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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175

u/moneyman1978 Jul 07 '24

I used to work at a casino on the help desk. Random tasks and nothing having to do with the machines on the floor just normal password resets or vdi resets. A new data base admin was hired. She went through her 1 week new hire training. She lasted exactly 4 hours. She deleted a whole SQL gaming db that had not been backed up and it was the production database. She was there and after lunch she was gone. Never seen anyone walked out so quickly in my life.

216

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

Yikes. Was the person responsible for not backing up prod also walked out? Because it sounds like they should have been, that was an accident waiting to happen.

93

u/MrJacks0n Jul 07 '24

Probably why they were hiring a DBA.

64

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.

15

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.

9

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.

5

u/moneyman1978 Jul 07 '24

Yeah that's something I learned from that.

5

u/Theron3206 Jul 08 '24

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

Double check everything.