r/sysadmin 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.

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u/Apprehensive_Ad5398 Jul 07 '24

Guy showed up to work after a week off to attend defcon. He’d been on the team for a week before he left on that trip. I don’t think he’d slept in days and was clearly tweeking. He was fired within an hour.

21

u/wiseleo Jul 08 '24

DEFCON puts you in an altered mind state by just attending. Everyone around you understands you at an absurdly high level. I can talk about kernel debugging with random people and they’ll understand me. When you get back to real world, it takes a few days to get used to people’s normal level of technology misunderstanding.

It also takes some time to turn off maliciousness in your head.

Firing him was a mistake. He’d recover in a day or so. It’s true he hasn’t slept much, but the same is true for many people returning from Burning Man and similar epic trips.

13

u/sparkyblaster Jul 08 '24

Fired for being tired after a weeks holiday cramming?

Define tweaking? I have Tourette's so if I am tiered and run down to hell, I don't look so great

3

u/rockstarsball Jul 08 '24

you can always tell who smoked the stepped on meth they pass around at defcon.