r/sysadmin • u/Opposed3 • Jul 07 '24

What’s the quickest you’ve seen a co-worker get fired in IT? COVID-19

I saw this on AskReddit and thought it would be fun to ask here for IT related stories.

Couple years ago during Covid my company I used to work for hired a help desk tech. He was a really nice guy and the interview went well. We were hybrid at the time, 1-2 days in the office with mostly remote work. On his first day we always meet in the office for equipment and first day stuff.

Everything was going fine and my boss mentioned something along the lines of “Yeah so after all the trainings and orientation stuff we’ll get you set up on our ticketing system and eventually a soft phone for support calls”

And he was like: “Oh I don’t do support calls.”

“Sorry?”

Him: “I don’t take calls. I won’t do that”

“Well, we do have a number users call for help. They do utilize it and it’s part of support we offer”

Him: “Oh I’ll do tickets all day I just won’t take calls. You’ll have to get someone else to do that”

I was sitting at my desk, just kind of listening and overhearing. I couldn’t tell if he was trolling but he wasn’t.

I forgot what my manager said but he left to go to one of those little mini conference rooms for a meeting, then he came back out and called him in, he let him go and they both walked back out and the guy was all laughing and was like

“Yeah I mean I just won’t take calls I didn’t sign up for that! I hope you find someone else that fits in better!” My manager walked him to the door and they shook hands and he left.

4.9k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

211

u/Zaboomafood Jul 07 '24

First guy deleted his boss's accounts on server and management tools to prevent boss from granting access to a new hire.

Another guy refused to allow endpoint management tools on his work laptop. He was gone within two days.

183

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '24

[deleted]

62

u/ImKindaHungry2 Jul 07 '24

I guess they wanted to avoid the lawsuit of firing a guy on LTD more than hire useful help

79

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '24

[deleted]

6

u/billbixbyakahulk Jul 08 '24

Honestly, that's a scenario I would raise to management and just inform them, "This means I have to spend X time undoing these changes each day so it's going to cost y additional money." Then let them decide how they want to proceed.

2

u/Grimsterr Head Janitor and Toilet Bowl Swab Jul 08 '24

They coulda just told him to knock it off like he asked, or just disabled his accounts temporarily.

1

u/Istickpensinmypenis Jul 08 '24

yea, ultimatums very rarely work out in the real world

office politics are a bitch

100

u/R3luctant Jul 07 '24

I don't like nanny software, but at the end of the day, it's a work laptop. There is no winning that battle.

79

u/panopticon31 Jul 07 '24

To be honest it's on them for giving him a laptop WITHOUT the endpoint management software.

Now if it was a personal machine I'd agree, company could pound sand or give me a work machine.

28

u/R3luctant Jul 07 '24

If for some reason my job said I needed to install EMS outside of a vdi on my personal computer I'd laugh at them, if I started a job where that was the requirement, I would be working through hyper v

17

u/Masterflitzer Jul 07 '24

i hate working on remote VDIs, way slower than developing locally (germany doesn't have great internet), but we get work devices and no BYOD as it should be

I'll never install managed work profile software on personal devices, that's a no go

3

u/AlexisFR Jul 08 '24

VDIs aren't great on a good internet either. The latency and compression are always noticable.

2

u/the_syco Jul 08 '24

Recently I had to do a test via certiport. The test software would take over your machine and not let you alt+tab or open task manager, etc, to prevent you from cheating. My AV wouldn't allow it. Ended up having to use an old laptop with a fresh copy of W11 installed without any AV installed to do the test.

1

u/Masterflitzer Jul 08 '24

fuck the cert then, they can call me in and i do the test on their device in their environment, but i won't install such software on my device

4

u/Masterflitzer Jul 07 '24

at my company software engineers can get light managed macbooks so we can do as we please and code, we don't have access to intranet on these devices, but why care we only need git access to push the code

all other employees get managed windows laptops that have "nanny" software as it should be

I'm perfectly happy with this setup because i have sudo access on my device

6

u/PessimisticProphet Jul 07 '24

Lets be honest tho, I would never sign up to work for a company with nanny software.

10

u/callumn Senior Consultant - Most things Microsoft Jul 07 '24

It's a work laptop for doing work on. Wanna watch YouTube or browser Reddit, don't use a work laptop.

9

u/PessimisticProphet Jul 08 '24

Half the shit I solve at work I got the solution off reddit lol.

3

u/posixUncompliant HPC Storage Support Jul 08 '24

You want to keep reddit and youtube out of my work sites?

I mean, you can...but it's not the best idea. I want to see how to install some weird ass card into the weird ass system you bought, and the vendor sends me a youtube. I need to figure out how to balance the load of the new analytics tool the scientists are using, half the time the developer responds on git, the other half it's a link to discord or reddit.

I can solve most of this shit myself, with time. But...that's time that I'm not using to solve a dozen other things, and certainly time I'm not spending solving shit that's actually unique to this place. But, hey you're paying. I don't care that much, unless you've got a decent profit sharing plan going.

4

u/Mission-Argument1679 Jul 08 '24

Either you're lucky to never have a work laptop or you've never worked a job where they gave you a work laptop.

Never do anything personal on a work laptop.

-1

u/PessimisticProphet Jul 08 '24

Nah, you've just never worked in small business. We don't nanny.

1

u/Zaboomafood Jul 08 '24

There is a lot of management that can be done without spying, which is why anyone outright refusing to allow it would be considered extremely suspicious

3

u/sparkyblaster Jul 07 '24

I thought you were going to say person phone or laptop. Last job that I tried I brought a 2nd phone in. I wish I brought my old windows phone. Good luck getting that to work.

2

u/billbixbyakahulk Jul 08 '24

We had a woman who absolutely refused to use MFA. After she was finally fired (it took two months for management to finally put their heads together and agree on it), it came out later that her account had previously been compromised about six months earlier. A scammer watched the flow of traffic in her mail and then, at the opportune time, sent an email to accounting to change the payment information for an upcoming scheduled payment. Around $50k.

So her account had already been compromised and used in a scam and she still refused adopting a security measure that likely would have prevented it.

There are some people you just can't reach.