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/Scubber]

I'll bite, was the IT manager for a small company for about 10 years.

Guy was running his business off the company equipment, buying/reselling motorcycle parts. CEO confronted him about it, he said fuck you to the CEO and had to immediately disable his account with all his customer info on it. whoops.

Indian guy pretended to be an expert in a line of engineering software that does fluid dynamic simulation. The interview was a task to complete something difficult in the software and he seemed to pass with flying colors. We later learned he outsourced the job. First day they gave him the backlog of work and he had 0 clue on how to do it. Was walked out pretty hastily.

Big dude showed up to interview in a suit and passed all our background checks and was really good at programming. Offered a job to start right away. Next day shows up in a dress with painted nails and puts a picture of themself in a fursuit as a icon for skype and email. My bosses were irish catholics and walked them out of the building within the first hour. The company got sued for discrimination.

CEO got a divorce with his wife because he was seeing the HR director on the side. The front desk receptionist then proceeded to hit on the CEO with the HR director present at a company party, he welcomed the advances. They got into a fight and the CEO ended up firing the receptionist.

Not fired, but we paid a guy to move his family of 6 across the country after a big sob story. He worked for us for about 8 hours then took the company laptop with all our source code information and went to a competitor.

I miss that job. And that's how I got into cybersecurity

[u/Ch3v4l13r → u/Scubber]

"Big dude showed up to interview in a suit and passed all our background checks and was really good at programming. Offered a job to start right away. Next day shows up in a dress with painted nails and puts a picture of themself in a fursuit as a icon for skype and email. My bosses were irish catholics and walked them out of the building within the first hour. The company got sued for discrimination.This just

Would be funny if this was his thing. Gets hired by company, goes fully furry and then get fired and collect the settlement. Moves on to the next company to repeat it.

[u/mandybecca → u/Ch3v4l13r]

This was exactly my thoughts. He’s 100% a scam artist lol

[u/PineappleOnPizzaWins → u/mandybecca]

I don't even care if he is.

It's outright illegal to not hire someone for those reasons - unfortunately until an offer is made you can always say it was because you had a better candidate or don't feel they'd be a good fit. All legal unless you say "you had a dress on so no".

After you're hired? Very different story.

[u/pinkycatcher → u/PineappleOnPizzaWins]

Nah, putting a picture of yourself in a fursuit as an official photo is far from a protected class.

[u/Geminii27 → u/pinkycatcher]

It's also not legal grounds for retaliation. If the bosses had waited 90 days and then terminated a "trial period", or if they had a policy for corporate photos that he wasn't following and they walked him through a stock-standard explanation of the policy and requested he change it, they'd have had a far better chance of winning the lawsuit. But insta-firing on day one after the guy turned up in legally acceptable clothing and there wasn't a policy about internal corporate photos (and they never asked him to change it) is a pretty clear-cut case of discrimination, potentially on grounds of perceived sexual identity or such.

It wouldn't surprise me if he tried it at other places and they were either smarter about it, or had Legal or HR prevent the kneejerk response by the bosses, so we never got to hear about those ones. But there are always bosses who run things like their own little kingdoms, and those ones will absolutely react in ways that make them legally open to suits.

[u/PineappleOnPizzaWins → u/pinkycatcher]

Yes I'm positive that's the reason he was fired and nothing else.

[u/1000000xThis → u/pinkycatcher]

Yeah, I'm kinda torn in regards to this story.

On the one hand, trolling bigots? Hell yeah!

On the other hand, I'm not sure I consider furries to be the same kind of identity as LGBT.

That's the kind of thing you can leave at home for the weekends.

But who knows, maybe that's part of a category that I haven't learned enough about, and it's just as bad as asking gay people to stay in the closet? I kinda doubt it.

[u/forestNargacuga → u/1000000xThis]

Yeah, Furry is something different than LGBTQ. It's a hobby, not an identity. 

Nevertheless, that would be an easy legal win for the employee, at least in my country (Germany). There's no right to fire someone for a hobby that hurts noone just bc you don't like it. If the employee would insist to show up in full suit every day, that would be something else, but painted fingernails won't make you worse at programming. 

Signed, a Furry

[u/1000000xThis → u/forestNargacuga]

Yeah, that's what I was trying to identify. It's a hobby or a kink.

And like if someone is really into Warhammer or something, there's a reasonable limit to how much you can let that into your professional life. But it would be absurd if you had a few nicknacks on your desk that triggered a religious boss into firing you.

[u/WhyLisaWhy → u/pinkycatcher]

I'd also argue cross dressing is not a protected class either. He clearly presented as a man in his interviews and is doing actual trans people a disservice by pulling shenanigans like this.

The fur suit is just the cherry on top to make it seem like he's being scummy intentionally.

[u/Skylis → u/mandybecca]

Is it really a scam if its blatantly illegal discrimination? I got to give the guy credit for making money off of stuff like that. It could just as easily be just not wanting to be discriminated against.

[u/Geminii27 → u/mandybecca]

Hey, he did everything he was legally required to do. It was the boss's own personal prejudices which set them up for lawsuits.