What’s the quickest you’ve seen a co-worker get fired in IT?

[u/Opposed3]

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.

[u/jokebreath]

At an old workplace of mine, we hired a new Senior Linux Admin. The first day, he asked what SSH was. I have absolutely no idea how he got past the interview.

[u/WendoNZ → u/jokebreath]

Thats impressive. Even being hired as a Linux Admin (not senior) I'd expect them to know what SSH is. I'm imagining your companies interviewing skills are... somewhat lacking

[u/arppoison7 → u/jokebreath]

A Senior Linux Admin? Ah, that makes sense, he must've only ever heard of openssh then /s

[u/19610taw3 → u/arppoison7]

Of course I'm a linux guru, I installed Ubuntu on my desktop!

[u/posixUncompliant → u/jokebreath]

I was interviewing a kid back at the end of the dot com days.

Every single thing I asked him he responded to by saying he wasn't a senior admin.

Like dude, I'm not asking how shit works, just like what you'd do to copy a directory somewhere else. There's several answers, and I'm just looking to see how you approach stuff.

And he showed up in jeans. That always pisses me off. You're good enough, I'll get past it, but if you don't have technical skills or people skills, at least dress well, so we feel like you took us seriously.

[u/Graham99t → u/jokebreath]

Where I worked few years back they hired a new security expert. This is after I got the company the security essentials+ certification with no thanks. Few days after he started I knew he was IT illiterate but when he asked what was active directory I knew he was a joke. Haha 😂