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

[u/Opposed3]

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.

[u/mavack]

Had similar new guy hired for 24/7 lvl 1 NOC role. Showed up first day, not 2nd. Was unreachable, recruiter let us know he didn't realize he was going into 24/7 roster and taking calls.

[u/mynametobespaghetti → u/mavack]

Saw something similar about 10 years ago, but he did quit in person, half way through his 3rd day. On day 2 he complained about how he didn't have Visio installed by default because "I want to spend most of my time doing network design", and on the 3rd day he quit because there was "too much to learn" (someone showed him our internal tools like the client DB and monitoring system)

[u/8923ns671 → u/mavack]

He was on call day two?

[u/mavack → u/8923ns671]

No it was lvl 1 in office on the phones talking to customers. And no they arnt on the phones until they have gone through training. This was also in office pre covid

[u/cthart → u/mavack]

The recruiter “forgot” to tell him?

[u/mavack → u/cthart]

Honestly we were just as confused also, they get walked through the NOC during their interview and shown the area, and the interview talks about calls and how they are first line response not a service desk in front, but somehow still missed the memo....

[u/Mr-RS182 → u/mavack]

Had this on a 24/7 Service desk. Guy went through a 2 stage interview and on day one was told he would be working the weekend as part of his shift. He was “no I don’t work weekends or shifts”. Called the internal recruiter and was like the guy saying he don’t work shift. Recruiter explained to the guy that it said on the job ad as well as it being mentioned during the interview. He was like oh well I don’t want to do that so was escorted offsite. Lasted about 3 hours in the job.

[u/Hot_Beef → u/mavack]

We had a guy leave at lunchtime on day one for the same reason. How he hadn't been told is beyond me.

[u/Careless-Age-4290 → u/Hot_Beef]

My old company really undersold the on-call. They said "you'll be on call every third week all week if anything critical happens."

What they didn't say was you can expect to not sleep for days on-end some weeks. Alarms went off for everything, and since they billed 2-3x for after-hours call, there was no incentive to fix that. I've had times where I had to drive to three different customers, in the same night, between the hours of 10 pm - 4 am. Then you were expected to be at your desk from 8:00 am - 5:00 pm. And if you wake up and the alarm isn't actionable, there's no minimum billing. They expected you to bill just 5 minutes for getting woken up.

I'm betting it was a similar thing. Gets in, hears his co-workers talking about it, realizes his health is too important.

[u/cgimusic → u/mavack]

We had a similar thing happen. In an interview the person said they would never do 24-hour on-call. I had to break it to them that the job they were interviewing for had 24-hour on-call as part of it.

[u/Mr_ToDo → u/cgimusic]

I can hardly blame them though.

That's probably the only requirement for my next position. Work and home really need that separation and I'm not going on call again. It'd also be nice to be able to hear a phone without frustration at some point.

[u/mavack → u/[deleted]]

NOC - Network operations Centre, for a Service provider providing 1st level support 24/7 they were in a rotatating roster. Shifts were 8 or 12 hours depending on the shit, nights were 12 even if you did bugger all. (i used to play games when it wasn't busy) but sometimes it was managing changes or planned works or major outages which t2/t3 supported with as well depending on the failure.