As seen on reddit...

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

I bet I know exactly what's going on inside the IT guy's head here.

"My IT guys are saying that I ruined one of the workstations by plugging in my USB drive and then improperly removing it. They said the hard drive became corrupted. I've never heard of that happening. Any thoughts? Computer system is Windows XP (or was it Server 2003)..."


IT guy's head: "What sounds plausible enough to get him to (follow corporate policy)/(stop wasting my time)?"

Comments

[emsporter.livejournal.com]

Outside chance of "buggered up USB ports, caused power issues on motherboard", but... yeah, that sounds like a classic "you're a pain in the arse of a user" discussion.

[superbus.livejournal.com]

The top answer on that thread was the best one, I thought. No, to the other guys, the IT guy isn't a moron, he's actually quite smart. And furthermore, the IT guy is smart enough to actually SEE this on Reddit, and now will make it his life's goal to fuck with you. <3

[dave-iii.livejournal.com]

The bad part is, the poster is actually smart enough to post on Reddit, and therefore SHOULD be smart enough to know not to do that. I can see circumstances where things don't get done properly (Sometimes the system is behaving very poorly and "breaking" it is the only way to force it to be fixable) but still...

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

I agree, definitely the best response. I may be biased though, because it's me :)

[lunatic59.livejournal.com]

Classic case of writus interruptus. Get him an ice pack for his USB drive.

[natalie-i-am.livejournal.com]

I got distracted by the Star Trek comments.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Yea, they ARE what makes the post.

[vulpisfoxfire.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that giving misinformation and making the next IT guy's job that much harder (not to mention the current one, if he ever slips and does exactly what he told the user would blow up the machine himself) is the best way to handle this, myself. :-/

[scarah2.livejournal.com]

What I don't get is, how does the IT guy benefit from lying about this?

If it's corporate policy not to plug in USB drives and he's trying to avoid having the user not heed the policy because he finds that story too boring, if he's going to lie he could say that malware was detected on the USB drive, or that it managed to infect the computer.

The result of what he told the user, is that the user comes away believing that USB drives are A-OK, and his only mistake was not removing it properly.

The only thing I can come up with is that the user had a better computer that IT coveted for some purpose, and used this excuse to swap it out with a lesser powered machine...

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

I'll bet the ass had a virus on it.