'That's my job, get lost': Manager tries to pin $1 million machine malfunction on new hire who whips out documentation proving otherwise, effectively getting him fired instead

Author image for Eleonora Bader
Eleonora Bader
May 27, 2024 7:00 AM EDT

Instant karma is the best, especially when it involves a manager who is out to get a new hire for no reason other than ego.

This story is about a new IT manager, who clashed with a paranoid facilities manager at the manufacturing company they both worked at. The IT guy knew his stuff, but the micromanager was overprotective of jobs that 'belonged' to him, and often told him to get lost. For context, the micromanager controlled a critical production machine with an outdated computer system, and refused to share any information about it because as stated, he was a gatekeeper. One day, during a safety inspection, the power to the machine was accidentally pulled while it was running, corrupting the system. The micromanager was unreachable, and the company faced a million-dollar loss if the machine didn't restart pronto.

It was the new hire's time to shine, much to his coworker's displeasure, and after that, it all went haywire.

Then, check out this security guard who came to an employee's rescue when a customer got angry. Not all heroes wear capes.

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  • 01
    VPO: If I had the evidence, I'd fire him. New hire: You mean this evidence?
    via Canva
  • 02
    I know IT better than IT Epic r/ALL So a few years back, I was working in a manufacturing company as IT manager. Like many industries, we had a number of machines with embedded computer systems. For the sake of convenience, we called these "production machines", because they produce stuff. By and large, these PC's are just normal desktop PC's that have a bunch of data acquisition cards in them connected to a PLC, or a second network card connected to an ethernet capable PLC. Invariably these PC'
    via u/airzonesama
  • 03
    and then just left as is until the production machine is retired... In some cases, this can be as long as 20 years. Please bear in mind that this is 20 years inside a dusty, hot factory environment. I've been in manufacturing environments before, and this concept is not new to me. Thanks to a number of poignant lessons in the past, I make it my business to understand these PC's inside and out. I like to keep them on a tight refresh cycle, or when it's not practical (in the case of archaic hardwa
    via u/airzonesama
  • 04
    can be difficult to do and plan it well in advance. More often than not, these PC's aren't IT's responsibility - they fall under engineering or facilities. Even so, these guys understand that IT runs just about every other PC in the business, and welcome any advice or assistance that IT can provide. Finally, these PC's are usually tightly integrated into a production machine, and failure of the PC means the machine stops. And so we have today's stars: Airzone: Me, the new IT manager.
    via u/airzonesama
  • 05
    TooExpensive: The site's facilities manager. He's in charge of the maintenance of the site, including all of these production machines. He's super paranoid about people trying to take his job, so he guards all his responsibilities jealously and doesn't communicate anything lest they get the drop on his efforts. Oh, and he has a fixation about not spending company money - even to the point of shafting the lawn-mowing guy out of a few hours pay - hence the name. VPO: Vice president of operations.
    via u/airzonesama
  • 06
    Old Boy: We'll get to him, but his name is derived from being a man in his 70's. I'm new, but in my first few weeks I've already had a number of run-ins with TooExpensive. I'm a fairly relaxed guy, but I have no qualms about letting someone dig their own grave and fall into it - and in the case of TooExpensive, I'd be happy to lend him my shovel. My pet hate was when organising new network drops, I will always run a double when we needed a single. We're paying working- at-heights money already,
    via u/airzonesama
  • 07
    countermand all my orders and insist on singles. And then a few weeks / months later, I'd have the sparkie in again to install the second drop, at another $4k. And then there was the time that he was getting shirty because I was holding up a project of his.. Well sorry, if you are running a project that requires 12 - 16 network ports, you'd better at least talk to the IT guys prior to the day of installation. Not only will you not have drops, you won't have switch ports. And if you didn't budget
    via u/airzonesama
  • 08
    Failure to plan is not an emergency. So you could see that we didn't exactly gel together well. Which brings us to these production machines, and the PC's nested within. Every attempt for me to try and document, or even understand them was shut down by TooExpensive. Me: Hardware and software specifications? TooExpensive: That's my job, get lost. Me: Startup and shutdown procedures? TooExpensive: That's my job, get lost.
    via u/airzonesama
  • 09
    Me: Backup? TooExpensive: That's my job, get lost. Me: Emergency contacts? TooExpensive: That's my job, get lost. You get the picture. It resulted in a strong and terse email from TooExpensive to leave it alone. He had all the documentation, contacts, backups, and didn't need, or want my meddling, and I was not to touch any production machine's PC under any circumstance.
    via u/airzonesama
  • 10
    Move forward a few months and I'm helping one of the factory workers on their area's shared PC. It's located right next to one of these production machines. It's old. The machine itself was nearly an antique, but the controls system had been "recently" upgraded. It had co-ax network of 2 PC's - one NT4 primary domain controller, and a NT4 workstation, and a network PLC (also on co-ax). The machines were pentiums running the minimum specs for NT4 to run, with a control application whose applicati
    via u/airzonesama
  • 11
    was terminated on a hub with a few cat5 ports on it to connect to our LAN and an old hp laserjet printer. These particular production machines are rare, only a few of them exist in the world. We bought this one from a company that had gone out of business a few years earlier. It was test&tag day and TooExpensive was running around a sparkie to do the testing. My earlier instruction to the sparkie was to not disconnect any computer equipment if it was not powered off. And so it came time to test
    via u/airzonesama
  • 12
    prepared with his thoroughly documented shutdown procedure: yank the power cords. The test passed, new labels were applied to the power cord, he plugged it back in and turned it back on, then ran off to his next conquest without waiting for the boot to finish. 10 minutes later, the machine operator starts grumbling. I have a quick peek, and see that the control software had started, but the screen was garbled and none of the right measurements were showing. TooExpensive is called over, and he ta
    via u/airzonesama
  • 13
    10 minutes later, the operator looks at me and asks for help. I call TooExpensive's mobile, and it's off. I called VPO's mobile and suggest that he comes over immediately. 10 minutes later, the operator, VPO, and I are looking at this machine. It's fed. There's the better part of a million dollars worth of product to be processed by this machine, and the nearest alternate machine is in Singapore, belonging to a different company. And if the processing isn't done within soon, the product will exp
    via u/airzonesama
  • 14
    10 minutes later, we still can't get onto TooExpensive. We can't talk to him about the "backups" or any emergency contacts that he knows about. We can't even get his phone to ring. So as I have said, I have used this software before and have a basic understanding. I know enough that the configuration is everything, and configuration is matched to the machine. But I also knew a guy who did some of the implementations. A call to him gave me a lead, and I followed the leads until about 4 calls late
    via u/airzonesama
  • 15
    him to come out of retirement for an eyewatering sum of money. A few hours later, OldBoy took one look at the machine and confirmed that the database was We'd need to restore it from backup. TooExpensive is still not contactable. Me: Let's assume for a moment that there is no backup. What do we need to do. OldBoy: Normally I'd say pray, buy you must have done that already because I haven't kicked the bucket yet.
    via u/airzonesama
  • 16
    To cut a long story short, we had to rebuild the database. But not from scratch. Old Boy's MO was when setting up a machine, when he was done, he'd create and store a backup database on the machine. The only issue was that 20 years of machine updates needed to be worked out. It also just so happens that through sheer effort, I am able to compare a corrupted database file to a good one, and fool with it enough to get it to load in the configuration editor. It's still mangled, but we are able to u
    via u/airzonesama
  • 17
    All up, it took 4 days to bring this machine back online. But we did. To be honest, I certainly wasn't capable of doing this solo, and without my efforts to patch the corrupted database file, Old Boy would not have been able to restore 20 years of patches that we had no documentation for. And what of TooExpensive? After OldBoy and I started working on the problem, he showed up again. He ignored any advice about a backup (because obviously there wasn't any), and instead demanded regular status up
    via u/airzonesama
  • 18
    now a solution was in progress, was trying to claim the credit. When it was all running again, OldBoy debriefed VPO on the solution. I then had my turn with VPO. VPO: So Airzone. Thanks for your help. Your efforts have un-fuced us. Me: No worries. VPO: And now we get to the unpleasant bit. TooExpensive claims that you didn't follow procedure when shutting down the machine, causing it to crash. He also claims that you hadn't taken any backups, and it was effectively your fault.
    via u/airzonesama
  • 19
    Me: And when we tried to call him? VPO: He claims he was busy contacting his emergency contacts. Me: I see. VPO: I don't believe a word of that sh t. Unfortunately it's your word vs his. If I had the evidence, I'd fire him. Me: (opening the email TooExpensive had sent me about meddling on my phone) You mean this evidence? Half an hour later, I got the call to lock TooExpensive's account and disabled his access card.
    via u/airzonesama
  • 20
    lemonade_eyescream. you NEED me on that wall You mean this evidence There are a few times in your life when something happens that you have a grin on your face so wide even a nuke couldn't wipe it off. 2.5k Share
    via u/lemonade_eyescream
  • 21
    b-monster666 That's why I save every fu ng email. One time, I was working for a large energy distribution company, I was in the IT security department where the main part of my job was to setup users' accounts, and remove users' accounts. Well, a day came for the big Windows 7 deployment push. Three additional subcontractors were brought on to assist with the deploy.
    via u/b-monster666
  • 22
    Deskside services manager sends in the proper request to add the three employees into the system, and indicates which permissions they require for the deploy. I look at it, and it seems a little light for a standard deskside support user. So I email her back and said, "I'm going to process these user accounts, but can you confirm that this is all they need access to?" She wrote a very curt email back to me saying, "Yes." I wrote back and said, "Ok. I just want to be clear that they won't be able
    via u/b-monster666
  • 23
    She wrote back, "I know what I asked for. They don't need that!" So I wrote back, "Ok. No problem. I'll just give them access to X and Y then, and not Z. But, if you find out they need access to Z, let me know and I'll get on it as soon as possible." She wrote: "No, they don't!" So, I set them up exactly as she asked, provided her the credentials, etc. A few days go by and my manager came up to me. "b-monster666, you set these deskside support people up, right?"
    via u/b-monster666
  • 24
    "Yes I did. I remember that very well." "Well, deskside manager told me that you didn't set them up properly." "Oh? How so?" I knew where this was going. "They need access to Z, and you didn't provide them with that access." "Yes, I'm aware. I asked deskside manager several times if they needed access to Z and she said no. Would you like the emails?" So, I sent my manager the emails who in turn sent it to the general IT manager.
    via u/b-monster666
  • 25
    One thing I loathed about working in large corporations was the freaking office politics that goes on. Everyone's trying to backstab everyone else in order to advance. 1.6k Share rangoon03. She knew she messed up and lied about it to cover her a 3, she didn't care what would happen to you. Just herself.
    via u/rangoon03
  • 26
    oo AsmodeanUnderscore "This thing is really important!" "Mind sharing info about it?" "MY PRECIOUS" 2.9k Share MilkTaoist I've known more than one person with this attitude. They always seem to think of it as some sort of job security, when really it's just infuriating and potentially damaging.
    via u/AsmodeanUnderscore, u/MilkTaoist
  • 27
    Rook730. I am a controls engineer in a manufacturing environment. I have worked in a few different plants and they are all like this. I am currently in the process of rehabilitating an old DOS computer. We have a vital testing process that parts must go through before we can ship them and this DOS box runs the tester. There are only two in the plant, these are the only two in the world. No backups. 361 Share
    via u/Rook730
  • 28
    airzonesama OP. I Am Not Good With Computer I had something like this once. It was an old 386 with a bunch of ISA cards in it, MS Dos, and a specific application. The test ran slow though. I got asked to improve it's performance. So after about 9 months or so, I found a suitable 486 motherboard. I mirrored the disk, put the cards in, and it worked. But we soon discovered that since the application was running on a faster CPU, the timing was off and was ☐ up the test. I had to restore it to it's
    via u/airzonesama
  • 29
    The engineering manager and I got a rude shock with this result. We realised that even if you had a backup, different hardware can cause the machines to perform differently. We ended up upgrading all the control systems on all these machines over the course of the next few years, to the tune of a few $m. 213 Share
    via u/airzonesama
  • 30
    awfyou. "OldBoy: Normally I'd say pray, buy you must have done that already because I haven't kicked the bucket yet." Best Part :) 886 Share ...
    via u/awfyou
  • 31
    CyanPeppa I disagree. VPO: I don't believe a word of that s' 't. Unfortunately it's your word vs his. If I had the evidence, I'd fire him. Me: (opening the email TooExpensive had sent me about meddling on my phone) You mean this evidence? This is the best part. :D 430 Share
    via u/CyanPeppa

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database jobs micromanager tech support VPO manager machinist new hire facilities it system production malfunction company workplace stories manufacturing machine
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