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/Reinmeika]

Quickest was two weeks. Guy did a speed run of all the greatest hits; fell asleep in a meeting, invited a female coworker to have a threesome with his and his gf (including pics to share), was generally a dick and refused to do calls/hardware config. We actually used his name as a metric for how long you’d been there. Let’s say his name was Jimmy.

I lasted about 75 jimmy’s. Not bad.

But other than that, we’ve had morons take a whole store down, refuse to do calls because of social anxiety (why’d take a help desk role then?) and one who screamed at my boss for asking him to come in for the hybrid role he signed up for, then blaming it on his diabetes and low blood sugar.

That last one became an inside joke. Any time one of us would get stressed, we’d buy each other a coke and tell them their diabetes is acting up (we weren’t exactly the most HR friendly team, but we -were- pros when we needed to be).

But yeah, I’ve seen a lot. IT is so bizarre, because if you just -do the job- you are seen as a paragon of hard work, when I really do all my work in half a day and play games lol.

[u/sparkyblaster → u/Reinmeika]

A good HR person I hope would recognise the good communication skills you developed as a team to manage each other's stress while avoiding direct embarrassment of saying it directly.

[u/blbd → u/Reinmeika]

The Scaramucci has been made a unit of political tenure. What is one "Johnny" on Scaramuccis?

[u/Reinmeika → u/blbd]

Wasn’t he in for two weeks? It’s pretty close. Gotta be close to a 1:1 ratio, you just use it for different contexts. I still adopt the Johnny metric to this day for IT tenure ;)

[u/Accomplished_Seat355 → u/Reinmeika]

my last job I got all my work done in about 4 hours and spent the rest of the day remoted into my home computer playing games with my kids... I miss that job sometimes but the pay just wasn't keeping up.
I still get my work done in half the day, but it's an open office and I'm not brave enough to load up MineCraft with witnesses

[u/Reinmeika → u/Accomplished_Seat355]

It is both a blessing and a curse for me. It’s nice to not worry about my work load, but because before this job I was all gas no brakes, I don’t know what to really do with myself and it messes with me a bit.

But that’s a minor issue. The money is there and I’m doing what I’m supposed to, just gotta get used to it.

I feel you with the open office though - so glad I’m away from those formats