanine NICs / fibre controllers / etc tend to bend things, and under heat the CPU pins will curve after a year or two. Dells are a little better.

I'm just glad I don't deal with them that much any longer. 75% of my server work now is Azure or VMware RDSH in which all of the instant clones live in SAN storage.

Click to shrink...

Cisco B200 M4. I just work on hardware...the blade in question was a small part of a VM cluster, so no downtime.

 

[tangeu]

My first job out of college, within the first month there, I was doing some testing/learning the environment and didn't realize I was in the production database....I applied late fees to thousands of residents about 6 times over (each one compounding on the last)...It took our lead programmer and the entire accounting department almost 2 weeks to sus out all the ramifications and reverse my mistake, not to mention managers and leasing agents dealing with super angry folks who got auto generated letters and emails about late fees. I'm lucky I wasn't terminated on the spot for that error, although let me tell you...to this day I always triple, no quadruple, check where I'm writing/testing my code.

 

[Kazooie]

The phone slide out of my hand and through some strange trajectory, it hit my screen and broke it. I do not know how expensive the screen was, but it was not cheap. Since I did not break anything else, it surely was the most expensive thing.

 

[Geeklat]

Was working at a car dealership as a teenager. Specifically working in the parts department looking up parts mechanics needed and getting them from inventory/ordering as needed. Then they asked me to help clean cars cause it was slow. Someone brought in their new truck that got undercoating all over the side of the car and told me to clean it off. It wouldn't come off no matter what I did because it's undercoating and that's the point. There was a steel brush in the car cleaning station. I assumed that was what it was for. It was not and I damaged the paint job.

 

[Phantom_Snake]

I pressed copy on our copying machine and it broke...

 

[Meatfist]

If we're just talking about tangible things I completely ripped the display cable connector off a lady's iPad Mini while fixing her screen. Felt terrible

 

[RagingAardvark]

A guy got fired at my job for running a single command on a mainframe that essentially bricked it, all because he didn't want to wait an hour or so and thought he could get around the work in some faster way. So he crafted some command he thought would do the job better and ran it.

This was one of those old HP superdomes. We had them around until about 2015 for some legacy apps. I never worked on them aside from like connecting fibre or something to them, but to my understanding they had like 100 virtual machines running on them. All gone, just like that.

Poor guy. But just goes to show, never fuck around if something might break. App owners and programmers can get away with that. Us IT folk? bugsbunny-no.jpg

Click to shrink...

lol I can only imagine the rising feeling of dread, the growing pit in his stomach, after this guy realised what he did.

Virtual damage can be just as bad, if not worse, than physical damage...

I also remember a guy who used to do subcontract work for us. One day he invited me over to take a tour at the datacenter where his company had a few server racks, which hosted the applications for his international clients; he needed to be there to replace the mezzanine card on one of his servers anyway.

As I arrived at his corner of the datacenter, I already had a feeling that this wasn't going to end well. The cabling job he'd done was absolutely shit tier, and I mean, truely fucking awful. It was a wonder that his servers hadn't switched off due to lack of airflow.

Lo and behold, as the nitwit was using increasing violence to actually get to the server in question, grunting and cursing as he did so, he managed to rip out 6-7 plugs out of the PDU. The ensuing exclamation of "SHIT" was hilarious, made even better by his frantic attempts to reverse what he'd just done.