It is Friday afternoon, work almost behind you. That planned drive with your friend to visit a ghost town a couple of hours up north, was all the two of you could talk about for weeks, is ahead of you. It's happening.

Not so fast, the alternator went out in your car on your drive home from work. You found a mechanic who agreed to fix it over the weekend for you, to the tune of $700. But there's more, the battery is over three years old... You guessed it, $250. Then he... How much? O n l y $120. You get the picture.There goes the weekend.

It's Monday morning. Despite not getting much sleep you're driving your car at least. Two miles from your job, you had a blowout. You pulled over replace the bad tire with the spare in your trunk. You arrive at work 45 minutes late. Your boss wasn't happy at first, but he had a change of heart; you can stay an extra 45 minutes to make up time he said. You shrugged it off and got to work.

Just as you got to your desk, the phone rings. You picked up the phone and immediately heard " This is Tom Braggalot, I'm about to take my girlfriend on this first class cruise and wanted to make sure that you're not going to loose all of my money investing in brainless stocks after making sure you pay yourself a big commission." Without hesitation you answered "maybe you can come in here and invest your own stocks, while your girlfriend and I go on that cruise." Dead silence for a few seconds (that felt like an eternity), was what you heard. You quickly realized your STUPID mistake, and started to...Your client had hung up on you. You called back. No answer. Again. No answer.

You may have just lost one of your company's biggest accounts. What now?

Plenty of people who work in ordinary jobs do really, really stupid things at work.

Not every mistake will have such dire consequences. But even if you’re 110% sure the axe is going to fall, career experts say there are still things you should do to make the best of a terrible situation according to TIME.com. (Unless you got caught chortling along while someone bragged about grabbing women sexually without their permission. Then you should just realize your options for damage control are extremely limited.)

Apologize and own it. Taking responsibility for your big blunder is important — not because it will preserve your job, but because trying to cover up or dodge responsibility is probably going to turn out even worse, said Aaron Nurick, a professor of management at Bentley University. “In today’s world, information travels at lightning speed, so getting ahead of it is key.” Especially if your mistake is the kind of thing that will wind up causing public embarrassment to your organization, make sure your boss hears about it from you rather than that pesky Internet. If you try to cover it up or stall for time, you’re virtually guaranteed to make the situation worse. “If there’s a delay in an employee raising the issue and the manager hears about it elsewhere… [they’ll] see through that,” Nurick said.

Try to undo the damage. This should be your top priority, said career coach Todd Dewett. If you can’t fix it, do what you can to salvage the situation. “Your first move is to think for a few minutes about the longer-term plan to minimize the damage,” he said. Do it quickly, though. “To wait is to seal your doom… but you can push the odds in a positive direction by being proactive,” Dewett advised. It’s better to think of a couple of ways you might be able to do damage control and run them by your boss rather than asking, “What can I do?” It’s a safe bet he or she is already pretty busy putting out your fire, so don’t add to their to-do list by making them think of a way for you to help (especially because the answer in the immediate aftermath might be just, “Get out of here.”)

Don’t just quit. “If the employee is generally a good worker who rarely makes big mistakes, I would not advise them to offer resignation right away,” Nurick said. Rather than give the impression that you’re fleeing responsibility, you should stick around and own up to your actions. You might even salvage your job this way, Nurick said, although he pointed out that you also should be prepared for consequences, whether that’s the loss of a plum assignment, a reduction in your hours, or even a demotion. Accept the punishment management doles out without complaining, experts advise, because the alternative — which your boss almost certainly considered — would be worse.

Recognize that there might be lasting repercussions. “It takes years to build your professional reputation,” said Amanda Augustine, career advice expert for TopResume.com, “but only one major gaffe to call it all into question. While this may not seem fair, it is often the reality,” she said. So it’s important to be mindful of the fact that, even if your big slip-up has faded in your memory, it might not have in everyone else’s.

Avoid TMI in future interviews. If, in spite of your best efforts to remedy the situation, your gaffe costs you your job, it’s in your best interest not to mention the incident unless you have to, Augustine said. “There’s a good chance your interviewer may be unaware of the incident until you bring it up or they check your references,” she pointed out, in which case bringing it up will make the hiring manager question your judgment doubly (once for doing it, and again for volunteering information that makes you look bad). “You’ll need to address the situation if an interviewer directly asks your reason for leaving your position,” Augustine said, but absent that, the less said, the better.