Cost of error
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- Miesfan
U.S. government misprints more than 1 billion 100 dollar bills at a print cost of $120,000,000.00.
A problem with the press caused some of the bills to crease causing a blank space on the bill. Some feel the press simply could not meet the demand of the high tech 100 dollar bill and mixed the flawed bills in with the good bills.
Reading about this,what's the most expensive mistake you've made at work?
- SlashPeckham0
i once allowed a coffee to go cold on my desk - thankfully nobody noticed this error (!)
- goldieboy0
Back in the day, I once marked-up on an original photo print rather than the colour house's proof... costing me £55 to get a new print.
$120,000,000.00 sweet child of mine! That's one mistake.
- hans_glib0
i once tried to accelerate past a car turning out into the street (the driver hadn't seen me and was jusst coming out regardless). this was a mistake as when she hit me my car was pushed (at speed) into a row of parked cars. 4 cars totalled, 2 others with major damage. windscreens exploded everywhere. it was like something in the movies.
if i had slammed on the brakes it would have been just her car and mine in collision but i felt it was worth the try
i guess the total bill was quite hefty.
- i was on my way to a meeting so i guess this counts as "at work"hans_glib
- maikel0
My 1st cock up was about 2 grands (pre-press mistake, I almost got fired).
The 2nd was about 5 grands in dispute, but at the end of the day it was no my fault (colour matching mayhem).
Last I recall was for 12 grands. And it was because some pre-press chap changed my files for a 7 inks + matt/gloss sectorised varnish brochures.Thankfully the last one was about 10 years ago... I guess I'm getting old.
- Miesfan0
love this history
I met both Carl Page and Larry Page at a party hosted by a Stanford friend of mine in 1998. Carl gave me his card for eGroups and said "we're hiring". Larry gave me his card for Google—a flimsy bit of paper obviously printed by bubble jet—and said "we're hiring".
I said, "Nah, who needs another search engine?" and went to graduate school.
I still have the card.- incredibledoublespaced
- oh NOES!maikel
- so it's your fault they have a shitty design culture?Amicus
- jksAmicus
- cool story bro. srslyProjectile
- haha.akrok
- bjladams0
at a previous job- boss man took a survey on a building for a custom illuminated can sign. he lost his measurements and all i had was a pic of the brick wall. he had me count the number of bricks and measure that way. my father was a brick mason, so i know that bricks come in all sorts of sizes... but he said that they were 9" like all bricks. the signage was made 4 feet longer than the wall. about a $10,000 (24') sign.
he kept it around hoping that they would build a bigger building and need another sign.
- georgesIII0
If I was rich, I'll collect them then sell them for $120,
GENIUS
- WhiteFace0
My ex-girlfriends granddad lost a winning lottery ticket worth £6 Million, everyone hates him poor old chap..
- elahon0
At my old newspaper job, a co-worker and I were playing a prank on the proofer (with a LIVE ad, an obit that was running the next day). I used this image (cropped so just the head):
And changed the name on the obit to something obviously fake like Richard R. Richards. I was about THIS CLOSE to changing it to Deady McMaggotface, but I went with the other one. We all got a laugh out of it, I changed the picture back to the real person. But....... forgot to change the name. If I had used Deady McMaggogface, I would have gotten shitcanned. Luckily Richard R. Richards was "just a mistake". Customer was pissed, but it could have been a lot worse.
Total cost was just the cost of running the ad again the next week.
- dijitaq0
at the company i used to work at, we printed about fifty thousand copies of a calendar with some dates messed up and a request from the customer that was missing. client refused to pay. not sure how much was the total cost, but heads rolled.
- kona0
i used to work at an s-hole company that had a full-scale print shop attached to the design studio. the shtick was we could not only design the print pieces and cd's, but we could print them at cheaper costs. anyways, i was working on an interactive cd (many years ago) and before i left i made some last minute changes, phone number, address, real copy in place of lorem ipsum on a page or two and pushed the final file to the server. well, the printer unfortunately grabbed the last file from the folder, and glossed over the FINAL FOR PRINT folder i had created. that night he burned 10k cds... all with the wrong file. cost the company a shitload.
- ItalianStallion0
A calendar with 11 months.
- Bargels0
I worked at a newspaper once. We made an ad that had something like for an annoying client's placeholder contact information. Yep, it ran. He never even called. Proof no one reads newspapers anymore. Total cost $0.
- CALLES0
Me is perfect. I don't Make mistakes
- bjladams0
not the our mistake- but looked bad on us:
at a former job, worked up a yellowpage ad. all it was:
empty box with arrows pointing out to everyone elses ad. text in the middle says "we do what they do, but better"
yellow page people changed the text, as a joke, but forgot to change it back and ran with it.
now says "pointing you to a better business"
boss man was pretty fired up about it.
- gramme0
Several years ago, let a sales kit go out the door with a couple pages of dummy (greek) text that the client had never addressed. Also, it was a custom folder with loose brochures inside, and I miscalculated the size of the brochures. They ended up being too small. So they kinda flopped around inside. Total fail. $20,000 print job. The client also missed these errors in proofreading. My then-employer split the bill three ways between them, the client, and the print broker.
It was a huge error on my part. My only excuse is that I had 16 live projects at the same and had been working 7-day weeks for a couple months straight. I could barely keep my eyelids open.
- identity0
I once made a mistake by leaking thousands of classified documents on the internet - and used the pen name Julian Assange. Julian from my childhood dog and Assange, because I like rolling my tongue on silent french G's. Poor guy.
- mg330
I didn't do this, but at my previous job, a law firm, we were working with an outside designer on some magazine ads. He did great work, and we were doing this series of ads that juxtaposed something large with something small, "just the right fit" or some bullshit that's so tired it's nearly dead.
Anyhow, he used this picture of a Mastif dog or some kind of huge dog, and after it was approved and published, nobody but me noticed how distasteful it was that he used a photo of a male dog sitting down, with a huge huge huge dick and balls 100% visible in the picture. My boss was a woman, and when I showed it to her she flipped out and was like "how did we not notice this?" It wasn't an earth-shattering mistake, it was just so wrong and nasty. Look around at ads with dogs, you hardly ever find a male dog with it's junk exposed, the poor things.
- lol just the right fit indeed.mcmillions
- I think it had a tiny poodle next to it actually, making it so much more crude.mg33
- bahahahmcmillions
- :D :D :DBargels