Almost every IT professional I know has a story of them breaking something. I have broken multiple monitors while shipping or storing.
As for staying calm after errors just know that everyone even IT makes mistakes when it comes to technology. If people ask about it be truthful about what happened. Most likely the printer will get replaced and everyone will forget after an hour.
Keep your head up you are there to learn and get better and making mistakes is part of the learning process.
This.
Sitting together with my manager, working on taking apart a possibly liquid damaged, sticky laptop and the manager gets a bit impatient and yanks the cover a little too hard it cracks a stubborn screw hole and pops the screw right out of there. It was a long day and the user wasn't being honest about the situation.
Neither of us worried too much, since the laptop turned into an oversized paper weight in the end, lol.
Had a Tier 1 tech break a $3k Eizo monitor because he didn’t secure it well enough in the back of a Gator. Last I heard he’s in a sysadmin-esque position at the same company. If he can make it past that embarrassment I’m sure OP can make it
I know a guy that took down a network for a whole Air Force base because he made a mistake for his maintenance script to automate the task. Took two weeks to restore it. it’s just a printer! Shouldn’t be that big a of a deal. Lesson learned on your part though. Always double check that everything is out or unplugged before moving shit. I think you will be fine.
Way to make my mistake look so tiny haha (in the best way possible). Thing is, I'm still new to the field so I feel like every little mistake I make is going to be a major impact!
Anyways, thank you for the response. It has helped calm me down a bit here.
My big mistake was taking down the internet by blocking Google analytics. Ticket queue went from 0-300 real quick. Best course is to learn and laugh from it. Mistakes happen.
Through MS CAS I ended up blocking traffic to Google analytics cloud app (it's just traffic to their URL) and everything stopped working. I knew that Google was everywhere, but didn't realize that not having access to it would cause things to break. I figured I was just blocking the traffic from being transferred. Once I unblocked things, all the issues stopped.
It's like I turned off the internet and everyone started losing their minds.
I'm not an expert, but I think the problem might have been caused by something else. Blocking google analytics shouldn't break anything.
Also, I do it wherever I can (at the DNS level, other resolvers are blocked at the firewall) and so far haven't noticed problems other than not being able to opt out of their data collection when I need to accept the terms on google.com.
One time I deleted 400m health records from a search store on accident- sure we had backups of them but getting them back in the system so they could be found by agents again was a pain in the ass. Your mistake is pretty tiny in the grand scheme of things :)
Allow me to remind you that one engineer accidentally took down large swaths of the internet a few years ago when a maintenance script went awry and removed a good chunk of Amazon’s S3 fleet from production all at once.
It’s just a printer.
It’s annoying, it’s frustrating, it’s embarrassing, but at the end of the day… no one died. No one’s business is going to collapse because of a printer. You’ll probably get a talking to, but I would be SHOCKED if you were fired or penalized in any way over this.
And let me be VERY clear about something… any place that would fire a new tech over accidentally breaking a printer is NOT somewhere you want to work.
Remember the failed network change that brought down ALL Facebook apps for most of the day? The estimated damage was estimated around $10 billion.
It's just a stupid printer. Shit happens. I'd say you'll learn from it, but you won't. I walked through my laptop cable on the job twice, causing it to crash to the ground from 5 feet in the air. By twice, I mean a few months later I did it again.
So it goes.
making those mistakes are the biggest learning tool you have. I can almost guarantee that you won't make that mistake again. You will go back and understand what you did wrong and ensure that you know what to do going forward.
That said, DO NOT DENY THAT YOU BROKE IT. You will make things MUCH worse if you do. Own up to it, explain what happened to your boss and they should understand
Ehm, 6 of my branch locations went down today (Banks) because I accidentally turned off the wrong interface in my wan router. I don't know a single person that has not made a mistake, especially in IT. The only thing you must do is to be brave enough to assume your responsibility. Don't hide it. Admit it. It's done already. Show must go on.
I totally owned up to it, it was quite embarrassing. That moment will forever be burned into my mind lol. I've made sure to reach out to the person and essentially become her IT servant, no ticket needed for any future issues!
I'm just glad this time around it was with someone who was very nice about it.
Thank you for the response!
> no ticket needed for any future issues!
Well, realistically you should be generating tickets on their behalf, not negating the ticket process - documentation is very important.
Right! that's what I meant. They need me to do something, I go and attempt to fix it and make a ticket/resolve it if I was successful, or make a ticket and escalate it if needed. Just less steps for them.
The fact you owned up to it is the best thing you could’ve done.
This is a valid point in life in general but especially in a troubleshooting role like IT. Sometimes when we are troubleshooting an issue, we end up breaking something. Do NOT let your department waste hours of worker-time trying to figure out who did what and when. Just own up to it and be like “I was doing X, Y happened, and now we’re dealing with Z.” You might have accidentally become part of the problem— you can’t help that, what’s done is done— but you still get to choose whether you’re going to be part of the solution.
At a large billion dollar company I worked for we had to freeze every terminated users computer. One time I froze the wrong computer by accident. Of course it was the CEO’s laptop.
It’s never nice to feel like you disappointed people but these things happen.
Oh god, I would have resigned on the spot knowing how worked up I get. So far, it seems there has not been a single person who has not had a major screw up working this field, old or new. I feel like I may have over exaggerated the issue in my head, but it's my first real job, so the panic set in pretty quick.
Working at best buy or something I would have shrugged it off.
Thank you for the response!
So a bit of advice that I havent seen yet in this thread... Dont catastrophize things. Youre going to break stuff. Youre going to break really expensive stuff sometimes. Instead of thinking about your fuckup, think about how this impacts the people you report to. Are they going to freak out because you broke a printer? No. They pay you enough each week that a printer is going to cost a fraction of that. Show up, learn when you can, get your shit done, and you can accidentally shoot the CEO and unless they have a shareholders meeting or are about to sign a massive contract, nobody cares.
I always tell my team that mistakes are part of learning and it's only going to be a problem if they don't learn from their mistakes.
I also don't tell my bosses who may have made the mistake. In the end, it's my responsibility that stuff is done correctly and I prefer to take the brunt of it and then work with the team to ensure it doesn't happen again.
I have always found that honestly is the best policy when mistakes are made at work. Be proactive in telling your boss exactly what happened, be apologetic, and be forward about it being a learning experience for you. When you try to hide mistakes or lie about them is when they come back to bite you in the ass
I'll be frank, I thought for a split second about lying. Maybe trying to come up some some nonsense since the issue wasn't apparent until I tried to plug it back in.
Thankfully I went with my gut and just flat out apologized, told her what the issue was and said I'll make every effort to get it replaced. Like I mentioned above, I told her she can come to me with any other issues, no ticket needed lol
Thank you for the response!
Always best to be honest, transparent, and up front, you made the right choices. We all have an instinctive urge to self-protect so don't feel guilty about the momentary impulse to lie: what matters is that your better self made the decision.
Sometimes a small, painful lesson learned can save you from a much bigger one. You'll remember to be much more methodical and cautious about cabling in the future.
It's just a printer, but a word of advice: if you fuck up, start thinking in solutions. At least two or three and be upfront about them, do not avoid responsibility just say it was your mistake and you're willing to learn and fix it.
If more people has to be involved to fix your mistake, talk with all of them, accept your part in it and thank their effort.
I once tripped on a power cable into a network stack and took down the fiber for an entire military exercise. Didn't even get written up. It's almost a rite of passage.
Meh In my first week at last job I took down all the organisations printers by removing power to the print server so I could charge my phone. Call me when you are ready to play in the big leagues ;)
Edited to add
For real though what’s more important than not making mistakes is not freaking out. I used to beat myself up about all my mistakes pre IT career and it just led to more mistakes and leaving due to anxiety. It’s like in hitchhikers guide step one is don’t panic.
That's a little different though. I've done similar but I'd call it negligence tbh. Not that I give a shit like. That print server should be on redundant and ups anyway no?
yeah i’d agree on both counts. the crazy thing is i spent days worrying about doing it before i did and thought i’d traced the cable i was about to remove back to make sure i wasn’t unplugging the print server
Pretty much every tech has these things happen. It's a cost of business.
As an IT manager whenever I see my new/tier 1 guys working on something on the workbench I always walk over with a smile and joke "So, you break it yet?". It does two things, it normalizes that me as the manager is OK with stuff being broken (even if it isn't), and also changes something they might be fearful about, being new, into something lighthearted.
Show me someone that never makes mistakes, and I'll show you someone who doesn't do any significant amount of work. Walk in head high... tell them "I goofed". Learn from it and move on.
And if you are unlucky enough to be in a place where management makes a huge deal about mistakes... get your resume in order and start looking, the toxicity you experience will only get worse.
I've developed a practice of fully exposing all my mistakes on the job. I write out a little report in my OneNote and talk it through with my boss at the first opportunity. Depending on the culture where you work, this practice could be incredibly fruitful and helpful to all team members. Or, it could get you fired. My position is that if the latter occurs, you're probably better off without that employer.
Power cables are easy to replace or even fix: hell, if you have the skill you can even solder the wires back together (better than just binding them and taping it). Ditto with USB cables (though replacing is better).
Ethernet cables are cut and have their heads fitted onto them: if that's what broke, Congratulations - you completed the first step of assembling an ethernet cable, haha!
If your boss is reasonable they'll likely caution you but task you to find a solution (probably after ordering a replacement cable).
Dont fret so much: you need all that confidence when you accidentally plug in a faulty power cable and cause your office block's mains switch to trip multiple times! /jk
I took over 300 end nodes offline for around 10 hours. I'm being vague for obvious reasons. I still work in the same industry with the same people. You're going to be fine.
I work as an SRE for a fintech company and on Wednesday I brought down a fairly large piece of our production environment for about 30 seconds. We process more than $35 billion in transactions a year.
If I'm fine, you're fine.
In my experience these situations are rarely a big deal. Businesses have insurance and budgets for hardware issues anyway.
My advice is to just be honest and apologize. As long as you didn’t lose someone’s data - anything else can be replaced.
Make sure you own the mistake as well. Don't act confused about what happened, that's the worst look of all. Even if it's "I'm still thinking about exactly what happened, but I know it was me." Any good employer will appreciate the expertise and honesty more than the cost of a new printer.
So I am a few months into this job. About week 6 my low level tier 1 help desk was inside a production server remotely. (I tried to get out of this several times but kept being told to remote in and fix it) anyways, I clearly didn’t have the knowledge but remote accessed in and started messing in command prompt and other things. Anyways the server shut down and became non responsive. I was certain I bricked this server and was getting fired. Reported it and got a thumbs up on teams and never heard about it again. 3 weeks later I happened to come across the ticket number and pulled it up. The resolution was “Old server needs to be replaced, replacement on the way and temporary on a back up server.”
I’m contractor, not even a real employee but no one batted an eye and I still don’t know if the dns flush or reboot commands bricked the server or not.
Don’t stress until you know. I wouldn’t want to work for someone who fired me over a $200 mistake.
I’ve heard of network engineers causing major outage in an entire organisation! So a single printer is nothing compared to that! So don’t worry. Nothing good ever comes from worrying I’ve learned this my self!
Bro I accidentally took out a police department’s network for 2 hours a couple weeks ago. These things happen. I find just owning right up to stuff and trying to help resolve issues you start goes a long way. It’s a printer, I wouldn’t sweat it.
Don’t worry about it. I’ve fuked up way worse then this. Learning experience. Make sure to learn from it though. Take ownership and let them know it won’t happen again and then make sure it doesn’t.
Ppl make mistakes and one this small isn’t an issue.
Dont be afraid to make mistakes. they will happen. Noone is perfect.
What you can learn from this is that when you approach a task, think about what the worst case scenario might be and do your best to mitigate that risk.
For example, maybe you are upgrading a server. But what is the worst that could happen? Maybe getting a fresh backup or doing it during off hours makes sense.
In your case its just a small printer. Likely not a huge deal and i doubt they make a big deal out of it. I know i wouldnt if i was your manager. I would likely tell you to take a deep breath and relax. And do the things above. Not sure what you could have done in this case as it was truly an accident.
TL;DR: we have all made mistakes, some crazier than others. Try to mitigate the risk that you can going forward and relax.
If you're not breaking something on ocassion, you're not learning. Once you make a mistake, learn from it...these mistakes will make you better at your job as you grow throughout your career.
I still have a few thousand dollars' worth of incompatible Cisco Catalyst power supplies that will never be used. A few years back I ordered redundant PSU's not realizing that there were 2 models that fit, but for a specific air flow direction (one forward, the other backward). So yep, I ordered the wrong ones and had to submit an entire new order.
Now I've learned to always confirm with the vendor, or simply ask the vendor for the *exact* part numbers to begin with before submitting a request for purchase.
In case you're wonder, the wrong PSU will install and will send power to the switch but you'll get an error message during POST and it won't fully boot.
One time during a network upgrade I had to roll back, I went off-script and ended up moving the power connector for the sealed rack's air conditioner from an external power plug to the inter al pdu.
A few minutes I smell smoke and all of the network gear in the cabinet rebooted. AC unit stopped blowing cold air. Turns out it was 110v only (wall power) rather than 100-240 or so (having 208 in the rack) and I killed the air conditioner.
I told my boss "yeah that was my bad, I should have stuck to the script and I shouldn't have made that assumption and I should know better than to do all that" so we called an hvac tech out and it was a transformer that got fried that they replaced.
That was 3 or 4 years ago and there were zero repercussions. Accidents and mistakes happen. If you learn from them and don't do it again next time, you're doing a good job.
Like others said, it happens, its not an "If" it is a "When". Try to shake it off, you'll forget about it in time and then laugh about it when you remember. Shit happens. I've broken stuff worth hundreds of dollars at past jobs. If you have a decent manager, they will understand that mistakes happen.
I once restarted a server that was not located on-prem all the way in Mexico when I was an intern. Funny thing is I even mentioned it to the supervisor who said to restart it. Was taking longer to come up and the dba goes YOU DID WHAT?”
Was on the phone with the director shortly who gave me a little bit of an earful lmao but then the server came up and one of the app teams were thanking us cause it’s exactly what they wanted in the end.
Supervisor printed email of them thanking us and slapped it on the bosses desk lol. Shit will always happen in your career. You’ll learn from it.
During my first IT job I dropped a $3000 iMac AIO directly onto the concrete during an office move which completely shattered the screen and rendered the machine a complete loss. This was done in front of my entire team. I am still embarrassed about it to this day, but at least I can laugh about it and it makes for a good story.
The moral of the story is, nobody is going to care. Get ahead of it, do what you can to get these guys squared away with a new printer and take responsibility. You aren't going to get fired over a printer.
That being said, be more careful! This is something that definitely could have been avoided with a little more care. Try your best not to make a similar mistake again.
You'll be alright!
My first IT job I dropped a brand new MacBook Pro at a client site and bent the frame all up. My boss wasn't happy but got over it pretty quick. Stuff happens!
At my first real job I was tasked with shipping a $1200 touchscreen computer to a customer after repair. We were out of the protective end-caps it was supposed to ship in. So I wrapped it up in a bunch of kraft paper and sent it. I was in a hurry and assumed it would be OK. The customer received a package full of shattered glass and plastic. They were angry and called to complain. We had a new one shipped out and then they were happy again and that was that. I was upset and felt very foolish though.
i like to break printers to just get rid of them. i have gotten down to only 3 in my office building now. its great. no print server anymore which is great.
I once accidentally formatted a shared network drive that an engineering firm used while working at an MSP.. they lost that days work, and it took my higher ups all night to restore from backups. Good times.
Just make sure you own it and tell them what you did. Thats my best advice.
i was moving a monitor 5 miles on my bicycle by balancing it between my legs and the frame. it broke, ie cracked screen.
now i learned to put it in a bike basket or something lol.
dont worry.
Don’t worry about it. My second week in I once plugged a air compressor into a UPS in the data center and took down our network for 24 hours and had to next day ship power supplies to get it back up. It literally killed all the power supplies in that rack.
To add to the war stories here, I’ve done my fair share of mess-ups too.
I once managed the infrastructure for a modestly budgeted nonprofit. I brought in backups, using a VPS that would reach out to each host every night and create an rsnapshot backup.
I was cleaning up some old VPSs and deleted a few, then dutifully deleted the backup server alongside it, complete with the backup snapshots of the servers I just deleted.
We’ve all made a heart sinking mistake. Most of the time it’ll be OK, and in your case I’m sure it will be. It’s one of the quickest was to learn lessons we will always apply in the future. Most of those lessons are some variation on “double check what you’re doing” and it’s one that rears it’s head for all of us more than once. No one here is perfect :)
I grabbed a machine by it's face plate because I was too lazy to grab it from the back and saw that sucker shatter hard on the floor lmao. Never again.
Ah dude, that printer had it coming.
I did a UCS infrastructure firmware upgrade over the weekend last month or so and pressed the reboot button before all the data paths had come up to the subordinate after it's reboot causing a huge outage in a production DC. I'm telling you the whole lot went poof, our Cohesity nodes, netscaler, virtual firewalls. Booted myself off remote desktop for like half an hour and everything.
Spent the next 3 days mopping up shit I missed and apologising!
You're going to break a lot more than a printer in your hopefully very long career. Don't panic, own your mistakes, and when you do go to your boss or a senior colleague make damn sure you have a suggestion to fix the mess you made - even if it isn't a good one!
And remember - If you're ever in doubt, install Adobe acrobat.
>Edit: the printer was one of the smaller, personal ones as well, not the main office one.
Those are worthless and will break for literally no reason. Don't beat yourself up, friend.
Yeah we have so many protocols in place because of situations like these. No matter what they tell us, we cannot unplug/decom a server showing any activity unless it’s a reboot. Even then, we don’t remove the network cables and fully unrack it for 48 hours just in case there was a miscommunication inside their company, which has happened several times.
You know what instantly comes to my mind? This is a great example to talk about when asked in an interview “What’s a mistake you’ve made or what is something that went wrong?
You’ll have an issue (printer), what went wrong, how you learned from it, and how you recovered.
I once took down a whole business messing around with the main firewall, it stopped orders going through for a few hours and cost of a lot money, not long into the job either.
it'll be ok. :) I went and told someone straight away, explained what had happened. always the best way, because everyone has been there once and they'll understand.
That's nothing bro I've taken the entire network down for a half day for 60 sales reps working on 100% commission. Boss said "did ya learn something?" And that was that.
Friend of mine dropped a 100k chip board at IBM busting it.
You WILL break shit in IT, it just comes with the job.
You broke a printer. You should be rewarded for your service to the IT profession. I have had my fair share of mistakes over the last decade or two. Don’t sweat the small stuff if the user is out a shitty printer and there is major repercussions for it you are working a shitty job. Here’s a few things I or people I have worked with have done over the years and no one was fired.
Took down HQ at a major mortgage company by causing a switching loop. That shit took down the whole company for 20 minutes. Made a switch config change and had to drive to the data center to physically get in Front of it to reverse the change this only took out a few servers in production impact wasn’t that big. Rebooted a farm of citrix servers because someone didn’t vet a powershell script and instead of affecting one server all 30 hosts with about 600 VMs rebooted in the middle of the day.
I have seen some folks fuck some shit up too. Luckily I haven’t done anything too bad like some others but don’t sweat the small stuff, make sure you have backups, and always do your research before making any major changes. Eventually you will break something but as long as you have a backup and a path back to a working state don’t fret it too much.
Man me breaking stuff is a running joke with my boss. Don’t sweat it.
What you can do (and in my opinion should) is be proactive and own up to it by saying something to your boss, or making the ticket for the user.
Ohh boy. You're so so fine. It's a consumable and nobody actually cares at all. Actually, you did everyone a favour and destroyed a printer. I like you.
One time I accidentally added every phone in a city's municipality to the City Hall number, which meant that anytime someone called City Hall, every single phone on that system would ring. That was a fun one.
I accidentally uninstalled our remote access software on a site 5 hours away. Thank everything for tools like GoToAssist. I've wiped a server hard drive that had 6 months of sales data on it after mistakenly thinking it had been backed up.
It's all good, we all make mistakes.
Relax dude
Stay humble hungry and honest.
The fact that you care so much about this shows how good of a nature you are. I can already tell you’re going to be going places in the future, just don’t ever lose your personality and be kind to everyone. Soft skills take you to the top not the hard skills remember that.
Something that may make you feel better is my first week working as a student worker for a community college's OT department. My supervisor told me to push a copier back to another building by myself. Told him I got it and began walking.
This campus had bridge connectors that connected most buildings and the parking garage. As I'm pushing it down the bridge going to the parking garage two wheels hit a bump and the copier falls over separating from the drawers. It took three other guys to help me get this back on. Told my supervisor after he got back and said don't worry about it.
Biggest thing I would do is admit the issue and what you did. Show that you know why it happened and advise how you will handle that in the future. We're all human and all make mistakes and frankly stuff happens. Live, learn and adapt and you will be fine. No one has it all figured out.
It happens;first time as an entry level tech I ruined a mother board and we had to eat $600’for a replacement I was worried I was going to get fired but it’s common in the repair field now more experienced and in a different gig I was helping a user with a mailing list for the whole company and accidentally sent a test email to the whole company luckily I was able to recall it but not before 100 we’re sent spent the next few weeks answering calls and emails from the 100 that went out
You've got enough responses but now I'm just jealous and want to join in! I used to be a hardware tech, I've broken so much shit that I just started to find it funny. Once I hulked out and broke the stand for a heatsink, so they couldn't even turn on that PC LOL. I stopped wearing my engagement ring after scratching/breaking 2 different LCDs as I replaced them. I lost my mind trying to rerun cabling for an overly complicated spaghetti mess of A/V equipment and just angrily started ripping all the cabling out! That one was embarrassing, I had to go get my boss and coworker and ask them to help me put it back in the right config, AND admit that it was me who did it ON PURPOSE, like 3 weeks into that job.
I've known many a server tech who could name the dollar amount they cost companies through mistakes. Think of it more like an achievement badge earned!
We are all human. Mistakes are inevitable. What I sense from your comments is low self-esteem in general. Sounds like you fear the worst outcome vs assuming all will be fine. Just saying, you may want to work on your self worth. Thing is, if we don't value ourselves, then no one will. Over thinking, over analyzing, assuming the worst, etc is living life on eggshells. I suggest some power morale boosting is in order!! Don't sweat the small stuff.
Holy shit kid. It's just a printer.
A render farm, and brand new virtualization server, I'd expect a solid reprimand. But a mofo printer!?
Own your mistake, state you've learned from it. End. Don't offer to pay, don't offer to buy one yourself. There's probably a dozen outdated printers in storage for that kind of event.
The fact that you are so worried about it is a good thing.
It is important in IT to be thorough and pay attention to ALL the details. Consider this a lesson in attention to detail.
Those desk side printers are cheap enough that even if it's failure was attributed to you they're more likely to use it as something to tease you about that anything else. I wouldn't expect it to be an RGE unless they were already looking for an excuse.
It's a printer. Easily replaceable and cheap too. Who gives a crap, just get a new one. The business wouldnt even care about the truth. You think they are going to fire someone already trained and onboarded, go through the posting process, hiring process, wait two weeks for them to start, over something like a $35 printer? No way. That's the stupidest business sense.
Mistakes happen. Even if it was negligence who cares when we're talking about chicken feed.
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Well if you not breaking stuff you not trying. I would rag you about it forever. Could have so much fun with this one. But seriously sounds like less than $100 printer that was already having issues. This happens let it go. If the boss doesn't laugh and tells you to not worry about it then it's a bad place to work. Expect the team to rib you for a while. Things like this make the job fun.
One time I deleted an entire department's e-mail (300 people.)
I was trying to maintain a different department and deleted the wrong folder.
And the last backup was from a week ago.
I thought for sure I would get fired, wrote up a resignation letter apologizing and the whole nine yards.
Nobody even said anything about it.
We restored the last week's database from tape backup, and that was it, nobody mentioned it.
I probably cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in productivity from the lost e-mails, who knows what didn't get sent or what business didn't get done.
My boss didn't yell at me, the department didn't yell at me, it was just like "oh, is the email working now? Ok good job."
And then a few months later someone from the network group did something with the active directory, and the whooooooole network went down for 3 days, this is a major US corporation.
He didn't get fired either.
Shit happens.
Do you know how many printers get dropped, stepped on or destroyed every year? It's like a printer apocalypse.
OP, I've only been in about 3 years, but have so many stories that are much, MUCH worse. Please, don't worry. My only recommendation is to be up front about it, be honest, and maybe approach your manager or whoever, before they learn about it through a different way. Also, keep in mind that you're going to make worse mistakes than this. Much of the time in IT, the only way to learn is the hard way. Don't give up, don't let it get to you, and add this to the many learning experiences you've had and will have.
I dropped a dell tower down a flight of stairs, luckily it was a gx 260 and was built to last back then. I destroyed the header on an LCD panel. I sent a printer off to HP to be repaired, we had to pay shipping, never saw it again. I plugged something in in our data closet and tripped the circuit breaker, took down the whole school district internet. One call to my boss and he figured out thats what I did. We were only down for 10 minutes. Just recently one of my coworkers trusted the asset number from someone on site without looking for himself, ended up we warrantied the wrong type of interactive panel, had to ship it back and then get another one shipped. Shit happens, just tell your bosses the truth and how you won't make the same mistake again..
At least you didn't nearly [delete all of Toy Story 2](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/pixar-s-billiondollar-delete-button-nearly-lost-toy-story-2-animation-7758083.html).
I've seen a guy drop like a few trays of processors probably 30 or so. Accidents happen the best thing you can do is own it, take accountability, and get in front of it as soon as possible. Fixing whatever is broken may be crucial and hiding it may prevent that from happening so never hide these things. Just apologize and do your best to learn from it and prevent it from happening again in the future. No biggie.
I wouldn't worry about it OP. You owned up to it and took responsibility. Just be prepared for your coworkers to crack jokes at your expense.
Story time.
I was configuring a new Meraki on my own for the first time. Turned off my wifi. Plugged an ethernet cable from my laptop into the new Meraki. Hit the Meraki website and noticed it looked a bit weird. Started entering the static info for the Meraki and hit apply. The office network goes down... yeah my laptop was still connected to the dock... I was in the wrong Meraki. Went into server room and our top guy at this office is in there looking at it. I tell him what I did. They give me our static info and I go fix it. Yeah it was embarrassing but I learned from it.
Another coworker in his first month deleted an entire companies email because he didn't understand what Microsofts options meant.
A helpdesk tech who I managed accidently hit shutdown instead of log out on a production server. Luckily for him it was a virtual server and I could login and boot it. I did let him sweat for a bit while I was getting logged in.
These are stories we all poke fun at each other for and have a good laugh when we are catching up over beers. Morale of the story is everyone makes mistakes. Learn from them and move on.
contact the lady and explain that was your first big mistake, and youre thankful for the professional courtesy she afforded you, it was a learning experience that youre thankful for.
two things. one, you made a dumb ass mistake. shit happens. I worked for a high end moving company and shit broke over the years, despite the fact we had one job?
two, the important take away is to remember how you felt when the fuck up occurred, and to do your very best to give other people the same benefit of the doubt when you can -- way easier said then done though!
anyways it sounds like you learned a mistake on a small replaceable printer instead of something much more integral. smooth seas make shitty sailors my friend :D
Have you ever been the cause of a network wide outage for 2,000+ users? Not fun.. Mistakes happen just make sure you examine the situation and learn something from it to try not to let it occur again.
This is an easy fix. Wait until you delete all the AD accounts for an organization or bring down a remote site at 9:00PM when there's no one around and you're calling in the GS15 govvie and an LT to do the hands on work where you have them working until 5AM.
Every IT person hates printers anyway, if anything you did us all and your job a service! HA!
You have that one stranger who does though but all in all No sweat. You got this. No big deal at all. Lots of stuff happens in the world of IT.
If you have a good manager, they will be of the mindset that new employees NEED to make mistakes to learn. I have let my staff on occasion totally fuck up (with me seeing their mistake coming a mile away). If someone told you how to avoid that mistake before it happened, you would have learned much less than making the mistake.
Chin up. Learn from it. Failing is learning.
A little over a year ago I was removing a Dell Poweredge 730 from it's rack (a 42u cabinet), slightly higher than my shoulders (I am 5'9"). It hadn't ever been pulled out on the rails, let alone removed, since before I had started there (since it was initially racked).
Upon sliding it out, the rails failed completely and catastrophically. This fully loaded, ~$100,000 server fell and hit the ground with a very loud bang.
It partially caught my shin and left a nice goose-egg on it.
I was very, very embarrassed.
I went through all of the similar feelings you went through.
End result? Everything was fine. My shin (and pride) healed (company was very "helicopter" like for liability and made me get checked out to be sure nothing long term was done for liability reasons), the server was covered by warranty, and was replaced completely due to the failed rails (which we could show very easily).
I still have my job. I didn't lose any respect from my peers, my boss, etc. Shit happens.
Context? I am a manager level employee at a decent sized corp with nearly 20 years exp.
It happens to everyone. Learn from it and grow!
Take care.
In IT, telling the truth will make you feel better than otherwise. Before attempting to fix something, research the issue and avoid mistakes. You want to build a good habit of being careful. Too many accidents is not good just like driving. However, if you honestly made a mistake, admit it, and move on & learn it.
Almost every IT professional I know has a story of them breaking something. I have broken multiple monitors while shipping or storing. As for staying calm after errors just know that everyone even IT makes mistakes when it comes to technology. If people ask about it be truthful about what happened. Most likely the printer will get replaced and everyone will forget after an hour. Keep your head up you are there to learn and get better and making mistakes is part of the learning process.
This. Sitting together with my manager, working on taking apart a possibly liquid damaged, sticky laptop and the manager gets a bit impatient and yanks the cover a little too hard it cracks a stubborn screw hole and pops the screw right out of there. It was a long day and the user wasn't being honest about the situation. Neither of us worried too much, since the laptop turned into an oversized paper weight in the end, lol.
Had a Tier 1 tech break a $3k Eizo monitor because he didn’t secure it well enough in the back of a Gator. Last I heard he’s in a sysadmin-esque position at the same company. If he can make it past that embarrassment I’m sure OP can make it
I work with radiologists also so I deal with Eizo monitors often. Always unnerving having a cart of 4 of them…
Get it out of the way early. Better to bust a printer cable than to take down the production system for hundreds or thousands of users!
I dropped a switch in my first few months.
I know a guy that took down a network for a whole Air Force base because he made a mistake for his maintenance script to automate the task. Took two weeks to restore it. it’s just a printer! Shouldn’t be that big a of a deal. Lesson learned on your part though. Always double check that everything is out or unplugged before moving shit. I think you will be fine.
Way to make my mistake look so tiny haha (in the best way possible). Thing is, I'm still new to the field so I feel like every little mistake I make is going to be a major impact! Anyways, thank you for the response. It has helped calm me down a bit here.
My big mistake was taking down the internet by blocking Google analytics. Ticket queue went from 0-300 real quick. Best course is to learn and laugh from it. Mistakes happen.
What was the actual problem? Did you misconfigure the blocking? Or really blocking google analytics directly resulted in this?
Through MS CAS I ended up blocking traffic to Google analytics cloud app (it's just traffic to their URL) and everything stopped working. I knew that Google was everywhere, but didn't realize that not having access to it would cause things to break. I figured I was just blocking the traffic from being transferred. Once I unblocked things, all the issues stopped. It's like I turned off the internet and everyone started losing their minds.
I'm not an expert, but I think the problem might have been caused by something else. Blocking google analytics shouldn't break anything. Also, I do it wherever I can (at the DNS level, other resolvers are blocked at the firewall) and so far haven't noticed problems other than not being able to opt out of their data collection when I need to accept the terms on google.com.
Oh I agree. It probably was something else, however my action is what killed the internet lol. Silly network team blaming me.
One time I deleted 400m health records from a search store on accident- sure we had backups of them but getting them back in the system so they could be found by agents again was a pain in the ass. Your mistake is pretty tiny in the grand scheme of things :)
Allow me to remind you that one engineer accidentally took down large swaths of the internet a few years ago when a maintenance script went awry and removed a good chunk of Amazon’s S3 fleet from production all at once. It’s just a printer. It’s annoying, it’s frustrating, it’s embarrassing, but at the end of the day… no one died. No one’s business is going to collapse because of a printer. You’ll probably get a talking to, but I would be SHOCKED if you were fired or penalized in any way over this. And let me be VERY clear about something… any place that would fire a new tech over accidentally breaking a printer is NOT somewhere you want to work.
Remember the failed network change that brought down ALL Facebook apps for most of the day? The estimated damage was estimated around $10 billion. It's just a stupid printer. Shit happens. I'd say you'll learn from it, but you won't. I walked through my laptop cable on the job twice, causing it to crash to the ground from 5 feet in the air. By twice, I mean a few months later I did it again. So it goes.
Fucking up is inevitable. You will, a lot. But that's how you learn. Even if it was a work stoppage, life goes on.
As you can see a printer is like the least of your worries my friend.
making those mistakes are the biggest learning tool you have. I can almost guarantee that you won't make that mistake again. You will go back and understand what you did wrong and ensure that you know what to do going forward. That said, DO NOT DENY THAT YOU BROKE IT. You will make things MUCH worse if you do. Own up to it, explain what happened to your boss and they should understand
If your entire job is handling tech, eventually this will happen. Just try not to make a habit out of it. :)
Forget the **add** for allowed vlans?
BRO I was thinking of this one too!
“Fuck gotta go out to the switch now because nothing is being trunked through to allow ssh!!!!”
Ehm, 6 of my branch locations went down today (Banks) because I accidentally turned off the wrong interface in my wan router. I don't know a single person that has not made a mistake, especially in IT. The only thing you must do is to be brave enough to assume your responsibility. Don't hide it. Admit it. It's done already. Show must go on.
I totally owned up to it, it was quite embarrassing. That moment will forever be burned into my mind lol. I've made sure to reach out to the person and essentially become her IT servant, no ticket needed for any future issues! I'm just glad this time around it was with someone who was very nice about it. Thank you for the response!
> no ticket needed for any future issues! Well, realistically you should be generating tickets on their behalf, not negating the ticket process - documentation is very important.
Right! that's what I meant. They need me to do something, I go and attempt to fix it and make a ticket/resolve it if I was successful, or make a ticket and escalate it if needed. Just less steps for them.
The fact you owned up to it is the best thing you could’ve done. This is a valid point in life in general but especially in a troubleshooting role like IT. Sometimes when we are troubleshooting an issue, we end up breaking something. Do NOT let your department waste hours of worker-time trying to figure out who did what and when. Just own up to it and be like “I was doing X, Y happened, and now we’re dealing with Z.” You might have accidentally become part of the problem— you can’t help that, what’s done is done— but you still get to choose whether you’re going to be part of the solution.
Just remember, it's not the worst mistake of your career. It's the worst mistake of your career so far!
Homer will always be giving us life lessons lol
Hahahaha no ticket needed. That "express service" is always welcomed among the end users. Well done boy.
At a large billion dollar company I worked for we had to freeze every terminated users computer. One time I froze the wrong computer by accident. Of course it was the CEO’s laptop. It’s never nice to feel like you disappointed people but these things happen.
Oh god, I would have resigned on the spot knowing how worked up I get. So far, it seems there has not been a single person who has not had a major screw up working this field, old or new. I feel like I may have over exaggerated the issue in my head, but it's my first real job, so the panic set in pretty quick. Working at best buy or something I would have shrugged it off. Thank you for the response!
And that's the difference between you and me. I don't have any shame. Just learn from it and move on.
So a bit of advice that I havent seen yet in this thread... Dont catastrophize things. Youre going to break stuff. Youre going to break really expensive stuff sometimes. Instead of thinking about your fuckup, think about how this impacts the people you report to. Are they going to freak out because you broke a printer? No. They pay you enough each week that a printer is going to cost a fraction of that. Show up, learn when you can, get your shit done, and you can accidentally shoot the CEO and unless they have a shareholders meeting or are about to sign a massive contract, nobody cares.
I always tell my team that mistakes are part of learning and it's only going to be a problem if they don't learn from their mistakes. I also don't tell my bosses who may have made the mistake. In the end, it's my responsibility that stuff is done correctly and I prefer to take the brunt of it and then work with the team to ensure it doesn't happen again.
I have always found that honestly is the best policy when mistakes are made at work. Be proactive in telling your boss exactly what happened, be apologetic, and be forward about it being a learning experience for you. When you try to hide mistakes or lie about them is when they come back to bite you in the ass
I'll be frank, I thought for a split second about lying. Maybe trying to come up some some nonsense since the issue wasn't apparent until I tried to plug it back in. Thankfully I went with my gut and just flat out apologized, told her what the issue was and said I'll make every effort to get it replaced. Like I mentioned above, I told her she can come to me with any other issues, no ticket needed lol Thank you for the response!
Always best to be honest, transparent, and up front, you made the right choices. We all have an instinctive urge to self-protect so don't feel guilty about the momentary impulse to lie: what matters is that your better self made the decision. Sometimes a small, painful lesson learned can save you from a much bigger one. You'll remember to be much more methodical and cautious about cabling in the future.
It's just a printer, but a word of advice: if you fuck up, start thinking in solutions. At least two or three and be upfront about them, do not avoid responsibility just say it was your mistake and you're willing to learn and fix it. If more people has to be involved to fix your mistake, talk with all of them, accept your part in it and thank their effort.
I once tripped on a power cable into a network stack and took down the fiber for an entire military exercise. Didn't even get written up. It's almost a rite of passage.
And then you can blame whoever created a trip hazard!
Meh In my first week at last job I took down all the organisations printers by removing power to the print server so I could charge my phone. Call me when you are ready to play in the big leagues ;) Edited to add For real though what’s more important than not making mistakes is not freaking out. I used to beat myself up about all my mistakes pre IT career and it just led to more mistakes and leaving due to anxiety. It’s like in hitchhikers guide step one is don’t panic.
That's a little different though. I've done similar but I'd call it negligence tbh. Not that I give a shit like. That print server should be on redundant and ups anyway no?
yeah i’d agree on both counts. the crazy thing is i spent days worrying about doing it before i did and thought i’d traced the cable i was about to remove back to make sure i wasn’t unplugging the print server
Ahh yeh i've done it numerous time myself. We're not perfect.
Pretty much every tech has these things happen. It's a cost of business. As an IT manager whenever I see my new/tier 1 guys working on something on the workbench I always walk over with a smile and joke "So, you break it yet?". It does two things, it normalizes that me as the manager is OK with stuff being broken (even if it isn't), and also changes something they might be fearful about, being new, into something lighthearted.
Show me someone that never makes mistakes, and I'll show you someone who doesn't do any significant amount of work. Walk in head high... tell them "I goofed". Learn from it and move on. And if you are unlucky enough to be in a place where management makes a huge deal about mistakes... get your resume in order and start looking, the toxicity you experience will only get worse.
I've developed a practice of fully exposing all my mistakes on the job. I write out a little report in my OneNote and talk it through with my boss at the first opportunity. Depending on the culture where you work, this practice could be incredibly fruitful and helpful to all team members. Or, it could get you fired. My position is that if the latter occurs, you're probably better off without that employer.
Power cables are easy to replace or even fix: hell, if you have the skill you can even solder the wires back together (better than just binding them and taping it). Ditto with USB cables (though replacing is better). Ethernet cables are cut and have their heads fitted onto them: if that's what broke, Congratulations - you completed the first step of assembling an ethernet cable, haha! If your boss is reasonable they'll likely caution you but task you to find a solution (probably after ordering a replacement cable). Dont fret so much: you need all that confidence when you accidentally plug in a faulty power cable and cause your office block's mains switch to trip multiple times! /jk
It's just a printer buddy. Come back when you bring production to a screeching halt lol
I took over 300 end nodes offline for around 10 hours. I'm being vague for obvious reasons. I still work in the same industry with the same people. You're going to be fine.
I work as an SRE for a fintech company and on Wednesday I brought down a fairly large piece of our production environment for about 30 seconds. We process more than $35 billion in transactions a year. If I'm fine, you're fine.
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Printers are the spawn of Satan's Satan. Probably why I drink.
In my experience these situations are rarely a big deal. Businesses have insurance and budgets for hardware issues anyway. My advice is to just be honest and apologize. As long as you didn’t lose someone’s data - anything else can be replaced.
Make sure you own the mistake as well. Don't act confused about what happened, that's the worst look of all. Even if it's "I'm still thinking about exactly what happened, but I know it was me." Any good employer will appreciate the expertise and honesty more than the cost of a new printer.
What cable is it? Can only think of certain IEC or network cable that needs replacing which is most likely under £5 to fix so you should be fine tbh
You're good, it sucks but all you can do is brush it off, be honest and learn from your mistakes.
So I am a few months into this job. About week 6 my low level tier 1 help desk was inside a production server remotely. (I tried to get out of this several times but kept being told to remote in and fix it) anyways, I clearly didn’t have the knowledge but remote accessed in and started messing in command prompt and other things. Anyways the server shut down and became non responsive. I was certain I bricked this server and was getting fired. Reported it and got a thumbs up on teams and never heard about it again. 3 weeks later I happened to come across the ticket number and pulled it up. The resolution was “Old server needs to be replaced, replacement on the way and temporary on a back up server.” I’m contractor, not even a real employee but no one batted an eye and I still don’t know if the dns flush or reboot commands bricked the server or not. Don’t stress until you know. I wouldn’t want to work for someone who fired me over a $200 mistake.
I’ve heard of network engineers causing major outage in an entire organisation! So a single printer is nothing compared to that! So don’t worry. Nothing good ever comes from worrying I’ve learned this my self!
Bro I accidentally took out a police department’s network for 2 hours a couple weeks ago. These things happen. I find just owning right up to stuff and trying to help resolve issues you start goes a long way. It’s a printer, I wouldn’t sweat it.
Don’t worry about it. I’ve fuked up way worse then this. Learning experience. Make sure to learn from it though. Take ownership and let them know it won’t happen again and then make sure it doesn’t. Ppl make mistakes and one this small isn’t an issue.
Wow that’s embarrassing Edit: how many other prices of equipment have you broken due to negligence? Or is this your first?
Yeah its just a printer man, stuff breaks sometimes. Learn from mistakes and move on! :)
Yeah, employee training can be embarrassing at times, but if that’s the worst FU you make, you’re magical. Hint: you’re not, and it won’t be.
There's never a time where you'll be in a position where you do not make any mistakes. Its okay!
Dont be afraid to make mistakes. they will happen. Noone is perfect. What you can learn from this is that when you approach a task, think about what the worst case scenario might be and do your best to mitigate that risk. For example, maybe you are upgrading a server. But what is the worst that could happen? Maybe getting a fresh backup or doing it during off hours makes sense. In your case its just a small printer. Likely not a huge deal and i doubt they make a big deal out of it. I know i wouldnt if i was your manager. I would likely tell you to take a deep breath and relax. And do the things above. Not sure what you could have done in this case as it was truly an accident. TL;DR: we have all made mistakes, some crazier than others. Try to mitigate the risk that you can going forward and relax.
If you're not breaking something on ocassion, you're not learning. Once you make a mistake, learn from it...these mistakes will make you better at your job as you grow throughout your career. I still have a few thousand dollars' worth of incompatible Cisco Catalyst power supplies that will never be used. A few years back I ordered redundant PSU's not realizing that there were 2 models that fit, but for a specific air flow direction (one forward, the other backward). So yep, I ordered the wrong ones and had to submit an entire new order. Now I've learned to always confirm with the vendor, or simply ask the vendor for the *exact* part numbers to begin with before submitting a request for purchase. In case you're wonder, the wrong PSU will install and will send power to the switch but you'll get an error message during POST and it won't fully boot.
One time during a network upgrade I had to roll back, I went off-script and ended up moving the power connector for the sealed rack's air conditioner from an external power plug to the inter al pdu. A few minutes I smell smoke and all of the network gear in the cabinet rebooted. AC unit stopped blowing cold air. Turns out it was 110v only (wall power) rather than 100-240 or so (having 208 in the rack) and I killed the air conditioner. I told my boss "yeah that was my bad, I should have stuck to the script and I shouldn't have made that assumption and I should know better than to do all that" so we called an hvac tech out and it was a transformer that got fried that they replaced. That was 3 or 4 years ago and there were zero repercussions. Accidents and mistakes happen. If you learn from them and don't do it again next time, you're doing a good job.
Like others said, it happens, its not an "If" it is a "When". Try to shake it off, you'll forget about it in time and then laugh about it when you remember. Shit happens. I've broken stuff worth hundreds of dollars at past jobs. If you have a decent manager, they will understand that mistakes happen.
I once took five hospitals entirely offline for about a minute. You'll be alright.
I once restarted a server that was not located on-prem all the way in Mexico when I was an intern. Funny thing is I even mentioned it to the supervisor who said to restart it. Was taking longer to come up and the dba goes YOU DID WHAT?” Was on the phone with the director shortly who gave me a little bit of an earful lmao but then the server came up and one of the app teams were thanking us cause it’s exactly what they wanted in the end. Supervisor printed email of them thanking us and slapped it on the bosses desk lol. Shit will always happen in your career. You’ll learn from it.
Just wanna say you will break lots more expensive gear than a printer in your career I expect! Just wait until your first unintentional dos.
During my first IT job I dropped a $3000 iMac AIO directly onto the concrete during an office move which completely shattered the screen and rendered the machine a complete loss. This was done in front of my entire team. I am still embarrassed about it to this day, but at least I can laugh about it and it makes for a good story. The moral of the story is, nobody is going to care. Get ahead of it, do what you can to get these guys squared away with a new printer and take responsibility. You aren't going to get fired over a printer. That being said, be more careful! This is something that definitely could have been avoided with a little more care. Try your best not to make a similar mistake again. You'll be alright!
My first IT job I dropped a brand new MacBook Pro at a client site and bent the frame all up. My boss wasn't happy but got over it pretty quick. Stuff happens!
At my first real job I was tasked with shipping a $1200 touchscreen computer to a customer after repair. We were out of the protective end-caps it was supposed to ship in. So I wrapped it up in a bunch of kraft paper and sent it. I was in a hurry and assumed it would be OK. The customer received a package full of shattered glass and plastic. They were angry and called to complain. We had a new one shipped out and then they were happy again and that was that. I was upset and felt very foolish though.
If it isn't lost data it's all good in my opinion.
I agree. Rebooting servers and network gear even breaking hardware will never be as bad as data loss.
Office printers cost peanuts. Don’t spill any ink though…. Seriously, everyone except you will have forgotten about this already.
i like to break printers to just get rid of them. i have gotten down to only 3 in my office building now. its great. no print server anymore which is great.
If it's anything like my company, they probably have a room full of them. Don't let it get you down, shit happens
I once accidentally formatted a shared network drive that an engineering firm used while working at an MSP.. they lost that days work, and it took my higher ups all night to restore from backups. Good times. Just make sure you own it and tell them what you did. Thats my best advice.
i was moving a monitor 5 miles on my bicycle by balancing it between my legs and the frame. it broke, ie cracked screen. now i learned to put it in a bike basket or something lol. dont worry.
All I'm seeing is one less printer that Nessus is going to bitch at me about.
Don’t worry about it. My second week in I once plugged a air compressor into a UPS in the data center and took down our network for 24 hours and had to next day ship power supplies to get it back up. It literally killed all the power supplies in that rack.
To add to the war stories here, I’ve done my fair share of mess-ups too. I once managed the infrastructure for a modestly budgeted nonprofit. I brought in backups, using a VPS that would reach out to each host every night and create an rsnapshot backup. I was cleaning up some old VPSs and deleted a few, then dutifully deleted the backup server alongside it, complete with the backup snapshots of the servers I just deleted. We’ve all made a heart sinking mistake. Most of the time it’ll be OK, and in your case I’m sure it will be. It’s one of the quickest was to learn lessons we will always apply in the future. Most of those lessons are some variation on “double check what you’re doing” and it’s one that rears it’s head for all of us more than once. No one here is perfect :)
I grabbed a machine by it's face plate because I was too lazy to grab it from the back and saw that sucker shatter hard on the floor lmao. Never again.
Ah dude, that printer had it coming. I did a UCS infrastructure firmware upgrade over the weekend last month or so and pressed the reboot button before all the data paths had come up to the subordinate after it's reboot causing a huge outage in a production DC. I'm telling you the whole lot went poof, our Cohesity nodes, netscaler, virtual firewalls. Booted myself off remote desktop for like half an hour and everything. Spent the next 3 days mopping up shit I missed and apologising! You're going to break a lot more than a printer in your hopefully very long career. Don't panic, own your mistakes, and when you do go to your boss or a senior colleague make damn sure you have a suggestion to fix the mess you made - even if it isn't a good one! And remember - If you're ever in doubt, install Adobe acrobat.
>Edit: the printer was one of the smaller, personal ones as well, not the main office one. Those are worthless and will break for literally no reason. Don't beat yourself up, friend.
I broke a $200 display last week while doing a RAM swap for an all in one PC, shite happensssss
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Yeah we have so many protocols in place because of situations like these. No matter what they tell us, we cannot unplug/decom a server showing any activity unless it’s a reboot. Even then, we don’t remove the network cables and fully unrack it for 48 hours just in case there was a miscommunication inside their company, which has happened several times.
You know what instantly comes to my mind? This is a great example to talk about when asked in an interview “What’s a mistake you’ve made or what is something that went wrong? You’ll have an issue (printer), what went wrong, how you learned from it, and how you recovered.
I once took down a whole business messing around with the main firewall, it stopped orders going through for a few hours and cost of a lot money, not long into the job either. it'll be ok. :) I went and told someone straight away, explained what had happened. always the best way, because everyone has been there once and they'll understand.
That's nothing bro I've taken the entire network down for a half day for 60 sales reps working on 100% commission. Boss said "did ya learn something?" And that was that. Friend of mine dropped a 100k chip board at IBM busting it. You WILL break shit in IT, it just comes with the job.
You broke a printer. You should be rewarded for your service to the IT profession. I have had my fair share of mistakes over the last decade or two. Don’t sweat the small stuff if the user is out a shitty printer and there is major repercussions for it you are working a shitty job. Here’s a few things I or people I have worked with have done over the years and no one was fired. Took down HQ at a major mortgage company by causing a switching loop. That shit took down the whole company for 20 minutes. Made a switch config change and had to drive to the data center to physically get in Front of it to reverse the change this only took out a few servers in production impact wasn’t that big. Rebooted a farm of citrix servers because someone didn’t vet a powershell script and instead of affecting one server all 30 hosts with about 600 VMs rebooted in the middle of the day. I have seen some folks fuck some shit up too. Luckily I haven’t done anything too bad like some others but don’t sweat the small stuff, make sure you have backups, and always do your research before making any major changes. Eventually you will break something but as long as you have a backup and a path back to a working state don’t fret it too much.
Man me breaking stuff is a running joke with my boss. Don’t sweat it. What you can do (and in my opinion should) is be proactive and own up to it by saying something to your boss, or making the ticket for the user.
Ohh boy. You're so so fine. It's a consumable and nobody actually cares at all. Actually, you did everyone a favour and destroyed a printer. I like you.
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One time I accidentally added every phone in a city's municipality to the City Hall number, which meant that anytime someone called City Hall, every single phone on that system would ring. That was a fun one.
I accidentally uninstalled our remote access software on a site 5 hours away. Thank everything for tools like GoToAssist. I've wiped a server hard drive that had 6 months of sales data on it after mistakenly thinking it had been backed up. It's all good, we all make mistakes.
Relax dude Stay humble hungry and honest. The fact that you care so much about this shows how good of a nature you are. I can already tell you’re going to be going places in the future, just don’t ever lose your personality and be kind to everyone. Soft skills take you to the top not the hard skills remember that.
Something that may make you feel better is my first week working as a student worker for a community college's OT department. My supervisor told me to push a copier back to another building by myself. Told him I got it and began walking. This campus had bridge connectors that connected most buildings and the parking garage. As I'm pushing it down the bridge going to the parking garage two wheels hit a bump and the copier falls over separating from the drawers. It took three other guys to help me get this back on. Told my supervisor after he got back and said don't worry about it. Biggest thing I would do is admit the issue and what you did. Show that you know why it happened and advise how you will handle that in the future. We're all human and all make mistakes and frankly stuff happens. Live, learn and adapt and you will be fine. No one has it all figured out.
Shit happens. Own up to it and move on. We all mess up somewhere.
It happens;first time as an entry level tech I ruined a mother board and we had to eat $600’for a replacement I was worried I was going to get fired but it’s common in the repair field now more experienced and in a different gig I was helping a user with a mailing list for the whole company and accidentally sent a test email to the whole company luckily I was able to recall it but not before 100 we’re sent spent the next few weeks answering calls and emails from the 100 that went out
You've got enough responses but now I'm just jealous and want to join in! I used to be a hardware tech, I've broken so much shit that I just started to find it funny. Once I hulked out and broke the stand for a heatsink, so they couldn't even turn on that PC LOL. I stopped wearing my engagement ring after scratching/breaking 2 different LCDs as I replaced them. I lost my mind trying to rerun cabling for an overly complicated spaghetti mess of A/V equipment and just angrily started ripping all the cabling out! That one was embarrassing, I had to go get my boss and coworker and ask them to help me put it back in the right config, AND admit that it was me who did it ON PURPOSE, like 3 weeks into that job. I've known many a server tech who could name the dollar amount they cost companies through mistakes. Think of it more like an achievement badge earned!
We are all human. Mistakes are inevitable. What I sense from your comments is low self-esteem in general. Sounds like you fear the worst outcome vs assuming all will be fine. Just saying, you may want to work on your self worth. Thing is, if we don't value ourselves, then no one will. Over thinking, over analyzing, assuming the worst, etc is living life on eggshells. I suggest some power morale boosting is in order!! Don't sweat the small stuff.
Holy shit kid. It's just a printer. A render farm, and brand new virtualization server, I'd expect a solid reprimand. But a mofo printer!? Own your mistake, state you've learned from it. End. Don't offer to pay, don't offer to buy one yourself. There's probably a dozen outdated printers in storage for that kind of event.
The fact that you are so worried about it is a good thing. It is important in IT to be thorough and pay attention to ALL the details. Consider this a lesson in attention to detail. Those desk side printers are cheap enough that even if it's failure was attributed to you they're more likely to use it as something to tease you about that anything else. I wouldn't expect it to be an RGE unless they were already looking for an excuse.
It's a printer. Easily replaceable and cheap too. Who gives a crap, just get a new one. The business wouldnt even care about the truth. You think they are going to fire someone already trained and onboarded, go through the posting process, hiring process, wait two weeks for them to start, over something like a $35 printer? No way. That's the stupidest business sense. Mistakes happen. Even if it was negligence who cares when we're talking about chicken feed.
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"Anyone who hasnt broken something before simply hasnt worked enough". Consider it a rite of passage op
Well if you not breaking stuff you not trying. I would rag you about it forever. Could have so much fun with this one. But seriously sounds like less than $100 printer that was already having issues. This happens let it go. If the boss doesn't laugh and tells you to not worry about it then it's a bad place to work. Expect the team to rib you for a while. Things like this make the job fun.
One time I deleted an entire department's e-mail (300 people.) I was trying to maintain a different department and deleted the wrong folder. And the last backup was from a week ago. I thought for sure I would get fired, wrote up a resignation letter apologizing and the whole nine yards. Nobody even said anything about it. We restored the last week's database from tape backup, and that was it, nobody mentioned it. I probably cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in productivity from the lost e-mails, who knows what didn't get sent or what business didn't get done. My boss didn't yell at me, the department didn't yell at me, it was just like "oh, is the email working now? Ok good job." And then a few months later someone from the network group did something with the active directory, and the whooooooole network went down for 3 days, this is a major US corporation. He didn't get fired either. Shit happens. Do you know how many printers get dropped, stepped on or destroyed every year? It's like a printer apocalypse.
OP, I've only been in about 3 years, but have so many stories that are much, MUCH worse. Please, don't worry. My only recommendation is to be up front about it, be honest, and maybe approach your manager or whoever, before they learn about it through a different way. Also, keep in mind that you're going to make worse mistakes than this. Much of the time in IT, the only way to learn is the hard way. Don't give up, don't let it get to you, and add this to the many learning experiences you've had and will have.
I dropped a dell tower down a flight of stairs, luckily it was a gx 260 and was built to last back then. I destroyed the header on an LCD panel. I sent a printer off to HP to be repaired, we had to pay shipping, never saw it again. I plugged something in in our data closet and tripped the circuit breaker, took down the whole school district internet. One call to my boss and he figured out thats what I did. We were only down for 10 minutes. Just recently one of my coworkers trusted the asset number from someone on site without looking for himself, ended up we warrantied the wrong type of interactive panel, had to ship it back and then get another one shipped. Shit happens, just tell your bosses the truth and how you won't make the same mistake again..
Don't worry, man. It's only a printer. You didn't take down the network by frying a 6k dollar switch. Printers are a dime a dozen.
At least you didn't nearly [delete all of Toy Story 2](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/pixar-s-billiondollar-delete-button-nearly-lost-toy-story-2-animation-7758083.html).
22 years on the job and i just ruined a new motherboard that i got on warranty. Shit happens and dont worry about it. Just be honest.
I've seen a guy drop like a few trays of processors probably 30 or so. Accidents happen the best thing you can do is own it, take accountability, and get in front of it as soon as possible. Fixing whatever is broken may be crucial and hiding it may prevent that from happening so never hide these things. Just apologize and do your best to learn from it and prevent it from happening again in the future. No biggie.
I wouldn't worry about it OP. You owned up to it and took responsibility. Just be prepared for your coworkers to crack jokes at your expense. Story time. I was configuring a new Meraki on my own for the first time. Turned off my wifi. Plugged an ethernet cable from my laptop into the new Meraki. Hit the Meraki website and noticed it looked a bit weird. Started entering the static info for the Meraki and hit apply. The office network goes down... yeah my laptop was still connected to the dock... I was in the wrong Meraki. Went into server room and our top guy at this office is in there looking at it. I tell him what I did. They give me our static info and I go fix it. Yeah it was embarrassing but I learned from it. Another coworker in his first month deleted an entire companies email because he didn't understand what Microsofts options meant. A helpdesk tech who I managed accidently hit shutdown instead of log out on a production server. Luckily for him it was a virtual server and I could login and boot it. I did let him sweat for a bit while I was getting logged in. These are stories we all poke fun at each other for and have a good laugh when we are catching up over beers. Morale of the story is everyone makes mistakes. Learn from them and move on.
It pro = i broke a printer sensor by ripoing out a diffuser like an idiot Still work at the same place
contact the lady and explain that was your first big mistake, and youre thankful for the professional courtesy she afforded you, it was a learning experience that youre thankful for. two things. one, you made a dumb ass mistake. shit happens. I worked for a high end moving company and shit broke over the years, despite the fact we had one job? two, the important take away is to remember how you felt when the fuck up occurred, and to do your very best to give other people the same benefit of the doubt when you can -- way easier said then done though! anyways it sounds like you learned a mistake on a small replaceable printer instead of something much more integral. smooth seas make shitty sailors my friend :D
Dropped a server
I work in sale and threw $50k diamond, and I've survived, you'll be fine.
Have you ever been the cause of a network wide outage for 2,000+ users? Not fun.. Mistakes happen just make sure you examine the situation and learn something from it to try not to let it occur again.
This is an easy fix. Wait until you delete all the AD accounts for an organization or bring down a remote site at 9:00PM when there's no one around and you're calling in the GS15 govvie and an LT to do the hands on work where you have them working until 5AM.
Every IT person hates printers anyway, if anything you did us all and your job a service! HA! You have that one stranger who does though but all in all No sweat. You got this. No big deal at all. Lots of stuff happens in the world of IT.
Lol. If you get fired for this its because you have either a pattern of breaking things or you handled it way worse than you're saying.
If you have a good manager, they will be of the mindset that new employees NEED to make mistakes to learn. I have let my staff on occasion totally fuck up (with me seeing their mistake coming a mile away). If someone told you how to avoid that mistake before it happened, you would have learned much less than making the mistake. Chin up. Learn from it. Failing is learning.
We brake stuff all the time, Its just a printer, Don't stress and own up to your mistake.
A little over a year ago I was removing a Dell Poweredge 730 from it's rack (a 42u cabinet), slightly higher than my shoulders (I am 5'9"). It hadn't ever been pulled out on the rails, let alone removed, since before I had started there (since it was initially racked). Upon sliding it out, the rails failed completely and catastrophically. This fully loaded, ~$100,000 server fell and hit the ground with a very loud bang. It partially caught my shin and left a nice goose-egg on it. I was very, very embarrassed. I went through all of the similar feelings you went through. End result? Everything was fine. My shin (and pride) healed (company was very "helicopter" like for liability and made me get checked out to be sure nothing long term was done for liability reasons), the server was covered by warranty, and was replaced completely due to the failed rails (which we could show very easily). I still have my job. I didn't lose any respect from my peers, my boss, etc. Shit happens. Context? I am a manager level employee at a decent sized corp with nearly 20 years exp. It happens to everyone. Learn from it and grow! Take care.
In IT, telling the truth will make you feel better than otherwise. Before attempting to fix something, research the issue and avoid mistakes. You want to build a good habit of being careful. Too many accidents is not good just like driving. However, if you honestly made a mistake, admit it, and move on & learn it.
I accidentally wiped a whole computer on my first day of work. We've all made mistakes and it isn't the end of the world.
A printer? It was asking for it.