30 Blunders That Ended People’s Careers

Most errors and mistakes end up remaining internal, nothing but an unhappy memory for all involved. But add in a live broadcast and a microphone and we can still “enjoy” some particularly public mistakes to this day. Football (the one where you actually kick the ball) presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray unknowingly broadcasted their opinion that a female referee wouldn’t understand offside rules. Both lost their jobs. 

Networks are pretty quick to dump workers who make such mistakes, but politicians tend to have a bit more staying power. In 1997 Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien joked around with some other Prime Ministers that U.S. politicians would all be in jail for selling votes in nearly any other country. 

Another way to end up with a particularly well-known mistake is if there is enough money involved. In the world of financial markets, these are called “fat finger errors,” where someone hits the wrong keys (easy to do with fat fingers) and sends out a trade with wildly incorrect amounts. In 2006 a trader at Mizuho Securities in Japan short-sold a stock and ended up making the company spend around ¥40 billion to fix it. This would be about 288,084,775.00 United States Dollars in 2023. 

Similarly, Deutsche Bank on accident sent $6 billion to a hedge fund in 2015. This was a result of a junior employee putting in the wrong number while their boss was on vacation. The error was later rectified, but it does make one wonder why these mistakes never end with a bank depositing $6 billion in my bank account. 

While not career-breaking, actors messing up lines in front of a camera is a pretty common bit of entertainment for all of us to enjoy later. Many contemporary films will post gag or blooper reels later, but these exist for a variety of media. Leonard Nimoy, most famous as the emotionless and logical Spock famously cracked up when he misdelivered the line "The plants act as a repository" and instead said, "The plants act as a suppository."

These can be so popular that certain animated films will include them, most famously Pixar, which animates scenes of the characters messing up their lines. This creates an interesting parallel universe where, for example, Woody is just a character played by a toy. And if it wasn’t already clear, Pixar films are animated, so there can’t be bloopers, at least not in the sense that we think of them, so this was all just extra content for the viewer to enjoy.