I used to work at a company with a…slightly incompetent…IT department. A couple stories:

We had a problem with the company network crashing, about once a week. It was an ongoing problem for almost a year.

The engineering department used Unix based CAD workstations. The rest of the company used Windows. To run Windows apps, we engineers had a Citrix server that would we would remote into, and run Office apps from there. One day, one of the engineers discovered an admin app that would let users logged into the Citrix machine to send instant messages to any other user. It was both useful, and abused, because the messages weren’t tagged with a sender. You could pretend to be anybody.

One day, an outside IT contractor (the internal IT department was incompetent, so they hired a contractor) discovered a log of all the messages. He came into Engineering, and just told us the log existed, and to be more ‘professional’ when sending messages.

He must have told the IT manager, because next I know, the entire department is called into the VP’s office, interrogated about the IM app, and sent home while they decide what to do. Sent home without pay.

Over the next few days, engineers were called in one-by-one for meetings with HR. Turns out, the IT manager told HR we were using the IM app to purposefully crash the network. Never mind that the contractor told her that wasn’t possible. She was intent on finding a scapegoat.

HR decides to suspend everyone without pay for a week. But nobody is fired because there’s no proof and no “confession”. While everyone is out (I found out later) the network crashes.

Things get back to normal, time passes, and a couple months later, the network just stops crashing. No more problems. It turns out, IT had installed the wrong printer driver for the engineering plotter in another department. This other department only used the plotter about once a week, so they just used the plotter in engineering. It was overwhelming the network whenever it was used. This was fixed quietly, without fanfare. We engineers only found out about it a few years later, after the IT manager left the company.

Our CEO made a big announcement about how we were going to move from a B2B (Business to Business) environment to a B2C (Business to Consumer) environment. B2C is the future, Internet of Things, yadda yadda.

So, since we have an open door policy, I popped him an email and asked him what the plan was to invest in our infrastructure because, as it stood then, B2C was out of reach and the clients we had attempting it were finding it wasn’t robust enough, citing my example client list and recent failures.

I got immediate heat. Nobody had told him our infrastructure couldn’t do it. “What are your sources? How do you know?” - Sources cited. CEO went to his yes men: “This guy knows what he’s talking about and seems really sure of what he’s saying…”

Oh.

10 years later, we’re on our 3rd CEO, our infrastructure still isn’t updated, and B2C still hasn’t happened.

Ehhh, depends on what you consider right and wrong. Some folks might say I did do something wrong. They’d be wrong, and assholes, but they might say it ;)

So, I worked in home health as my main job. Started in facilities, but burned out and moved to home health.

There’s extra rules when doing home health because you’re in people’s homes, which can be a lot of complication. Not all of them are good rules.

A case I was working, it was 24/7 coverage for a very wealthy elderly couple. That meant at least two caregivers present all day, every day of the year. Those of us that were regular, steady caregivers on the case got you know the family well. A lot of rich folks are absolute assholes to workers in their home, these folks weren’t. Genuinely nice people, a really perfect case to be on.

So, I tended to work either overnight, or late afternoon to late night, depending on how everyone needed the schedule. Since the clients covered whatever the insurance didn’t, and the family erred on the side of regular, reliable caregivers over set schedules, the office was glad to make things work so that if someone needed to do something with their kids or whatever, we’d all work it out so that the patients were covered and nobody lost hours either.

Enter the other worker that preferred a similar shift to me. She was awesome. She would bust her ass for the patients, was one of those people that’s easy to get along with, even if there’s a disagreement or misunderstanding. Was and is one of the best people I ever worked with. We aren’t close, but we keep in contact, especially since covid, which is a long story in itself.

Anyway, her and one of the patients’ grandsons end up spending a lot of time together over a few months. Enough so that it was pretty obvious it was going somewhere. Now, to the best of my knowledge, she never, ever engaged in any behaviour that would have impacted patient care, and I know for a fact she never did when we were there at the same time. To the contrary, when we’d all be sitting down in the kitchen, chatting and such between checking on the patients, it didn’t matter what they were talking about, she would cut him off mid sentence to go handle things

I heard the same thing happen when they were alone together in other rooms as well. She didn’t mess around with the job at all, in any way.

If they were finding time to canoodle or whatever, they were quite and stopped when it was time for work. In other words, nobody did anything inappropriate while at work.

However, they did go out together eventually. And they got seen by one of the office staff (it isn’t exactly a highly populated area, so you’ll run into everyone eventually).

So it was drama. They called in all of us that worked the case, acting like they were fucking cops investigating a crime. Which set me off hard. I got the call that they wanted me to come into the office “for questioning” after I had pulled a shift with those patients, then gone to work at a second job (and had to physically throw a dude out of the club, which is not exactly refreshing after two long shifts). Woke my ass up, calling five fucking times, leaving increasingly shitty messages.

Now, I was younger. I was a lot nicer, a lot more patient in my youth. Now, I’d tell anyone pulling that shit to go fuck themselves. But back then, I agreed to come in. I had no clue what they were on about, but there had been rumors going around that the administrator who had recently gone on vacation wasn’t coming back at all because money was missing. So I figured it had to be something about that, what with the ever increasing shittiness of the messages.

I get there, and the lady that was nominally “human resources” starts out with a threat. Starts with. Saying that I could be held responsible too, if I don’t tell the truth.

I’m sitting there on about three hours of sleep, so my mouth opens and asks her what the fuck she’s on about. Which turns into her trying to scream and fire me (she didn’t have that ability at all). I walk the fuck out, go to my actual supervisor, and tell her I’m about done. The HR twat comes in behind me telling my supervisor to fire me.

My supe asks me to head to the break room and have some coffee, and she’ll be right with me.

When she gets there, she’s rolling her eyes and apologizing. We sit and have a cup of coffee while she explains what it’s really about, that my co-worker is dating a family member of a client. She asks if I know about it. I reply that even if I had, after the blast of crazy I just caught, my memory would disappear really fast.

She basically says “dude, c’mon”, in polite southern lady. I told her that I had never observed any inappropriate behavior of any kind by my co-worker. She asked if I had anything to add, and my mouth opened again. I said that the next time anyone from the office called me like that, they could go fuck themselves, and I’d find another job in fifteen minutes. Which got a laugh and an eye roll from her. Miss Patty was awesome as a supervisor lol.

So, the HR Lady, and I use the term loosely, did try to fuck with me after that, but I don’t know how it would have shaken out because the company folded. The administrator had run off with pretty much every drop of cash he could pilfer from the company.

The patients ended up following the bulk of us that worked there to a smaller, but way better, company. A few of the regular caregivers just quit the industry entirely, and a few went to the only other company around at the time instead of the smaller one the rest of us went to.

The co-worker and the grandson ended up getting married a few years later. I went, and it was a good match imo. They were happy as pigs in slops, hanging all over each other all night lol. Still married, still happy afaik.

On my end of things, idgaf about those two getting together the way they did. If they’d compromised patient care, it would matter, but it didn’t. If anything, it would have improved it, but my co-worker was already deeply devoted to the job, she couldn’t be a better caregiver, period. It’s one of those rules that makes sense on the surface, but fails utterly when real people are involved.

Wasn’t exactly my workplace, but a contractor. Basically, as a cost saving measure, they layed off half of the IT department. And then they got hacked. They just re-flashed everything, and the threat was out of their system, but they messed up big time. The new images weren’t locked down properly, so they almost immediately got hacked again. I noticed that they’d messed up, and pointed it out to a few people, but it was too late.

Now the execs need a scapegoat, so they gut the IT department again. I don’t work for them, not even close to the business relationship, but their managers call me to a meeting room and try to get me in trouble? Try to make me admit to doing something wrong? And it was just their admin people there, not like my heads or anything. It was kind of a surreal experience.

This was a while ago, and their tech is still a bit funky. (Some details are lightly fuzzed, but this all is basically true)