What's the worst brain fart mistake?

[FredMnkyDad10]

That you have done or seen done?

My wife just did one. I am cooking up some steaks. She decided to toast garlic bread. One of those that it is already heavy buttered with garlic. She puts the loaf in the oven, butter side facing down.

In high school I use to work in a auto shop.

One guy that went to my high school. Pulls into the shop. His parents were regulars at the shop. He drove 10 miles on a flat to get to the shop so we could put on the spare. By the time he pulled in he was almost riding on the disk break. Whole side of the car just dings, scratches from flying rim. He also popped the air shock. He looked at the shop manager and asked if he could have it fixed by Monday since his parents return on Tuesday. It was 3pm on Firiday. A PG&E guy pulled in behind him, had followed him, tried to get him to pullover so he could put the spare on.

Another younger guy I went to school. His parents also regular. For his 16th birthday they bought him a 66 mustang. They had the engine rebuild, interior and paintjob done. Stock but looked good. He pulls in and while he was gassing up he check his oil. He was low so he put a quart. Checked, still low. He put 4 quarts and still low. So we check and yup he is about a quart low. We ask him to show us where he poured the oil. He points to the radiator cap.

Me, at the same shop. End of the day I am putting stuff away. Wrapping air hose up, gets snagged on something. Instead of going to see what I give it a tug. Still stuck, so I give a really hard jerk, comes free. I look up just in time to catch the female brass end right above my eyebrow, split it open and just start bleeding.

[StaticShocked]

About a year after i started machining metal out of high school, i made a stupid decision. I got in a hurry and used a rag to quickly brush the chips off of my part after drilling a 3/8" hole which was quite normal. Except you are supposed to stop the milling machine first. The spinning drill bit caught the rag, rag had my finger in it, finger managed to get out after wrapping around the bit while inside the rag and me yanking my hand super hard. It made it out with 3 distinctly radiused shaped, large, and deep chunks out of my finger down its length. I still don't know how my finger flexed that much without permeant damage. The missing sections eventually healed but the rag didn't survive. Moral of the story, ensure all tools and rotating components are off and stationary before attempting to clean your part. That haunts me as the day i almost lost an appendage due to a brain fart.

[DocsMachine]

Back in high school, a buddy of mine had a Ford Courier- basically a Datsun minitruck. His dad had swapped out the worn and smoky original engine (I think a 2.2L four cylinder) with one out of a Datsun (or maybe Nissan?) branded truck. (Basically the same truck and engine, except I think the new one was a 2.4L.)

He told me the mileage sucked, it ran poorly, and there was a constant gas smell. His dad couldn't figure it out, so he wanted me to have a look.

Almost immediately I noticed there were two 3/8" rubber lines hooked to the carburetor. One a vent line to the charcoal cannister, the other the fuel line from the pump. And, of course, they were backwards. The fuel inlet was hooked to the cannister, and the fuel pump could just shove as much fuel as it wanted, into the open vent.

I swapped 'em, and lo and behold the truck ran like a champ after that, not only running better but going from about 10MPG to somewhere in the low 30s.

Same guy, same truck, not long after. Tells me it's running poorly again, hard to start, no power. This one takes longer, but eventually I check the oil, for lack of much else to check. The dipstick has oil all the way up.

I look in the filler cap- I can see the oil level is a few inches below the cap. The engine is close to hydrolocked.

It seems that this buddy was used to driving his dad's old F150. A truck which burned so much oil you threw a quart in every time you filled up. My friend thought this was normal. Fill up, quart of oil. Fill up, quart of oil.

His new truck burned very little oil, so it wasn't long before he had four or five extra quarts in there. I drained most of it out, showed him the stick and level markings, and he ran that poor truck for years afterward.

The latter was less of a brain fart and more just ignorance of procedure, so to speak, but still.

Doc.

[FredMnkyDad10]

StaticShocked your story reminds me of one.

Middle school woodshop. Shop on one side had double doors. One door had a huge dent that went deep. Teacher told us a student had cut a piece of thick oak on the table saw. He was using the fence to cut the wood that was not as wide as the blade. The wood got wedged between the fence and blade. Blade spat that thing with such force it flew 5-6 to make that dent in the door. Lucky that the student was standing on the left side of the blade.

[COB]

Thinking it was going to be a fart in the first place.

[ChillswitchEngage]

Myself personally - Was working in a local PC repair place. Dude comes in to clone/backup his old HDD to a new one. We have some linux boot USB we use to do it with that's all over terminal commands & interface, and I have the sheet right in front of me with the specific commands. It's something I've already done at least a handful of times before so, sure thing, easy enough right?

Not sure if I just fat fingered something or what but, I ended up essentially doing a low level wipe of that entire drive (was probably easily a terabyte of data). Amazingly, my co worker was able to recover almost if not all of the data, and I was not fired for it. This incident has since taught me to minimum quadruple check everything I do 😅.

[Jaan]

When I do a computer build from scratch I need to lay out everything in a clean area and do it step by step. A friend of mine wanted to build a new rig so I told him what parts to order. The parts get to his business and he decides to tackle the job himself. I go over after work and he's pissed. He can't get it to boot up. In the middle of his rant I plug in the power connecter to the chip...the one thing he missed. *click* done. He's swearing saying "I should have just gone to Best Buy..." I interrupt him "try it now." He was so busy complaining he didn't even see what I did.

[flyweightnate]

A couple months ago I was getting ready to make coffee, and the espresso machine was out of water. I groggily shuffled over to the sink, grabbed a bottle, filled it with water, and poured it... into the open top of my new electric grinder.

Let it air out a few days and she still runs fine, fortunately.

Edit: As I think back, it's clear why I'm not an electrical engineer.

My other one, I was rebuilding a drill press with a bent quill. When I started unscrewing the power switch, I realized - abruptly - I had left it plugged in. Yikes.

[Walker]

The worst brain fart mistake is the one that gets you killed..... All others are just mishaps......

[the_matrix_guy]

First time I laid brick pavers, I didn't even realize there was a bottom/flat side, so I had to go back and re-do a lot of and lay them all correctly. I dont know if that's a brain fart or just general idiocy though. Probably the latter

[river031403]

Marriage 🤣

[Deus Machina]

Yeah, quite a few at the current job I probably shouldn't talk much about.

When I was turning wrenches, a lady had a newish Lexus towed in. That doesn't happen often. She had decided to do her own oil change.
Which is great, on its own. She did manage to drain the oil and put the plug back in tight, but not dangerously so.
She did not change the filter. Or check the dipstick. Just added oil until it stopped taking it.

[moving_target]

Two that jump to mind at the most recent job.

Coworker sold a phone, then after checking them out, gave them the box for the wrong phone. Luckily they only left with the wrong box and we were able to put the right serial number on the wrong box and get it sorted, but there was a solid hour of trying to find a $1300 phone that wasn't missing one morning.


Have another guy who has on multiple occasions forgotten to ring every device out. Ranging from forgetting just a watch (taxes and commission loss wouldn't be *too bad*) to an entire four phone plus sale.

[Myrkul]

The most recent one in memory is a giant mustache hair.
To clarify, it's been a half a decade since I had a beard, only the mustache, but ONLY my facial hair is red. EVERYTHING else is a different color. My cat is grey and black, and my wife is Mexican. The ONLY short, extremely coarse, and extremely red hair in my house is going to come from my mustache.

Turns out, that's exactly what I found trapped under a Shocktech LPR piston "o" ring. It took me months to find it since the ones I have are usually annoed red. I was going mad trying to figure out why this specific LPR kept underperforming, I changed all the "o" rings and seats on it at least 3 times, but the hair was so covered in lube it stuck while everything else got cleaned off. Eventually, on the upteenthen rebuild, I spotted it, blending in perfectly against the red Anno and the dregs of super lube.

Super pissed off it took me that long to find.

[FredMnkyDad10]

Hahahaha that is funny.

[DocsMachine]

I got a good fresh one for ya.

As my summer project (our summers are so short, you only get one) I'm doing some work to my old musclecar, which includes swapping the broken bench seat for a pair of bucket seats and a new center console with shifter.

This has been in the plans for many years, and nearly a decade ago I had access to a newer model car that was going to be junked. The bucket seats were comfy, so I snagged 'em specifically for my swap. A few years after that- 2018 I think- I hocked a kidney and had them reupholstered, since my interior is black and the seats were grey- and had a couple cigarette burns.

I finally, just this past weekend, got the driver's seat installed, which was not a trivial process. I had to modify both the car floor and the seat mounting rails. I'm happy with the install, and after a test drive, I'm cleaning up my tools and vacuuming grinding residue out of the car...

And the seats don't fold.

They came out of a four-door, mine's a 2-door. There's no reason for them to fold forward to allow access to the back seat... so they don't. They tilt back, sure, but forward? Bolt upright is as far as they go.

Fortunately, by tilting the seat back to full upright, and sliding it full forward on the rails, a non-chunky guy can get in the back without too much difficulty. But really, I've damn near converted my full-size sedan into a 2-seater, because at no point in the last eight years or so, or before or after spending a ton of hard-earned on the reupholstery... did I bother to check if the seats folded forward.

Doc.

[Jaan]

Have you considered swivel bucket seats?
Man, this right here kills me. This has happened to me enough times that I don't expect the first time I do anything new to be perfect, I expect there to be a non trivial mistake. The second time sure, but not the first.

[Jaan]

I have a friend who is a fantastic cook. The kind of woman who goes to the farmers market and makes fresh marinara sauce.

When she invites you over for dinner you just go, because it's always wonderful. I went to high school with her so I've known her and her boys for a long time. Her sons birthday came up and she invites me over...and she made him a red velvet cake from scratch. She was just finishing up the frosting when I got there.

I love raspberry too. We all can't wait to dig in. Finally it's time and it's one of the best cakes I've ever tasted. But...there's a weird aftertaste. We all notice it. I mean it's the kind of aftertaste that just stays there. Well, we did some investigation and it turns out that she was tired from work and used coconut oil for the vegetable oil...garlic flavored coconut oil.

To this day, I can't eat any kind of raspberry dessert after eating anything with garlic in it.

We still joke about it. I must have brushed my teeth a dozen times that night. The taste just wouldn't go away.

Another younger guy I went to school. His parents also regular. For his 16th birthday they bought him a 66 mustang. They had the engine rebuild, interior and paintjob done. Stock but looked good. He pulls in and while he was gassing up he check his oil. He was low so he put a quart. Checked, still low. He put 4 quarts and still low. So we check and yup he is about a quart low. We ask him to show us where he poured the oil. He points to the radiator cap.

This reminds me of the opposite of a brain fart that I had, or at least maybe it was a brain fart for the other guy...

I had just rebuilt the engine in a 1970 Cutlass. I was driving it around and breaking it in when I went to the gas station to fill up (15mpg I did that a LOT). I pulled it into a parking spot and while running checked the oil. More specifically the dipstick because I was looking for any sign of a coolant leak which could show up as a bubbly froth because of the splash oiling process.

Well of course a know it all come over and starts laughing at me and mansplaining that's not how you check the oil. I tell him "that's not what I'm doing, I'm not checking the oil level". He snorts then calls over his friend to point out the dummy trying to check the oil level with the engine running.

Let's just say I schooled him. I kept seeing him get smaller and smaller and I explained things in rigorous detail "...I just had the oil pump in my hand three days ago and you really think I have no idea how the oiling process works in my own car? I just finished saying I wasn't checking the oil level...what word didn't you understand? Not? Checking? Oil? Level? I know what the oil level is because I literally just put in 5 quarts two hours ago. Look at this engine. Look at the brand new paint. Do you see any oil on the outside? Go ahead, just point to it..."

[evilfishsticks]

Oh man, my mother in law made some rice Krispy treats years ago and accidentally used garlic flavored Pam on the pan to keep them from sticking, they were awful and ended up in the trash.