As a follow-up to my Labor Day post, here are some of my favorite workplace faux pas. I did not make these up.

• The veterinarian who pulled the wrong chart and mistook an 80-pound, male Golden Retriever for a 10-pound, female Havanese
• The hairdresser who didn’t check the bottle of color and turned a honey blonde into a brassy redhead resembling Bozo the Clown
• The surgical resident who, after 36 hours on call, fell asleep on his feet during an operation while holding a hemostat to stanch the blood flowing into an open abdominal cavity
• The manicurist who mistook a bottle of peroxide for nail gel and bleached her client’s fingernails white
• The public relations vice president who wrote an email to her account manager complaining about a difficult client—and hit “Reply All” with the client’s name on the address list

Ouch. None of these mistakes—even the young surgeon’s—had disastrous consequences. But the workers who made them were all highly embarrassed and had to deal with the fallout from their errors.

What’s your worst work mistake? You can share it with me by confidential email. I’ll report the responses in a later post.