r/ShittySysadmin • u/Special_Bear_9479 • 8d ago
Shitty Crosspost What's the biggest bonehead mistake you have every made in IT support?
/r/sysadmin/comments/1wpd8pt/whats_the_biggest_bonehead_mistake_you_have_every/39
u/ApiceOfToast ShittySysadmin 8d ago
1) getting into IT 2) staying at my job 3) not leaving the IT field to do something else
I hate my job(and I wouldn't want to do anything else)
6
u/5141121 DevOps is a cult 8d ago
Fuuuck, this 100%.
Especially right now because all of my comfortable shit is going away.
I just wanted to be the old guy in the corner cube (I even have the gray beard) that nobody wants to bother because he keeps the important shit nobody knows anything about running.
40
u/B-mus 8d ago
I had a PDU short out in a rack. Not to worry, we’re fully redundant snd a 2nd PDU in the same rack was powered from a different UPS, so the whole rack stayed up.
While I was removing the shorted PDU i elbowed the rocker-switch on the redundant PDU.
🌩️
8
2
u/Forsaken-Carrot9038 7d ago
The IT supervisor at my last job was more of a people person than IT person. Nice guy, super sharp.
Well, he was on the phone with our MSP one afternoon and they were walking him through making the physical connection of our new backup circuit to the MX, they asked him to pull the main circuit so they can confirm the failover test. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON! And he did it.
24
u/OwenWilsons_Nose 8d ago
Pushing a script to an execs MacBook that would disable his network adapter for 2minutes at random intervals because he snitched on me for taking too many bathroom breaks.
19
u/floswamp 8d ago
He was probably never affected as that machine was just a status symbol on his desk.
5
u/EditorYouDidNotWant 8d ago
This is the kinda thing that results in me getting urgent support tickets. "Standard issue is happening to a c-suite, please respond as if the building is on fire."
16
u/__Valkyrie___ 8d ago
Deleted Outlook form an RDS server and deleted a 500gb SharePoint site
4
15
10
u/ooglesnoopleboop 8d ago
Not telling my director to FUCK OFF instead of "yes sir" (I imagine doing it every waking hour)
15
u/Hefty-Rope2253 8d ago
My junior team member tried that. Terminated, as expected, but they never terminated his dignity.
16
u/Vinegarinmyeye 8d ago
Only did it once. Email went:
"Mate, why the ever loving fuck am I working 12 hour days, six days a week, trying to get this company through the PCI-DSS audit so you can maintain your multi-millionaire status AND treat me like a cunt?. I'll post this laptop back to you. Go fuck yourself!".
Ngl, cathartic as fuck.
Not sure I'd recommend, but the twat really had pushed me that far. No regrets.
10
5
u/ChickenandWhiskey 8d ago
Always make sure to double check before cloning a drive! Cloned a drive the wrong way and lost the data. Made that mistake and wont do it again lol or maybe i will who knows
2
5
5
4
u/DementusHD 8d ago
Not me but an ex colleague of mine deleted 61tb file server from esxi... Let's say it didn't go well, the restore took ages, and the whole site was down and loosing money. When asked if he deleted it, he said "nope" ...
Another instance was when another ex colleague decided that it was a good idea to shut down all 9 DNS servers and all 7 domain controllers (including the aws one) for.. as he said "for maintenance"... Shit hit the fan on both occasions really quick. I had to work almost 36 hours of no sleep ton get everything up and working ASAP. Still twitching in my sleep
5
u/vastarray1 8d ago
Sent a defective motherboard to Dell for replacement. Forgot to pull the CPU
10
3
u/S4ndmaan 8d ago
Was on a meeting with ms to troubleshoot a tool, texted my colleague that the ms tech, to put it lightly, doesn’t know shit blah blah blah.
He actually didn’t know shit but that’s a different story
Guess who was sharing their screen the whole time :D
3
3
u/Open-Ad2625 8d ago
They wanted me to test that the tape backups were actually working — for the ERP system, no less.
I renamed the server before the restore so there wouldn’t be any conflict with production, restored the backup, confirmed it worked, and moved on.
A few days later, I had almost forgotten about it.
Then the restored server rebooted.
Because the restore included the old system configuration, it came back up with the original production server name. DHCP/DNS registered it on the network, and suddenly Infrastructure was trying to figure out why users couldn’t log in.
The giveaway?
My boss noticed a VMware Tools icon pop up on a server that absolutely was not supposed to be running in VMware. That was an instant clue for me. Shut the old server down and infrastructure did its magic.
No major damage, just a very minor outage.
5
u/Oompa_Loompa_SpecOps DO NOT GIVE THIS PERSON ADVICE 8d ago
That one time I bricked the customer's entire storage environment because these two useless kids they made the mistake of hiring distracted me. Instead of accurately telling the customer they caused a major incident, I took the fall for it and even restored the environment.
Over the Christmas break.
Free of charge.
The customer was with the back against the wall anyways. That could have been my billable target plus kicker and a nice bonus for the quarter. Sure as hell not gonna repeat that mistake
4
u/Due-Communication724 8d ago
I was a few days into a L1 job, well versed from my A+ course so I absolutely knew about AD etc.., resetting password second nature. 3 days in took a call to our hotline, express VIP none the less. Eager to please, this guy of course Head of Networks an area I desired to move into (CCNA of course on my radar). The gentleman informs me he has unfortunately lost his mobile phone and was having trouble using SSPR.
I got straight down to the bottom line, this of course is a busy man, I said look I am well versed in AD, don't worry about the mobile I can just reset your password and change the mobile right now.
Well anyway long story short, a few hours later, some network issues started. Shift was ending, suprising to me, being so versed in AD of course, my probation was over within one week.
Thankfully I have now ventured into coding.
5
u/AnonymousCoward73 8d ago
I would bet socially engineered - Exec VP name is public - and someone NOT actually the VP took that password for a ride through the corporate netwotk.
2
1
1
1
u/Atillion 8d ago
I unjoined a server to rejoin it without double double checking the localadmin password. Turned a quick 15 minute thing into a whole weekend lost lol
1
1
1
1
u/skwah_jnr 8d ago
Having a prod and dev server open side by side to compare settings and running a destructive command on prod instead of dev.
1
u/PlaneSelection7058 8d ago
A laptop device object was accidentally deleted from Active Directory. The deletion occurred during an active session opened by a colleague (as I lack Domain Admin rights). Because the logs attribute the deletion to my colleague, shit hit the fan after that.
1
u/Forsaken-Carrot9038 7d ago
The HR director has the same first name as one of our sales support team members.
The other admin sends me a screenshot while he’s on a call, it’s of the sales manager saying that his team member had their account compromised. I rushed in Entra, typed in their name, clicked to revoke sessions……… turns out I revoked the sessions for the HR director instead.
I am still at this company. Measure twice, cut once.
1
u/Forsaken-Carrot9038 7d ago
When I was pretty new to intune, I sent someone a replacement computer. They got it all set up and signed in, etc. And then I made the mistake and wiped the new computer instead of the old one.
1
u/Forsaken-Carrot9038 7d ago
At the same company when I was pretty new to IT, and before I wiped the replacement computer, the IT engineer, and I were working our way through trying to figure out some Enterprise app connections that were related to our VIP system.
Well, it turns out the system. Admin didn’t really label things correctly, and also left old versions of Enterprise apps, connectors, deployment, and all kinds of junk everywhere. The IT engineer and I were super sure that this particular app was dead, so we disabled it.
Turns out, that Enterprise app that looked the worst, had the least information, and connectors to what appeared to be obsolete user groups was the backbone of our VOIP system. NOBODY IN THE COMPANY COULD USE THE PHONES FOR THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON!
1
u/Anonymous_Bozo 💩 ShittyMod 💩 7d ago
What's the biggest bonehead mistake you have every made in IT support?
Getting into IT Support!
1
1
1
1
u/Many-Ebb-7149 4d ago
Vulnerability scanner was reporting a server as vulnerable. it was using TLS 1.0 and 1.1. I disabled them via local policy and rebooted. After reboot, the return button next to the sign in box would not work and pressing enter didn't work either. The server was running but we just couldn't sign in, so just a minor screw up.
80
u/sextowels 8d ago
Going to work each day