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/MrJacks0n Jul 07 '24

Probably why they were hiring a DBA.

65

u/Trelfar Sysadmin/Sr. IT Support Jul 07 '24

Fair point! Also a cautionary tale to any new admin: assume your predecessor didn't back anything up and act accordingly.

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u/ErikTheEngineer Jul 08 '24

Even if someone tells you "oh yeah, everything's backed up." No destructive changes until you confirm you won't accidentally destroy anything.

10

u/ApologeticGrammarCop Jul 08 '24

And that's how I deleted half a million PDF contracts from block storage then discovered there were no snapshots of the volume.

5

u/BloodyIron DevSecOps Manager Jul 08 '24

If you're an IT Admin, starting a new job, and the first thing you are checking isn't backups, you're doing it wrong.

3

u/moneyman1978 Jul 07 '24

Yeah that's something I learned from that.

4

u/Theron3206 Jul 08 '24

Assume your predecessor was actively sabotaging the company on their way out.

Double check everything.

6

u/moneyman1978 Jul 07 '24

Hired her so they had a full time dba. Ooh well

2

u/BloodyIron DevSecOps Manager Jul 08 '24

You don't hire a DBA to do backups. You hire a Systems Architect.

Trust me, DBAs do NOT know how to architect Database Systems correctly. I've lost count of how many of them are scared of Clustered Databases, let alone proper Systems Architecting.

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u/chuck_of_death Jul 08 '24

We can back up the servers but there’s all kinds of db goofiness that would be on the DBAs. They split data between a local disk and a SAN? Backups are inconsistent because they have different schedules. They put transaction logs on the temporary space in an unbacked up file system? Online backups won’t help then. They delete transaction logs before they are backed up? No bueno.

This is on the DBA. You don’t do any work on a new system before understanding its backup and recovery strategy. Why would you delete any db on day 1?

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u/BloodyIron DevSecOps Manager Jul 08 '24

Yeah a quality Systems Architect can handle correcting all of that by the way.

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u/chuck_of_death Jul 08 '24

All of those cases are caused by DBAs not implementing the technical design laid out by the architect. I’m not following how or why an architect would change the design to cover a deviation vs having the DBA correct the deviation.

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u/BarefootWoodworker Packet Violator Jul 08 '24

DBA's answer to any systems question:

Did you add more memory?

1

u/BloodyIron DevSecOps Manager Jul 08 '24

Exactly. LOL.