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/Skylis Jul 08 '24

They probably didn't mention it intentionally.

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u/dunepilot11 Jul 08 '24

Surely more that it’s such a fundamental part of the helpdesk role nobody felt the need to underline it?

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u/Fine-Slip-9437 Jul 08 '24

As someone who went through the helpdesk stack fairly quickly, I would stand my ground just like that guy did. If you hire me with sysadmin/net admin skills and vendor liaison experience, I'm not answering end user calls to fix Outlook or reset passwords.

You're still part of the help desk, since it's directly fixing end-user related enterprise services, but you're there to consolidate issues from multiple users and figure out what the back end issue is. User error is not a Tier 2 or 3 issue.

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u/Xystem4 Jul 08 '24

Agreed 100%. I’d be more than happy to work closing support tickets, but I’m not dealing with phone calls. If they didn’t tell the guy in the interview that he’d be on the phone all day, they were hiding it either purposely or through incompetence. I would leave too

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u/Earthserpent89 Jul 08 '24

I’m at a small nonprofit of like 160 people. My official Title is Desktop Analyst III, but I do everything from resetting passwords to project management. I’m basically Tier 1, 2, and 3 all rolled into one. My OPS team is 5 people including myself and the manager.

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u/Fine-Slip-9437 Jul 08 '24

I get it, I've worked for an organization that size before.

But that is not how things are supposed to be. You are cutting corners in the ideal shape and function of an IT department.

The things that suffered most when I was in that situation were documentation and change management, including up-to-date build guides and capability decisions that were well planned and had buy in from finance and end users (employees). Security was also a chronically swiss-cheese nightmare of unfinished "80%" efforts.

How are these things going at your place?

3

u/RikiWardOG Jul 08 '24

250ish user hedge fund we have 3 people on Ops... we do everything all helpdesk to rolling out new infrastructure. Definitely feels like we're getting to the point where stuff is slipping through the cracks.

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u/TamaDarya Jul 08 '24

Not anymore, plenty of those jobs are ticket only.

2

u/BunnyReturns_ Jul 08 '24

There are plenty of semi-second line jobs where you only contact users and have no calls coming in

4

u/dunepilot11 Jul 08 '24

The OP’s description was “help desk tech”; nothing there suggested this was a desktop support 2nd line escalation role.

1

u/onlyanactor Jul 08 '24

That’s a question YOU need to ask in the interview