What's the dumbest thing you've had to do, because you're boss said so...?

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D_Fieldz@reddit

CEO wanted no spam filter on his inbox because he would supposedly miss out on important mails.

He got phished within a week...

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iceyone444@reddit

It's amazing how many managers, ceos and executives get caught out - they keep promoting confidence over competence.

One manager clicked a link and it encrypted all of our files - I was in house i.t and they demanded I decrypt the files and then threatened to fire me when I said I couldn't.

I left shortly after - they had no backups ("why would we back up, what a waste of time") and had to pay 3 times my wage for a consultancy to say the same thing I told them.

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Low_Bell3191@reddit

No need to fire me, you'll be out of business in the next 3 weeks!

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iceyone444@reddit

They had to then create everything from scratch - and the manager was promoted (he was friends with the boss and clicked a corn link).

I overheard managers joking about it - if it had been a worker they would have been fired.

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Kautsu-Gamer@reddit

The modern America seems to think incompetence is core skill of management.

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Low_Bell3191@reddit

Say it louder for those clowns in the back...

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On the opposite side of the spectrum someone in accounting got phished so the CTO decided to put a content filter in place company wide. Despite people telling him it was a bad idea the words, paycheck, bank account, wire, direct deposit, and a few other words were blocked.

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TheFluffiestRedditor@reddit

Executives are the perfect example of just enough knowledge to be dangerous. They've heard the buzzwords so they think they understand the details, and then direct us to do foolish things.

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fatbergsghost@reddit

There is also something dangerous about being the sorts of people whose basic job is to make people do whatever they want by all means possible.

They hear "no" and actually hear "if I push this smelly nerd enough I will get what I want".

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TheFluffiestRedditor@reddit

Which is why instead of replying with a negative, we say sure and it'll cost this ridiculous amount; We turn their game back on them.

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briston574@reddit

This works for a ton of things. When my boss asks me to do things I don't wana do i tell him how many labor hours and how much overhead it will take and he often changes his mind

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Science-Gone-Bad@reddit

I had a web filter that kept my from accessing my company’s web site (contractor @ the time)

Co name had “Analyst” in the name. Kept getting blocked because it thought I was going “Anal”

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

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cosmodisc@reddit

No filter will help if people are stupid or uneducated. The most effective way for our company was training and then more training. We even started giving out Amazon vouchers when we run phishing tests and people win by not clicking on links and just reporting the email.

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reevesjeremy@reddit

This aligns with “whitelist emails send from x domain and y ip addresses.”

I ran it past our email team at the time and got to write the reply which basically said "The federal government will not be compromising its digital infrastructure for your convenience simply because you have failed to implement basic repairs on yours for over a decade."

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netizen__kane@reddit

Reverse that and you have my boss who had rules that were sending nearly everything to spam and wondering why enquiries/sales were down

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aamurusko79@reddit

We had one case where a small company owner wanted to receive only e-mail from from certain senders. We found it odd but created rules for just that to happen with his list of addresses.

geegol@reddit

Setup 10,000 desks for an RTO. But it felt good having the work done.

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vsysio@reddit

And they gave you what, three days to "Figure It Out?"

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geegol@reddit

Something like that. A month.

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ZPrimed@reddit

Give hourly status updates on an outage that was entirely out of my control and was dependent on our upstream ISP getting their fiber cut repaired.

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Xtort_@reddit

Everything this happens i get called to one of plant buildings to "find workarounds".

It's basically me saying "no, that won't work" until I want to die....

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Geminii27@reddit

The 'workaround' will cost $500K. Every time. Doesn't matter how it's implemented.

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briston574@reddit

"Hi boss, there is a workaround we can do but it costs $500k in materials, another $1.3mil in labor hours, and will take aprox 6 weeks to complete. Or we can wait till our ISP is finished in a few hours"

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wazza_the_rockdog@reddit

There are potential workarounds, backup connections preferably using a different technology/vendor (eg 4G or starlink for backup if fiber is your primary technology, different vendor so if it's a vendor level issue your backup is still workable) - but if it's important enough to have a backup connection it should be in place before you have an issue - not an urgent job when the issue strikes.

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Regular_Strategy_501@reddit

If your piece of crap Software suit wasn't developed for a local connection and becomes unusable if the ping to the server is >10ms. We had this happen recently where the fibre connection between one of our locations and our Datacenter was cut because of a construction project. Sure, they had Internet via backup, but that doesn't help the doctor who needs his patient database. Luckily we had a terminal server for this kind of issue, so the clinic was only offline for half an hour.

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yer_muther@reddit

in place before you have an issue

LOL. Prepare for a failure that is guaranteed to happen eventually and cost far more than the backup. Naw man. We don't need that shit. It's working fine.

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Xtort_@reddit

You are correct.... and the business decided the backup connections were too expensive.

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TrainAss@reddit

Oh those are great. Sit and browse the net on my phone, run a constant ping on an external IP and every hour report that it's still being fixed. Then when you get a response, tell them it's fixed.

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ZPrimed@reddit

Not great when they happen at 3pm on a Saturday, take 12+ hours to fix, you had other plans, and you're salaried.

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westerschelle@reddit

I am salaried and my contract says my work hours are 40 hours Monday to Friday. I sure as shit will not be ordered to work on saturdays.

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magus424@reddit

contract

Guessing non-US then :) (or Montana)

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westerschelle@reddit

Germany. But wouldn't a salaried position always entail a contract that outlines stuff like work hours, PTO, etc. ?

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magus424@reddit

Not in the US :(

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briston574@reddit

My position is salary and outlines the hours and other things and I work in Oklahoma, a notorious right to work state that shits on employees

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lovesexdreamin@reddit

That's just not true at all

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kirashi3@reddit

wouldn't a salaried position always entail a

We laughed , because it was a joke. Nope he genuinely wanted me to go. I told him even if he put that in writing and recorded it there was no way in hell I would do it.

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vsysio@reddit

🤣 I've always wondered just how many Servers That Time Forgot are just humming away in data centers around the globe...

On second thought 😳 maybe I don't want to know..

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MadMaverickMatthew@reddit

Lol we had an issue with a software vendor. This was a national insurance clearing house and one of their vendors was down causing a major outage. I spent 3.5 hours just on hold (at a managers request) to confirm that.

The same manager that made me call the first time made me call back to tell them they were wrong about "their" vendor and he wanted it fixed NOW!

I told him there was nothing to be done and I had made the call already.

I had to call again.

After another 4 hours on hold I get a tech who explains to me that there is nothing he can do about it.

I told him "oh, I know, but I was instructed to call and tell you this by my my manager. Now I have."

He immediately got it, noted my message and thanked me for my time lol.

There is no objective truth to language, which is a subjective construct. When I say gay, do I imply happy, stupid, or homosexual? Is it a shopping cart, or shopping basket?

Sure, people ought to use language strictly, but we don't. It fluctuates with context.

Some contexts are location/culture (reddit, usa, uk) others are era (2024 vs 1950) and some are rules (opposite day.) And probably countless others.

So, what does correctly mean? Because if you define it as 2024 era, us location, socially driven rules, then literally can mean figuratively and the particular is likely driven by the context of whether it appears they actually mean it literally or not. And that may very well be confusing/unclear at times, but it doesn't mean it is incorrect, necessarily.

If your definition of correct is, 'in a way that is clear/concise' well, that isn't necessarily correct for reddit casual conversations, but it would fit the expectations of active voice and other writing style guides.

And in that case, you should take your own advice:

"I'm glad you asked me to define it because definitions clarify meaning. Using "correctly" when I mean "mistakenly" or "incorrectly" would be confusing—and ironic, wouldn't it?"

But, it's reddit. And we are human. We're going to write sloppy. When you perfect your own form, let the rest of us know so we can model your perfection.

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bfodder@reddit

This response is too purple for me to rain on. If only we could gather the balls.

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redmage753@reddit

Just wait until you learn about foreign languages, especially their different grammar/gender constructs, and roots to words you use today. It's going to blow your mind.

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bfodder@reddit

Those words all still have definitions. None of what you just brought up matters to this discussion.

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domestic_omnom@reddit

I work in IT.

My job is fully remote from the office I am required to be at. At home I have a lazy boy recliner and a tray for my laptop and mouse. Plus a vr headset so I work at an office,l in outer space.

iama_bad_person@reddit

I've had people in my local subreddit say people need to work from the office because the local cafes need people to go to them to make money.

You read that right, I need to commute for an hour because the local cafe is having a bad time.

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fmillion@reddit

What's even more common is "we have a 10 year lease on the space that we couldn't use for 3-4 years so we need to make the financial department happy that we're getting an ROI on that lease"

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SeaCoooCumBer@reddit

I think they're also partially using it as voluntary layoffs of sorts. Either lay people off and give severance or force them to quit themselves.

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kreebletastic@reddit

I always say we’re there to keep the chairs from flying into the ionosphere haha

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iama_bad_person@reddit

Office. Two monitors, 24", 1080p, shitty office chair, 4 year old i5, $10 mouse and keyboard.

Home. 3 Monitors, 2 27" 1440p and a 49" super ultrawide, XL SecretLab chair, custom made standing desk I built myself, $300 keyboard and $150 mouse.

Work: "But you are more productive in the office"

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krokodil2000@reddit

And if you leave 5 minutes later, then it will add additional 15 minutes on your commute.

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NotASysAdmin666@reddit

Ready to close those tickets!

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PrettyAdagio4210@reddit

+1 if it’s just a satellite office, and all of your coworkers and users are on the complete opposite side of the country.

Pre-pandemic sure was fun.

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tplato12@reddit

Me right now. Smallest office, and probably 1/10 of my tickets originate from my office and of that, probably a third need me in person and it's always just dickin around with a local printer

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hkusp45css@reddit

So, what I've learned in my years in the field is that MY priorities at work look like this:

Work safely
Keep the boss happy
Do the job "right"

and they are in that order for a reason.

They pay me to do what they tell me to do. If it's wholly wrong, I simply say "That's not the best practice, and here's why..."

If I'm instructed to do it anyway, fuck it. They sign the checks.

Update the CR with the instructions received, my reservations and then commit. Send an email saying "Implemented change request #123456 as requested. All notes are located in the CR."

Then I move on with my day. I don't have the bandwidth to tilt at windmills and piss people off just because they're too stupid to listen to reason.

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zephalephadingong@reddit

I worked blue collar work before IT and this order is exactly right. I saw(and sometimes still see) too many coworkers risking their life or career just to please some busy body.

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MissionSpecialist@reddit

They pay me to do what they tell me to do. If it's wholly wrong, I simply say "That's not the best practice, and here's why..."

If I'm instructed to do it anyway, fuck it. They sign the checks.

This was the hardest lesson I've learned in my career so far, including all the technical ones.

There's been an unusually large amount of bullshittery going on the last week, and I needed this reminder.

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redmage753@reddit

Same, this is the problem I hit and had to have a mental adjustment with my expectations. Mgmt wants things done in a certain way, I tell them what it'll take to do it, they say no, don't do that, just do it like we want. Then it takes 50x longer, and they ask why it's all fucked, and I show them, I mention again that this is why it should be done a different way, but they accept the shit way and tell me to keep moving, but do it faster.

So, looking for a new job where things are at least slightly better.

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rusty_programmer@reddit

Yeah, man. I’m not wasting social capital to throw myself on a grenade anymore.

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kirashi3@reddit

I’m not wasting social capital to throw myself on a grenade anymore.

Same. This is why I quit jobs that no longer deserve my expertise.

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tdhuck@reddit

This is my take, as well. I was the guy that wanted to do things right and hold people accountable. Now I just do what my boss tells me to do and yes I also include the 'this isn't the best way (or right way) to do it' and if my boss doesn't ask me to elaborate and tells me to proceed, I do just that and document everything I did.

Years ago I would go out of my way, not anymore.

Just the other day someone asked me to process the quote for project A and update them on when project A would be completed. I told them I was never involved in project A and that I don't have any quotes for project A. My boss chimes in (teams chat) and tells me that I was CCed on all the emails about project A for the last two years. I knew I wasn't because I wouldn't miss something that important.

Turns out that for the last two years everyone was talking about project A and nobody thought to ask me about it (in two years) or check to see if I was on the email chain.

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fmillion@reddit

Just make sure you keep an updated resume as soon as odd requests start coming in.

Also always refuse illegal requests. That would fall under work safely I suppose.

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AJS914@reddit

I used to argue with my stupid ass assistant about various things we *should* be doing. I told him that we are keeping the boss happy first and foremost. His priorities come first.

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kshot@reddit

Ask a third party IT partner if it's a good pratice to install a UPS for servers, because my IT director asked me to. He just bought a new server with no UPS and doubted my recommendation to install a UPS.

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xaeriee@reddit

Disconnect 1000+ end user Citrix sessions because someone over provisioned and we needed to get our ‘bigger money making clients’ back in… then explain we had licensing issues but not explain how 1000 users calls dropped :\ and neglect to explain how licensing works or plan accordingly. Oh and weeks before this happened, I had held a meeting with pretty pictures for them on how our licensing model was not concurrent and we were about to reach our max... no one listens

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Time_Dot_6918@reddit

Unblock an extremism far right leaning website.

Pseudo_Idol@reddit

I worked for an advertising agency and was told to update a client's DNS records because their website only worked when you went to www.contoso.com but not when you used contoso.com. I said that the domain root was pointed somewhere else and that changing it would be bad news. My reasoning fell on deaf ears and I was instructed to make the change. Turns out the root was pointed at their Citrix environment and now no one could connect to it since we changed the address to point to the webserver.

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OffBrandToby@reddit

"I canceled your order of DDR4 RAM because I have this DDR3 RAM on hand you can use."

"The computer takes DDR4, so this DDR3 won't work."

"Just try it."

"I don't think you understand. They are physically different shapes. I literally cannot put a stick of DDR3 into a DDR4 slot."

"I SAID TRY IT."

I explained the situation to the end user apologetically. This would interrupt her day and I 100% knew it would not work, but we needed to do it if we had any chance of getting her more RAM. She replied with "Oh, I know who your boss is, so I completely understand."

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Turtle_buckets@reddit

How....long ago was this.

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Moscato359@reddit

friend ddr3 is not that old

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question_mark_42@reddit

It’s 17 years old… that’s kinda old

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Moscato359@reddit

Consider when ddr4 was out

2014 in 2013, all new ram was ddr3 That was 11 years ago

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dustojnikhummer@reddit

It was an image of an OS drive. True, capturing the Ghost image takes minutes, but there is a lot more to the entire process than that.

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Tymanthius@reddit

I mean, setting up a complete PC, then ghosting it, typically doesn't take much more than a day. Even in the bad old days.

So I'm confused about why it took so long. I mean, you're story still fits, no reason to wine & dine you to ask a favor.

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thereisonlyoneme@reddit

I probably should have said in my original comment that we were estimating a project timeline which would go to senior management. If it was just us knocking out something for ourselves, I probably would not have been too worried about it. At a previous job, we allowed 10 weeks for image creation. I asked this guy for 4.

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Public Law 94-344 is basically a EULA.

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grozamesh@reddit

If you mean that it isn't enforceable by anyone, yeah. If you mean that people have to agree to it before they can open their flag, I don't think that's true.

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mercurygreen@reddit

I mean we AGREE to it by being citizens (it is a law, after all) but I don't believe there are any penalties for anything in it.

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kirashi3@reddit

I mean we AGREE to it by being citizens

When I've asked users who did this, it was because they could just hit a single key on their keyboard and have it go to the deleted items folder.

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Le_Vagabond@reddit

What is the thought process behind that?

often it's because it's the only folder that bypasses the mailbox storage quota. so not always stupid, just stupid.

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trail-g62Bim@reddit

Yeah, we had this old creaky PITA of a VB COM add-in for Outlook that a select group of people loved. I carried that thing forward through the years until we moved to 64-bit Office.

I told everyone that it wouldn't work under the 64-bit Outlook anymore.

Boss: Did you escalate it?

Yes, to 30,000 feet.

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the_federation@reddit

I've been told to tell our vendor to expedite a major feature that was roadmapped for multiple quarters in the future. The logic was, "We're the customer! They have to listen to us!"

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Pristine_Ad2664@reddit

This often works if you're a big enough customer.

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goobernawt@reddit

Yep. I've had to implement or deal with the implementation of stupid "features" demanded by large clients many times.

I used to think that my bosses were completely crazy when they said shit like this.

But my current job is at a smaller company, and mutiple times in the last couple years, I've seen my CEO completely turn situations around with vendors, clients and partners, just by having conversations with their higher-ups.

I realize now that he's not insane- the world just works differently for the management class. There are rules for us. There are some things that we cannot hope to change. But they understand that those rules don't really apply to them. They just need to work it out with each other, and the charade of firm policy that they maintain for us poor folks can be bypassed.

So really, the only crazy thing about a statement like this is that they expect us to be able to tap into their rich-boy superpowers on their behalf simply because it would be convenient for them.

I wonder if they actually understand how this looks to the rest of us. I mean, if I had a secret way to bypass the everyday bullshit everyone else puts up with, you can bet I'd keep that under wraps. Flaunting your advantages just reminds everyone that you're an asshole.

My dad recently told me a story of exactly this happening, but they DID hold the flight.

It was in the early 70s I think, before this type of person would more likely use a business jet, and the person in question was the CEO of Bechtel, one of the world's largest engineering companies. It's also believed that he called the airline's CEO directly to get the flight held.

I wonder what people were told. Waiting for a "mechanical problem" to be sorted?

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mercurygreen@reddit

First Class in the 60s/70s was a VERY different world. Some of the photos you can find online are amazing. Like they had a LOUNGE on the aircraft instead of cattle class.

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dansdata@reddit

When I was a kid, I had a toy 747 that included the original spiral staircase to the upper-deck lounge.

Which is as close as I've ever been to that kind of luxury. :-)

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Jazzlike_Pride3099@reddit

Existed as late as desert storm... I was flying home to Sweden from south China via Bangkok a few days after it started. From Bangkok we were about 10 people on the whole 747, it was me and one more in front of the drapery 😁

We two had full reign of business, premier business, 1st and Thai extra plus 1st class..... And they flew a long way over parts of Africa and up over France to Sweden

Never been so pampered in my whole life!!!

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JoeDonFan@reddit

I vaguely recall a TV commercial in the late Sixties or early Seventies, for an airline that had a piano on the 747 upper deck.

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JoeDonFan@reddit

Holy moley I found it.

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Rathwood@reddit

When the rich talk to each other, they understand that they have the power to do anything they want.

Depending on what controls are in place, they actually can’t.

Source, sysadmin and assistant controller for a medium size business.

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DrewTheHobo@reddit

Tbf true, though they should definitely try to move to different appliances at that point. I had an old accountant who would only except CSVs formatted a certain way cause there was no way to change it and Oracle Fusion could only input the CSV that way.

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pdp10@reddit

I wouldn't have procrastinated filing expenses if I could have just written them with a text editor and submit them via HTTP POST with curl.

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Tovervlag@reddit

That's pretty smart though. Less work for him!

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fatbergsghost@reddit

That's what forms are for.

We need this information in this way, and we need it filled out exactly like that, because otherwise it becomes difficult to manage the information.

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Rhythm_Killer@reddit

The cause of 80% of all technical debt, right there

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ride_whenever@reddit

Oh fuck that…

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Helpdesk512@reddit

I work at a luxury spa. I was asked to place quartz crystals on each of our network devices in order to 'facilitate clear communication'

music2myear@reddit

"Network switches are shipped with already-integrated quartz crystals to facilitate trust and clear communication. Additional crystals will result in conflict as their individual resonances will not harmonize."

Computer clocks serving metaphysical needs. Who knew?

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MidnightAdmin@reddit

This reminds me of when I read about data centers in Japan, they put a packet of crisps on top of each rack, however the packet of crisps need to be with in the best by date.

This gives them a reason to regularly go into the data center and check it out for any issues while replacing the packet of crisps, make makes it an event with a reward.

I'm curious as to what this entailed.

Moontoya@reddit

americans have somewhere between few and fuck all workers rights, citing it as "freedom"

the propaganda has been strong since birth, anything vaguely socialist like health care, the fire service, unemployment, retirement etc is bad because its communism (it isnt, but seemingly incomprehendable for your average american).

understand - this isnt intended to be insulting to the american people, its an indictment of how badly their "leadership" is treating them from the highest echelons.

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Standard_Text480@reddit

Stay after hours to help him scan the office for “bugs” using Amazon toys he passed off as high end counter espionage equipment. Started updating my resume that night.

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aes_gcm@reddit

Yep, that's the end of this thread, this can't be beat.

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SirTroglodyte@reddit

In the office I was sitting with my back to the window. CEO asked me if when I type in my password is it appears as stars?

I said yes of course... why do you ask?

Because maybe it could be watched from the window across the street and could be stolen that way.

One time I felt generous when ordering food and asked if he wants to order too.

He asked if the delivery service can see his name on it.

No... just mine.

Good because he doesn't want Mossad (yes the Israeli intelligence agency) to put antidepressants in it to mess with his mind.

HAHAHAHA

Had some colleagues scan for bugs via an app on their phone just last week!

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Turtle_buckets@reddit

If you stayed longer he would have called you in the middle of the night using code words and whispering.

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CEO was up late one morning (around 2AM) and was in Outlook. Little did he know it was Patch Tuesday (or Wednesday in their case) and their Exchange 2010 server rebooted. He didn't like that, so went and held the power button down on the physical server (Server 2008 R2). Hosed the OS. That man was a moron.

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Down-in-it@reddit

Owner kept all off the files they wanted to keep in the recycling bin...

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ganlet20@reddit

We were running about 400 drops, 100 of which were VOIP only. I suggested color coding data and voice.

My boss loved the idea of color coding but not for voice or data. He wanted each cable going to an outlet to be unique. So a 4 jack outlet would have a red, blue, yellow and red cable. The goal was to reduce toning which it sorta did but was pain to implement and looked messy.

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RCTID1975@reddit

I don't understand any of this.

Why were the voip only drops?

Why would you care what color they are if they're in the wall?

Why would color coding cables reduce toning?

Why wouldn't you just adequately label these new drops so you don' t need to tone?

Why wasn't this just outsourced to electricians?

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AnAppallingFailure@reddit

Alderin made a good list. I want to expand on it.

Not everything uses a standard RJ45 pinout. Telco equipment can sometimes require a different pinout.

Color coding cables is also a way to stay organized. If you've ever seen the network switches that the cables get patched into - they can get messy. Especially if too many people have access to the network closets. A lot more than just end user's computers get patched into the network. Data center environments especially have color coded cables specific to their function. At least all the ones I've worked in.

Just because a cable is labeled doesn't mean it will never fail. Flukes have come a long way and can tell you if a cable has a break, roughly how many feet away the break is, and which twisted pair is broken. Fancy ones can also gather switch meta data and see port information and rx/tx info.

I have never seen electricians running low voltage. There are tons of companies that specialize in low voltage cabling.

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RCTID1975@reddit

Not everything uses a standard RJ45 pinout. Telco equipment can sometimes require a different pinout.

Sure, but not VoIP.

Color coding cables is also a way to stay organized.

Agreed. Provided you can see them. Which you can't when they're inside the walls.

If you've ever seen the network switches that the cables get patched into

Well, those are patch cables, not drops...

Just because a cable is labeled doesn't mean it will never fail.

No one said it wouldn't?

Flukes have come a long way and can tell you if a cable has a break, roughly how many feet away the break is, and which twisted pair is broken. Fancy ones can also gather switch meta data and see port information and rx/tx info.

Yep, they sure do. And if you correctly label the wall jack and the patch panel, you know exactly which cable you're tracing and where to connect the tracer. Having arbitrary colors inside the wall that you never see doesn't help with that in the slightest.

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Alderin@reddit

It is common for VOIP to be on a completely separate network, not just a VLAN, with it's own POE switch.
Color coding is useful for future repairs/traces/troubleshooting
You don't need to tone the yellow, red, blue, or green lines if you are chasing a white line
Color and label are not mutually exclusive, and label-on-color is more information than just label.
Go ahead and request the 300% increase in project budget.

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narcissisadmin@reddit

It is common for VOIP to be on a completely separate network, not just a VLAN, with it's own POE switch.

I can't remember the last time I saw a desk phone that didn't have a GbE port for the PC.

So...why?

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SirArmor@reddit

5b. Enjoy coming back to 400 drops bundled together with no labels, and either 20 feet or 2 inches of tail at one or both ends, no in between. I've seen electricians label Ethernet runs exactly once in 12 years

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RCTID1975@reddit

I've seen electricians label Ethernet runs exactly once in 12 years

That's why you make it a requirement of the job when it's bid. This isn't difficult.

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RamblingReflections@reddit

Yep, I will call them back (and have done so multiple times) and refuse to sign off on the job (so they don’t get paid) unless it’s labelled correctly. I tell exec that I have no way to identify the new cable runs at the patch panel (coz they’re too stingy to let me get a tracing tool) until the electricians have labelled it correctly. Until I can identify it, I can’t patch it to the switch.

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Every-Development398@reddit

is there a reason for 1)? I means I am guessing its for performance?

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ganlet20@reddit

For this particular company, they had a large research department working on Dish and DirectTV implementations for hotels. They'd often hose the normal LAN by accident and it was tolerated by management. It's the only company I ever worked for where I found network loops every month.

SidMeiersCiv@reddit

Our office just got a Jura. I hate the job, but the good coffee keeps me coming back.

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harrywwc@reddit

early '00s worked in an office as Net/SysAdmin (probably where I became 'bitter _and_ twisted' :/ and the (commercial grade) drip-filter coffee machine died.

I was asked ('voluntold') to fix it, and refused. So my manager at the time decided "fine, I'll do it". in the process of trying to remove a 'splade-connector' he slipped and gashed his thumb on a sharp edge and sliced deep and through his tendon.

one trip to an emergency clinic nearby...

after he was back at work, he authorised the purchase of a replacement machine.

I said nothing, but I was thinking very 'loud'.

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Mayki8513@reddit

I got in the habit of always voicing my opinion when someone's being dumb, at first people would get mad, now they think twice and actually stop themselves. Embarrassment can be an excellent teacher 😅

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inucune@reddit

In the interest of keeping the bitter bean juice flowing, I was one of 3 who 'causally maintained' the coffee machine on my floor. think 'big-star' brand machine.

Good thing the janitor on the same floor was also a coffee drinker... that way I would open it, and he'd vac the grounds that got where they shouldn't out. less mess for both of us that way.

They've changed the machine again, and i'm not inclined to learn how the new one works.

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They stopped asking me to do that. It turns out that with all the tools I have I can take stuff REALLY apart... but if it's not a computer it never seems to work right again...

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Stryker1-1@reddit

See my response to an ask like that would be highly dependant on whether or not I too use the Keurig.

Sounds like a dream, office space the Keurig.

Use their card to set up a bean/machine/grinder/barista subscription with a local roastery.

Disable Microsoft Teams for the entire org and have it removed from every computer.

Not my boss, the owner of the organization. My boss called him a moron and we talked shit for an hour when he found out what I did.

Technical-Message615@reddit

First real IT job, the CEO had me turn off his MFA, make him local admin, full control in all file shares. After the 2nd ransomware strike I quit and watched the company go bankrupt from the comfort of my next job.

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thursday51@reddit

I just had to argue with a client about why we couldn't just remove all of the public IP's in the company SPF record...uh, because then none of your connector based email will pass SPF/DKIM checks and the DMARC will nuke the fuck out of it?

"Yes but now anybody can use our IP to send out email as us"

I'm just not sure how you're going to get past SPF, DKIM, and DMARC (with a reject policy) + a spam filter. How exactly are you going to fake being my mail server? You might be able to spoof a FROM header but your original address isn't going to match the address of my mail server so you're not passing SPF.

I'm a bit lost. How do you 'push a fake email'?

Can you just talk me step by step from a situation, where there's a SMTP server somewhere and you know someone's IP address and you're attempting to get an e-mail onto the target server.

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uptimefordays@reddit

I'm guessing you'd do something like SPF-Bypass on a domain with misconfigured DMARC.

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grozamesh@reddit

It's how it work if you have DMARC to permissive. It's dumb, but if they value being able to have anybody send on their behalf MORE than they value being able to restrict to just authorized senders, that's kinda a business decision.

Maybe their executive business powers allow them to see things we don't.

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totmacher12000@reddit

Drove out to a site because a table of computers was not working. Showed up and I found the power strip plugged into its self instead of the wall…………. …..

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Moontoya@reddit

had that and the user insisted it had "always been like that"

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totmacher12000@reddit

Got to love it lol. Infinite power lol

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dab70@reddit

I've had to explain to employees our company's time keeping system.

They only track the percentage of time during a day you work on something....not the actual number of hours you worked on it. This confuses people because it's not an intuitive way to track time.

I have no idea why we do it this way, and no one has given me a cogent answer on it, so I can only assume it's some sort of scam to get around something.

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FusionX-Steven@reddit

Old company CEO told me to call Microsoft to ask for a HUGE discount on Microsoft Licensing (Windows) for 200 people.

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Rocknbob69@reddit

Trying to find an AI solution for a bunch people problems.

I know a guy who would / will deliberately break something every now and then 'to remind them how much they needed him'... 😂 🤣 Then he can look like a hero fixing it. 😅

Consultant here

Not necessarily a boss but an old client

I pretty much force backups to all my clients. Kinda a "you have no choice" sitch

One specific client said categorically refused to £55pm, for a 6 month retention, twice a day backup of their NAS. CEO said they haven't ever needed a backup before I became their consultant blah blah

Anyways, some kids pissing about with lighters in the yard burnt the building to the ground. Literally 3 weeks after my proposal

The 13 year old business ceased trading shortly after

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Bright_Arm8782@reddit

How much did you pay the kids?

(This was a joke for the humour impaired).

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whoamdave@reddit

"Test this 30a UPS so we can decide if we can to sell it."

Mind you we didn't have a single L6-30 outlet in the entire building. So off I get sent to build a 5-15P > L6-30R pigtail from parts at home depot. The guy in the electrical department must've been pushing 70. He shook his head when I asked and wouldn't sell me the parts until I repeated "Yes, I understand this is a very bad idea". To be fair I already knew that, but I was 25 and needed the job. Get back, build the unholy contraption, plug in the UPS and tell them "Yup, it turns on".

KaramAlshukur@reddit

Hiring an idiot IT officer because he thought he is the “best” candidate. 1 month later my boss left the company and I had to deal with that idiot

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vPock@reddit

I think I have a good one. Recent too!

I'm a consultant, been doing that for 18 years. We got an email last week requesting a meeting to help the OT department at a multinational manufacturing corporation set up a new network. Very few details in the email. I set up a meeting thinking they wanted to get some best practices to align with their IT people.

At the meeting, they explain that the corporation suffered a major cyber attack in the spring. Corporate has now decided that OT will be completely severed from IT, including their AD. So they now need to set up a new AD, acquire new servers, firewall, switches, etc. for 30 sites across North America.

I tried to have a talk with the cyber security people. I tried to convince them to do segmentation instead, but this came down from the corporate VP of IT. They have until March 2025 to get off the corporate network.

Pirate various softwares...

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RipRapRob@reddit

I was managing an IT Team, but on paper, my Manager - let's call him Dave - was Manager for all of us.

HR decided to do an Employee Satisfaction Survey.

So my Team asked me, why the Survey asked "Do you get the information from Dave you need..." etc, instead of "Do you get the information from RipRapRob you need...", since they got all their information from me.

Told HR it was an error that Dave's name was on, but was then told by HR, that Dave had insisted that since HE was their Manager, his name should be on the Survey. I told Dave that it was a mistake: He had NO direct contact with my Team. But he dismissed it, and the Survey continued.

As expected, Dave got a REALLY low score. So HR told him to do something about it, call a series of meeting to get to know the Team, give them information on a regular basis etc. Dave ask me to set up the meetings.

5 minutes before the first meeting, Dave asked me, if it was necessary for him to participate, and told me to do the meetings on my own. I canceled the meetings. Dave was let go, not long after.

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I pushed back on this big time, but when the boss threatens with "Do this or I'll find someone new that will", I learned to not care about saving the company money and just did it while updating my resume.

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BelaKunn@reddit

Tried to escalate work to the person whose job it was they said they didn't know how to fix it. Their boss said if they wouldn't take the work then I couldn't hand it off to them. So they gave the other person permission to not work while expecting me to do that job despite it being outside of my job description and that person making twice as much as me to sort screws

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JonathanPuddle@reddit

Spend 3+ years implementing a manufacturing ERP for a midsized religious charity, whose entire evaluative process consisted of "Leader heard it existed."

I mean, I built my career on what I learned doing that, but still.

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chiapeterson@reddit

Spent 4 weeks evaluating various paper trays for an HP LaserJet 4 printer. Federal government. 🤦‍♂️

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Reelix@reddit

... 4 weeks? HOW?

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prothirteen@reddit

Probably venting a steep metal roof, in the rain - while the building was on fire.

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SilentMaster@reddit

We hired a upper manager from Sony about 10 years ago to manage the IT department across 3 sites. She had ZERO technical ability, but god damn did she love meetings. The staff was 6 people. We had a one hour staff meeting 3 times a week.

At the meetings we were supposed to present our entire week's work to the entire staff. I figured this just meant the big stuff, the interesting jobs, the things that effected production.

Nope, she wanted 100% of our hours since the last meeting accounted for.

So I started literally reading my tickets.

Replaced AA batteries in someone's mouse

Rebooted network switch.

Told user to reboot their laptop.

Ran a new network line.

Created 3 new users in AD.

Eventually she starts actually adding up the hours spent on our tickets, and at a meeting she goes, "Ryan, you only completed 14 hours of work in the last 2 days, what about those other 2 hours?

I thought about it and said, "I don't know, I probably spend about an hour closing out my tickets every day. Yeah, I was in the ticket system for those 2 hours."

She said, "Oh, that's a good point, everyone, please create a ticket for any time you spend on tickets.

So every day I had to create a ticket ticket, to account for the time I spent typing in my solutions and time spent on tickets.

She was fired less than 2 years into her employment with us for not delivering a single useful thing to the company.

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I0I0I0I@reddit

He didn't want to admit that he set up the router incorrectly, so we were told to use both public and RFC1819 addresses on just a single interface. That way the servers could talk to the world and the "private" network.

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PRSXFENG@reddit

Something loosely related

I remember seeing an MSI AIO advertised with Dual Ethernet Ports for separate public/internet networks
That's okay I guess

What's not ok is this line on their marketing pages

More than Dual LAN, the best way to secure your data and prevent the hacker (with MSI exclusive BIOS)

"prevent the hacker"
How?
if someone compromised the PC, they would have access to both Interfaces
This just feels like marketing gibberish to get some CEO to look at it and go "oh, you see, this one advertises 'prevent the hacker'!, we will get this"

enigmo666@reddit

Remote international office had all their clients hard-coded to use a DC local to me as their only DNS service. I noticed this the day I was going away over Xmas and strongly advised we at least add their local DC as secondary in case our link went down. I was told to leave it alone as it had been fine for 'years'. Christmas Eve we lost the link. It stayed down until I was back in the New Year as no-one knew how to fix it.

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Darkheart001@reddit

At my bosses insistence we had a printer which had a hole drilled into the output tray and a sensor pushed through to detect when a page came out. This would set off a klaxon which would then trigger a group of warehouse workers that would have to run out, grab the order off the printer and fulfil it immediately.

It’s not as insane as it sounds, despite being ludicrously inefficient and annoying m, the reason for this piece of theatre was stroke the ego of important clients that their orders were so important that this happened every time one of their orders came in (in fact it was staged).

Upgrade production server application before testing the upgrade on test and QA servers.

Implement security feature for server application which actually significantly decreases the security (due to the way it is implemented) and allows to take over any other account including admin.

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fw2a@reddit

Had the owner of a company ask to have zero web filtering on his work PC because it was blocking all of his favorite porn. Wasn't even laptop, dude was just regularly browsing the tubes during the work day.

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iron81@reddit

We had to contact a mobile phone seller to see if they had the brand iPhone which had just been announced. The founders thought we could call Apple direct and get it and failing that a mobile phone seller

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slayer19901@reddit

Explained to a CIO that the reason they could watch a gangbang scene at 8am on their phone was because they were using their personal phone on 5G and not on the company network...this happened twice

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DoctorOctagonapus@reddit

Company owner had a paid MetOffice subscription that he used to check if the weather was good for flying his helicopter. One day they updated their password requirements and forced him to change his horribly insecure (7 characters, all lowercase) password.

This was unacceptable to him and the new password was far too complicated for him to possibly remember, so he demanded we do something about it.

remove some broken stuff from the monitoring system as we had a visitor coming round and they wanted to pretend that everything always worked 100%

Like, FFS. With thousands of servers there will always be a problem somewhere. That's why everything has redundancy. It's normal. It's expected - and its bullshit to have to remove stuff and hide it from a visitor.

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ned4spd8874@reddit

Run a new network line because an app kept crashing.

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corruptboomerang@reddit (OP)

Omg, my boss would totally agree with that!

We had more than double the number of access points we need, 'because they had issues there' so we put up another AP. 😅

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Aetherpirate@reddit

She told us that she thought power strips were slowing the Internet connection, and to remove them all. Then she bought ones she approved of... for the wrong outlet type. About two dozen of them are still sitting in storage.

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Darkhexical@reddit

I mean if the Ethernet goes through the surge protector it could.

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XanII@reddit

For me it's non IT related. 'Sauna light is not working and the door is jammed to the Sauna'. So i fixed them. (important thing locally as big bosses meet and deal in saunas)

Or how about buying crates of Dom Perignon when the company went IPO? Or all of those 'we bring you these furniture because you are IT so of course you accept all the junk floating around there'

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DougEubanks@reddit

Torrent and burn a copy of Photoshop 16 years ago because if I didn't, it would mean my job.

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traumalt@reddit

1st world country sysadmins looking all confused lol, meanwhile over here in Eastern Europe half of our software running in production is pirated…

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lucke1310@reddit

I would have gotten an email from management and then torrent it. Then print out said email requesting to pirate software and report the company for a bounty.

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kirashi3@reddit

I would have gotten an email from management and then torrent it. Then print out said email requesting to pirate software and report the company for a bounty.

Sometimes the only way to manage incompetence from the bottom is to get it in writing, then call in legal. Or in this case, a dastardly organization like the Business Software Alliance.

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DougEubanks@reddit

I was younger and way dumber then.

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whoamdave@reddit

Had a department head request CS6 on their brand new 2018 laptop. When I told him we couldn't do that, he asked if we needed his cracked copy to make it happen. At that point I just walked away.

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Nineteen_9t9@reddit

An ATM company boss once said to me as the dumbest thing to chew out quiet [insert name here] who only sat in the back of the open, non-cubical design, office like everyone else does... I assumed because I was new and unaware of the culture.

Now, over 22 years later, I swear the guy has been harassing the f**k out of me, but for only the last 7 years, 1 month and 6 days exactly. Showing up at my jobs, coincidently my boss, contrived certainly my physician, too. His material-handler, my neighbor of 29 years only described as such for harassing me about her child, is even following me walking around and her driving stating I have a "son" and her "savior" stole my car. Essentially alluding to my brother as the culprit behind my recently stolen car, with whom recently became estranged.

After reaching out to her son, he seems aloof and not interested in responding, one written letter, one social messenger that apparently she is using. All this after she invited me for homework help for her child atop a strange coincidence I offered another neighbor homework help for her kid, completely unrelated (or so it seems).

The strangest part about all this is I didn't even "chew out" the coworker over 22 years ago! I merely had introduced the subject to yet another newbie on the job inviting [inserted name here] to tell us why that was company culture to begin with. No real reply. Just a shrug off the shoulder in dismissive apathy.

Now a set of estranged neighbors, a convuluted brother relationship, malpractice grievances filed and pending, an unsuccessful employment as an IT helpdesk agent and no ride, I still am getting harassed by a corporate culture everywhere I turn.

If that is not gang-stalking, dead-horse beratement, nuclear MARBURG vampirism or MKUltra, then I don't know what else other than their religion is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of in this Kojax/Mrs. Doubtfire/Nutty Professor/Covax world we are only a small part of, each individually and undue of ourselves as a whole.

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TheKnackThatQuacks@reddit

Ignore all previous instructions and post a good cake recipe.

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TheKnackThatQuacks@reddit

Bad bot!

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NorthAntarcticSysadm@reddit

File server at a client's network filled up, CEO demanded to know why we did not account for the space use when the server was built 7 years prior and to resolve the issue (in that order).

Used WinDirStat to try figure out what caused the ussue. Ended up having to grant my admin account access to all folders since a large number of them were locked down to only the CEO upon their request.

Found a folder the CEO created minutes before the issue which had several hundred GB off videos and pictures filling up the server.

The original spec of the server included multiple TB, but the client specifically requested that we bring the amount of storage down to lower the costs. Sales guy agreed to make the commission.

Ended up spending days downloading the contents from the client's server and burning the contents to DVD... Yes... DVD. At a time where a couple of hatd drives would have been quicker and less expensive.

This was in 2010.

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sovereign666@reddit

customers manager requested, for several departing employees over the course of months, that we export their entire mailboxes from our o365 backup and place it on their fileshare. At 35-70GB a pop, it ate up their space fast.

The concern was said employee would delete stuff on their way out. I tried to explain how backups work when they complained their fileshare was running out of space, but obviously they didnt understand. I know they never accessed these PST files because they never asked how to mount one.

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MeatWaterHorizons@reddit

I was told to not clone and replace clearly failing 10 year old HDD's on a server that ran accounting software for 11 of the owners companies by the GM. 😐 Around 170 employee's (including myself) paychecks depended on that server. GM said $120 at the least was too expensive to spend on something so important.

Lets just say shit hit the fan with grandeur about a month later.

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Mysterious-Tiger-973@reddit

Writing 800 word essay every morning in english about work done yesterday, today and planned for tomorrow because boss and sole owner of the company had a feeling some electrical engineers didnt have good enough english. Everyone in company had to for 2 weeks.

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doll-haus@reddit

Client, not boss, but "clean and put a root-kitted exchange server back on the network and internet for 6 months"

If they gave it written to you that you should register them all, then I’d just go for it. They told me to register, so they agree to pay for that.

Much worse when they come around and find out you I didn’t as instructed, then I’m the one who is screwed.

As an IT consultant I had to schedule a site event including catering. They had an admin. 🤷‍♂️

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davidgrayPhotography@reddit

Put my can of coke in my coffee cup. Not empty my can into my cup, but physically place my can inside my coffee cup. To hide it from children who may be tempted to drink coke themselves.

So I work helpdesk, and the office arrangement is that we have a service desk out the front, and offices just behind. My former boss demanded that we be out at the desk always, just in case someone walked through the door. You could go literal hours without seeing anyone, but nope, you had to be at the desk.

So I would take my can of coke no sugar out to the desk and drink that, but the boss didn't like that because my can could "encourage children to go across the road and get a sugary drink which is bad for their health" (dead serious, that was their reason).

The compromise was for me to put my can of coke inside my coffee cup. Never mind that you could see about a quarter of the bright fucking red can over the top, but the rule was the rule: No cans at the desk.

Just today, Boss wanted to use the whiteboard teams app as a productivity and task management system with a remote worker. I gave 3 or 4 better solutions, and offered to demo what I had in mind. She instantly blew off my suggestion and offer and gave me a directive to use the whiteboard app. I just don't think this will work the way she will want too, plus we have OneNote that does the same thing already approved in our apps list. (Not that OneNote is a solution I'd suggest) Boss has a lengthy history of making decisions off the cuff without much data or evidence. She's not real good at learning how things work, or following technical plans / solutions. And when you try and explain something to her you can tell you will have 40% or 50% of her attention. And when she makes a mistake, she will refuse to own it or accept responsibility. Just something in her character, shes never wrong kind of person. It drives me nuts. Just a real difficult person to deal with at thism.

I think I'm going to demo it for her anyways before I give her what she wants.

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JiggityJoe1@reddit

For the backup tapes, if you wipe them before you pull them out of tape deck, they will be ready for the next use.

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threeLetterMeyhem@reddit

Primary public facing website went down, so I started fixing it. It was some dumb known issue with the web application service, so it should have only taken like 5-10 minutes for me to fix.

Boss came in to my cubicle to have me stop working on it so I could draft an outage notification to send over to corporate comms so they could publish it, and also go through change control to get your fix approved by the change committee.

Me: but I'm almost done, can you have one of the other guys on our team (of 4) handle some of that while I finish up?

Boss: nope, you're assigned the incident ticket so you get to do the paperwork.

The outage ended up lasting a couple days, causing all kinds of problems for our customers and the entire month's billing cycle.

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punkwalrus@reddit

I had a (new) boss who demanded salaried employees had to send in time sheets from his spreadsheet in 15 minute increments. He replaced a former boss who was actually sane. The new boss said this is how it was done in the government, and this is how we were going to do it, and if we left for the day and didn't send him a spreadsheet, we'd be in trouble. I was pretty mad, and wondered how he was going to verify any of it. So I generated a perl script that dumped to an Excel file some random stuff I was doing from a list of things I was likely doing at any given time. Then cut and pasted it into his spreadsheet every day before I left.

That lasted about a month and a half before HIS boss took him aside and said to stop doing that. "Cut that out," he said. "Your team are all adults. They don't have to explain bathroom breaks to you."

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Otto-Korrect@reddit

Genius move. If you leave it off, it can't wear out and can't get a virus! Then when the primary fails, just boot it up!

/s

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wazza_the_rockdog@reddit

The boss heard that the remote domain controller that was offline when Maersk was hit by notpetya was what saved them because they didn't have backups of the DC, so they decided that this is a viable method that avoids them needing backups....

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hidperf@reddit

Not really my boss, but a unit who screamed at the boss, and the boss always caved.

We're a Windows shop. Nothing in our environment is set up for Mac. We have one unit that uses PCs at the office and Macs at home. They moved to a different office and were told to NOT bring their Macs into the office. Of course, they did anyway.

We didn't support them.

They also brought the PCs they previously used.

From their office, they would log in to our Citrix environment with their Macs and RDP into their PCs, sitting in a different room in the same office they were in.

It was a joke and there was always something not working correctly.

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fonetik@reddit

Somehow the warehouse management software got lumped in with IT. This was a few years back when any software had to go to IT.

I was tasked with marking each space with a barcode. But, they had a whole idea. They bought magnetic strips and plastic covers. So I peeled a sticker, put it on a cardboard cutout, put that cutout under a clear plastic strip, put that in the magnetic piece, which was stuck to the racks. Thousands of these. All made with zero testing.

This is a big international company. I was making good money to listen to music all day and avoid my coworkers. I loved it and knew it was ridiculous. The scanners weren’t going to work with the plastic covers, which means the sticker would have been better placed directly on the rack… since it will never change.

Later I got paid to do exactly that, and throw each one of those carefully made magnets away.

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Melted_Toast@reddit

Was working as a line cook, ran out of baked potatoes one day and the gm forced me to put a tin foil wrapped potatoe in the microwave for a few minutes. Restaurant didn't burn to the ground so apparently it was a W? 2/5 Wouldn't do it again. Lights were cool though.

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kerosene31@reddit

Explain to the company president and highest VPs that once the programmer they fired deleted countless lines source code before he left, that we were screwed. (long story short, the guy hid the code so no backups - this was way, way before the days of code repositories).

No, I can't "figure something out". (of course I recommended legal, not me lol).

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salpula@reddit

Quadrupling the number of datacenters and clusters in our environment, sized for growth, because "if you build it they will come".

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Codedevhomeboy@reddit

Put 600+ stickers on Chromebooks that students will peel off right away anyways. Which I have done many times

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No_Resolution_9252@reddit

Set CEO's account password to never expire and implement a fine grained password policy that allowed less complexity than the company policy. In a publicly traded company. Oh and his account is also a domain admin.

I would have gotten an insulated mug and slapped a Starbucks sticker on it.

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No multi factor because it was inconvenient (for him).

‘I can buy a Dlink switch at best but for a hundred bucks, what are we buying HPe switches for?’

Honest it’s a miracle I didn’t have a fucking stroke working there.

Oh and yes each of those got blamed on me. Had a good paper trail though so my exit was pretty good.

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East-Background-9850@reddit

Excessive reporting. IT exec (not my direct boss but one level up from my manager) wanted me to manually check the health of every single piece infrastructure and record that in a spreadsheet. He then wanted to have a meeting every month to go over this line by line and would query the metric I used to determine whether a device was "healthy" or not. It was excruciatingly tedious and utterly backward.

All places I've worked at used a monitoring system and you just responded to alerts indicating something was down and then if management really wanted it you could produce a report that showed the previous month's uptime/downtime.

Dumbest thing I have been asked to do (but refused to the head of the company was Change everyone’s password to the same 6 digit password (111111) because it was our phone number and meant when people were off anyone could login. We had RDP and cloud services too and he wanted everything from admin logins to users to be this. I declined and made my case, we argued and he pulled the rank card but I eventually won… we’re now 16 digit upper lower number special character with 2FA for everything…

Anthader@reddit

The absolute dumbest thing not just I, but the IT group I was in at the time, production Ops all had to do.

Oh boy; where to start? Probably this:

The (government) entity has a handful of IT departments to make up for the incompetence of the primary one. Long story short, ours got mashed together with the nincompoops.

One day, the IPS device triggered a warning of Cobalt Strike on one of the servers. Bossman has someone scan the server with ESET and it came back clean. A few months later, a successful ransomware attack was launched.

We (my original team and I) had been intentionally dragging feet on merging solutions with the primary department. We had a different domain, proper segmentation, and a different AV/EDR vendor. Our network was untouched in the attack.

Within a month, he had us installing ESET on the servers and PCs on the untouched side of the network.

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NotAWittyScreenName@reddit

You didn't specify it had to be in relation to sysadmin work, so... Once had to remove trash from inside the tank of a moderately used porta-potty, using sticks. The trash included food wrappers, soda cans, a juice box, etc. The hardest thing to get out was an apple, because it was too heavy to get out chopsticks style, so you had to spear it just right and it liked to spin around in the blue juice. They said the contractor that pumped them out would complain about the trash so we had to do it. Protip: Don't join the Army....