British people reveal the most embarrassing mistakes they’ve ever made at work

The workplace is one of the worst places to have an embarrassing moment. You know the ones we're talking about: you might break an expensive piece of machinery, snog Geoff from accounting at the Christmas party or wander around the cubicles with your shirt tucked in your pants.

When you slip up and embarrass yourself in public at least you can get away from the scene sharpish. That's not the case at work; you have to spend most of your waking hours there, with the same people, and there’s nowhere to hide.

You can't just stop showing up at work, employers don't tend to look too kindly on that kind of thing.

Unfortunately, office embarrassment happens to the best of us, and it happens a lot.

YouGov has gathered some of our most embarrassing work-related confessions – they even admit that a few of them were “just too inappropriate to publish".

Here are some of the best:

There's this nightmare from someone working in the service industry:

While serving a customer with carvery turkey I told them I had a nice couple of breasts.

A poor soul on the phones one day.

Accidentally being rude about a customer whilst I thought they were on hold. They were not.

This has happened to everyone... Right?

Mistook a photo of my colleague’s dead father for Nigel Farage, on her final day after losing her job.

Maybe this one could be considered a special offer of some description?

Giving an enema to the wrong patient.

This does sound painful.

As a police officer trying to shoulder charge a door unsuccessfully to gain entry before breaking a window to enter the property, only to then learn that the door was not locked but opened outward.

We're sure they had a laugh about this in the staff room.

Setting a new pupil work to do and checking up on him only to discover later that he was a graduate trainee supposed to be observing the lesson.

Perhaps you should keep this page handy for the next time you embarrass yourself in front of your colleagues and co-workers - it might take the sting out of the whole experience a little.

More: What not to say when you're leaving the office