Terrible new IT supervisor is setup by their team when upper management comes to visit : 'The [supervisor] was put on 90-days' unpaid suspension, and was written up for gross insubordination'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
May 16, 2024 6:00 PM EDT

Oftentimes, a little push is the only thing it takes to topple the facade of power presented by someone abusing it. They want you to think there's nothing you can do to circumvent their authority, but they forget that they're just managing an IT department at a medical center, and their authority really isn't all that far-reaching at all. So that one little push (or notifying their boss) is all it takes to reveal the man behind the curtain.

This IT worker was responsible for issuing equipment to new staff, being personally entrusted to do so by the CIO (Chief Information Officer) of the organization—you know, the top brass for things involving information and technology. When a team member received an internal promotion to a vacant supervisor's role, they made their intentions of taking their wrath out on their former coworkers perfectly clear. They did exactly that, threatening to write up their former team members for "insubordination"  for trying to do their jobs without being interrupted by their impatient supervisor's conceited requests. Finally, the IT worker found a way to deal with this when they set the stage for the CIO to witness the behavior firsthand.

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    GI
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    "Talk to the boss..."

    About 14 years ago, I was working IT for a large medical center, one of several owned by the same people. The regional CIO personally put me in charge of setting up and issuing laptops to doctors and other medical staff to go to patient's homes when they could no longer come to the hospital for any number of reasons including disability, lack of adequate transportation, etc.
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    When we got a new shop supervisor (who was only promoted to that position exactly one year to the day after being hired from the outside, something that left myself and a lot of the other IT techs very upset), he made it abundantly clear that he was going to make several people's lives miserable, including me. He'd look at my Outlook calendar (we all had to share access to our calendar with him)
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    to see when I had someone scheduled to pick a laptop up, do their three- month software update, etc., then a few minutes before the person was supposed to arrive, he would order me to do some menial project halfway across the hospital that he could have just as easily done himself or delegated to one of the new people. If I tried to tell him that I had an appointment, he'd threaten to write me up for insubordination.
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    Cue malicious compliance: One day, the regional CIO was due for his 3- month update. Right on cue, the shop sup tasked me with unboxing, then installing monitors on the first floor. About 15 minutes later, when the regional CIO arrived, he called to asked that I return to the office. I headed back up right away.
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    The shop sup didn't know and never met the regional CIO, so the shop sup had no clue who he was dealing with. When I arrived, the CIO asked the shop sup to leave the room. He asked me what was going on, since I was always punctual & thorough to a fault. I told him about the shop sup making several of the lives of anyone he disliked miserable with reassigning trouble tickets in multiple random floors at the last second, just as they
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    had projects scheduled, or in my case, as I had appointments close to arriving for the laptops. The CIO even asked why the shop sup always seemed to be out of the office most times the director came up, and could never get him on the phone. I just told the truth; "He's been much too busy chasing skirts and shooting the breeze with his friends, sir." When the CIO asked if the shop sup had a girlfriend on the side, my response was "which one? He has us too busy running around to count them."
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    He told me to wait outside the office for a few minutes, and brought the shop sup back in to have "Come to Jesus" moment with him. The shop sup was put on 90-days' unpaid suspension, and was written up for gross insubordination for talking back to him, among other things. The CIO even asked HR to start an investigation to see what other department regulations he violated.
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    turbocomppro So what happened after the 90 days? Come on... don't leave us hanging...
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    Illustrious-Mind-683 But what happened after the 90 days??? 124 Reply Share Downtown Diamond1932 OP After one of his side chicks threatened to sue him for sal harassment, he was pressured into leaving after a couple months. Beyond that I don't know, since I moved south back in 2010.
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    The_Sanch1128 Years ago, my last (thank goodness) corporate boss, referred to here often as Boss From ' was notorious for sending people to the branch office of our regional office, two hours away, AND calling All Hands On Deck managerial meetings at 9 AM. Whichever you picked, you were wrong and subject to write-up, especially if you said anything. Complaints to corporate were of course considered insubordination.
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    And no, there was never any punishment for him. He was a corporate golden child and mega-bully, sent to our region to punish us for overachieving, and he ran off six of his seven direct reports within eight months, the seventh being his secretary/mistress.
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    Downtown_Diamond1932 OP . 14 hr. ago Had a similar boss. The hospital director called me and the networking manager to meet with her and the head of the hospice unit. The unit had just opened and admitted their first patient (WWII vet with end-stage cancer). The patient was quite tech savvy from his time in
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    the military and wanted to have an internet connection to put his affairs in order. The hospice chief even got approval to have one of the local VFW posts to cover the cost of a separate internet connection all to himself. The networking manager and I agreed to do it, and got it done later that afternoon. We even went
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    so far as air gapping his connection so that he couldn't access the hospital network, and no one could get into his personal computer. When the CIO found out about this, he personally went to the patient's room and disconnected the ethernet cable from the wall. He also ordered
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    the network manager and I to several hours of remedial training. Needless to say the hospital director was FKING livid. She dragged him into her office, and screamed at him so loudly, everyone in the director's office could clearly hear the conversation behind the closed door.
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    She also ordered him to personally apologize to the dying veteran, as well as me and the networking manager for punishing us simply for doing our jobs and helping the dying veteran.
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    TryndamereKing What does CIO stand for? I'm unfamiliar with your branch. But great MC! 6 Reply Share Mdayofearth Chief Information Officer. For a non-tech company, they would be the head of internal IT, and IT infrastructure; including cloud services.
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