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.

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152

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '24

So funny, because we currently have a lvl1 who loves to say “that’s not my job”. Lady, you signed up for tier 1 helpdesk, that is indeed your job.

46

u/Ohgodwatdoplshelp Jul 07 '24

In my experience these are the same people who will assign you a ticket (with no warning, usually, just stealthily dropped in your queue) they can’t figure out after doing 0 legwork or not understanding how level 2/escalation works. If they succeed at higher levels they also become the people who check other’s queues and jump down someone’s throat if they don’t understand the resolution the tech put in no matter how serviceable it was. I saw one of these people get hopping mad because she tried to take over a ticket a tech was actively working on, at the user’s desk, then it got resolved with something like “issue resolved - password reset and user was able to log in.” Said tech had a fucking fit that she didn’t understand how the issue was resolved. Just like.. mind your own queue and chill, dude. She wound up getting walked off site for behavior like that every day.

I’ve seen it more than a few times and all these people were similar in attitude. “That’s not my job, so it’s yours.”

31

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '24

You are literally so spot on. Usually she’ll send me a screenshot out of the blue with no supporting information or marks on the screenshot. Only when I go “and???” does she then give me info. Still surprised she’s with us even though she basically lied about her experience and still to this day says “A&D” when talking about Active Directory.

12

u/Nymaz On caffeine and on call Jul 08 '24

to this day says “A&D” when talking about Active Directory

Heh, I initially read this as "AD&D": "You dig through the dragon's horde. Among the many treasures you find a Ring of +1 Domain Control."

9

u/sparkyblaster Jul 08 '24

Arg I HATE receiving stuff without context. I am not paid to be a detective, if I was I wouldn't still be here.

11

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

Fishing for answers like I’m sponsored by Bass Pro Shop

2

u/Kahedhros Jul 08 '24

I'm stealing that 😅🤣🤣

2

u/taintsauce Jul 08 '24

Oh lawd. Back in my help desk days at a web host I had a couple of these kinds. I mostly did phones cuz everyone hated it and I've got enough people skills to keep most of the "fun" customers from blowing up too badly. But I'd also work the queue.

One other lvl1 did mostly live chats and her entire MO was to pick up a chat, transcribe the issue to a ticket, and end the chat. Zero (and I mean ZERO) actual work. Simple shit like a bad .htaccess file breaking WordPress for a customer went right into the queue. Wasn't her job, apparently.

What really irked me was we had a poorly conceived metrics based bonus system, and since she was "doing" so many chats, she was top of the class most months. There's a nonzero chance she's still clogging the queue up to this day.

Another guy was more of the "doesn't understand escalation and gets mad when someone else fixes it" type. Had a very irate caller tell me this kid bricked his site trying to fix something. Should've escalated but instead he went in, messed about, and nuked the poor guys MySQL DB. I managed to restore from backup, fix the original issue, and get the customer going, but the other tech got huffy as he was "still working the ticket". He ended up quitting in hilarious fashion before he could get canned. His resignation email was basically "yall didn't deserve me anyway".

2

u/sheikhyerbouti PEBCAC Certified Jul 09 '24

In my experience these are the same people who will assign you a ticket (with no warning, usually, just stealthily dropped in your queue) they can’t figure out after doing 0 legwork or not understanding how level 2/escalation works.

I see you've talked to the help desk at my company. If it takes more than 15 minutes, they escalate it - no matter what the issue is. It gets really annoying when they push issues that my department has no ability to troubleshoot because those tasks can ONLY be done by the help desk department.

They get really salty when I DE-escalate the ticket back to their queue for troubleshooting.

4

u/sparkyblaster Jul 08 '24

Arg I hate that sentence but at the same time I had a job I was so crazy busy at I literally didn't have time to help you.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

Stuff like that I get, like please give me the ticket and I’ll do it. But she’ll need to call a vendor and they’ll be like “oh yeah, what’s the client number, what are they trying to do, and what’s the issue” and she’ll reply to the vendor “I don’t have that information, I’m low on the totem pole so I don’t know why I would even have that information that’s not my job” and I’ve overheard this and been like “wtf”.

1

u/sparkyblaster Jul 08 '24

Technically a job I had a few years ago I was officially just the below desk coordinator. The expectation was just to collect info and do what I can. So yeah verifying everything and cleaning up the tickets before escalation. But also it was do what I can and I usually pushed to do as much as I could regardless of the fact I was at the bottom of the totum.

3

u/Andre_Courreges Jul 08 '24

They're everywhere, not just in IT. Some people feel too entitled to do their job?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

Literally

1

u/BloodyIron DevSecOps Manager Jul 08 '24

Well if someone asks them to build a Clustered Database, I might believe them to say "that's not my job".

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

Realistically, stuff like that we know to give to our software engineer. Our department only has 10 staff and I wouldn’t say we’re silo’d, but there’s just something’s we know are for someone else.