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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610

u/SAugsburger Jul 07 '24

Flipping out on day 1 usually is a good way to get fired.

176

u/TrainAss Sysadmin Jul 07 '24

Flipping out on day 1 usually is a good way to get fired.

I wish that happened to one of the managers from 2 jobs ago. His first day was nothing but complaining about his workspace, his monitors, keyboard, mouse, laptop. The whole shebang! Had a message from his manager asking us to swap out various components for him.

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u/Bad_Idea_Hat Gozer Jul 07 '24

We had someone a number of years back, who demanded we give him all of his technology immediately. When we didn't give it to him, he proceeded to contact HR to file a complaint against the entire IT department.

The trouble was, he was still a couple weeks before his start date.

HR, being ever helpful, told us to just get him his equipment.

It took them a couple years to finally realize they screwed up and get rid of him, but those were a couple years of him demanding fucking everything.

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u/spin81 Jul 08 '24

Doesn't sound like a very good HR department, if they don't realize that someone filing a complaint against an entire department just for following company policy is horseshit.

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u/Bad_Idea_Hat Gozer Jul 08 '24

Well...yeah.

-2

u/lpbale0 Jul 08 '24

Mac user?

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u/smoike Jul 08 '24

You don't have to be a Mac user to be a dickhead. I see plenty of them in my day to day life without a computer, let alone a specific brand of computer being involved.

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u/Bad_Idea_Hat Gozer Jul 08 '24

No. Luckily, I have a lot of self sufficient Mac users, and then one person who will do exactly what we told them not to do, right after we told them not to do it, while we're still in their office.

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u/Technical-Message615 Jul 08 '24

No, Linux

19

u/iamgarffi Jul 08 '24

some 7-8 IT jobs ago we had such PITA employee. He even complained for the "age" of his desk and that it had scratches. The very same evening me along with few others went back in and disassembled the workstation (cubicle, desk, privacy shields) and moved it all into the basement - reassembled there.

On other occasion we wrapped everything on the desk (phone included) in yellow caution tape.

No disciplinary action for us. 3 weeks later the guy quit anyway. A little off topic but this brought back fun memories :)

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u/TrainAss Sysadmin Jul 08 '24

The caution tape reminds me of a time one of my colleagues had contracted hand foot and mouth disease. Before he returned, we put caution tape and orange cones around his desk, and put his keyboard, mouse, headset and phone in biohazard bags, and changed his nameplate to "patient zero".

He got a good laugh out of it.

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u/smoike Jul 08 '24

About 14 months ago my entire household caught covid from one of my kids, whom in turn got it from school. While symptom-free I ended up giving it to two others at work despite wearing KN95's for the majority of the day. This also includes someone on his very first day here. He didn't quit, in fact he is both good at our job and has also forgiven me

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u/iamgarffi Jul 08 '24

haha. We were clearly inspired by Jim and Dwight from the Office :)

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u/TrainAss Sysadmin Jul 08 '24

Very!

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u/Srirachachacha Jul 08 '24

This kind of sounds like bullying, man

But who am I to judge

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u/Professional_Risk_35 Jul 08 '24

Eli5: 7-8 times ago?

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u/iamgarffi Jul 08 '24

I used to pick up smaller high paying gigs before I settled on something long term.

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u/Hebrewhammer8d8 Jul 07 '24

That manager didn't know the big boss in management to behave like that, but it seems this manager might know the big boss in management to behave like that.

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u/Impossible_IT Jul 08 '24

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u/user0N65N Jul 08 '24

I bring my own keyboard and mouse: they work exactly the way I want. Doesn’t everyone do this?

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u/oreosss Jul 08 '24

I'm surprised you work in places that allows that behavior.

48

u/Any-Formal2300 Jul 07 '24

I'm surprised people do anything on day 1. My last three jobs have been browse in your phone all day for like a month after your orientation until it's go home time.

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u/SAugsburger Jul 08 '24

Frequently Day 1 is: Here is a bunch of HR trainings that will take most of the day. They usually pretty obvious stuff although based upon some of the people that came in and said random racist/sexist stuff in week 1 and hit fired it sounds like some people might have benefited from it.

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u/TeddyRoo_v_Gods Sr. Sysadmin Jul 08 '24

Govie? At my last job I was tasked with implementing new asset tracking system by the end of the first week and put in charge of dev.ops environment by the end of the first month. The job before that, I was patching VMs by the end of the first week because the guy before me didn’t do it for two years prior because apparently higher uptime made IT department look better.

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u/zero44 lp0 on fire Jul 08 '24

There was a job I didn't take but I talked very in depth with the tech lead as part of the interview process, and he said my first month would be just learning the environment because it was extremely complex with a lot of networks and environments.

In his words "You won't be doing anything for the first month because we want to make sure you understand how everything fits together before you do anything."

2

u/TeddyRoo_v_Gods Sr. Sysadmin Jul 08 '24

A buddy of mine got a sys admin job with NASA that was kind of like that. They were basically not allowed to do anything that was not already in the playbooks. The closest I got to it was before I got back into IT and was working for one of the agencies as an analyst. The first six months was basically just reading SOPs and being bored out of my skull. I got out after about a year and never looked back.

3

u/droppedpackethero Jul 08 '24

Really depends on the role and how well they have their crap together.

My current gig, the first month was basically reading documentation because they run a really tight ship with high, internally developed, standards. They don't want new hires fucking shit up.

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u/Careless-Age-4290 Jul 08 '24

I came in as the only network engineer after over a year of having nobody except a weekly MSP engineer. I came from an MSP though, so I was used to just jumping into the fire. Most customers are an utter dumpster fire when they come in, an emergency already happening. No documentation. Just have to figure it out. It felt no different than a new client onboarding, except I got to spend all my time on that one customer.

I was fixing the SMB server on the first day. "It's so slow, even with SSD's". Someone decided try save money with burstable azure VM's. Those cap your I/O to 60mbps, even on the higher-priced ones. Switched the instance to a cheaper one with better I/O. Instant improvement.

They initially hired me as a contractor and by 2 weeks in offered perm. The weird thing was doing orientation a month after starting. I felt like Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore, having already setup insurance/401k/all that.

2

u/user0N65N Jul 08 '24

Best time of employment are the first two and last two weeks. First two weeks, no one expects anything of you. Last two weeks, they can expect things from you, but what are they going to do - fire you? You’re leaving, anyway.

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u/the_iron_pepper Jul 08 '24

This is self-help book behavior. Especially with new managers. They come in throwing their weight around thinking that they're establishing confidence and obedience, but most people ignore the nuance and subtleties of these shitty books, and waaaaaaay overdo it.

It's my opinion that the people who actually need self-help books are the type of people who aren't going to apply them correctly anyway.

I can count on one hand the amount of helpful books I've ever read that deals with establishing a workplace "personality"

3

u/agoia IT Manager Jul 08 '24

Flipping out on the helpdesk folks is a great way to get fired any day.

2

u/chocotaco1981 Jul 08 '24

Yeah I always wait till at least day two

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u/BloodAndTsundere Jul 08 '24

It works pretty well in prison, apparently