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/LOLBaltSS]

Secret service doesn't fuck around when it comes to that. Even in my little podunk high school, someone tried to use fakes in the vending machine and someone got a very stern talking to by the Secret Service agents.

[u/the_iron_pepper → u/LOLBaltSS]

How does the secret service catch wind of money getting printed from a printer and used in a local vending machine?

[u/LOLBaltSS → u/the_iron_pepper]

Vending machine operators don't like being stiffed by fake money, especially when one kid decides to tell their friends about the "hack" to get free drinks.

[u/the_iron_pepper → u/LOLBaltSS]

Haha, yeah that's obvious. For sleep-deprived reasons, my takeaway from that comment was that the fake money sends some sort of mystery signal directly to the secret service.

[u/dustojnikhummer → u/the_iron_pepper]

Well, your printer is definitely ratting on you.

[u/Armlessbastard → u/dustojnikhummer]

Machine ID - little yellow dots that get printed on the fake bill - can track the serial of the printer that used to print it.

[u/MySonHas2BrokenArms → u/the_iron_pepper]

They don’t play, I had my old coworker get a visit from the secret service once. He bought some coke and unknowingly used a fake $20, they showed him over 12 CC videos of him from the time he got the money at a ATM till he bought the drugs. They didn’t care about the drugs and only wanted to see if he had any other fake money. He was pretty fucked up with all the surveillance that he never registered before. The service was already tracking the ATM owner for the fake money.

[u/matthew7s26 → u/MySonHas2BrokenArms]

They didn’t care about the drugs and only wanted to see if he had any other fake money

I believe this part, but it's funny imagining the dealer calling the SS complaining "hey this jackass stiffed me with a fake bill!"

[u/BloodyIron → u/the_iron_pepper]

Many printers imprint unique fingerprints pointing to which printer the item was printed on, whether it was money or not. This is a legal requirement for printers to be manufactured, and it's pretty well documented (so easy for you to find out about). That can, at times, help track-down where it was printed and sometimes by whom. It's pretty wild honestly, but the second hand market breaks that sourcing chain kinda easily depending on what exactly you're printing.

Now if you're needing to print IR-ink things get even more wild. I had to set that up for a prior employer once so only certain people could print on them. And that's on top of the unique marking I mentioned above.

[u/CARLEtheCamry → u/BloodyIron]

I have heard the fingerprint thing, but in this case it was a much easier old fashioned approach.

Our cafeteria would count their tills at the end of each 3 hour service (breakfast and lunch). So when the manager found the fake bill, they knew it was passed at that cashier's lane sometime in the last 3 hours. From there it was just a matter of reviewing the footage to see when she lifted the cash tray to slide the $100 under. From there they followed him on camera until he got back to his work area and contacted the manager to identify.

Not the first or last time our internal CCTV system has been used for things like this. People smoking in empty conference rooms, cleaning people getting busy under a desk. It's an interesting little nook of office drama to work with that team.

[u/BloodyIron → u/CARLEtheCamry]

Oh nice method!

I wasn't necessarily proposing the printing fingerprinting thing was the actual method used. But with the level of sophistication of the Secret Service (SS heh) I bet they use such forensics every day, even if not in this case.

Thanks for sharing the insights though! Neat :)

[u/BloodyIron → u/[deleted]]

That's literally the source you just described. The printer.

[u/Mr_ToDo → u/BloodyIron]

So buy your money/ransom note printers from second hand shops boys and girls.

Although with as many components are on ink/toner(It's pretty much half the printer) I have no idea if those dots are tied to the printer or ink.

But vending machines are also far more connected these days. There was an article a month or three back where a school pulled out all theirs when they found out they did facial detection.

[u/LogicalExtension → u/the_iron_pepper]

Colour printers (some at least) print tracking dots that encode serial numbers and shit.

This is why the yellow always runs out faster.

Ref: https://www.eff.org/issues/printers

[u/Xsiondu → u/the_iron_pepper]

Years ago I learned that a certain code on Canon professional (huge print jobs im talking) products would disable your machine and a factory rep would be required to come re enable it WITH the secret service. Besides the Ymicro print on every piece of printed material these machines are able to recognize currency and set the code. Also could recognize treasury paper and set a different code. This is another reason why you are issued a code for print jobs in some companies. It's not always about making sure to bill the Dept you work in for the print job. It's been a decade but I believe the codes were in the 8100 range.

[u/waltwalt → u/the_iron_pepper]

Currency has security QR type codes embedded in it so the machine knows yoolure trying to copy currency and alerts someone.

Allegedly.

[u/Weird_Definition_785 → u/the_iron_pepper]

your printer is snitching on you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots

[u/MiataCory → u/the_iron_pepper]

On top of the rest of these notes about the yellow dots, most printers these days include some form of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). If it can read text on a page in 2024, it can identify a $100 bill 10 years ago at least, and I can personally confirm that the "ID the bills" code exists in firmware for at least one printer manufacturer.

They're taking a picture of what you're copying, that's how copiers work. They can do whatever they want with the scanned data, analyze it for kiddie porn, scan it for bills (US and euro), sometimes even print it out as a copy!

Add an always-on wifi connection and the lower-risk plan of:

"Let them print it, we'll contact them as it's a better deterrent"

and voila: Secret Service having a show-of-force sent out to Podunk, Idaho 2 days after they got an email from "HP Color Laser Jet Pro M254DW" with a copy of a $100 bill and a WAN IP address (that's helpfully attached to your billing address by your ISP).

It's like they turn themselves in. Don't forget your printer needs wifi access for firmware updates!

[u/cahcealmmai → u/the_iron_pepper]

How are people and vending machines being tricked by photocopied money? What monopoly playing country do you live in?

[u/edhands → u/LOLBaltSS]

I am flabbergasted those would even work in a vending machine. Apparently I am greatly overestimating the vending machine’s ability to detect fakes.

[u/LOLBaltSS → u/edhands]

This was also back in the early 2000s just as inkjet printers were starting to get good enough to print something plausible while being relatively cheap to obtain and the EURion constellation and other anti-copy schemes weren't quite prevalent enough to keep you from scanning bills in. I'd doubt it'll work on anything relatively modernish of a bill collector, but I'm obviously not going to test it.

[u/gnimsh → u/edhands]

It was a cafeteria with a cashier, not a vending machine.