"Dear interns..." Mistakes as a "new hire" that haunt us to this day:

Linkedin-Merchant (definition #8)

NOUN

1. Someone who is "just taking a moment to reflect" on their industrial placements, writing a benevolent post about how much "learning and growing" they did and how they "quickly settled into their role". In reality, they spent a lot of time drinking coffee, panicking and trying to get through the day without accidentally shutting down the company.

• My own Linkedin post at the end of my year abroad: "The end of last month marked the end of my year abroad as part of my course at the University of Exeter and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my overall experience."

Dear Network,

We've all been there...

It's a Friday afternoon and all work crossing your desk past 3pm has essentially been written off, Monday's problem now. We're ready for the weekend and afterwork drinks are drawing all too close. After an eventful weekend, Monday morning rolls around and we feel recharged and revitalised ready for another challenging week, we check our inbox.

"Dear interns,

Just a quick reminder..."

Oh s***.

Welcome back to Officially Unemployed! This week we explore the mistakes we make as we venture into the working world and how companies and employees alike react to these errors. I ran another survey on my Instagram to find out some of the readers' best/worst mistakes as a basis for this edition and I'm excited to get into them!

These responses were amazing and I wanted to provide you with the top five absolute howlers as a basis for today's discussion.

"Temporarily misplaced funds"

I received an alarming number of responses in this vein, but these are my two favourites

"I came into work hungover at the bank and accidentally sent 2 million euros to the wrong country"

Quite literally the last thing you could possibly need after too many shandies at the work drinks as a new hire. A potentially extremely costly error on an international scale, this unintentional larcenist has definitely landed himself in some hot water with their supervisor.

"I lost millions of pounds for 24 hours"

I love the vagueness here and it arguably leaves us with more questions that answers. Was it an accounting error? Did this person misdirect a cash transfer (or indeed many cash transfers)? Or was their first day on the trading floor the fateful day in 2021 that Gamestop crashed after being convinced by Reddit that would keep going "to the moon"? I guess we'll never know.

The one redeeming factor though is that it was only for 24 hours which seems to imply that it was found again. Good effort, smile and wave.

"Mistaken Identity"

"I asked the co-founder of the company what his role was in the company whilst he was trying to get me into a nightclub"

A lot to unpack here, but absolute genius nonetheless.

I don't think this is actually as flagrant as it sounds. When you're new to a company, it is not necessarily a reasonable expectation to know every single person straight away, particularly those at the higher levels that you may not see as often or simply don't have much to do with you on a daily basis. That being said, you would think a name and photo of the co-founder wouldn't escape your consciousness but then again, new hire, a lot on your plate, alcohol likely involved, it happens. An alternative motive, (and I really hope it's this one) is that person attempted and likely perfectly executed what we would call a "power move", defined by the ever-reliable wiktionary.org as "an aggressive action taken to demonstrate power and dominance". Although as a young intern with some further career aspirations, I would be surprised, although it may have given them legendary status amongst the workforce. Respect.

As for the nightclub scenario, I think we have another case of more questions than answers. On we go.

"System Error"

"I went on holiday and maxed out my company's servers with an auto-refresh website I built"

You can almost feel the stomach dropping to the floor and the ground opening up here...

Reclining on a beach, sat by a pool, maybe even on a hike? Taking a few days well-earned break from the rat race and finally relieved of the immense pressure to prove yourself to your superiors is a feeling of relaxation like no other. That is of course, until the fateful Slack message comes through on the phone (you thought you'd finally turned notifications off for that).

"CEO: @intern , please rectify this immediately"

Once again, "s***"

As a former humanities student with an at-best tenuous grip on the real world, I am not going to pretend I understand the gravity of a situation like this but it seems pretty critical. I have seen countless Tik Toks of software engineers talking about times they edit their code in production rather than development and other scary sounding errors. Software development and web programming seems like an absolute minefield to me and I have nothing but respect for people that commit their time to honing these skills.

From a technologically illiterate man that struggles with Wix at the best of times, props to you.

Yes.

"Knowing your worth... or not?"

"Worked a few hours longer per week than I was contracted just to impress, [...] I emailed the finance department to ask if they'd simply top up my monthly salary to reflect this. They responded 'no.' and I soon realised how dumb it was."

I love this one. Seriously, what an absolute belter.

I have spoken before about knowing your worth at a firm and it's really important not to be walked over as a young, often first-time employee. I don't think the principle here is miles off at all; you work more and you get paid more right? In this scenario though, wrong.

Arguably inspired by the old saying "you don't ask, you don't get", a probable lack of experience in the workplace has led to an audacious but not unsubstantiated request that may have raised some eyebrows across a few different departments. Definitely worth noting that despite likely being impressed by the extra hours and, again, it would be irresponsible to suggest you shouldn't push yourself to the best job you can, it is worth remembering most companies won't adjust your salary in the short term!

Maybe they should though, I mean why not? Despite potentially being a miscalculation by this person, I do not disagree with the principle at all. Keep pushing the boundaries, it might help us all in the long run if we all do it.

"Just a reminder that professionalism in the workplace is paramount..."

"I never changed my lockdown Zoom drinking name... entered a call with a customer and my screen name was Ben Dover. My manager had to sit me down afterwards, but he struggled not to giggle."

What better way to round this list off than with an absolute classic.

From questionable e-mail addresses, Instagram accounts left on public, and misinterpreting the use of company communication channels, transitioning from uni to the workplace all too often lends itself to these kinds of blunders. All I can say is at least the manager has somewhat seen the funny side. Lesson learned.

From thievery to sabotage, it's amazing that companies still let wrong-uns like us have any responsibility at all. Or is it?

The answer really is that it's not that surprising at all. Almost everyone will have made mistakes like this in their working life, including the person that is having to reprimand you. The point of today's blog isn't to shame these mistakes or stress anyone out even more, quite the opposite. I think it's really important to have an open dialogue surrounding errors and imperfection at work and to understand that even the mistakes that seem horrendous at the time are almost never complete career-enders. A willingness to accept responsibility and learn from these errors won't steer you wrong.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to respond to the survey. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this one and reading all your responses! You also essentially wrote this for me so I can hardly complain.

Happy Friday, merchants. Catch you in the next one!

Your favourite LM,

AT