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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/TinyRascalSaurus on 2024-09-03 15:39:53+00:00.

So, I work at a church. With the whole Covid thing a few years ago, some of the members never returned after the stay home and isolate rules were lifted.

The Pastors just ran a list of everyone who’s been inactive in the roster since that time period and decided to send out a letter inviting them to return.

So me, being in charge of the printing and other Gopher stuff, takes the query they ran, prepares letters, runs labels, prints envelopes, etc.

Here’s where I began my FU. I was supposed to do a mail merge to get the letters all addressed as one 300 page document. I completely missed the mail merge part, and addressed the letters one by one, printing them in batches of 30, which overwhelmed the print queue and began deleting other jobs as it ran out of room. Not to mention our printing company that leases our equipment charges 15 cents per page. $45 of prints.

Here’s my second FU. The letter was supposed to be signed by the head pastor personally. We have a pdf image of his signature on file, and I misunderstood instructions and added that to the letters. 300 of them. Then I printed them. $45 of prints.

Here’s my third FU. When I ran labels, I didn’t make sure they had the informal titles (ex: Jacob and Angela) instead of the formal ones (ex: Mr. & Mrs. Knight). So while the letters were informal and personal, the labels didn’t match.

And here’s the big one. Postage is 64 cents per letter. At 300, I spent $192 on postage to mail out the completely wrong thing.

That’s $282 of FUs. Not to mention the costs of paper, ink, and envelopes.

Thankfully, I have not been fired. But the head Pastor is probably not too pleased with me.

TL;DR: Printed and mailed 300 completely wrong letters, costing the church $282 because of my FU and earning the disapproval of my boss.