Weird IT Story #1

Every geek has a story about where the job went strange - where the senior sales guy's mailbox was found to be full of porn, where the love-triangle became an HR matter, where the senior VP's drug habit became public knowledge, whatever. IT is about tech and people - generally the tech is okay...but the people can get weird. I thought I would share a 'weird' IT story and invite everyone to put in some of the ones they've had.

Rule #1 - No names, no companies. This has to be completely anonymous.
Rule #2 - It has to have happened to you. No writing in a story about 'something you heard that happened to another guy'.

Persons who violate these terms will be condemned to edit /root while under the influence of alcohol or mood-altering, legally-prescribed medication. Here is my "Weird IT Story #1"...

I worked for a small-time IT contractor in San Jose about 7 years ago. Between me and 3 other guys, we did local government IT support and one of those jobs was to do PM (preventative maintenance) on the dozens of workstations they had at particular sites. Not very glamourous...lots of wiping and spraying of canned air into old workstations that had accumulated dust bunnies in their 9 months of operation.

This was during the summer - we broke for lunch to a local pizza place. While waiting for our order (I think it was barbequed chicken and BBQ sauce...on pizza...I digress) we noticed a strange pair of guys at the next table. It was some white guy, a contractor and a Mexican guy...probably a day laborer. The white guy was acting really strange, like he was half asleep - one of the other guys who had more experience with this matter said that he was 'sketched out' (on Speed, I found out). I didn't know many people like that, but it was clear that this guy was strange. Half asleep, he couldn't keep it together to take a bite of the pepperoni pizza he was eating...he kept trying to take a bite but missing.

The other guys at my table thought it was hilarious - imagine a drowsy white guy with a pepperoni on his cheek and an embarrassed Mexican guy - what would you have done? They started pouring salt on the table and cutting it into 'lines' - the white guy was oblivious. After they left, we noticed that the sleepy guy had left a bottle of Advil on the table. It was an old bottle, label was wearing off, and inside were about 30 different prescription pills...all legal, but strong stuff: Demoral, Vicodin, Percodan, etc.

The weirdest guy of our group palmed the bottle and left with it. I didn't think anything more of it until the following Monday. It turns out our guy had downed all 30 pills - to get high or commit suicide, I don't really know which. He'd passed out Friday, slept through the weekend and was barely functional on Monday morning when he dragged himself into work. The punchline? This wasn't the weirdest thing I'd heard of him doing, but I didn't witness any of it firsthand and so it's not my story to tell.

That's one to start with. Would you like to share one of your own? Comment below!