"I broke a $3,000 diamond at work once. It was a wedding ring. I was tightening a little princess cut (the square one with the sharp points), and all of a sudden it turned into a broken “milky/frosted” mess, lol. You would be surprised on how easy it is to break a diamond; especially when they have super-sharp points. You can’t scratch them, but they will break.
Aftermath was a “hey, that happens” and some more training. I broke several more stones after that, but all small and easy and cheap to replace. Best job I’ve ever had."
Sparkselot
"I broke my dad’s fake leg once, for the aftermath he couldn’t really catch me…for a while. I got a good smack from his crutch lol"
chevy1500
"Broke is a strong word – but I accidentally turned off a server I was working on once.
I had a complete mind fart while being on a remote session on this server. My main machine needed turning off for some reason, and I forgot I was still in this remote session to a server. Hit Start > shut down and got “Are you sure, please type something in this box to confirm why…etc” – so I just mashed the keyboard thinking “of course I want to turn it off”.
It went off. But another screen appeared behind that. S@#T, I’d just turned off a server that hundreds of other analysts use for work. Suddenly cries of “hey Server001 has stopped working”, “yeah me too…”, “and me”. Then my desk phone rang. It’s the data center: “DID YOU JUST TURN OFF SERVER001?!?!” S@#T. “no” – “then why does it says: Shut down by DonKiddic, Reason given: aosbfsiodufsiudbfsdfsdbjf ?”."
DonKiddic
"The lever on my mother’s brand new recliner.
The aftermath? I gently placed it back and made it look like it was fine, then she went to use it and thought she broke it."
TanukiMara
"I was 12, asked to carry a ceramic urn for my aunt while we were loading up the car for a trip. I dropped it and it turned out they were the ashes of her grandfather that just passed.
We were driving to some lake to spread his ashes. I felt bad, but she was devastated. Not really a dignified thing having your ashes cleaned up by a swiffer wet jet.."
BCKPFfNGSCHT
"I broke my dad’s original Xbox because I would spam the on/off button because I liked the light."
ItSn0tmanmy
"My mom told me to get a cake out of the oven for her while she stepped out of the store. I was in the middle of a COD match when it was time to take it out so I ran, took it out of the oven and put it on the glass table we had in our kitchen, and ran back to my game.
Fast forward my mom comes home and is screaming at me for what I think is her not believing I took the cake out of the oven, but when I go downstairs to tell her I did take it out of the oven the table was shattered to pieces on the floor.
Edit: the cake was also ruined as glass shards make for a cursed snack."
"Editor’s Note, the heated metal tray the cake was on was put directly onto glass and moments later it shattered the table."
notFG
"I broke my front tooth biting an apple, can’t even make that up.
Nearly 5 years of painful root canals, gum surgeries, braces, and countless trips to the dentist later the tooth is still dead, and there is a chance I will need to replace the tooth with a multiple thousand dollar implant."
thebigm101
"I was in college getting ready to visit friends at another college about 4 hours away. I had packed my laptop in my backpack which had one of those side inserting pouches for laptops but I forgot to zip it up. As I was getting ready to leave, I swung the backpack over my shoulder and the laptop flew out like a slingshot. Found it was damaged but still worked. Went on my trip super bummed I had damaged my laptop.
At the end of the trip, I came back home ready to relax and watch some TV. To my horror, there are huge cracks in the tv and the entire picture was ruined. Turns out that I had slingshotted my laptop into my TV. I Did about 1k worth of damage in 1 second, all because I forgot a zipper."
dandab
"I kicked a Lego ferris wheel that my Lego obsessed brother had built because I was mad at him. I’ll never forget the way he deflated. He was so proud of that thing and Legos were really all that he had at the time. We never found all the pieces and I feel guilty about it 15 years later."
SunRaies29
“Hey, can you look after my fish while I’m gone?”
“Sure, that’ll be easy!”
Spoiler alert: it died. In like an hour.
JackofScarlets
"I wrecked my brand new truck right before my 16th birthday, while eating chicken nuggets. Into a mailbox. Made of brick. Luckily the neighbors didn’t want to file a police report because I didn’t have an adult with me. I had to wake up at 6 am the next morning and pick up all of the pieces of brick that literally exploded throughout the yard.
Also my dad had to pay for the mailbox to be rebuilt. Thankfully my truck wasn’t totaled, although it was very close. The stain where I dropped my barbecue sauce is still on the floor mat."
RCcola57
"Oh oh, I have something for this! I broke $20k of equipment and kept my job!
I was working on a gas chromatography machine, and through some dumb@$$ery, blew a channel—the carrier gas line was kinked and I didn’t know. I was like “oh that’s weird” replaced it, and instantly blew it again because there still wasn’t carrier gas being pushed to the instrument.
All told, about $20k USD mistake. Nothing ever happened to me, I was upfront about what happened and my boss just shrugged. This was the first time I realized I was dealing with Real Money— that’s a drop in the bucket."
AtomicTaintKick
"I was seeing a new guy after getting out of an abusive relationship. I was borrowing his truck, (he actually trusted me with his truck!) and when I pushed the 4hi button, it broke! I was super nervous about telling him, scared of his reaction, and afraid of losing him. (all based on how the previous guy would have reacted).
His reaction: s@#t happens, I’ll schedule an appointment to get it to the shop.I ended up marrying him.
Things would have been very, very different had it been with the previous guy."
mjskaj
"At resort, Executive chef sent me to the storeroom to get him a 12 oz jar of saffron threads. For those that don’t know, saffron is more expensive than cocaine.
Anyway, I enter the kitchen, yet someone spilled grease on the floor and didn’t get it all up. I slipped, dropped the jar and the saffron ended up all over the floor.
Got fired on the spot. Found out that jar cost $2500"
RmeMSG
"During classroom instruction in the army, I broke a bit of electronic equipment worth £250k (back in the 90’s) by plugging it into a dock of sorts which had an undiagnosed fault. Immediate reaction from the instructor: “that’s odd, try this one”… the replacement bill is now £500k.
Instructor brings in the head instructor of the unit, who then proceeds to break another one in exactly the same way… £750k by this point.
By this time I’m somewhere between s@#tting bricks over breaking something so expensive, and trying not to laugh my @$$ off as my seniors proceed to break half a million worth of kit in front of me. It took the civilian instructor stepping in and saying that maybe we should stop breaking stuff and send everything in for repair. No repercussions for me as I was under instruction, but interesting to see the definition of insanity play out in front of me in real-time.
I guess that was a great insight into the military mentality."
Salty_Paroxysm
"Not broke but more like burned a side of my grandparent’s house after lighting a firecracker when I was 11. It blew up in my hand after I was called to get something in another room. Not sure how one firecracker could cause this and it took like an hour before it started burning.
The aftermath was that they had to pay for revocations, got some help from my parents, grounded, and can never use anything fire-related ever again."
A-real_human_
"The condom. Aftermath is no money and sleepless nights."
Yoguls
"Oh god, it was horrible. When I got my first maid’s job at 20 I was dispatched to clean this woman’s in her early 50’s house. She had a beautiful house with even more beautiful decor.
She showed me around her upstairs and had some dope diorama she made by hand. She was a piano teacher and had a baby grand. She told me she went to France often and most of the decor in her house was from France. She pointed out a specific freestanding shelf, filled to the brim with glass art, a tea set, and this really interesting clear fish glass art piece that had some gold metal work on it. It was big and had some heft to it. She told me 4 other maids had broken something on this shelf and be VERY careful when cleaning it.
After she gave me a tour she left to go by the grocery store, telling me her boyfriend would be back shortly. They were in the process of breaking up and he would probably be coming in and out.
So, she’s gone and I’m going room but room cleaning. Starting top to bottom, which begins with dusting. I get to this prized shelf. It was a bamboo frame with glass shelves that could be removed. I am touching it with the utmost care, so I thought, using the lightest touch I thought possible. Suddenly this thing wobbles and before I knew it two shelves fly off and come absolutely crashing to the ground.
If I could have dissolved into the floor I would have at that moment. It was just a concrete floor and glass shards as far as the eye could see. All these curated possessions shattered into a million pieces.
I had no clue what to do. Before I knew it she’s walking in the door. I tell her what happened and how I can’t begin to say how sorry I am. I’m crying, she’s crying, saying “all I could do was tell you, all I could do was tell you to be careful”.
I finished cleaning her place, and I also wrote her a long note saying how sorry I was, how I could tell she had a beautiful home that represented all of her passions and personality so wonderfully, and how I felt so horribly for adding to her stress.
It was actually so sweet. Her boyfriend told her I had something for her, and I gave her the letter. She gave me a big hug.
I felt so bad about those items I broke, and on top of that this perfectly nice, and really cool woman who had so much on her plate couldn’t have been nicer about it. Of course she was sad and so shocked, but really it could have been so much worse.
Still can’t believe I broke all that s@#t."
PatienceMeadow
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It still makes me feel guilty.