You're Toast!

davebo11 submitted 595 days ago

I was working at a large company and at some point my folder of work related files, as well as those of several of my co-workers disappeared off the server. I contacted the IS department and they looked into it. Every few days I would follow up to see if there was any progress. They were checking the backups, but nobody could seem to located the files there either. One morning, a couple weeks later, I got to work and was told that the IS dept. had given up and they could not restore my files. I called over to check for myself, irritated that restoring a backup, (which should have been a simple procedure for a trained IS tech, who were all being paid way more than I was) was apparently beyond their capabilities. This was a heavily regulated industry and had I lost a similar amount of information that was not on the computers, I would have expected to be fired. Anyway, I called over to talk to them on what was coincidentally, the first day they had implemented a new Help Desk system which consisted of an answering machine instead of a person who could possibly help me. As I left a message I became increasingly angry and all my botled up frustration over the incident came out. I ended with "...get my f***ing files back, or you're toast!"

Needless to say, over the next few days, the message was transferred up the chain of command to the IS dept. head and then over to my dept where it descended on my manager. I apologized for using the f-word (In fact, I did that almost immmediately after I left the first message.) but they dismsissed me anyway for "threatening" a co-worker. Apparently saying "You're Toast" to an answering machine made someone (I never even knew who would listen to the message) feel threatened.

The icing on the cake: My files were restored mere hours after the message was left, but the IS dept claimed it was a coincidence and that my information had been wrong and I should have called over to confirm it before getting upset.

I went on to start my own successful company and am much happier now, anyway. The whole story still makes me laugh.