Expensive Mistakescoopsweb asks "What's the most expensive mistake you've ever made? Should I mention a certain employee who caused 4 hours worth of delays in Central London and got his company fined £500k?"
No points for stories about the time you had a few and thought it'd be a good idea to wrap your car around a bollard. Or replies consisting of "my wife".
(
chthonic, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 11:26)
« Go Back
Tesco are idiots.A few years back, pre-university trying to gather up money to go to university (not a lot of saving took place...), I was working as a till monkey in the local Tesco. One sunday, I was working in the Customer Service desk by myself on a quiet afternoon when a lad comes up to me to purchase a lottery ticket. Being the polite young Tesco drone that I am, I happily stop reading my 'temporarily free' copy of Q, oblige and start processing the ticket.
Then the machine jammed. Not trained on how to handle machine jams, and in full knowledge my boss was busy, I attempted to fix it. I knew there was button to open it somewhere...so I pushed this little red button.
That was mistake number one.
No joy. Customer says "Its no bother, i'll just go to WHSmith.
Ten seconds later, I get a phonecall. I pick up and declare that they have called Tesco in Fort William, that my name is Christopher and how may I help them? Answer to this? A chilling male voice: "Do you need police assistance?!". No...we didn't...so I told him this. A sterm "Hmmm..." was the reply, and I offered to get the manager. "Please hurry up, I have two minutes to decide". So I forward the call as fast as possible to the managers office.
5 minutes of nothing exciting pass, and my manager storms down and declares "WHY DID YOU PRESS THE PANIC BUTTON?!". Shit. That "red button" was the stores panic button! Not wanting to make him more pissed than he already was (he was a VERY irritable boss that was hungover) I said "Wasn't me"in a very convincing voice.
That was mistake number two.
Manager storms off to phone Central Security complaining of a broken panic alarm. Central Station confirm Panic Alarm went off. Store manager says no one touched it. Because the Panic Alarm "went off by
itself", it was a matter of urgency and an engineer had to be called to the store.
Now, engineers are expensive. ESPECIALLY on....thats right. Sundays. He was in for around 3 hours trying to work out what was wrong,because it "looked fine". He ended up having to get a new one and install that and test it.
This cost the company around £200. All because I didn't own up.
Length? Your mum didn't complain.
(, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 17:52, Reply)
« Go Back