A rule-obsessed employee made work miserable for others — until one co-worker gave him a taste of his own medicine

An employee from the IT department of a large organization refused to help with urgent technical issues without a formal ticketing process. His colleague (u/sad_puppy_eyes​), however, used his tactic to force the IT guy to show up every day, ultimately resulting in a compromise. The story, shared in September 2023, has received over 8K upvotes on the platform. 

The author, responsible for hosting high-level guest speakers (for instance, the Dean of Medicine at Yale), said everything ran perfectly until Gary, their previous IT guy, retired. Whenever there was a technical issue, Gary would show up to fix it immediately. After he retired, his replacement, Todd, came in with a very different approach. Though he was asked to report at 8 am sharp, Todd would always show up 10-15 minutes late. "He hated walking into the office and immediately having a call waiting for him. He wanted to have his coffee, read his email, and ease his way into the workday," the narrator explained. Todd was so frustrated with the arrangement that he asked if the author could ask his admin assistants to troubleshoot the problems instead of him. "He was pretty hardcore about this until I pulled out the job description of my assistants, and nowhere did it say that computer repair fell under their workload. I then showed him HIS job description, where it said that computer repair was [his job]," the author recalled. Todd was still very reluctant to help, and so he insisted that everyone follow a formal IT protocol to contact him. "You need to call the central helpline and have them open a user ticket. Then I'll attend," he announced. 

Even though the narrator explained to him that this was unacceptable and that he couldn't let the guest speaker wait any longer, Todd refused, emphasizing that even the CEO follows the "rules." When the author realized Todd was in no mood to understand the situation, he let the IT guy walk right into his own trap. Well, he had submitted pre-emptive tickets, requiring Todd to be present at the venue every day at 7:45 am for the next three months. "I had contacted his boss's boss and received authorization to change Todd's work schedule due to operational requirements, so he would now be required to work 7-3 instead of 8-4," he shared. When Todd confronted the author, he was given two choices: either follow the amended rules or show up to help immediately when required.

Eventually, Todd agreed that the ticket process would not be necessary and that he would show up as needed. While the ticketing system looks professional, it leads to more inconvenience than ever, especially when you're running out of time. Most IT-related issues that people report are minor problems; however, a small number of tickets (just 12.6%) are serious issues, and if they are not responded to quickly (because of slow ticketing systems), they can lead to 80% of the total productivity lost, a survey by HappySignals reported.

Meanwhile, reacting to the Reddit post, a person, u/my_lovely_me, commented, "So good! I literally had to stop reading for a few seconds when I reached your big moment, because I not only laughed out loud but also clenched my eyes shut to do so! I hate Todd."

u/no_channel_6909 said, "This was oh so satisfying. We have an IT guy who is exactly the same way. Nothing is an emergency unless he deems it so.' Put in a ticket; I'm leaving for the day. I'll look at it tomorrow.' Well, when you can't access your computer system to process the 20 people who left/forgot/lost their badge, I would deem it an emergency. 'No, Rick, it can't wait until tomorrow.' We have started calling operations and HR and telling them that productivity is going to be impacted due to the computer system issues. Rick always seems to be irritated when he gets to the desk now." 

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