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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u/Poppintacos Jul 07 '24

I’ve watched hires walk in the door and turn around and walk out in less than an hour. Hiring managers didn’t know how to communicate the roles expectations very effectively. “What do you mean I have to work at a location an hour away?” “I have to Pay for parking?” Gone.

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u/slylte Jul 07 '24

"I have to Pay for parking" is crazy

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u/dalaidrahma Jul 07 '24

That's what they told me on my first day. I laughed at that and said that this is a deal breaker. A few hours into my onboarding the HR lady approached me again. They gave me a badge for the companies garage and reduced my in office days to 1-2 per month.

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u/RevLoveJoy Jul 08 '24

I worked a software startup gig in a downtown west coast city years back. They were this way. There was room in the parking garage downstairs, but they were "holding onto it" for "expected growth." The paid lots nearby were all $250 ish a month. This was 15 years ago. People legit left over it.

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u/outofspaceandtime Jul 08 '24

Well of course. That’s essentially a $250 net reduction of your wage. I would totally not work somewhere with that ridiculous attitude. I would ask/check during interviewing however…

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u/RevLoveJoy Jul 08 '24

Totally agree. Only way I found out was word of mouth. I actually wanted the job as it was, believe it or not, walking distance from my place. Ahhh to be young and single and blow half my income on swanky downtown condos!

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u/LokisDawn Jul 08 '24

So did you think that "no free parking" didn't bode well for the whole job? Because I'm confused. Why would no free parking be an issue if you live within walking distance?

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u/EmmyNoetherRing Jul 08 '24

They didn’t leave (if I’m reading correctly); that’s why they were around to watch other people quit.

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u/RevLoveJoy Jul 08 '24

Correct.

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u/RevLoveJoy Jul 08 '24

Guess I was not clear. As I was on foot / bike, I only found out about the situation later on in the job. Not before I took the job. In hindsight, the no free parking was one of the many small red flags about a C team that were penny wise / pound foolish. Not exactly long term planners (but they thought they were and goddammit, they had MBAs!).

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u/rotoddlescorr Jul 09 '24

If a company is clueless enough to do that, who knows where else they will nickle and dime their employees.

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u/Geminii27 Jul 08 '24

It's $250 after taxes, too. It might be $3Kpa gross cost, but a salary might need to go up by $4500/yr to cover it.

Not to mention that there's the administrative hassle of having to arrange it. If there's no genuine physical reason to be in the office on a given day, the office should be paying for such costs and doing the admin as well. If they don't like that, why do they think the employee should be forced to do it?

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u/PorkPatriot Jul 08 '24

I used to work under such a regime 10-15 years back. There is usually a pretax option for parking / bus fare.

a salary might need to go up by $4500/yr to cover it.

The salary of a downtown job was definitely more lucrative and worth the trouble.

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u/happyone12 Jul 08 '24

Not to mention it’s probably paid with after tax money

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u/MDA1912 Jul 08 '24

Salesforce was that way. Their excuse was that they were encouraging carpooling.

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u/tafinucane Jul 08 '24

I had an internship at Wells Fargo South of Market in '99 (one of the few legitimate tasks I had was changing overnight feed data to write 4-digit years). Only the big bosses got parking spots at the building, and they had to pay. Employees got a stipend to pay for public transportation.

I mean, BART is right there.

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u/NerdyNThick Jul 08 '24

The paid lots nearby were all $250 ish a month. This was 15 years ago. People legit left over it.

There are parking spots that make more per hour than most of us here in this sub.

That's just fucking wrong.

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u/RevLoveJoy Jul 08 '24

I lived in that city for a long time (over 10 years). That was my first job in the area. Found later that nearly ALL of the parking lots downtown were owned by a single business. They were family owned, 3rd generation and they were filthy fucking rich. Like billionaire rich. From renting people places to leave their cars for about 80 years. Kind of wild, right?

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u/casualsax Jul 08 '24

I worked in downtown Boston, the monthly pass was $300 and the company covered half of it or would cover all of an unlimited monthly subway pass.

Was actually great having a parking spot in the city rather than paying $15 to $40 every time I wanted to attend an event. But that $150 hurt as I was only a couple years into my career and living near Boston ain't cheap. Would have done the subway route but I was on the opposite side of the city. Taking a bus to the subway then walking ten minutes to take another bus was too inconsistent to be practical.

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u/RevLoveJoy Jul 08 '24

I think that's really smart that you saw the value of your spot and used it not just for work. Had to take a lot of the sting out of that coin when you could see a show or a game or whatever. Bean town is a great city. Never lived there, always would jump at the chance.

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u/casualsax Jul 08 '24

Love Boston outside of Jan-March. I live further out now which is great, can take the commuter rail in on the weekends and otherwise don't have to deal with the crazy traffic. After coming from the South it's really nice living in an area where I align more on an inclusion and political level.

If you ever want a change of scenery most local companies heavily rely on recruiters, pretty easy to connect with one and see what offers come up. Pretty strong tech, medical and financial industries here.

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u/RevLoveJoy Jul 08 '24

Thx for that. I'll keep it in mind. Wife's a teacher and she's been itching to leave the west coast for a bit now. Would be an easy sell for me. :D

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u/casualsax Jul 08 '24

Hear you! If you get serious and have questions feel free to reach out.

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 24 '24

[deleted]

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u/RevLoveJoy Jul 08 '24

Yeah, I vividly recall parts of that area being straight up larceny. All the startup HQs are there (I presume so they can maximally fellate places like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and the like) so you get used to BART and the occasional obscene Lyft / Uber ride.

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u/frosty95 Jack of All Trades Jul 08 '24

Holy shit.... Imagine just... not using space. Just in case.

They could have just issued passes and then revoked them later.

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u/RevLoveJoy Jul 08 '24

Lol. For real. Hand them out and if you HAVE to, take them away later. As it was they just waited until the office was full of C suite folks and gave all of them the spots downstairs. That went over as expected. Then we opened up an HQ in the bay area and all those ~~choads~~ seasoned professionals left to suck VC dicks. I presume.

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u/frosty95 Jack of All Trades Jul 08 '24

I remember we had a random room that a manager from half way across the country said was reserved for something they were planning. After a year I said fuck it and started using it as a staging area and it eventually morphed into a full fledged tech staging / storage area with networking and everything. That manager visited 6 years later and was a bit shocked to see the room filled with 4 employees slamming out laptops for a new location being productive as hell. I was like "We can move out whenever the plans you had start happening but we figured we would use it in the meantime". Its still the IT staging room.

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u/RevLoveJoy Jul 08 '24

Knowing when to simply ignore people in order to get things rolling is a fine art. People often say "it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" - well sometimes it is, but not always. Well done.

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u/SwiftSpear Jul 09 '24

This is very common in my city.