Biggest Fail at Work?

When I used to work commission I worked a huge sale and finished after 3 hours with a customer to find out I rang it up under someone else's commission code.

Never saw that bonus money

For me the worst fail was telling my boss I would handle a lot of the banking info while he was gone and he gave me the password. Of course the day I was supposed to cover him I forgot the notebook with the passwords in it and he was on a plane for 12 hours. I ended up locking us out of our bank and getting back in was a huge and humiliating process.

On the bright side someone above my boss made the same mistake 2 weeks later so everyone forgot that I did it.

ordered a salad for seamless.. what a waste of an order

4 ounces of shit is too much shit.

The deleted answer was how after having earned an internship, I did not see any value the company was bringing to client; forget that, I did not see any value I was bringing to the company. Naive? Definitely. A little late for the analysis? 100%.

I texted the HR guy, I wouldn't be able to continue after the month is over. The month still had two days remaining. The very next morning of the text, I went to the office and was fired.

Moral of the story: Be careful before you give your heart and brains to an industry. And don't text the HR guy you won't be coming after the month is over.

As a first year analyst about 2 months into the job I had my first management presentation. The first meeting was scheduled much sooner than expected so obviously this was a fire drill. The night before the meeting I was up pretty much all night, finishing edits and binding the books until about 4am (worked at a MM bank and had to actually print/bind myself). My MD was going to pick me up around 6am to make the 2.5 hr drive to the meeting. We get there, stop to get breakfast and he asks to see one of the books to prep....I forgot all 20 of the books I spent the last week straight putting together. He was pissed, but the blank / confused / stupid look on my face somewhat humored him. Luckily we were somehow able to have a FedEx print shop print and bind them right in time for the meeting -- though it was extremely expensive. Not the end of the world but a pretty stupid mistake. I now triple check for the materials every time I go to a meeting.

Mis marked a model and brought 3% off a stock before the ceo personally called to tear our eyes out

Made an error in my analysis that discounted the value of the U.S. solar energy company by $400 million

"Please find as attached and let me know your thoughts"

nothing attached...

First deal was a ~$4BN sellside. Super lean team, just me, the MD, and the second-year analyst that was out the door to his PE job.

When the time came to write-up the invoice, I was tasked with doing it. Didn't realize we had to include our legal expenses because it was the first time I ever did an invoice. Second-year didn't care and the MD didn't look at it, so we issued the invoice to the client without including ~$200K worth of legal fees.

We ended up just eating the fees and the MD said it was his fault. It was like a $14MM fee, so at the end of the day it was okay, but still not a great look for me as a green analyst. Still made top bucket both years somehow...

Got belligerently drunk in the office once. Other people were not impressed.

Ordered a wrong order of printing products in color instead of non color causing the company to lose 12k in my first week of work. Wasnt fired though but work back up my rep. :)

Totally screwed up a TTM calculation, and I was a few years into my lev fin job. I just didn't pay close attention, was in a rush, was bored - no good excuse. One of the VPs, kind of a loner sad single guy, super genius, was horrified. Complained about me to another VP, who was also kinda shocked and disappointed at that kind of error for someone at my level. I was mortified and never really spoke to the loner sad single VP genius again. It didn't cost me my job, but my pride suffered. #DUH. Needless to say, never made that error again.

1. Joined a Chinese PE shop (in China), but I'm not Chinese. I was never going to be an insider at the firm, or with the companies in which we were investing. My fail was the day I left banking to take the job. Hubris was not realizing how off the fit was.
2. Not raising enough $ at the PE shop. This has happened twice. Ultimately I think it's the product that sells or fails to attract capital. But that's what makes this business hard. Eventually the boss loses patience and cuts you.

banking caused me to get pretty depressed. The psych doc put me on antidepressants which made me tired all the time. It affected my performance, and I even ran late to an overseas meeting which I was to attend with a colleague, and she took her own ride. She was not impressed. Not fired but those anti-depressants were a bitch to deal with.

Let's just say I hated my first job so much I decided it would be a good idea to email my work email with a train ticket that was paid for by the company interviewing me who I was going to visit for final rounds later that week. Came back from the interview and I was called in to the CCO's office. The email was flagged for "the gift acceptance rule". As uncomfortable as it was with them knowing I was actively interviewing, I somehow was able to keep my job as a trader there until I moved on. To make matters worse, a few weeks later I had to train someone who was going to take over my position so I was showing her how we trade in one of our model strategies. I thought it was a 3% sell for XYZ and then a buy order of ZYZX, however it was only a 1.5% buy for a very volatile industrial stock. Let's just say it was a good alpha generator but not what they had asked for lol! Frankly, I found it strange they had someone who was only there for 8 months training someone rather than someone more seasoned.

I was putting together IOI materials for our client’s Board. We received a decent amount of bids (8 bids) relative to how many buyers we reached out to. I screwed up the updating of the public markets data that populated the side-by-side buyer and bid comparison metrics slide for the bottom four bidders. During the meeting the lead MD caught the mistake and the other MD who accompanied texted me during the break and said there was a mistake and the lead MD was pissed. I was riding high at the time because I’ve been pretty on top of shit on this deal and other projects. I checked the Excel and there was indeed a huge mistake. Luckily the top four bidders were way higher than the bottom four so they were able to gloss over the lower bids, but my heart sank to my stomach for a couple hours. I got reamed, but my MD liked me and was able to sidestep that awkwardness during the meeting.

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