tales from tech support

Karen manager demands IT technician take business server offline during business hours, despite technician's protests, gets the order in writing before complying: ‘Within 15 minutes, the office was in chaos. The CFO stormed into my office’

Brad Dickson

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments

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

Brad Dickson

Comments

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

Comments

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

Comments