I need to set the scene first: Me, about 12-13 years ago, on the surface looking like a respectable career and family man, pillar of the community…Behind the scenes slowly falling apart, trapped in an abusive marriage, a job I hated more and more each day, and told that I had to keep the happy face on for the sake of everyone else.

And one day I just fucking imploded. Left for work one morning like normal, halfway there I threw my phone out the window and decided I was done. I remember driving and driving, stopping a few times for food or just to get out of the car and meander…but I had no real direction, started to panic about the possibility of going back to hell or staying lost out here. I blacked out.

Apparently my car ran out of gas and I ditched it. I was told when they (they being the cops) found me I was several states away, couldn’t remember my name, was talking nonsense, and was covered in my own filth. I was involuntarily committed and when my wife tried to visit me I tried to attack her, told her I wanted her dead, that she better never come near me again. That was the last I ever saw of her or our kids. My dad had no idea how to handle this so he just decided to treat me like I was dead and sold off most of what I owned, and at the time I was too inside out to care. I was in and out of psych wards for the better part of three years.

So yeah, destroyed a family, a home, my career and reputation, and caused a ruckus in a sleepy little rural shit town. I did get better…much better, and I’m happier and more together than I’ve ever been, but that’s the boring part of the story.

factory I worked at, I snapped a bearing rod on an injection machine.

it was made of steel, about 16 inches in diameter, about 18ft long, and cost around $1.5 million to replace.

complete accident, required a mandatory one week off (no pay) while they investigated if it was due to negligence or just routine wear and tear.

it took them six months to get a new one and cost the company close to $100 million on lost revenue on top of the cost of the part.

I drained an entire airplane’s fuel tank onto the hangar floor once. Wasn’t really ready to mop up 26 gallons of avgas.

Managed to topple a big oil drum of waste oil in my dad’s garage. I was 5 or so, and I was wearing a brand new winter outfit. It was light blue.

My dad was doing something, and was talking to someone who had stopped by. And this being on a moderately large farm, I always found something to do. 99.9% of the time, this was not a problem, as there wasn’t much that could physically maim me other than stuff my parents obviously watched out for.

However, I’ve never managed to reach any higher levels of cimedic timing in my life, and I doubt anyone else could either. The visitor asked my dad where I was at, knowing I was usually in the immediatevicinity. Upon hearing “around here somewhere”, they were concerned that I was kind of unsupervised. “There’s not a whole lot of bad stuff he can do” my dad said, just around the time when they heard the sound of something large falling over, combined with my excited cheer. I was a crafty little shit, and I somehow understood the concept of leverage.

That was 38ish years ago. I still remember the smell. My brand new winter clothes weren’t blue after that.

Both involving One of these

First time my manager was micromanaging me what buttons to press, so I did a malicious compliance and let him make me spill around 150kg of honey on the floor.

Second time I tried teaching a new lad how to work it, and he insisted that I shut up and leave him to it because he knows how to do it because hes not thick and it was pretty insulting that I thought he was that thick. Just stood back and casually watched him spill 2 tons of beef and blood all over the floor.

Neither one was properly my fault, but I deliberately did nothing to stop either one and laughed inside the whole way.

Ever interfered with mobile carrier in a state capital city? Yea… We did. I’ll grab the link to the story.

https://lemmy.world/post/19338754

Mine is probably the same both physically and metaphorically!

Almost cut my finger off with my dad’s table saw when I was four. Ran through the house screaming and spurting blood everywhere.

I still remember my thought process: I was trying to see how close I could get my finger to the spinning blade without touching it. I don’t know what success was supposed to look like here.

As a young child I got up early and decided that I would cut my own hair as a gift to my parents.

The big problem was the small mirror in the kitchen was too high so I was jumping, snip, jump, snip, etc.

When complete I went up to wake them to show them their “gift”.

I still remember the look on my mother’s face. I couldn’t understand why she was horrified hahaha.

Edit: I just remembered another little detail… She took me to the hairdresser’s as soon as possible and when the lady asked if I’d cut my own hair I was like “how did you know???” Lol

Forgot passwords, including a Bitwarden master password.

Locked my 3 credit bureaus, and I think the passwords to the accounts were in that vault.

Still locked out of the credit thing… been procrastinating with trying to get them unlocked…

I put my leg through the ceiling of a General’s office. He wasn’t the commander of the base mind you, he was the commander over several bases.

Someone had asked my team to repair one of his lights, and his office was in a WWII era building that had had a facelift. So most everything you could see was newer looking, but that did not apply to the base structure of the building, which included the area above the ceiling. Took a bad step and CRASH, huge mess.

Lucky on two points: He wasn’t in his office, and I was able to grab support so as to not fall all the way through.

His secretary heard the commotion and yelled, “oh gosh, are you ok?” Bless her, she was concerned for me. Friends/coworkers laughing their asses off in the ceiling with me.

“Not sure. I think I probably need CPR!” Couldn’t resist saying this. Friends still howling.

“Oh jeez, I’ll call the Fire Department”.

“No, not necessary. I’m fine now, thank you.”

I never did see the General, and they didn’t want me in his office to clean the mess.

So this was my biggest mess in a figurative sense due the circumstances. Which would have been orders of magnitude worse had the General been at his desk.

Once I spilled my trader Joe’s chicken Tikka masala all over my pants and while it wasn’t really a big mess in the long run it was still very disappointing in the moment

I was lab assistant at school. I had to make up a fruit fly medium for a class’ genetics experiments. I mixed it up in a 2 liter beaker and put it on heat. It was pyrex. It broke and the medium spread all over the floor. There were fruit flies buzzing around the classroom for the next month no matter how often they washed the floors.

My entire life after high school

I went to a private university 20 years ago

Camp, in the 80s. 2 counselors ran through the mess hall with water balloons chasing each other. In a split second I found myself running up to a table with a couple of ice-cream buckets full of water for dirty silverware. Grabbed one and flung the water at a counselor.

I pulled it a bit because as soon as the soapy water left the bucket, I saw the silverware already inside.

Totally embarrassed and apologetic! Water and silverware all over the place.

Not sure what came over me, but for some reason I felt like I needed to join, I guess.