'[He] was gone within the next month': IT department head steals coveted email address from worker, gets fired, that worker gets his job

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Aug 10, 2023 9:00 AM EDT

You should be careful what you wish for because your deepest desires may come with unintended consequences. For example, if you make a wish to some magic dust as a 13-year-old to be "30, flirty, thriving, and thriving," hoping to have the future and life that you think you want to have… You may, instead, wake up to find that while you're now successful, you've also become a vapid, hateful, spiteful individual. Hopefully, it's not too late, and the magic dust takes you back, traumatized and confused, to your 13-year-old life so that you can live out your life in the average-but-ethical way it was supposed to be lived.

So, this story isn't exactly 13 going on 30, but the whole lesson about "Be careful what you aspire to" remains true… (see also: Macbeth.) If you go to any length to achieve your dream, you may not like what you find at the end of the rainbow—or something like that.

This IT head saw fit to swipe a long-held email address that belonged to one of his staff which he had been coveting, which set off a domino effect that led to their removal from their position. 

What is it with power that makes it go straight to some people's heads? We may never know.

Read on to see this brilliant and classic tale as originally shared by Redditor u/Lorix_In_Oz to Reddit's r/talesfromtechsupport community.

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  • 01
    Hairstyle
    via Israel Andrade

    Masked Image: inews/IT Crowd

  • 02
    Font - When a new IT department head steals the prestige e-mail address from long time employee and lives to regret it. Epic A number of years back I was working for a company that had been around for many years, I was only relatively new myself but there were still a couple of "old guard" senior engineers around who had been there from the start. The kind that knows where all the obscure, undocumented insider stuff is and can fix most problems in 5 seconds that the rest of us might take hours t
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 03
    Font - One of the guys in particular, who I shall refer to as Joe, a bearded and jovial gent with a very Steve Wozniak persona was always happy for us to approach him with our questions and welcomed us to leverage his VAST knowledge of how the company's sprawling IT infrastructure worked to make our lives easier and cope with the constant unrealistic expectations of upper management. He was a real, old-school engineer
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 04
    Font - - someone who loved their job and was well respected by everyone around the department. So when his friend the current department head, a man of comparable knowledge and experience retired and was replaced from the outside with a young and brash one with a business degree and little technical knowledge who was also called Joe it was a big change for everyone. Fortunately for us he didn't interfere too much with the technical aspects of our day to day jobs. At least at first.
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 05
    Font - When the company first started out they weren't too concerned with formality when it came to e- mail address policy. In later years as the company had grown they tightened the bolts with an official policy of issuing staff with a more formal address of Firstname.Lastname@department.countrycode.c ompany.com but those who were around from the early days retained their original name@company.com addresses as an alias. It was somewhat of a status symbol and sign of
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 06
    Font - authority in the company to have one and those that did would use that version as their sending address and proudly have it in their e-mail signatures and on their business cards. The retired head had one such address, as did joe in the form of joe@company.com and you always knew when you saw an e-mail come into the inbox from somebody with one of these addresses that they were someone important who had been around for a while. Most of the
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 07
    Font - department heads were long term employees who used them and it wasn't long before the new IT head noticed this aspect of our corporate culture and clearly envied his peers. But as a new employee he was stuck with his formal e-mail address and they weren't issuing new legacy e- mail addresses of this kind unless they were for someone way up the food chain. Even as head of IT he had no authority to claim one which is why when one day he spotted an e-mail from Joe using his legacy address he
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 08
    Font - So as the tale goes, he called Joe into his office and had an exchange that went something like this: IT Head: "Hey Joe, great work on the capacity report and getting it to me so quickly we should be able to get approval from finance to expand our storage way sooner than I thought" Joe: "Not a problem, is there anything else you needed from me for it?" IT Head: "Nope, everything is there thanks. But I happened to notice when you sent it through you were using a different e-mail address a
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 09
    Font - Joe: "Yes, that's the one I've always used from when I started and everyone here knows to reach me at. Also some of our older systems and scripts we still use from the early days were hard coded to use it as well so I'm still actively using it to get critical alerts and I've got rules set up to forward them on to the relevant team addresses we use these days since the only alternative is to budget a major project to go through all our legacy stuff to change it and we were never able to ge
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 10
    Font - IT Head: "I've got no problem with that but I was interested in getting one of those kind of addresses for me, it would make it easier for people to, you know, know I'm the head of this department rather than just another employee here. My predecessor had one so it should be no problem for me to have one as well too, right? Can you make that happen?" Joe: "I'm sorry, I wish I could but it's HR that makes that decision and it's their policy is to only issue personal addresses at the top co
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 11
    Font - IT Head: "You've been here for a long time, surely there isn't a way or someone you know who can make this happen?" Joe: "I'm sorry, it's a decision way above my pay grade. I'd be happy to put a request in for you to the head of HR to see if they could do it as a favor but I'm pretty certain what their answer will be." IT Head: (Annoyed) "Ok thanks, do it and let's see what happens" Joe goes and logs the request but of course the head of HR knocks it back, citing policy and not wanting to
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 12
    Font - Joe: (Knocks) "Hey, you know that request I put through to try and get you a top level e-mail address? Unfortunately HR have knocked it back, I did my best to try and push it through but they were firm on our current corporate policy of not issuing any new ones except for those at the very top." IT Head: (Visibly unhappy) "I'm sorry to hear that, are you sure you did everything you could??" Joe: "Yes, it's out of either of our hands unfortunately." IT Head: "Fine then"
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 13
    Font - And Joe was right. There was no way the IT Head was going to be issued with a brand new personal address. However, his position did allow how to authorize the reassignment of existing e- mail addresses to staff which was normally used to forward mail and alerts still being sent internally to staff who had left the company. He soon realized this was possible and formed a plan, calling Joe back into his office for another conversation: IT Head: "Hey Joe, you know how we can't get new person
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 14
    Font - Joe: (Frowning) "We can do that, yes. You have the authority to have the e-mail address of anyone who has left redirected or assigned to anyone else if you so wish, did you want your predecessor's address? I mean, we can do it but it would confuse a lot of people if they saw your e-mail coming from someone who is gone." IT Head: "What about e-mail addresses of existing staff?" Joe: (Frowning harder and seeing where this was going) "You do have the authority, but it would still confuse peo
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 15
    Font - IT Head: "I think I can handle forwarding a couple of lousy e-mails whenever I see them. I have a greater need for visibility here and there is no business requirement for you to have one so start the process of transferring joe@company.com across to me immediately. Let me know once it's done so I can let everyone know." So poor Joe was forced to dig his own grave and give up the e-mail address he had held since day one. He definitely wasn't happy about it but did as he was instructed. Fa
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 16
    Font - Weeks went by and it was clear he was taking every opportunity to send out e-mails using his new address, new stationary was issued along with business cards clearly showing his position and contact address. He was clearly reveling in having a coveted address and the prestige and recognition it instantly gave him, especially when dealing with other offices and people who didn't know he was only a relative newcomer. Life was good, that is until one fateful morning when he wasn't in his off
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 17
    Font - Turned out he had forgotten about his responsibility to forward through important notifications when they can through to him. He had set up a rule to handle them, sure, but not to forward them as promised but instead deleting them directly from his inbox without notice. One particular alert dealt with backup failures for a particularly important and long-term defense contract. One of our key SLAs was to ensure daily incremental and weekly full backups being performed on one of these old l
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 18
    Font - in writing. The media in an old backup unit had failed and was repeatedly notifying the issue. It was normally a simple fix, replace the faulty media in the backup unit and restart a full backup run but with no alerts being sent through nobody knew there was a problem. So when a request came through from the client to perform a restore of the previous week's data after an accidental deletion that backup team found, to their horror, that no backups had been running for the past several wee
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 19
    Font - The client was not amused. The CEO with whom they had a close relationship was even less so. The IT Head attempted to throw Joe under the bus when word came down that the company was going to incur a MASSIVE rebate for the SLA breach, but Joe in his wisdom had ensured he had done a complete CYA when handing over his e-mail address, including e-mail exchanges with the IT Head highlighting the importance of the alerts and to ensure they went to the right people, including detailed instructi
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 20
    Font - Everyone was wondering who we would be getting in the position next, HR and management were tight lipped on the topic and there was plenty of speculation within the department about what might happen next. But everyone was smiling when they walked in on the Monday to see Joe sitting in the IT Head office, in the wake of what happened management decided in their wisdom that the IT Department should have a Head who actually
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 21
    Font - knew something about IT and tapped Joe to take the seat. He hung on for a few more years before retiring or moving on but during his tenure he was one of the best IT managers I have ever worked for and the position didn't change him from being the friendly, helpful and supportive teacher that he was. I was sad to see him go but while he was still with us I always smiled when I saw his e-mails coming through to us from the old, friendly address of joe@company.com which he had reclaimed and
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 22
    Font - someonehasmygamertag If someone ever said "it receives all the critical alerts and I'm happy to deal with them" why the f would you want to get involved in that 3.2k Share SirIsildur Bc they crave attention that they can not achieve on their own merits, I'd say... 1.3k Share DPSOnly See: Business degree. 544 Share
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 23
    Font - bkaiser85 Nothing better than giving someone enough rope to hang themselves if they ask for it. 596 Share WgXcQ Honestly, this is more like someone actively taking a fistful of LAN cables and specifically braiding them into their own personal noose. 200 Share
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 24
    Font - terbiumct Well written & a good read. 539 Share DieselDetBos We love the original Joe, not new hip self centered joe 96 Share
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 25
    Font - emmerzed Glad "Joe" got his email back but gosh the current email address rule is ridiculous. Is department AND country code really necessary? 169 Share
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 26
    Font - SirIsildur I have a very, VERY similar story... In mine, the "usurper" simply was told something along the lines of "Alright, send email/contact whoever you think should be contacted and let me know" by the veteran The Usurper was friends/family from people in upper mgmt and he managed to achieve what he intended, and in a very similar turn of events (alerts being ignored and clients being extra annoyed for problems unsolved) he got in trouble The usurper asked the old guy to fix it, and
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz
  • 27
    Font - sihasihasi Great read. I usually can't be arsed with the long ones, but that one had me hooked from the start! 67 Share
    via u/Lorix_In_Oz

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