Karen manager demands IT technician take business server offline during business hours, despite technician's protests, gets the order in writing before complying: ‘Within 15 minutes, the office was in chaos. The CFO stormed into my office’

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Sep 29, 2025 12:00 PM EDT

Undoubtedly, the hardest part of being a manager is letting go. Throughout your entire career, you've been doing everything yourself. If there's something that needs to be done, take a look at it, create a plan of action, and then work through it yourself until you've seen it through. 

But if you're successful enough at seeing your own work through, you'll eventually get promoted and have that work taken off you. You'll instead be tasked with managing the people doing that work. Now, there's all this productivity being done that you have no time to do yourself, limited now to only oversight by pure necessity. 

But letting go is necessary and important. And especially when you're managing a business or work group that falls outside your technical expertise, you need to be able to relinquish direct control and accept their advice. Sure, you need to use common sense in signing off on any decision, but you need to accept that you might lack the knowledge and experience that is essential to common sense.

Either way, at a certain point, you just need to trust the people beneath you.

This boss proved herself incapable of doing so when she demanded that the IT department urgently perform scheduled maintenance and doubled down on the order despite their protests. When she insisted that the IT technician had the foresight to get her to send the request in an email to get it in writing.

The technician had already scheduled the maintenance for an upcoming Sunday, when there was unlikely to be any sort of disruption. But the boss had issued an order and was keen to see it executed, seemingly thinking about nothing but compliance with her decision.

Chaos predictably ensued as the servers went down at 10:30 AM, right during peak business hours, sparking a response from upper management that would see the boss embarrassed and the process amended to ensure she couldn't stick her nose where it didn't belong again. 

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  • "You want the server down during business hours? You got it."

    I used to work IT at a mid-sized logistics company. Our warehouse ran 24/7, but the corporate office was open Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 6 PM. I was responsible for maintaining the internal server that handled everything from payroll to inventory management to shipping labels.
    via IllustriousReport482

  • "You want the server down during business hours? You got it."

    Boss points to a tablet while standing over the tech's desk
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • One Monday morning, I got an email from a higher-up, let's call her Karen, demanding that we take the server offline immediately for scheduled maintenance. Now, I had scheduled that maintenance for Sunday evening, sent out three notices, and got no objections. But Karen hadn't read those emails and was now insisting we do it "right now" during her working hours.
    via IllustriousReport482
  • I replied, Taking the server offline during business hours will temporarily halt. access to the shipping system, inventory, time tracking, and payroll processing. Confirm you'd like me to proceed. She replied (and I quote) Yes. You should be working on my schedule. Get it done now. Alright. Malicious compliance time.
    via IllustriousReport482
  • I looped in the warehouse manager and let him know the system would be down per Karen's urgent request. Then I pulled the plug at exactly 10:30 AM. Within 15 minutes, the office was in chaos. No one could clock in or out, print labels, track shipments, or even check inventory levels. Phones were ringing off the hook. The CFO stormed into my office asking what the h I was going on.
    via IllustriousReport482
  • I just showed him the email thread. Less than 30 minutes later, Karen came to my office red-faced and yelling. I calmly pointed out that she had approved the server downtime in writing despite warnings. I offered to restore access early, but reminded her it would take time to reboot and check for errors from the forced shutdown. Fallout? Oh yes.
    via IllustriousReport482
  • She got dragged into a meeting with the COO and CTO that afternoon. From what I heard, it didn't go well for her. After that, all urgent IT requests from management had to go through a change management process with multiple approvals.
    via IllustriousReport482
  • I also got a little bonus on my next paycheck for handling the outage with professionalism. Sometimes, the best way to teach someone why we have procedures is to let them break one. Once.
    via IllustriousReport482
  • Woman's silhouette as she leans over her desk against a brightly lit background
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • AngrySquidlsOK The crazy thing is that she needed control so much, but it defied all logical reason. "It must be done in my time!" But why though? That makes no sense. Glad she got what she deserved.
    via IllustriousReport482
  • MusicalMerlin1973 Yeah, when someone asks you to verify your demand in writing you should always rethink your decision. When IT asks, are you sure????, you should put your ego. aside and realize you're about to screw up royally.
    via IllustriousReport482
  • cthulhu-wallis That's the sort of person who reads a dodgy email, infects a whole company, and takes a company offline until it's fixed.
    via IllustriousReport482

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