It could be that someone got fired for something they did and you got the blame for them being fired.
Or it could be something else, so spill the beans what workplace dramas have you been involved in?
It could be that someone got fired for something they did and you got the blame for them being fired.
Or it could be something else, so spill the beans what workplace dramas have you been involved in?
I used to work at a company with a…slightly incompetent…IT department. A couple stories:
We had a problem with the company network crashing, about once a week. It was an ongoing problem for almost a year.
The engineering department used Unix based CAD workstations. The rest of the company used Windows. To run Windows apps, we engineers had a Citrix server that would we would remote into, and run Office apps from there. One day, one of the engineers discovered an admin app that would let users logged into the Citrix machine to send instant messages to any other user. It was both useful, and abused, because the messages weren’t tagged with a sender. You could pretend to be anybody.
One day, an outside IT contractor (the internal IT department was incompetent, so they hired a contractor) discovered a log of all the messages. He came into Engineering, and just told us the log existed, and to be more ‘professional’ when sending messages.
He must have told the IT manager, because next I know, the entire department is called into the VP’s office, interrogated about the IM app, and sent home while they decide what to do. Sent home without pay.
Over the next few days, engineers were called in one-by-one for meetings with HR. Turns out, the IT manager told HR we were using the IM app to purposefully crash the network. Never mind that the contractor told her that wasn’t possible. She was intent on finding a scapegoat.
HR decides to suspend everyone without pay for a week. But nobody is fired because there’s no proof and no “confession”. While everyone is out (I found out later) the network crashes.
Things get back to normal, time passes, and a couple months later, the network just stops crashing. No more problems. It turns out, IT had installed the wrong printer driver for the engineering plotter in another department. This other department only used the plotter about once a week, so they just used the plotter in engineering. It was overwhelming the network whenever it was used. This was fixed quietly, without fanfare. We engineers only found out about it a few years later, after the IT manager left the company.
Next story:
Company emails were formatted First Initial Last Name @ Companyname . com. I have a common nickname I’m known by. Nobody calls me by my given name, and my nickname had a different first letter. My company email uses my given name. Pretend it’s c[email protected].
I start getting phone calls from customers, suppliers, people outside the company, etc. that any email they send to me is getting bounced back. When I ask what address they’re sending to, they’re using an email created using my nickname. Pretend it’s d[email protected]. So I tell them it’s wrong, give them the right one, and fix it one caller at a time.
This gets old, and it happens while the IT manager is talking to someone else in the department when it happens again. I walk over to her and ask if it’s possible to have a second email address based on my nickname, because I’m getting a lot of calls about people using that instead of my official address.
“Absolutely not. If I give you a second address, pretty soon everyone is going to want one.”
One of the engineering managers is standing there. He says “I don’t want one.” Another engineer speaks out “I don’t want one either.” IT manager is pissed, but stands her ground. I don’t get another address.
Pretty soon, I get a phonecall from a college intern that was planning to come back for the summer. He says my email address doesn’t work. I explain the issue, and give him the right address.
He says “That’s not what’s on the webpage.”
For some stupid reason, the company webpage had everybody’s email address on it. Except mine was wrong. When IT made the page, they put d[email protected] on it. But since that was wrong, all email was returned to sender.
I talked to the IT contractor about it, and he basically said “That’s stupid. It’s a 30 second fix, I’ll take care of it.” And a few minutes later, I had two email addresses and the issue was fixed.
This was driving me absolutely crazy until I read the last paragraph! Adding an email alias is absolutely a 30 second fix, I’m sorry you had to work with such a shitty IT department.
Not even 30 seconds, it’s as much time as it takes to type the new address and click “save”.