Don't want to listen to IT, a great way to get fired.
Posted by DerekWildstar1@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 89 comments
I'm sure this has been brought up before, but I'll share a fun story from about 10 years ago.
Working in a medium sized accounting firm in the big city. Had an auditor who thought she knew everything about IT, simply because her husband worked for RIM (Blackberry). She was originally from Houston, and I don't care much for folks from down there. If you are a Houstonian, don't take too much offense. I'm sure you hate North Texas folks too.
Anyways, she walks in with a laptop and says it will not boot up. Sure enough, got message that cannot find OS. Give her a loaner lappy. Now, we encrypt our laptops at that time with McAfee Endpoint Encryption. Pulled out the decrypting software, and began to decrypt for the rest of the day to get SafeBoot off.
Get it off right before 5pm, an sure enough, getting SMART errors. Called her into the IT office next day and told her that her hard drive was failing. Also discovered she was not saving files to the network drive. Her excuse? "Ugh, VPN is too slow, so I save them to the hard drive." "Yeah, I know it can be slow, but firm policy is you save everything to the network."
I give her back lappy and tell her to move those files to the server, with the understanding that she will be using the loaner laptop for awhile, and she needs to bring it back once the files are synced. After about 5 minutes, I got a hunch something wasn't right. Go to her cube, she's friggin gone.
- Left firm with an unencrypted laptop.
- She works with people's SSNs for heaven's sake!
- Drive is in imminent threat of mechanical failure.
Next day she arrives, says machine will not load Windows. Yep, SMART failure has reached it's zenith. Drive is toast. Explained that to her. Next day, one of the partners asks me what happened. I explain all this crap. Found out she didn't sync a friggin thing to the server, and now the firm must write down an additional 60 hours of time that is not billable, because all the work has to be recreated.
By the next day, she was gone. A senior auditor with tenure in the firm.
Lesson here: Not listening to IT can get you fired.
Id10t_techsupport@reddit
I had a similar issue. My user spend department $ and sent the drive off to a data recovery company. If I remember correctly the user didn’t utilize the company back up software to be able to recover their data. Another story different user used department $ to purchase a large ssd and copy twice all of their data which took up the entire new ssd
meitemark@reddit
That sounds like a solid backup at another location to me. One is on the desktop and the other one is in "New folder - (copy 338)".
Strazdas1@reddit
if they are two physical separate drives it is a backup that will protect from drive failure. There are files i triplicate on different physical drives as a matter of course (and also have cold backups).
Kai-Arne@reddit
While technically true, one spark or drop kan kill both drives, and this might give the user a false sense of security.
Strazdas1@reddit
Thats why i also keep cold backups, but its still much better than everything on one drive. The person was just doing what ammounts to manual raid here.
viviswetdream@reddit
Sounds like another classic case of "tech-savvy" user striking a mile-a-minute to avoid syncing headaches…
HoochieKoochieMan@reddit
Awesome cautionary tale.
My guess is that she was already a thorn in the sides of many others, and this was a pretty big last straw. But still - always heed the techies!
DerekWildstar1@reddit (OP)
I got that impression too. What I didn't really understand is writing down 60 hours when billing out at $400 per hour, eats into Partner profits.
Mess with people's money, you mess with their emotions. CANNED.
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
Whatever is being done can possibly be reused again later (templated) so it might have cost more time. Either way, when someone complains that the VPN is “soooo sloooow”, in this case they should also think
It’s just more billable time.
If it’s so slow, why not work working a local copy, then save it to the network when done? If the system is encrypted, you’re not risking things. There are ways. I always want my data to be somewhere safe when it’s at rest though, so if I’m not working on it, it needs to be in a backed up location, and if I am working on it, I still want a network copy.
Some people will do anything to justify the way they work, and assume that problems will never come their way. Bad idea.
Eraevn@reddit
Had a user just the other day complain of low storage, had over 100 GB of files saved locally. Had to explain if that drive dies, thats all lost. Luckily not strolling around with vital info that could be lost, but damn, onedrive isnt that hard to figure out.
Also had someone today that hasn't rebooted their machine in months, had some 40 GB of update data waiting on a reboot to clear out. Dude was just leaving 10 excel sheets open to work on and a stupid amount of tabs, with the excuse of being a luddite lol these are the people running the projects that earn our paycheck and its a damn terrifying realization that its in those hands.
Strazdas1@reddit
Be careful with OneDrive. We had issues with it where it would set itself as the only copy (and delete local files) then when the person left the company and got market as deactivated it would just delete the files with no recovery. Lost quite a few peoples data that way that left people replacing them having to recreate everything from scratch. Our official IT advice now is to NOT use OneDrive.
Eraevn@reddit
That is a good point, while we will kidnap the exchange mailboxes, we tend to assume that any documents saved to onedrive are kept in a shared folder for each group, but my company is one where we need it to bite us firmly on the ass to force such things. My boss's official stance is "we have laid out what should be done, its on the department heads to ensure their minions are following protocol"
Im sure it will bite us eventually, but back before we got forced into the MS365 environments they still sucked at using file shares appropriately lol
Strazdas1@reddit
File sharing is inconvenient, so people will just store locally until they get bit in the ass personally.
Eraevn@reddit
Truth, when we did incorporate OneDrive we had a few people throw fits about it and be like "why cant we do this the same way we always do" and I had to corporate speak the equivalent of "you didnt freaking use that either nitwit now stop whining!" Lol everyone needs that lesson at least once, for me it was failing to ensure a vm backup before upgrades, and never again!
Cpt_plainguy@reddit
After about the 3rd or 4th month of people leaving things open so the computer didnt reboot to get updates. We instituted a gpo that forced reboots at something like 1am for updates, or the next time the laptop came online in case of laptop users
Strazdas1@reddit
hey at least you were smart and did it at 1AM. Here i am working at 10 AM when a popup shows up telling me the system will reboot for update in 5 minutes. No choice to cancel or delay. Why cant it just wait till 5 PM when ill give it a shutdown and it can install all it wants?
Cpt_plainguy@reddit
Well if you shutdown, it can't install! Gotta just lock the machine and let it do its thing. Also if it's a laptop its either on auto update, or it missed the update command that probably came from the server over the weekend/over night when the machine was off
Strazdas1@reddit
It installs updates on shutdown anyway.
BlueJaysFeather@reddit
My job now does this and I still don’t get the auto updates (wfh day messes with the network or something), so I still end up having to manually do it. Fortunately I’m in IT so I have the access and knowledge to click “update” but I shudder to think how many professors take their laptops home on the designated update day and just never get updates lol
Peacemkr45@reddit
You go as long as 4 months? That's insane. we go 2 to 3 weeks then force reboots for security updates.
NightGod@reddit
You get 8 days on our machines. At 7 days it starts popping up warnings and then at 8 days it says you have an hour to finish up what you're doing because it's going to reboot regardless
Eraevn@reddit
That sounds like something to be implemented Monday lol
Cpt_plainguy@reddit
It 100% saved my sanity because I didn't have to chance people down for reboots. I think I had set it up to allow them to postpone it for a week, then it was unskippable and gave them like 5 or 10min to save all their open documents and stuff
Plus_Drawing3818@reddit
Again and again, I see the assumption Jeremy that not knowing or worrying about computers, equals being the worst at your job. Broaden your view!
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
Equally terrifying, always has been
Garriga@reddit
100 GB is not that much with a HDD Or SDD that has TB of nonvolatile memory, or even 250 GB.
cleanup disk space, defrag clear browsing history and temp files, clear cache, and reboot. if it is still slow, check the your network bandwidth. If you are running a server,, scan traffic and collect IP addresses, see what's cooking.
Eraevn@reddit
He had 16gb left, 100 was just local files that had no business being saved locally lol
meitemark@reddit
"I don't care if those cat pictures are important to your mental health and you want them close, cat pictures should ONLY be saved on the caturday server, not on your computer."
Strazdas1@reddit
A simple robocopy script that runs once a week backing up the data to networked drive will save so much headache. Just run it and watch the directory tree fly by.
gimpwiz@reddit
60 x $400 = $24k of billable hours. But of course, the actual vs opportunity cost to the company is significantly less, it'll be some thousands of dollars of labor. It could cost even less if they tell her that she's gonna be working extra hours to make up for it, and presumably she's salaried so it wouldn't be hours she's getting paid extra for.
Most (most) white collar professionals wouldn't get fired over a mistake that cost a few grand... unless it's a constantly repeating problem, or unless they've done a lot to piss people off, or unless they're in the wrong place at the wrong time (company looking to make cuts.)
Strazdas1@reddit
The actual reality: 60 unpaid overtime hours.
NightGod@reddit
You're also forgetting the pretty big security violation of leaving with an unencrypted drive. That would get you in more trouble than the dying hard drive at most places
gimpwiz@reddit
Good point mate
grauenwolf@reddit
That's not how the math works. The partner pays for every minute of labor even if the company gets free overtime.
This is something that annoys me a lot. I have sat on the bench for months waiting for a partner to decide whether or not to fund an internal project.
gimpwiz@reddit
Well, color me confused. I may not understand something about the partner-company relationship.
grauenwolf@reddit
I've been in the racket for a decade and it still confuses me from time to time.
The best way to think of it is that each partner operates like they are their own company. And they love squeezing money out of each other.
Diz7@reddit
I worked for a chartered accounting firm whose server hard drive I resurected from the dead twice, and they didn't under why I wanted to spend $1k on a tape backup system until I pointed out that if we lose just a week of data, that's 400 hours of billable labour down the drain.
Teknikal_Domain@reddit
Yeah but, but. That's $1k of CAPEX which isn't in the budget. 400 hours of operational loss, well, that's just loss, nobody could have predicted that!
Strazdas1@reddit
Real event: "The server just crashed, so if you had anything on the networked drive youll have to recreate that on your own. Stay at work longer if you have to." There was not even a though for overtime pay. Luckily the data got recovered 3 days later so none of this was needed.
Strazdas1@reddit
Its always the secretary hiding all the documents under her desk :D
sonryhater@reddit
Lawyers are the cheapest fucks on the planet when it comes to IT. All of them are shortsighted morons
lokis_construction@reddit
Not just IT. They are cheap in every way.
lost_tacos@reddit
Not cheap, greedy. Early in my career, I worked IT for small law firms. Any expense comes out of the partners' profits. They would complain that the new el cheapo computers in the office would not perform as good as their high-end personal computers at home.
radelix@reddit
The mantra for my team is "don't wee in the cheerios of your service team". Leaving with a non compliant laptop after being told is a moderate to pretty moderate wee.
protogenxl@reddit
Had a few of these in my career.
When Windows 7 was released I was able to make the case "offline files" was "ready for business use" so user folders were redirected to the server, offline files auto enabled and local disk drives were hidden from explorer. We implemented the change as part of a hardware refresh. We knew who the problem children were going to be because of zero size personal folders on the server. (They got their own shelving unit)
When the tickets came in "I can't find my local drive, I can't find my files"
Strazdas1@reddit
i always work locally and then robocopy to the network. Tell me you never tried to use remote files for work if you dont think they are significantly slower.
alcoholismisfun@reddit
I remember reading this same story on Reddit a few years ago, thought “that’s fucking weird”, but thankfully it’s the same OP. I thought I was losing my marbles for a second there.
AssclownJericho@reddit
you mean op is plagiarising himself? GET THE PITCH FORKS!
FeeIsRequired@reddit
And the tar! Don’t forget the tar for god’s sake!
Optimal-Condition803@reddit
Hold up, who's got the feathers?
afcagroo@reddit
In this economy? Best we can do is Styrofoam packing peanuts.
UnabashedVoice@reddit
Forks, Elmer's glue, and packing peanuts. Got it.
Sciuruzz@reddit
Hope they are the nature friendly ones!
porpoiseoflife@reddit
We need to dig the ferrets out of the packing peanuts first. And you know how hard that can be.
HMS_Slartibartfast@reddit
So you can glue the Ferrets to OP and save the packing material for later?
anubisviech@reddit
Sounds reasonable.
UnabashedVoice@reddit
Oh absolutely! Bonus: they'll partially melt into the glue, being water-soluble.
Fun fact: you can also repurpose/reuse Styrofoam by melting it in acetone and casting it into your desired shape (don't use plastic for your molds unless it's HDPE, PP, or PTFE), then letting the solvent boil off. You can use aluminum foil, but it sticks to the polystyrene; HDPE can be heat welded with a soldering iron.
Algaean@reddit
Just coming!
Herb_Derb@reddit
He did mention he was sure it's been brought up before
alcoholismisfun@reddit
Aye, I guess I thought that meant “I’m sure something like this has been discussed before”, not that OP had posted this same story in the past. As I was reading it I thought “there’s no way this has happened to two people, even down to the 60 hours”.
When I realised it was OP I wanted to kiss him for giving me my sanity back.
DerekWildstar1@reddit (OP)
If I could be your mental fitness coach, I’m here to help out brother. I’m a Leeds United supporter so you know I’m totally stable when it comes to mental health.lol
DerekWildstar1@reddit (OP)
Yes, I posted it in /sysadmin, but they shut it down saying "wrong forum". I just recently came back to reddit.
alcoholismisfun@reddit
Yeah, the sysadmin sub is strange, you need to cosplay that sysadmins are in the trenches at Verdun, fighting an incessant war between end users and management, or your post will be deleted.
Good post though, mate.
DerekWildstar1@reddit (OP)
Yeah, sysadmin sub I find a bit strange to interact with indeed.
Loko8765@reddit
Well, your story was good enough to be remembered, so you can feel good about that.
Garriga@reddit
why not not chkdsk or repartitions the drive? If it was a HDD you could pull the data l with a SATA dock, maybe ? if it is an SDD, She would need to microwave it or piss on the drive to damage it that bad.
When you say network drive: you mean : cloud, right? who still uses a share network drive or "shared area?". If you are storing data that valuable, you might want to think about a cloud migration.
But Whatever works, I guess...
DerekWildstar1@reddit (OP)
In the early 2000s, SSDs were not common in computers and still we were using HDD. The SATA Dock is a great idea, but in this case the network drive was housing a program where the files were synced to over VPN. That was the point of having VPN, because if someone was needing to get at a file, others could see who had it currently "checked out", and of course, work is being updated in realtime.
As for the cloud aspect, cloud computing was just coming on the scene, but this company that used this Accounting Software did not have a cloud option.
Today's generation of IT Professionals have a lot of things that were not around for many of us that have been at this job for 20 years. It's been great to see the progression to the cloud, but you might be surprised that file servers are still just as relevant today as they were back then.
somethinghelpful@reddit
10 years ago network drives were common as “cloud” aka “providers network drives made available through internet” wasn’t readily available.
NightGod@reddit
Well, cloud was plenty available in 2015, they just didn't have a lot of penetration into corporate environments yet
somethinghelpful@reddit
No matter cloud presence or not, it’s still spinning disks in someone’s data center storing the data. Local or cloud, as long as the IT team is performing backups and maintenance correctly, it’s safer than a local disk.
NightGod@reddit
I was just commenting on "wasn't readily available"
weezeface@reddit
“I have a blanket dislike of people from an entire area based on nothing about the person in particular” is a pretty weird take to have.
Good_Texan@reddit
Not when you are from Texas. I’m a fifth generation Houstonian and agree with the sentiment. My favorite football team is whoever is playing the Cowboys! 🤣
ScrewWorkn@reddit
I think you mean “not following corporate policy” can get you fired.
DerekWildstar1@reddit (OP)
Well, there’s that too. However, as the IT person and I’m telling you to your face, “your hard drive is about to fail” you don’t have to know a lot about technology to know that you probably should go rectify the situation immediately.
So I guess it’s twofold in this case
Garriga@reddit
Dude...anything can get you fired in the US
NightGod@reddit
But not all of the firings are safe from unemployment claims
kenny71406@reddit
I know company specific internal IT support policies are different from company to company, but I would have never handed an end user back an unencrypted laptop. If I decrypted it, it was now my responsibility to keep it physically secure in a locked area (our IT support office had a restricted access lab for such situations).
I would have recovered the data and copied it to the network share myself.
Its been over 10 years since I worked with McAfee full disk encryption, but we had a bootable CD from McAfee that would decrypt on the fly and had network card drivers so we could boot the CD, map a network drive and then copy data from the hard drive to the network.
Ontrack also got a lot of our business to recover data when the drive failed
After data loss happening enough times we got the company to invest in an automated online cloud based backup solution. Everyone's hard drive was securely backed up encrypted to a cloud system all the time automatically, no interaction from the user needed. This fixed everything.
MoneyTreeFiddy@reddit
Didny8u ever ask her about her husband's RIM jobs?
DerekWildstar1@reddit (OP)
I was going to circle back to that, because with this person it was just "the tip" of the iceberg.
Plus_Drawing3818@reddit
We had our entire IT team replaced last time they tried to force updates on a Wednesday afternoon just to piss off the Head of Manufacturing, including a new IT head
AshleyJSheridan@reddit
There's a middle ground to working locally. I used to work at a media agency, and the designers were all working with pretty large files (easily over 1GB each, often many GB - as a developer these files were not fun to work with). When various autosave features were enabled, working on the network was just not tenable for anyone. The designers couldn't easily be segmented into their own network as people across the entire company needed to be able to access their work, and syncing massive files, multiplied out by dozens of designers (and this was over a decade ago) was just not viable. So, they would edit locally, and then only save back to the network once they had reached any kind of particular point (e.g. a milestone, end of day, meeting point, etc)
However, seems like the target of OPs story was solely working locally, which is obviously a terrible idea.
joe_attaboy@reddit
I would need a calculator to count all the users I wish this would have happened to when I was working.
Candid_Ad5642@reddit
Reminds me
Waaaay back, early 2000 ish
I was working in a company that developed and sold software for collection agencies
One day we got a call from an old but small client, essentially a one person agency. They had some weird issues, and one of our seniors took a good look at the issues. Cleaned up the mess, but noted that there were signs the HDD was failing, and told the client to make sure their backup systems were good.
Fast forward a few weeks, the HDD fails,and we get a frantic call.
No biggie, get a new HDD, or maybe a new PC while you're at it, we'll help you reinstall the software and get the backup properly restored for you
Backup?
The HDD held several years of their work, all required for compliance, and all data on any dept they had bought. Basically, without it the company value is the office furniture. We pointed her to a good data restoration company. Said company would start at around 3k to let a drive into their shop, and eye watering from there on. In this case well worth the price
Saragon4005@reddit
Good news! She didn't have unencrypted data for long! It came with a self destruct!
twinnedcalcite@reddit
Guess there was a reason she was never offered a RIM job.
runobody22@reddit
Back in the Windows 3.1 days, I worked for a small engineering services firm. We had two salesmen: one was a young, humble-sounding guy who wanted to learn; the other was an older man that sounded a lot like the woman you just described. He had a know-it-all attitude, and, I came to find, had fooled my boss into thinking he actually was the expert he claimed to be.
One day, I told my boss that I'd bet him a case of Guiness Stout that Mr. Expert-on-Everything would be the first to prove his lack of technical expertise. He was surprised by my opinion of the man's skills, and took the bet.
Not long afterward, the subject of our bet stormed into my cubicle, shaking his laptop at me and complaining that I must have done something wrong because it had stopped working.
After he stomped off, I looked at the files on his hard drive. He had deleted command.com
I won the bet :D
djmcfuzzyduck@reddit
I got one of the can’t find system 32 calls back in my call taking days. It’s hilarious to this day.
rhoduhhh@reddit
Good ol' PII and users too dumb/overconfident to follow the rules. 😩 Costing the firm that much money, too!