IT intern tries to show off by going over his superior's head and organizes the cables in the server room, crashes company's entire system for 2 hours: ‘[He had] a very proud expression on his face.'

Author image for Elna McHilderson
Elna McHilderson • Managing Editor
Apr 5, 2026 1:00 PM EDT

It's normal for an intern to make some mistakes, but it's not every day that they make such a colossal mistake that it shuts down the entire company for hours. This poor intern, however, truly takes the cake. He truly reenacted the nightmare everyone has before their first day on the job. That dream where you make one small move, and it's the biggest mistake you could've made. 

This intern wasn't used for anything too seriously. As an IT intern, there was a lot of room for error. So he was given easier tasks like making sure the client's computer is plugged in, password resets, etc. Things that would be hard to mess up, and he did great with that. Everyone seemed to like him enough, he wasn't malicious in any way. However, he did seem to be kind of a slow learner, which can be frustrating in the field of tech.

He must have known he wasn't progressing fast enough and decided he needed to make a big splash and do something that sets him up to be seen as a go-getter employee worthy of more responsibilities. However, he chose the wrong splash… Instead of doing something positive for the company, he ended up unplugging its main life source… 

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  • Internet wires, fiber optics, online, tech, electricity
    via Unsplash+ (milan degraeve)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
    Internet wires, fiber optics, online, tech, electricity 

  • "The day the "organized" intern decided the server room cables looked messy"

    So we hired this new intern a couple of weeks ago. Let us call him Kyle.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • Kyle is a nice guy, super eager to please, and apparently possesses a level of confidence in his cable management skills that is bordering on delusional.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • Most of the time he just handles basic password resets and "my mouse is double clicking" tickets, which he does fine.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • But yesterday I made the mistake of leaving him alone near the server room while I went to grab a much needed caffeine fix.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • I was gone for maybe ten minutes. I was just walking back to my desk when my phone started blowing up with Slack notifications.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • Then the shouting started from the sales floor because their CRM went dark. I ran to the server room and found Kyle standing there with a handful of Cat6 cables and a very proud expression on his face.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • He looked at me and said hey man I noticed these wires were looking a bit cluttered so I decided to unplug them and reroute them through the side panels so it looks more professional for when the CTO visits next week.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • I literally felt my soul leave my body for a second. He had unplugged the main switch that handles the entire east wing of the office without labeling a single thing or checking if there was active traffic.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • He just saw "messy wires" and decided to fix the aesthetic. It took me and the senior admin two hours to get everything back to normal and verify that we had not fried anything or caused a massive data loop.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • Kyle spent the rest of the afternoon sitting at his desk looking like a kicked puppy while I explained the concept of "if it is plugged in and working do not touch it".
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • The best part was when he asked if I still wanted him to finish the cable ties.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • I told him he is banned from entering any room that contains a blinking light for the next month.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • I swear some people think IT is just about making things look pretty like a pinterest board instead of actually keeping the business running.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • At least the CTO did not walk in while Kyle was standing there holding the lifeblood of the company in his sweaty hands.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • TL;DR: New intern decided the server room cables looked messy and unplugged the main switch to "reroute" them for better aesthetics.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • Entire office went down and it took two hours to fix his professional cable management.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • IT employee working in tech, wearing safety glasses, smiling as he works
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
    IT employee working in tech, wearing safety glasses, smiling as he works

  • You can only imagine the face of his superior when he discovered what this intern just did. The intern was looking so proud of himself as he held the now unplugged cables to the company's main system. He claims he felt his “soul leave his body.” He and his colleagues then had to spend two hours fixing this intern's huge mistake. The intern wanted to help, but the damage was done and they no longer trusted him in the server room. He wasn't allowed back in a room with a “blinking light” from that point on. He seemed sorry, but after that mistake, you might just have to cut your losses and move on to the next job… 

  • JJJBLKRose He was given access to the network closet as an intern without any training or explanation? Sounds a bit like a training issue.
    via JJJBLKRose
  • OP Cascade_2Nyx Honestly, you're not wrong. Kyle still made a wildly dumb decision, but someone also should've made it crystal clear that "if it's plugged in and blinking, keep your hands off it" was not a suggestion.
    via Cascade_2Nyx
  • Savafan1 Sound like you should be fired for allowing an unsupervised intern access to the server room.
    via Savafan1
  • BrocktreeMC I've had access to our network room and all IDF/MDF closets since I was the lowest tier HelpDesk at my organization. We stored equipment in there that I needed access to sometimes. But even I knew, without anyone having to tell me, that I shouldn't go with any of the servers or networking unless I was specifically told to. It seems like a common sense thing, and if that's not a skill you have, you may not be cut out for IT.
    via BrocktreeMC
  • CAShark-7 Back in the mid 1990's I worked for an international, growing company. Instead of scattered dumb terminals and a PC only for the executive secretaries, we were migrating to a WAN with a PC on every desk, using MS suite products. It was quite the shift for everyone, as you can imagine. The owners promoted someone who had a reputation for 'fixing' problems. He was going to come into IT, kick a, take names, and curb all the unnecessary expenses. Yeah. That lasted a month. He got educated
    via CAShark-7
  • Dom_Shady >I swear some people think IT is just about making things look pretty like a pinterest board instead of actually keeping the business running Chef's kiss for eloquently putting it like that!
    via Dom_Shady
  • Lyric Nimbus The confidence level required to walk into a server room, see live cables, and start rerouting things for aesthetics needs to be studied. That is not intern behavior, that is a fully loaded disaster instinct.
    via LyricNimbus
  • dalgeek I had a network tech do this to a PBX rack. He incorrectly assumed that digital PBX phones worked like IP phones, tore down the entire rack and repatched it in sequential order instead of where they were patched before. Took out 300+ phones and it took about 18 hours to tone out all the ports and get the phones back to where they should be.
    via dalgeek
  • Friendly_Guy3 He did clearly wrong. But it raises some questions. Why are the cables not labeled? How its documented where which connection goes?
    via Friendly_Guy3

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