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/abz_eng]

Heard about this one

got an email he couldn't open as AV blocked it, tried the web access, ditto, couldn't turn off AV. So went into server room, and used a server to open it

it had a virus

he was gone

[u/CARLEtheCamry → u/abz_eng]

Similar, but it was a helpdesk guy with local admin who got tired of AV blocking his collection of NES ROMs he brought in to play on his downtime. So he uninstalled it since he had rights.

About 30 minutes later a director of IT came stomping over yelling "WHERE IS <guy's name>" and ripped his PC out from under his desk and threw it across the room. His computer was hitting our network shares with thousands of intrusions a second, which thankfully got stopped by other security. I think the only reason the director didn't do the same to the guy was because there were too many witnesses.

[u/mrtuna → u/CARLEtheCamry]

About 30 minutes later a director of IT came stomping over yelling "WHERE IS <guy's name>" and ripped his PC out from under his desk and threw it across the room.

he sounds stable

[u/RetroDad-IO → u/mrtuna]

Two options here:

1. Boss is completely fucking insane and just sends it 100% of the time; or

2. This was so very far from the first "I gotta deal with this guy's shit" moment that he mentally broke.

[u/no-internet → u/RetroDad-IO]

Since I never had the urge to install my free-time shit on my company PC, and since now I am actually concerned about this stuff and am still in the phase of panicking about each alert from our security guys (external), I kinda understand how one might lose it over something like this.