Life IT work

IT types have been sharing their wildest tales of people’s hilarious and infuriating tech fails – 13 stories definitely worth downloading

Poke Reporter. Updated June 21st, 2024

7.

“Take literal magnets off of the laptop so that it would work again.”
laddsta

8.

“Ohh, story time!

“Let’s name my colleage “Mike”. It’s not his real name, for reasons that will become obvious.

“Mike was our “top” helpdesk guy. Always happy to help out, and to guide you through your problem, until it was fixed. In the decade I’ve worked here, I’ve never seen him get angry at a client.

“One day, Mike receives a ticket, from the VP of our company. VP claims she can no longer log into the system, and requests help. Of course, Mike hurries up to her office, because that’s a pretty big problem – especially for a VP. When he gets to the office, he sees that VP is able to log in. But, the system is now demanding she sets up 2-factor authentication.

“Mike is not surprised by this. 2FA has recently gone from a “suggestion” to a “requirement”. So, he figures she has difficulties with setting up 2FA, and starts explaining how to pair her phone, and how everything works. But nope. VP knows what 2FA is, and how it works. She just doesn’t want it. She demands Mike make it go away.

“Mike is confused, but declines. 2FA has become mandatory, like I said, and he can’t simply “make it go away”. So, he explains again that it’s required, and that she, as VP, is especially crucial to set it up properly. Even the CEO has it set up, and has been using it since it was first introduced.

“But VP is adamant. She demands an exception, and demands it now. But Mike refuses again – mostly because he literally does NOT have the power to do what she asks, even if he wanted. So, VP takes the next logical step.

“She calls up the CTO,

“The CTO is absolutely baffled. All he was told by VP is that Mike is refusing to help her, and he knows that Mike is our top helpdesk guy. He wouldn’t just randomly refuse help. He marches up to the VP’s office, to get the finer details. After about 15 seconds of explaining, he instantly sides with Mike, and tells VP that she’s shit out of luck, and that 2FA is mandatory. No exceptions.

“Probably realizing she can’t just bully the CTO into submission, she finally relents, and agrees to set up the 2FA. Mike quickly helps her through, and 5 minutes later they’re out of the office.

“A few hours later, Mike is called by one of VP’s assistants. None of them can log in anymore, they claim. Mike goes back up, and guesses they probably are also confused by the now-mandatory 2FA.

“And in a way, they were – as it turns out, they couldn’t log in anymore, because they were logging in with VPs account. A bit of questioning later, and the truth comes up: VP has simply been giving out her username and password to her entire team (~20 people), so they can do her work for her.

“That’s why she was so adamant on not setting up 2FA – with 2FA enabled, her cronies can now no longer simply log in to her account. She now has to constantly go around and hand out her 2FA token, or – god forbid – do her own work.

“Mike raises this obvious security concern with his manager, who, according to rumors, facepalms, and immediately escalates the issue. Higher and higher it goes, with facepalms all the way, until it comes back to the CTO, who facepalms the hardest, and mutters “of course she did”.

He schedules an urgent cybersecurity training for her, which she declines. CTO calls her office and explains in quite certain words that this training is not optional, and she is expected to be there.

Last I heard, she did show up. And still has 2FA enabled.”
-Smallwater

9.

“Got paged one night because of a data outage. Turns out one of our on-call response folks went into the server room, locked themselves in, and unplugged several machines. This caused several data outages, which caused a page and thus someone driving in to resolve it. This was a major military mission critical system and this guy thought the best way to get someone’s attention was to break a bunch of stuff.”
-Illustrious-Ruin2099

10.

“I ran the pay to use wireless internet used at around 800 hotels. We had to implement a website tracking tool.

“Over 25% of internet usage was porn. Depending on the time of day (night time) that amount would jump up to over 50%. And some people would spend just hours looking at porn and going to dozens of websites. We’re talking people spending 5+ hours just watching porn.”
-spytez

11.

“Every week tuesdays a switch was shutting down for 15 20 minutes. After countless experts and analyses they sent an technician on site to observe… the cleaning lady unplugging it to plug her vacuum cleaner then put it back”
–TheRonsinkable

12.

“On my way to a client site, the client called and asked me to pick up a pizza.

Me: ‘You are charged by the hour, you know that right?’

Client: ‘Yep’

Me: “What kind of pizza do you want?”
-gummyby8

13.

“I worked as a Mac Genius and consultant in the NYC area I have more stories than I can remember. A few of the greatest hits:

“A grown man screaming, crying and headbutting the steel wall in our Apple Store because I asked him if he had an appointment.

“People showing up to Genius Bar appointments absolutely shitfaced drunk at 9:30 in the morning.

“Computers so dirty they are literally biohazards.

“Full on screaming tantrums by adults who have damaged their stuff after being told they need to pay for repairs or get a new device altogether.

“Threats of physical violence for a variety of reasons.

“One time a customer sat at the Genius Bar while his Photo library rebuilt, including tons of nude pictures of him with a variety of women.

“People who swore up and down that they have been hacked or are being hacked by governments.

“A customer accidentally deleted their entire macOS partition and all of the pictures of their 1 year old along with it. He sat at the end of our genius bar for probably an hour after our appointment with his head in his hands.”
-Colonel_Moopington

And finally …

“Other workers screen shot her windows screen, made it her background then moved her task bar off screen. She kept clicking start but nothing would happen.”
YetiCincinnati

Source: Reddit/AskReddit

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