Yes Kate.....if we are honest we have all had those moments.
Mine was a Christmas dinner.......all the family over, everything going like clockwork, and you are smugly congratulating yourself on your organisational skills.......you have been really good, washing up as you go along so that there is no dish/pan mountain to wash up at the end of the meal......You serve your starter, everyone tucks in and enjoys it.......you whisk away the plates/dishes and wash them up in lovely sudsy water....then you decide to make the turkey gravy........you take the roasting tin to the sink and trying to hold the hot roasting tin and the turkey, you try to pour the juices into another pan.......the turkey makes a bid for freedom and plops into the hot sudsy water........EEEK, that isn't on the cooking plan!
You hastily fish it out of the water, pick off the soggy lettuce(from the washed up starter plates) rinse the bird in fresh cold water....put it back into the roasting tin and put it back in the oven to dry out/warm up....you tell your guests that the turkey is just circling the building waiting for permission from Air traffic control to make a landing....and hope that veggies will last until you feel the bird is Ok to serve.
That is one of my culinary disasters
Oh, and at that time I didn't have an open plan kitchen so none of my dinner guests were any the wiser.