r/talesfromtechsupport • u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work • Sep 05 '12
Only Communists Work On Computers
Remember Mr Suit from It's Raining RAM? He has a sequel.
It took me four months, give or take, from the time it rained in the severer room to the time I started working on the server side of the world, and sadly there was a side trip back to app-support land when we had layoffs (I was told to go back to supporting Windows apps or get fired, I picked the job). But this was a cool autumn day, after a bad week.
My week was epic shit. My aunt had been found dead (heart attack), I hated supporting Windows, and I was having problems at home. So when I was told that someone had trouble getting his software to install on our desktops, and would I please help, I sighed and dragged myself into our testing lab. Usually I got called in to QA everyone else's work, so I never messed with the apps themselves. But some days, when a user couldn't install the software they were an expert on, they called me in.
Oh, shit. It was Mr. Suit.
Clearly the universe hated me that week, but I sucked it up and plastered on a smile. "Hi, Mr. Suit. PHB says you're having trouble installing?"
"No."
I glance over at the room, and no one wants to look at Suit. This isn't good. "Okay, then where are we?"
"Don't you know?" I remember his sneer.
"Sorry, they just handed me the project and I didn't look at the notes since you were already here. If you don't mind, I can take five minutes and catch up." That was my bad, I should have looked at the notes, but generally these things were people not understanding registry settings, or forgetting passwords.
"I don't have the fucking time for this! Just install the shit!"
Count to ten. Do not kill. I pick up the CD and the accompanying paper he was supposed to have filled out to say how we install it. "Sorry, someone must have printed the wrong copy, this is blank. Let me just pull up the file--"
"You're as dumb as the last one!"
Fuck this shit. "Sir, I get you're frustrated, but I'm an employee here, same as you, and if you're not going to work with me, we're done."
He stopped and grabbed the papers. "Listen here, kid. I don't know how to install this crappy software! So you can stop being a fucking communist cunt and install it for me, or I'll have your ass fired!"
He threw the papers at me and stomped out.
I remember standing there, totally shell shocked, while the papers fluttered around me. The room was dead silent. Finally one guy asks if I'm okay.
"No, I'm really not," I replied, dropped the CD and went back to my desk.
I was sitting there staring at my PC, for who knows how long. There was something about the sheer vitriolic way he said it that felt like I'd been punched. Never before, or after, have I run into someone filled with that much anger. It wasn't that he said a lot, it was how he said it. Have you ever fallen and knocked all the air out of your lungs? That's what it was like. Stunned. I remember thinking I was overreacting, but my brain just refused to process things past how inhumane he'd been.
At some point, my PHB showed up and said HR had been informed, and I needed to go home. When I showed up home, hours early, my wife said I looked like there was no blood in my body, and she thought I'd been fired. It took a while before I could explain what happened, and oddly that started us fixing our relationship.
I took the next day off and when I got back I had two priority emails. One was from Suit saying he was sorry, the other from HR saying I was not to speak to Suit. I forwarded them the email and set him up on an auto filter. Suit's manager showed up and apologized, saying Suit was suspended, unless I wanted to file a complaint. I did, and he got sent to anger management.
The end played out that he wasn't allowed to work with anyone anymore. He sat in a cube, filled in his forms or whatever he did, reported to one person, and from what I could tell, never got another raise/promotion. But they didn't fire him.
I should have checked before I left, to see if he was still there, but the only time after that I saw him was once, on the bus (I saw him, our eyes met, and I got off at the next stop), and once in the office (I had to tell my new manager that I wasn't allowed to talk to him).
I remain quite unsatisfied that the shit didn't get fired.
tl;dr Don't waste my time with political correctness.
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u/myWorkAccount840 Sep 05 '12
my PHB showed up and said HR had been informed, and I needed to go home
Your boss sounds like a worthless asshole, from that. Did he give you any positive noises when he told you to go home? If I'd been in emotional collapse and told "HR has been informed, go home" without any positive reinforcement, my mind would have completely snapped from the stress.
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 05 '12
My PHB was worthless. My team leader was not, and actually paid for the taxi to take me home, called the next day to make sure I was okay, etc etc.
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u/PrinceJonn Sep 05 '12
Holy jumping shitballs. That's one horribly awful guy. Hope you never run into that kind of people again :)
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u/tmstms Sep 05 '12
I read this first without realising you are female and a lesbian, making his words and attitude far far more offensive.
I'm in the UK and in these kinds of circumstances this would certainly be big trouble for Mr Suit.
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u/sfatl004 Oct 22 '12
Holy fucking shit. OP is female? That really does increase the seriousness of this incident significantly. That kind of lawsuit can ruin a company, I can't believe Suit was not immediately terminated.
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u/Craysh Patience of Buddha, Coping Skills of Raoul Duke Sep 05 '12
I remain quite unsatisfied that the shit didn't get fired.
You should be satisfied. There are few things more soul sucking that knowing your in a dead end job with zero chance of raise or promotion.
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 05 '12
I'd rather see him fired. Keeping a dead end job still doesn't hammer home exactly how wrong this sort of shit is.
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u/Haukness Sep 07 '12
Agreed. Not only should have he been fired, but any benefits he had acquired over the years that could legally be taken away from him, should have been. Can you imagine if someone else with less clout had done something like that? They probably would have been shit-canned before they could open their mouth to explain themselves.
I really hate "powerful" people sometimes...
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u/sagewah Sep 05 '12
And isolation.. day in, day out, nothing for company but grey cubicle walls. They didn't fire him because that would have been expensive for them and easy for him. This way they save on termination payout / rehiring costs and he gets consigned to hell, instead of being unleashed on some other office.
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u/scarecrowshane When all you have is a hammer... Sep 05 '12
Holy crap. I've been in situations like that, and I know, you just...freeze. It's like, do I punch and get fired? Do I complain? Am I overreacting?
Fair play for formally complaining, you did the right thing the whole way, Kudos!
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u/chubbysumo Sep 05 '12
I would have filed a complaint of sexual and verbal harassment right away with HR, but that is just me, since I have dealt with assholes like this before, I know how to deal with them properly. Good job on not freaking out on him, and good job for getting him canned(not literally, but no raises, no communications, and no promotions for someone like him is worse than getting fired. It means he cannot collect unemployment, but will be making the same unless he quits.
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 05 '12
That is what my complaint said. This remains the only time I've ever had to fill in those forms, so at the time it was totally foreign to me. It's still weird. "And what did he say?" "Well, he called me a 'fucking communist cunt' and--" "Can you repeat that?"
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u/chubbysumo Sep 06 '12
once you deal with one tho, the next time one comes at you, you will react much quicker, and report him the same day without hesitation. Anyone who makes the workplace an environment that is hostile like Mr. Suit did is very obviously harassing other employees, even if just by his angry demanding demeaning attitude. He tried to make everyone else do his job the wrong way, and he paid for it. You want to make friends, not enemies, and he had plenty of enemies, but knew someone higher up that could not muster the courage to tell a "friend" that hes too abusive for the workplace and has to go.
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u/giantrobothead chmod+x facepalm.sh Sep 05 '12
Count to ten. Do not kill.
Easily my favorite line of the day. Possibly the week.
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u/dark_frog Sep 05 '12
When people yell at me, I treat them like another piece of defective hardware. I begin to plot how I will repair them without electrocuting myself.
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u/trro16p Sep 05 '12
I agree with with another post here. If they fired it (do not think it was human), it would of been messy, expensive and (possibly) violent.
I think this was the worst possible punishment. He was allowed to stay but, it had to work in complete isolation w/ only one person to contact. Not to mention it was further isolated into a windowless cubicle without any chance of getting a raise/promotion or changing jobs. I believe they wanted it to quit so there was no way to get unemployment.
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 05 '12
Okay, wow, that reminded me that at the time, I seriously thought he was going to come back with a rifle.
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u/KBKarma Interloping dev Oct 22 '12
OK, honestly, that is unprofessional, offensive, and just straight-up disrespectful. Congratulations on leaving.
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u/essentialgenitals Sep 06 '12
In your last story, you were a female. I'm so confused. Good story though, I know exactly what you mean when you're describing how you felt after what he said. It's a fucking shit feeling.
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 06 '12
I'm still a female last I checked. Yep, still got boobies and ovaries.
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u/Mshell Sep 11 '12
I think that you confused a few people mentioning your wife.
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 11 '12
I think you're a little late to that party ;)
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u/illgainedgoods Sep 11 '12
Oooh, there's a party? Will there be cake?
I'm stumped by all this confusion. The last suit tale establishes you as a girl, this story mentions a wife. I will admit to a second of "ok, guy goes home to wife, wait, no ... what?" and then it clicks, I assume girl with wife, and we move on. Where is the confusion?
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u/yes_my_ass_is_sore Sep 05 '12
I dont get it.. Are you a guy or a girl??? Lesbian?
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 05 '12
I'm a lesbian. Not that complicated.
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u/GrandmaGos Sep 05 '12
And, are you a Communist? I'm still not getting where that came from (WTF?), unless Mr. Suit inhabits some kind of uber-Tea Party binary cosmos in which everyone who is Not With Me is automatically a Communist.
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 05 '12
I'm not a communist. No one ever figured out where he pulled that shit from.
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Sep 05 '12
You just SAID you're Canadian. Everybody from outside the US is a communist. It is known.
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u/CaseyG QA - I break the things you fix! Sep 05 '12
Same place as "cunt". He thinks it's bad, so he shouts it when he's angry, but the truth is he's never even seen one.
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Sep 06 '12
[deleted]
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u/CaseyG QA - I break the things you fix! Sep 06 '12
I've known folks for whom that would be a compliment - sure, they're irritating, intrusive, and full of shit, but at least the colostomy bag is helpful and sanitary.
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u/KazumaKat Sep 05 '12
Having handled clients as a freelance tech just as bad as Mr. Suit, I can pretty much tell you they can look like they run the gamut from just-out-of-college blue collar to retired grandmother with 30 cats.
I could post about the rather heated incident I had with said grandmother wherein the neighbors saw what was happening and called the cops on her, but thats more of a WTF story than a /r/talesfromtechsupport story.
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u/GrandmaGos Sep 05 '12
Not going to tell us? We have ways of making you talk...
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u/KazumaKat Sep 05 '12
ooh, thats low, showing TOS cast in those famous costumes for that infamous episode...
Nope, not telling, not enough IT in the story to be worth a post, besides the other scary bits about it.
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u/DealioD Why would you tell anyone to put a Tilde in their password?! Sep 05 '12
You have much more integrity than I do, I spilled.
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u/yes_my_ass_is_sore Sep 05 '12
Was a legit question. Not very used to the whole "went home to my wife" thing.
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Sep 05 '12
Threw me for a second too. If he thought communist was an insult, I can only imagine the verbal flogging you'd receive if he met your wife.
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 05 '12
And people wondered why I was closeted for years. (I came out of the closet about a month after they gave me root access, figuring no one would piss off the lady with root ;) Also the server guys knew. One was my neighbor. They didn't give a shit.)
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u/surgegamer ID:10-T error fixer Sep 05 '12
no one would piss off the lady with root
All my upvotes to you, And even though not in the relevant reply stream, infinite kudos to you for sticking with IT after dealing with a horrendous end user like that.
It disgusts me when I run into elder employees who have such a blatantly sexist attitude and disregard for other employees as Mr. Suit. I will say this, they do receive their just reward sometimes... I know because I had helped get one fired at a previous job. I had a female co-worker/friend who had to deal with something like that and I actually witnessed it myself. She did not want to go to HR, but I was floored by such deplorable behavior and reported it myself. 3 weeks later she thanked me after the guy had gotten the pink slip.
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Sep 05 '12
Yeah when I read it I had to do a double-take as well, but then I quickly figured it out. Glad to see the comments agreed with my intuition.
Also OP, I feel ya. My old job was nothing but a hysterical HR manager and coworkers dumber than shit. (this wasn't computer related work) but now I'm back in school studying to be CIS, and even with the amount of dumb people and vitriol I'm bound to run into, it can't be worse than that. The problem solving part of CIS is also what drags me to it, I live for solving problems, it's the entirety of my existence.
But short explanation of some people I deal with now, one wanted to go do Cisco, so His course of action was: Open IE(okay okay, it's getting better, you don't have to use firefox) -> use the bing search field to find google -> use google to find Cisco's website. I lost a few brain cells watching that, but then I had a cig and a coffee and laughed at it.
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u/DealioD Why would you tell anyone to put a Tilde in their password?! Sep 05 '12
We should set up a new subreddit, "Stupid Shit I've Had to Deal With in HR." I could fill that one myself.
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u/eisforennui Sep 05 '12
i'd have to use throwaways, just to be safe!
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u/DealioD Why would you tell anyone to put a Tilde in their password?! Sep 05 '12
I wouldn't. At least not now.
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u/wildly_curious_1 K-12 Ed Tech + possessor of the patented Teacher Death Glare Oct 21 '12
And done: /r/TalesFromHR
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u/wildly_curious_1 K-12 Ed Tech + possessor of the patented Teacher Death Glare Oct 21 '12
And done: /r/TalesFromHR
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u/Cadi-T Sep 05 '12
Yeah, but is her gender and sexuality really relevant? If you knew from the last that she's female, why not just think "oh cool, she has a wife" and carry on? That aside, if you have to ask the question, is the excess of question marks necessary? Because from where I'm sitting, it just makes you look like you're freaking out over who OP marries, when it's really not a big deal.
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 05 '12
That was sort of my feeling, to be honest. I mean, of all the things to take away, he zeroed in on 'wife' and not 'communist' ;)
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u/joh6nn Sep 05 '12
or 'cunt'. that sort of caught my attention
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u/Cadi-T Sep 05 '12
Really? That's kinda interesting. I understand 'cunt' to be a strong insult that gets applied to any gender, being stronger than most other insults. Where in the world are you from? Perhaps it's a London attitude...
(Excuse me while I go get excited about how people across the world are rude to each other.)
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u/joh6nn Sep 05 '12
i'm from the north-eastern USA; we're fairly acerbic up here, and don't think much of calling someone asshole or motherfucker. but for some reason, at least in the circles i hang out in, cunt is kicking things up a level.
EDIT: just noticed your comment about it being for all genders. around here it's reserved mostly for women, and when used on men has connotations of emasculation. like bitch, but much more so.
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u/sewiv Sep 05 '12
It's a VERY strong insult/curse word in the US, far stronger than England or Australia.
It'd be an instantly fireable offense at my current job to call someone that.
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u/Letmefixthatforyouyo Sep 07 '12
Well, most of the readers here are in the US, where gay marriage is still largely banned. Its sad, its fucked, but its where we are at as a nation right now. Luckily, we are finally starting to make some inroads. Either way, it looks like many of us had a moment of cognitive dissidence reconciling the whole "married to a woman and also a woman" thing. No problem with it, just took a minute for reason to override hard cultural mores, no matter how ridicoulous.
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u/Cadi-T Sep 05 '12
*but are her...
(It was making me twitch, and my phone is screwing around with editing.)
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u/eisforennui Sep 05 '12
why not just think "oh cool, she has a wife" and carry on
i thought, "cool!" and then carried on. :)
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u/yes_my_ass_is_sore Sep 05 '12
Well it is relevant. It was like "Why would that guy call him a cunt? He has a wife... why not call him a dick?... he is a guy... woo, "..girl.." wtf, ok.. So cunt makes sense.. she has a wife.. Did he just misspell? Gotta ask...
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u/PoglaTheGrate Script Kiddie and Code Ninja Sep 05 '12
Well, since you said 'wife' it certainly narrows down the country you could be from...
Many moons could mean anything from months to years, but I'm going to say around 10 years...
My guess is Canadian, but you could be English, from California or one of the other handful of Seppo States.
This is, of course, assuming that English is your first language.
You could be from Belgium or The Netherlands.
If it isn't quite ten years South Africa and Spain come into the equation. Your command of the English language doesn't necessarily rule out any of those countries, but my feeling is Spain is the least likely candidate.
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u/bippyz Screaming Makes The Server Work Sep 05 '12
Canadian, living and working in the US. I'm one of those dual people.
She wasn't my wife then, but she is now. I suppose to be accurate it would be my then girlfriend, in the context of the story.
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Sep 05 '12
For some reason this reminded me of Roy on The IT Crowd getting the crap kicked out of him in the pilot.
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Sep 06 '12
That guy clearly hasnt had his dick sucked in a while. Stupid fucking rage case shouldnt be allowed in public. I'm sorry you had to put up with his shit.
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u/Donkey-boner Sep 06 '12
All offense you are a pussy. Are you actually that much of a little girl? did you cry? fuck sake someone swore at you so you went home. worst person.
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u/Haukness Sep 07 '12
First of all, her PHB sent her home ... she didn't just run home crying like a "little girl".
Secondly, what reaction would you have rather she had? Slinging profanity back at him? Taking a swing at him? Getting revenge by deleting his files or damaging his computer? Just "sucking it up"?
Please, by all means, enlighten us, oh most wise "Donkey-boner".
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u/DealioD Why would you tell anyone to put a Tilde in their password?! Sep 05 '12
I can only sympathize. That's one horrible story. I had a guy try to break down a door to get to me, and we didn't even have a meeting about it. So, at least you were at a slightly better place than where I worked.