tales from tech support

Mid-sized marketing firm outsources IT firing the single employee who had been there for 4 years, he gets a job paying $20k more: 'The first week after I left, their main server crashed. The outsourced company took 6 hours to respond, another 8 to fix it'

Brad Dickson

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Scapegoated IT admin gets blamed when client's employee retires and accidentally deletes their entire database: 'Welp, I'm retired now! Guess I'll delete everything'

Brad Dickson

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Marketing demands review of all technical documents, programmer creates a fake protocol to mess with them: '[It was] called the "TP Protocol." [I]t could be implemented as a 2 or 3-layer network, each layer called a "ply"'

Brad Dickson

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Employee complains to tech support about broken printer, IT guy discovers employee completely soaked it: 'I found pools of water in ridiculous places'

Ben Weiss

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Coworker tells on himself by complaining to CEO when IT guy deletes banned and inappropriate "personal" files off his work computer: 'He went to the CEO and complained'

Brad Dickson

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IT worker told to stop wasting time helping their coworkers, IT tickets get out of control when all the small problems are no longer getting fixed: 'Everyone was quietly enjoying the fact that Boss's ridiculous policy had backfired spectacularly'

Brad Dickson

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Boss demands IT engineer write "more words" on ticket resolutions, they begin writing a novel hidden in the reports: 'You're averaging well over a 1000 characters per ticket, keep it up!'

Brad Dickson

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Woman tells roommate she's going to charge him for any future IT help due to his "learned incompetence": '[He] just sits there and wait[s] for someone else to fix it'

Brad Dickson

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Coworker complains about tech support worker getting credit for their unfinished jobs, forced to finish them himself: 'So now, he’s doing twice, sometimes 3 times the work, all because he wanted full credit for partial results'

Brad Dickson

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Employee denied raise and told they're replaceable after becoming sole engineer on a project, costs the company big when they quit: '$500,000 and two years of productivity over a $40,000/yr raise'

Brad Dickson

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Developer embarrasses new boss and gets foolish "no overtime" policy overturned by adhering strictly to it: 'Well, it's 4:30. That's my 8 hours. I'll see you tomorrow'

Brad Dickson

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Software giant fires last developer capable of servicing $25M contract in short-sighted cost-cutting measure, he successfully negotiates $1M/yr consulting fees:'Never fire the last legacy knowledge guy...'

Brad Dickson

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HR refuses to give developer raise by downplaying their work, forced to eat their words when their software stops working

Brad Dickson

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Major client foolishly insists tech support delete all data, tech support refuses to comply saving the client's business: 'Their entire company basically shut down for an afternoon'

Brad Dickson

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Lead programmer insists there's something wrong with their computer to system admin, ends up being their own code: 'I tried not to laugh, but I just couldn't hold it in'

Brad Dickson

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‘Guess I’ll delete everything': Employee retires and deletes all of client's files, company doesn't have a backup

Eleonora Bader

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