So, this post has gotten removed from other places for being fake, as this obviously would never happen in real life, it has literally gotten me banned from a sub for 'creating an unbelievable story'. So, I hope it fits here and that there are actually people who will believe me. I have posted a Q&A at the end with the most common questions I got asked before the post was removed in the other subs. I have also translated this from another language using Google Translate (I know, terrible), I did check it but if there is anything I missed, sorry.

This all happened about 10 years ago, but I'm still in contact with the people from the company and I hear that, unfortunately, things haven't improved, not even in 10 years. This story takes place during my first month as a trainee at the company, working in IT, mainly providing first-level support, but the easy stuff, like telling people how to turn on the computer and where to plug in the USB-Stick.

Wednesday, 11:55 a.m., just before lunch. Back then, I was still a trainee with very little knowledge, but when suddenly 50 tickets from 10 countries landed in the ticketing system basically at once, all with the same message, "SAP is down," I knew we had a huge problem.

The troubleshooting began, and after almost 20 minutes, we hadn't made any progress. We had tried practically everything we could. The mood was terrible, everyone was hungry, everyone was frustrated, but the problem had to be solved now, production was at a standstill in 10 countries. In my youthful innocence, I joked, "Maybe someone just pulled the plug." Man, if looks could have killed. I got yelled at, "If I have nothing productive to contribute, then shut up." Intimidated, I sat in the corner and watched while the others frantically tried to find a solution. The phone kept ringing, new tickets kept coming in. All I could do was answer the phone and say, "We're aware of the situation" and respond to tickets in the same way.

At 12:45, one of my colleagues returned from his lunch break; he had left at 11:45. He came in and saw how everything was going wrong. He asked what was going on. We explained. He just looked worried and asked basically to himself "Could this have something to do with the Telekom guys I left in the server room before my lunch break?"

Silence, dead silence. Everyone just stared at him. "You did what," someone managed to ask, while two others had already started sprinting towards the server room. "They were supposed to be here, we knew they were coming," "Yeah, at 2:30 PM. You can't just leave strangers unattended in the server room and then go on your lunch break!" "Okay, sorry, it won't happen again."

Suddenly, the connection to SAP is re-established. Relief. The two colleagues return from the server room. They both look down at the floor. The boss asks, "So, guys, what was the problem?" "Well, he had to plug in a device for work and unplugged it. He said he didn't think it was important because all the other plugs were labeled, only that one wasn't."

Dead silence again. No one looks at me. After what felt like 10 minutes, but was probably only a few seconds, the boss simply said, "How about I order pizza for everyone? You all worked through your lunch break." People nodded and walked back to their desks. I was still sitting at the trainee desk in the corner, the worst possible spot. The boss came over and asked what kind of pizza I wanted. I answered, and he kept walking. No one spoke to me for a good hour. I just kept working, processing the tickets related to the incident and eating my pizza.

In the five years I was with the company, the incident was never mentioned again. However, every time there was another major incident at the company (and there were far too many, they were so awful), I was taken seriously and given a chance to speak before being yelled at.

Q&A

Why was there no emergency plan in place?

I don't know, they probably didn't think it would happen. I see plenty of companies in my now lime of work that don't have an emergency response plan and would probably panic the same way of their critical system went down.

Why didn't anyone check the server room?

Again, I don't know, probably because it was very improbable that it was coming from there. Only we had access to the server room. 2 people were working from home, 1 guy had left for lunch and people had seen him leave, half of the team was supposed to leave for lunch at noon, the other half at 1 p.m., so we didn't expect anyone to even be in the server room, let alone unsupervised.

Why did you keep on receiving tickets, why wasn't a master ticket created, why did you not post anything on the intranet?

We kept on receiving tickets because people were panicking about production having come to a standstill and as you know, we will work faster the more tickets there are (this is a joke by the way). And I didn't know what a master ticket was, I was less then a month in, I had no idea what I was doing. And I definitely didn't have access to the intranet to put a message on there.

Why did the phone keep ringing, why didn't you put a message on that says you are working on the problem?

Again, not my domain, I was working there for less than a month at this point, I was just told to pick up the phone, say we are working on the problem and hang up.

Why weren't there any failover in place?

There were, but nobody had tested whether they actually worked in like 2 years. If one system failed (this includes pulling the plug on one system), it was supposed to automatically switch over to another system, it just didn't.

Why wasn't electricity being monitored?

I don't know, there were failovers in place so everyone just assumed that something line this couldn't happen.

Why were people left alone in the server room?

I don't know, the guy was probably hungry, wasn't thinking straight and thought they couldn't do much damage.

Why wasn't this shown on the monitoring tool?

I don't know, I was a trainee, I wasn't even looking at the monitoring tool and if I had, I probably wouldn't have understood anyway, but I assume if it had said 'plug A was pulled', someone would have gone to check.

I hope I have answered most questions and that this doesn't get me banned, it really is a true story, I have many others like this because that company was chaos but the pay was excellent for a trainee.