The Most Expensive Thing You've Dropped

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

I had the diverter valve changed on my boiler today because I'm rock and roll. The plumber actually rang and asked me if he could come and do it early because he had a cancellation. (He was supposed to do it tomorrow). It turns out that when they had been putting the new boiler for today's job into the van this morning they had dropped it and damaged it and had to order a new one. Nine grands worth of boiler reduced to scrap metal basically, so you can imagine he wasn't best pleased. 

Anyway that got me to thinking, what is the most expensive thing I've dropped? My first job out of school was working for a theatre company and me and one of the other lads dropped a magic trick called a Substitution Trunk down a flight of stairs when we were loading it out of a theatre. That was about 4 grands worth of trick in 1991, so I dread to think how much it would cost to buy one now. 

So what's the most expensive thing you've dropped? As this is the UKFF I'm obviously expecting "My Guts and it caused a bus crash" but could we limit it to actual things you were holding/carrying in your hands/arms please. 

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

It didn't cost anything but I accidentally dropped this in the wrong forum. All praise to the mods who moved it. 

Edited Monday at 11:04 PM by Lion_of_the_Midlands

[ReturnOfTheMack]

When I worked at McDonalds in the late 90s (literally 1999) I ended up the morning delivery manager. 

I had close to fuck all training beyond counting boxes and putting them away. So when the driver asked if I needed my cola topping up I said yes. It was on the list that I needed 9 boxes after all.

What wasnt told to me was that we had a tank of the pre mix syrup that the machines defaulted to in between the bag in box emptying. 

The driver hooked up a hose to that, unknown to us, full tank. 20 minutes later we went into that room, having finished putting away the delivery. Cola syrup was coating every surface of the room, it was easily 2 inches deep on the floor.

I spent about 3 hours cleaning that room, even having to mop the ceiling.

Afterwards I was sent home as it had dripped on me and I was just coated. I didnt have a shower, so i had to take 4 baths before the water stopped being still coke.

[Carbomb]

I'm just thankful Houchen's not here to see this thread.

[RedTwoster]

I don't know if this counts as 'dropped' but back in the day, when I worked in retail, a colleague of mine was pulling a pallet of alcohol - whisky, although I can't remember what kind - out into the booze aisle of the supermarket we worked for at speed, so that the night shift could work it and he could go home. 

Unfortunately, pulling a pallet full of alcohol at high speed around a corner is - as it turns out - a really bad idea, and even though the booze was clingfilmed to keep it in place, it toppled into the shelving, bringing them down and smashing dozens of bottles. I couldn't tell you the exact number, but there was glass everywhere, much of the whisky was destroyed and pretty much everything on the row of shelves was - even if it didn't smash, it was so tainted by the liquid from the other bottles that you couldn't possibly expect someone to want to pay full price for it. 

The person had been working fast because they wanted to go home and, in spite of what happened, they did just that - immediately leaving the mess they had created, running upstairs to grab their stuff and sprint out of the store to go home; leaving me, a cleaner and a few others (including a poor checkout worker who happened to pass by in that moment) to close off the aisle and start what was a monumental clean-up job. 

[gmoney]

I dropped an ipad I'd bought on tick for about £600 within a week of owning it. It was a complete impulse buy at a time when I had fuck all money, and contributed to the huge amount of debt I had at the time. It fell face down on the kitchen lino and smashed the screen to smithereens. In a rare moment of caution, I'd paid for insurance so I was able to get a replacement, and was ultra careful with it afterwards to the point of not really using it much for fear of dropping it again. I found that ipad the other day, it still powered on. I was thinking it'd be useful for something, but turns out Apple don't support the model anymore so it's functionally useless as almost all the apps don't work and can't be updated.

So to recap; didn't need it, couldn't afford it, smashed it, replaced it and then hardly used it, now it's shiny brick. Pretty shit investment all around really. 

Edited yesterday at 10:02 AM by gmoney

[deathrey]

What an absolute arsehole @RedTwoster. I would have been trolling the colleague for the rest of my/their employ.

[RedTwoster]

20 minutes ago, deathrey said:

What an absolute arsehole @RedTwoster. I would have been trolling the colleague for the rest of my/their employ.

You know how some people suggested Kenny Omega should have retired after the Will Ospreay match at All In as he'd never top it?

Well, this guy applied that logic here, and never returned to the store. What a way to go out, 20-years later and I'm still talking about it. 

[wordsfromlee]

I think my worst was dropping a £3000 guitar onto a £5000 guitar. Oops. 

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

41 minutes ago, wordsfromlee said:

I think my worst was dropping a £3000 guitar onto a £5000 guitar. Oops. 

You have evolved the game. Dropping one expensive thing onto another is not something I had considered. 

[BomberPat]

For work experience, I was in the stockroom at HMV. It was quite a small shop, and part of a larger department store. The main stockroom was upstairs, with boxes of stuff to get prepped and ready to put out on the shop floor, and then there was a larger storeroom downstairs, with overstock, and weirder stuff that wasn't selling - it was a bit of a labyrinth to get there, involving two separate lifts, or physically leaving the building, walking to the end of the block, and accessing it via the back of the whole department store.

I was sent down there to get a couple of palettes of stuff, all loaded up on this rickety trolley, coming up to my shoulders. I navigate it around all the corners and corridors to get to the lift...and then don't realise that the knackered old lift doesn't stop flush with the floor. Wheel the trolley forwards, it catches on the fractionally higher bit of the lift, and everything just tips forward into the lift, scattering CDs and DVDs everywhere. As I move the trolley out of the way to try and get into the lift and start trying to fix it, the lift door closes, because someone upstairs in the poshest bit of the department store has pressed the call button.