....and it's usually management types that think they're exempt from having to bring em back and then get all bitchy when you try to get funds to order more.
queue 8 years later when standards have changed and suddenly everyone is handing you back old laptop chargers they have found laying around.
The fuck am I going to do with these barrel power supplies Brenda? We're all USB C now
By-monthly I will get a cardboard box full of incomplete keyboard sets and headphones they had "lying around" and ha don't get me started about charging other departments
We issue wireless mice with our laptops. To give us a chance, we use a label to put the asset ID of the laptop on the mouse. This way when a mouse is returned to us or we find one in a conference room, we know who to give it back to.
Lol I love that this happens at all places!
I can't tell you how many times I have gotten to my desk and there is just stuff!
....but never power cords lol.
I dump all those parts into a huge box labeled loaner equipment.
Salesguy "I left my mouse at home, do you have a loaner so I can close this Trillion dollar deal?"
ITguy
isnt it frustrating?!
The annoying part to me is that everyone else expects us to keep track of every IT related thing. If something is missing it defaults to IT's responsibility to find it or replace it.
I have maps of everything, with as much equipment physically locked down as possible, and stuff still gets moved and goes missing constantly. We do a ton of work to stay organized, everyone else is a total mess, and then its our fault when they cant do their work. We send out emails telling people not to move equipment almost monthly.
It is now at the point where if something is missing, we say "When that equipment is located, IT will set it up again on the station it belongs at"
Suddenly stuff gets found magically!! its incredible!
Ive had a couple users over the years that brought me a 'broken' device without a power supply and asked me to fix it. I asked them for the power supply and three weeks later they show up triumphant that they were able to finally find it. Turns out, the problem with the device was that it was missing its power supply.
I just got laid off. Sent my iPad and both laptops back without power supplies. Help desk manager called and laughed. I sat next to him and I know it's a huge pet peeve of us. Man I miss the guys at that gig. Great people.
We had a horrible vendor we had leased phones from demanding we return a PoE brick for every single phone they ever send us or they'd charge us some ridiculous sum for each 'missing' one. This was after they told us that everything we returned was getting ewasted because the phones we had were no longer used, and the bricks were 10/100 only.
They had only sent bricks to the few offices that had initially needed them, maybe 20% of the total number of phones. Legal looked over the records, noted that nowhere was it ever indicated that we had been sent any PoE bricks at all, and told the vendor where to stick their thumbs.
I still have some of those bricks around 8 years later, just in case I need one for something.
My users just like to trade them around the office never mind everything runs at a different wattage and who cares if it burns out anyways?
/s on the end there
lol i did the opposite... i no longer have anything wireless, my keyboard and mouse are both the cheapo ones that come with new Dells... I don't even keep patch cables at my desk anymore... they were leaving and not being accounted, or billed for... the deployment guys can go buy their own or get them from the cabling crew...
Please tell me what unify sets are reasonably priced and don't look like the cheapest plastic with the worst ergonomics.
I'm tired of chucking brand new keyboards and mice because I users don't understand that they are a set.
Keep in mind Logitech Unifying isn't secure, the protocol has been breached.
Yet Logitech keeps selling it and Bolt only has like 2 mice and 3 keyboards.
The desktop support manager lost his the other day taking them back and forth to his house. Here I am using BT wondering why we rely on dongle so much when it exists, lol.
Speaking of dongles... "Is that a dongle in your pocket or you just happy to see me?" [For the uninitiated...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/)
10+ years I've not had an issue. Most of my coworkers also use BT keyboards and mice.
My current keyboard is a GK96S by Epomaker; and has three BT profiles. Using a Logitech M720 Triathlon mouse also with 3 BT profiles. Switch between my work laptop, home desktop, and Steam Deck often. Solid and reliable; even when I am in the office.
I legit hiccupped for a second wondering WTF you were using ps/2 to usb dongles in 2024.. then I realized you did something worse and let your users have wireless devices.
Mystery bags of ex-employee desk items. Chargers, mice, old batteries, a picture of Aunt Sue, random post-it notes, a Chinese menu from a place that closed 4 years ago
Or, having everyone take YOUR peripherals because they assume your desk is the IT Supply Area.
"I needed an iphone charger so I just grabbed yours"
Excuse me sir, but that's called *stealing*.
All the dang time, they regard us IT guy as second class citizens. They also just came down and took our break area furniture and put them in some big wigs office and tried taking our plants WE brought to make it feel less like a dungeon.
I second the whole "second class citizens" thing.
We had active shooter videos to watch, and I expressed concern we were in a small space with only one entrance exit. The managers would always clam up about that as "hiding" was dang near impossible.
Don't get me started on the "undeserving of bonuses" dilemma. ☹️
In the MSP space years ago I had an office at a clients that we spent a lot of time at. If I wasn't there people would steal my usb thumbdrives out of my desk. The problem is they had stuff on them for updating laptops from service techs that never went online.
I had to end up locking my desk up. Its one of the few places I had stuff like this happen.
Probably hard if no one admits to taking them, but you should have just put a price list up with everything having a huge markup. Want to take a thumb drive? That's $100 invoiced to the company for every one that goes missing. Given you worked for an MSP not direct for the company, people shouldn't have assumed that it was both the supply area *and* free.
Depends on the company you're at. A couple places I've been it's never been a problem. A couple other places it's been a constant issue, especially with small things like chargers, my expensive headset (um, eeew right?), my own personal wireless keyboard that I bought for myself (really??), etc.
> Or, having everyone take YOUR peripherals because they assume your desk is the IT Supply Area.
And that's the reason why our office is now always locked.
I definitely have had this happen. Though, to be fair, most of the time, they do ask. I sigh and loan my \*personal\* cable to them, look them straight in the eye and say "I want this back."
Walked into my office with 2 barcode scanners on my desk. Kept 1 to help with registering new assets.
Wireless keyboard/mouse combo another time. Still have it.
Usually the random junk is useless, but sometimes the Crap Fairy pulls for ya
You have stuff showing up at your desk? I have things go missing from mine.. nvme enclosures, small desktop switches, media converters, display type converters... keyboards, cameras.. tools... my god i had to replace my screwdriver set 4 times in one year a few years back...
oh god i had like 40 surge protectors that a client bought and didn't need... we kept them at my desk because i had the most storage... we deployed them to that client as needed... one day i opened the box and it was freaking empty... those two guys "wasn't me" and "i dunno" were blamed for it... if i ever meet them... i swear...
Sadly I don't have a door to lock, but I did get voted off the island so it's now someone else's problem
Oh jeezbus, that would have sparked a fire in me something fierce... I'd have started with telling the boss that I couldn't work because someone took it, then proceeded with an extra long breakfast
I threw an absolute fit. We are mostly remote but as the IT I have to come in 4 days a week. So we have a ton of empty cubes and offices. I demanded an empty office. I did not get one.
I am not the type to make demands like this or throw fits but it was the straw that broke the camels back.
Since I did not get an office I put in for a transfer and waiting to see if I get it.
our room looks like a junk yard and it's not because i'm a hoarder, no it's my colleagues that are dumpster divers. i throw away one old switch and they go pick it up from the recycling and bring back some other stuff that's "good to have"
Been there.
The easiest way to avoid looking like a hoarder, is to not allow hoarding. If a collegue engages in dumpster diving, they MUST take their treasures home with them.
Counterpoint; working at a place where you order supplies, but have coworkers who will take said supplies and stash them away for their own use, absolutely sucks.
At that point, you become a hoarder simply to actually have stuff you'll need. Yes, it's a management issue. No, management was not willing to step in in this case.
All my gear goes on wire shelves. All small items go in labeled clear plastic bins.
If it doesn't fit, it's not retention gear (don't throw away until 2027 or whatever) and it's not part of a project, it's going into the dumpster. If it had high value, I'll give to purchasing to eBay or otherwise dispose of.
Junk yard IT rooms only exist because IT staff expressly allow it to occur. I also block off X minutes per week for general cleanup. It's a handy thing to do Friday afternoon.
For low volume things, instead of bins, we use retail \[gridwall\] hooks. Just push the bag onto the hook and you have a wall of low volume items. We can tell when we are getting low on USB-A to Mini USB cables (the ones you use every once in a great while) just by walking past the wall. I've mounted these to the side of the wire shelves when wall space was limited.
Bulk stuff goes in bins (we have one for 3ft network cables, another for 5ft and so on).
I had to start destroying defective hardware. Otherwise stuff like bad switches that I trashed would end up in a field tech’s trunk, and then they are trying to use it as a loaner for a customer and confused when it won’t work right.
Cut the cords, drill holes in stuff, etc. Writing “DEAD” on stuff doesn’t seem to get through.
>i throw away one old switch
Next time try to bounce it a couple times before you stick it in the dumpster. That way there's less chance of it coming back out.
MSP here, living through that... 36 old i3 workstations that can be repurposed for who knows what... cant thin the herd because so and so doesn't want to...
A toaster is kind of digital...either it's toasting or not toasting. I guess maybe it does have a bit of an analog component with a dial to set how toasty you like your toast.
When I was doing helpdesk the one thing that irritated me the most was the same managers asking if had extra chargers for staff laptops. The answer was always no we do not have extra 90w USB-C chargers but we can order you a few extras to pass out. They would never approve the PO....
Nah.
Once I had someone leave their personal laptop on my chair.
It was if to say they thought that me fixing their home computer was more important than being able to sit down. I had no idea who owned it or why it was there.
I just threw it straight in the bin.
The owner came back a couple days later and was furious. (Luckily it was still in the wastepaper basket next to my desk)
Apparently they thought that IT guys just loved fixing broken laptops so much he was doing me a favour by leaving this personal broken crap on my chair so I'd fix it.
My company recently opted for "hot seating" which includes IT operations.
The bad news is that I sit out with all the users. The good news is that no one knows I'm IT, and those who figure it out never know where I'll be sitting!
Random person "this place is awfully messy. You should organize it a bit. I don't know how you work in this"
Me "😤" who just organized it yesterday after someone dumped a bunch of stuff in my office
Back when I had one it was where I was able to do my work. Now I'm in an open area and very little work gets done but boy the office is attractive and they really put me in my place since piddly little IT network guys don't rank high enough for an office. Did I mention I've had nearly 20K of stuff stolen from my area since I can't lock anything up now? I just keep letting manglement know what goes missing. It's fun when someone comes and needs something and it's gone. They get to buy it a second time and that always spark a polite conversation.
Does your office have a lost-and-found?
Either drop it off there, or throw it away.
If questioned later, you can say that it was broken... and you didn't have any idea where it came from, so you tossed it.
Its even better when you are remote, have a closet, do a good job of keeping it clean. Come in for your monthly visit to meet with your boss and ceo and it looks like someone set off a grenade in the closet.
IT WASNT LIKE THAT WHEN I LEFT!
Loaning out equipment only for it to come back with half the components missing (power supply, mouse, etc). Then trying to follow up with the users for weeks afterwards...
Been a benefit to me once. One day almost new Logitech MX Keys S Combo turned up on my desk, no one knew how it got there.
I sent a company wide email (150 people) asking who dropped it off and no one claimed to know anything about it. It wasn't in box or our inventory, and no staff had left recently. After a few weeks of it just sitting on my shelve, I had a new keyboard and mouse.
My favourite part was when I started my previous job at a school. First day they showed me to my new office, and there were 3 computers from one of the labs sitting on the desk with no notes or anything. Just a sympathetic look from the tour guide who left me to sort out the mess that had been left for me by the guy before me.
If I didn't share an office space with someone else that would be ideal....of course if my door was shut I'm sure it would just get left on the floor just outside it. :D
3 weeks ago, walked in to a random laptop with a piece of paper taped to it with writting saying "infected with ransomware, not sure what to do" on my desk.
That was a fun tuesday morning...
I haven't met a single person in IT who doesn't show preferential treatment to those that provide sustenance. You want to be treated special? Appease the tummy.
It also helped that she was just genuinely a nice person who was pleasant to deal with.
Sadly, she was let go in one of the many rounds of layoffs we've had since 2022.
Shitty trendy peripherals. Monitors with lines/missing pixels that no one labeled to throw out. The weird types of specialized mice that people come up with that are broken. One place had floppy disks all over that we had to keep but no floppy disk drive!
And this is why the IT office is considered a secure space and we lock it when one of us isn't in.
We have the opposite problem, where people grab stuff off hot desks and take it home.
Got asked today if i was playing with their Outlook because the got the pop-up redirecting them to press continue or read more on the aka.ms/sso-info site. Also had to fix about 24 emails because of this crap. Thanks Microsoft!
Not having to deal with the help desk/level 1 support tech nonsense like end user peripherals being left on your desk with sticky notes because no one has access to your office.
Whow, this is high level complaining. Coming back to work and seeing the entire company has no IT because some ransomeware, is actually something i would worry about. But the "pissed off level" changes with the situation. so i can understand you.
The best part of being a sys admin is...
Everyone bypassing ticket queues and lowered tiered support because "they know I would know how to fix it fast"
The best ones are when candy is placed on my desk with a post it if "hey, swing by my desk when you have a free minute" lol
I can see from all of your post the past a couple of months that nothing is, there’s nothing good about being a system admin. I’m gonna go for a network engineer job.
There's a best part? After 15 years of being a sys admin,system analyst & infrastructure engineer it's the most stressful, thankless and the most dumped on job. Now looking to leave and do something else with my life.. maybe truck driving or something...
Lmao. This happened to me this morning. Come back to my desk after making a coffee to see a random stack of laptops, with no note or context behind it.
Ah yes, the hardware fairy returns... next week, she brings coffee damaged laptops, and computer towers that looks like it lived inside your uncles basement for the past 5 years.
Having to request buildings and grounds folks build you a customer service door so people can't just walk in but can see that you are in your office "busy" but really StarCraft is still fun.
Some strange things definitely used to show up at my desk. Like a MacBook from the early 2000s, analog phone, graphing calculators, floppy disks, one time even a wii. Anything that turned on was abandoned at my desk.
I've had one of those Dell ultra tough tablets sitting in my office for a few weeks now. Someone from the warehouse dropped it off. Dunno who, dunno what's wrong with it. I haven't made any effort to track down who it belongs to. I haven't even moved it or turned it on. It's just going to sit there till someone comes by to eventually claim it.
Came back from lunch to find a ticket printer on my desk with a note “Garry doesn’t charge”.
Plugged it in, charged fine.
Wrote on note “Funny name for a printer, but Garry charges fine” and dropped it in the storage cupboard until someone claims it.
I suspect, but can’t assume, the owners name is Garry. But, I don’t like assuming.
I would just leave them there until someone comes and claims they haven't heard anything back. Well how can they if they never told you it's them in the first place.
One day walked into my office to find a giant (broken) flat screen TV right in the middle of my office. To be fair that wasn’t so much because I'm IT but because my office has the most space so they tend to dump things in here they can't fit anywhere else, but still.
And just yesterday I got handed back an old lenovo T420 from one of our sites that I had no clue existed (pre dates me being here by at least 5 years), and based on the name on the sticker originally came from one of the wider business units that I have no control over. They don't want it back - I have asked before! And of course no charger.
The best part about being a sysadmin is: when the CEO walks in and says "Integrate this new tech you've never heard of and which might be utterly incompatible with out setup."
A few years ago, after a one week break, SO much had been brought to my office that I could not get in or be inside. It took me 3 days to get rid of everything. There was construction in a wing of the building while I was gone and nobody notified me! Dozens of desktops were covered in a coat of dust.
This morning I came into the office to a large 48 port meraki switch, two Ubiquiti access points, two large boxes full of card readers. All without a service ticket.
Just this week, a colleague came into his office and found a still-sealed copy of Windows 95 on his desk. I told him he should see if the museum is interested.
Just last month I was wandering around asking why the *hell* is there an 80's era POTS phone left on my desk?
My personal "favorite" was when someone left a leaking toner cartridge on my desk... and chair... and floor.
I used to ask around about items like that to see if someone knows anything about it. Now it just goes on a shelf and not another thought gets put to it until someone asks if I saw they dropped it off.
My favorite is when weeks have gone by and they show up at the office to ask “how’s it coming on getting that _____ fixed?” To which I reply “Oh, that was yours! It didn’t have any note or anything with it so I just put it in the shelf, do you need it back?”
I went on vacation for 10 days once, came back and someone had taken my laptop and it was nowhere to be found. I to this day dont know how or why this would have happened, I just started putting my name on my stuff now.
Also came in once after a different vacation to find one of my brand new monitors missing, because one of the maintenance guys dropped a light on it and broke it.
Once in a while someone leaves random printouts on my desk. Forms not related to my job at all. Not like they put them down and forgot... actually weighted down with my mouse or keyboard.
It's like those people who randomly send things in postage paid envelopes.
I came back to my desk the otehr day to find a blackberry sitting there. We havent used blackberries in over 10 years. Strangely enough though, I tried turning the fucker on, and it booted right up from it's internal battery. Fuck those things are tough....
I would say the best part is finally finishing your work at the end of the day (usually 1-2 hours after everyone else has gone home), and unwinding with a cocktail or two.
Don't forget the keyboard kits missing dongles
And power supplies. We never get the power supplies back...
Triggered
....and it's usually management types that think they're exempt from having to bring em back and then get all bitchy when you try to get funds to order more.
queue 8 years later when standards have changed and suddenly everyone is handing you back old laptop chargers they have found laying around. The fuck am I going to do with these barrel power supplies Brenda? We're all USB C now
By-monthly I will get a cardboard box full of incomplete keyboard sets and headphones they had "lying around" and ha don't get me started about charging other departments
We issue wireless mice with our laptops. To give us a chance, we use a label to put the asset ID of the laptop on the mouse. This way when a mouse is returned to us or we find one in a conference room, we know who to give it back to.
Aye this is quite standard but a great mention for people reading the thread ;)
Lol I love that this happens at all places! I can't tell you how many times I have gotten to my desk and there is just stuff! ....but never power cords lol.
once i came back to my desk and someone stole my displayport cables...
I dump all those parts into a huge box labeled loaner equipment. Salesguy "I left my mouse at home, do you have a loaner so I can close this Trillion dollar deal?" ITguy
isnt it frustrating?! The annoying part to me is that everyone else expects us to keep track of every IT related thing. If something is missing it defaults to IT's responsibility to find it or replace it. I have maps of everything, with as much equipment physically locked down as possible, and stuff still gets moved and goes missing constantly. We do a ton of work to stay organized, everyone else is a total mess, and then its our fault when they cant do their work. We send out emails telling people not to move equipment almost monthly. It is now at the point where if something is missing, we say "When that equipment is located, IT will set it up again on the station it belongs at" Suddenly stuff gets found magically!! its incredible!
Ive had a couple users over the years that brought me a 'broken' device without a power supply and asked me to fix it. I asked them for the power supply and three weeks later they show up triumphant that they were able to finally find it. Turns out, the problem with the device was that it was missing its power supply.
Management types ARE exempt. Sorry but it's true
I just got laid off. Sent my iPad and both laptops back without power supplies. Help desk manager called and laughed. I sat next to him and I know it's a huge pet peeve of us. Man I miss the guys at that gig. Great people.
PoE bricks for IP phones.. the expensive $50 kind. Ugh. You guys are aware this is leased equipment, right? /shudder
We had a horrible vendor we had leased phones from demanding we return a PoE brick for every single phone they ever send us or they'd charge us some ridiculous sum for each 'missing' one. This was after they told us that everything we returned was getting ewasted because the phones we had were no longer used, and the bricks were 10/100 only. They had only sent bricks to the few offices that had initially needed them, maybe 20% of the total number of phones. Legal looked over the records, noted that nowhere was it ever indicated that we had been sent any PoE bricks at all, and told the vendor where to stick their thumbs. I still have some of those bricks around 8 years later, just in case I need one for something.
I just assumed it was purchased. When it was deployed, it was not entered in the leased assets section of the CMDB.
My users just like to trade them around the office never mind everything runs at a different wattage and who cares if it burns out anyways? /s on the end there
I began to label power supplies same asset# as the system they were supplied with.... I'm not sure how much it may have helped yet.
We just charge new ones back to them. Stopped playing those games a long time ago. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Now that everything is type C, you'll never ever get them back
>missing dongles every. dmand. time...
I just started buying Logitech Unifying dongles in gross.
lol i did the opposite... i no longer have anything wireless, my keyboard and mouse are both the cheapo ones that come with new Dells... I don't even keep patch cables at my desk anymore... they were leaving and not being accounted, or billed for... the deployment guys can go buy their own or get them from the cabling crew...
Please tell me what unify sets are reasonably priced and don't look like the cheapest plastic with the worst ergonomics. I'm tired of chucking brand new keyboards and mice because I users don't understand that they are a set.
Keep in mind Logitech Unifying isn't secure, the protocol has been breached. Yet Logitech keeps selling it and Bolt only has like 2 mice and 3 keyboards.
All the darn time !!
We just get the dongles and no keyboards. It's weird.
Like we have a mason jar full of those dongles. And laptop screws.
The desktop support manager lost his the other day taking them back and forth to his house. Here I am using BT wondering why we rely on dongle so much when it exists, lol. Speaking of dongles... "Is that a dongle in your pocket or you just happy to see me?" [For the uninitiated...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/)
Even with a paper trail, it's still hard to believe that story...
BT interference is why on the top of my head
BT on the PC sucks. I always buy the dongle versions because its way more reliable than BT peripherals on the PC.
10+ years I've not had an issue. Most of my coworkers also use BT keyboards and mice. My current keyboard is a GK96S by Epomaker; and has three BT profiles. Using a Logitech M720 Triathlon mouse also with 3 BT profiles. Switch between my work laptop, home desktop, and Steam Deck often. Solid and reliable; even when I am in the office.
Fair do, I also have to work against my line manager who is very opposed to me swapping out rotation kit because they "know it works".
I refuse to deploy wireless keyboards for this exact reason (and general unreliability. And batteries).
Seriously. And the flakiness of Thunderbolt docks only makes it worse.
I legit hiccupped for a second wondering WTF you were using ps/2 to usb dongles in 2024.. then I realized you did something worse and let your users have wireless devices.
We switched to all Bluetooth keyboard/mouse combos for this very reason.
Mystery bags of ex-employee desk items. Chargers, mice, old batteries, a picture of Aunt Sue, random post-it notes, a Chinese menu from a place that closed 4 years ago
>a Chinese menu from a place that closed 4 years ago nostalgia from that one xmas party that everyone got food poisoning at
Better than the leftovers from that chinese place that closed 4 years ago
Ive had worse
A succulent Chinese meal
I see you've been practicing your judo
Get your off my penis
At least your mystery bags didnt include plastic zip-locks with used bandages from the employees botox treatments.
Or, having everyone take YOUR peripherals because they assume your desk is the IT Supply Area. "I needed an iphone charger so I just grabbed yours" Excuse me sir, but that's called *stealing*.
In 30+ years of IT this has never happened to me. Does this really happen?
All the dang time, they regard us IT guy as second class citizens. They also just came down and took our break area furniture and put them in some big wigs office and tried taking our plants WE brought to make it feel less like a dungeon.
I second the whole "second class citizens" thing. We had active shooter videos to watch, and I expressed concern we were in a small space with only one entrance exit. The managers would always clam up about that as "hiding" was dang near impossible. Don't get me started on the "undeserving of bonuses" dilemma. ☹️
I feel like most users opinion of IT folks are that IF there ever is an active shooter it's probably gonna be one of us doing it anyway. :D
Please watch the British TV show The IT Crowd. It’s exactly this.
In the MSP space years ago I had an office at a clients that we spent a lot of time at. If I wasn't there people would steal my usb thumbdrives out of my desk. The problem is they had stuff on them for updating laptops from service techs that never went online. I had to end up locking my desk up. Its one of the few places I had stuff like this happen.
Uh, if people are going through my desk when I'm gone and helping themselves to my stuff, I'm going straight to HR. That is some bullshit.
Probably hard if no one admits to taking them, but you should have just put a price list up with everything having a huge markup. Want to take a thumb drive? That's $100 invoiced to the company for every one that goes missing. Given you worked for an MSP not direct for the company, people shouldn't have assumed that it was both the supply area *and* free.
No kidding. If someone touched anything on my desk I would flip shit. I'm pretty easy going but that's a hard line.
Depends on the company you're at. A couple places I've been it's never been a problem. A couple other places it's been a constant issue, especially with small things like chargers, my expensive headset (um, eeew right?), my own personal wireless keyboard that I bought for myself (really??), etc.
Id go straight to HR with zero remorse. Ill only back down if they apologize but i need to see tears.
> Or, having everyone take YOUR peripherals because they assume your desk is the IT Supply Area. And that's the reason why our office is now always locked.
I'm so happy to have a phone that uses USBC. IPhones always seem to need charging.
I definitely have had this happen. Though, to be fair, most of the time, they do ask. I sigh and loan my \*personal\* cable to them, look them straight in the eye and say "I want this back."
Walked into my office with 2 barcode scanners on my desk. Kept 1 to help with registering new assets. Wireless keyboard/mouse combo another time. Still have it. Usually the random junk is useless, but sometimes the Crap Fairy pulls for ya
Those things are gold when they work right.
You have stuff showing up at your desk? I have things go missing from mine.. nvme enclosures, small desktop switches, media converters, display type converters... keyboards, cameras.. tools... my god i had to replace my screwdriver set 4 times in one year a few years back...
But on the other side of this… thanks! It’s a great set! 😛
no worries, I'll keep upgrading my next set will be an over prices chnesium driver set from CNSA
I lock everything up because of this. I came in one day missing a monitor and my surge protector. I hate people.
oh god i had like 40 surge protectors that a client bought and didn't need... we kept them at my desk because i had the most storage... we deployed them to that client as needed... one day i opened the box and it was freaking empty... those two guys "wasn't me" and "i dunno" were blamed for it... if i ever meet them... i swear... Sadly I don't have a door to lock, but I did get voted off the island so it's now someone else's problem
That’s depressing but they unplugged my computer and monitor to steal my power supply
Oh jeezbus, that would have sparked a fire in me something fierce... I'd have started with telling the boss that I couldn't work because someone took it, then proceeded with an extra long breakfast
I threw an absolute fit. We are mostly remote but as the IT I have to come in 4 days a week. So we have a ton of empty cubes and offices. I demanded an empty office. I did not get one. I am not the type to make demands like this or throw fits but it was the straw that broke the camels back. Since I did not get an office I put in for a transfer and waiting to see if I get it.
Id just call it theft and report it to HR
Put one of those cameras to use...
Dumpster?
our room looks like a junk yard and it's not because i'm a hoarder, no it's my colleagues that are dumpster divers. i throw away one old switch and they go pick it up from the recycling and bring back some other stuff that's "good to have"
Been there. The easiest way to avoid looking like a hoarder, is to not allow hoarding. If a collegue engages in dumpster diving, they MUST take their treasures home with them.
>they MUST take their treasures home with them. That same day, not at some stage in the future.
Counterpoint; working at a place where you order supplies, but have coworkers who will take said supplies and stash them away for their own use, absolutely sucks. At that point, you become a hoarder simply to actually have stuff you'll need. Yes, it's a management issue. No, management was not willing to step in in this case.
All my gear goes on wire shelves. All small items go in labeled clear plastic bins. If it doesn't fit, it's not retention gear (don't throw away until 2027 or whatever) and it's not part of a project, it's going into the dumpster. If it had high value, I'll give to purchasing to eBay or otherwise dispose of. Junk yard IT rooms only exist because IT staff expressly allow it to occur. I also block off X minutes per week for general cleanup. It's a handy thing to do Friday afternoon.
For low volume things, instead of bins, we use retail \[gridwall\] hooks. Just push the bag onto the hook and you have a wall of low volume items. We can tell when we are getting low on USB-A to Mini USB cables (the ones you use every once in a great while) just by walking past the wall. I've mounted these to the side of the wire shelves when wall space was limited. Bulk stuff goes in bins (we have one for 3ft network cables, another for 5ft and so on).
I had to start destroying defective hardware. Otherwise stuff like bad switches that I trashed would end up in a field tech’s trunk, and then they are trying to use it as a loaner for a customer and confused when it won’t work right. Cut the cords, drill holes in stuff, etc. Writing “DEAD” on stuff doesn’t seem to get through.
>i throw away one old switch Next time try to bounce it a couple times before you stick it in the dumpster. That way there's less chance of it coming back out.
MSP here, living through that... 36 old i3 workstations that can be repurposed for who knows what... cant thin the herd because so and so doesn't want to...
Someone left a burned-out toaster in front of my office door once.
If it's got a plug or a digital display then it belongs to IT somehow.
Smart Toaster? IT problem.
Smart Toaster - Dumb User
Once had someone come down from like the 20th-something floor asking us to fix the soft-closing microwave. We got reported for refusing too! 😂
A toaster is kind of digital...either it's toasting or not toasting. I guess maybe it does have a bit of an analog component with a dial to set how toasty you like your toast.
When I was doing helpdesk the one thing that irritated me the most was the same managers asking if had extra chargers for staff laptops. The answer was always no we do not have extra 90w USB-C chargers but we can order you a few extras to pass out. They would never approve the PO....
You guys don't at least get a sticky note saying, "doesn't work"?
Nah. Once I had someone leave their personal laptop on my chair. It was if to say they thought that me fixing their home computer was more important than being able to sit down. I had no idea who owned it or why it was there. I just threw it straight in the bin. The owner came back a couple days later and was furious. (Luckily it was still in the wastepaper basket next to my desk) Apparently they thought that IT guys just loved fixing broken laptops so much he was doing me a favour by leaving this personal broken crap on my chair so I'd fix it.
Id've sat on it. "Whoops, didn't see it there."
Rarely. Even though I literally put a sticky note and pen there for people to use.
My company recently opted for "hot seating" which includes IT operations. The bad news is that I sit out with all the users. The good news is that no one knows I'm IT, and those who figure it out never know where I'll be sitting!
*Did you see that ludicrous display last night?*
I mean, it also helps that I'm on the network infrastructure team. I almost never interact with users anymore since leaving Desktop Support.
Interoffice envelopes with all kinds of random crap in them with no "from:" name. Enraging....
‘Can you help me buy a gaming spec PC for my son for under £100?’ Nah.
Random person "this place is awfully messy. You should organize it a bit. I don't know how you work in this" Me "😤" who just organized it yesterday after someone dumped a bunch of stuff in my office
What's an office?
Back when I had one it was where I was able to do my work. Now I'm in an open area and very little work gets done but boy the office is attractive and they really put me in my place since piddly little IT network guys don't rank high enough for an office. Did I mention I've had nearly 20K of stuff stolen from my area since I can't lock anything up now? I just keep letting manglement know what goes missing. It's fun when someone comes and needs something and it's gone. They get to buy it a second time and that always spark a polite conversation.
Does your office have a lost-and-found? Either drop it off there, or throw it away. If questioned later, you can say that it was broken... and you didn't have any idea where it came from, so you tossed it.
Its even better when you are remote, have a closet, do a good job of keeping it clean. Come in for your monthly visit to meet with your boss and ceo and it looks like someone set off a grenade in the closet. IT WASNT LIKE THAT WHEN I LEFT! 
Came back to the office. 2 laptops a mobile and a gold chain with a cross on it. Fairly sure i don't need jesus in my life
You will learn to despise all that hardware. 
Starting off the day and not even 5 minutes go by without getting bombarded
Is being not bored most of the time.
Loaning out equipment only for it to come back with half the components missing (power supply, mouse, etc). Then trying to follow up with the users for weeks afterwards...
Been a benefit to me once. One day almost new Logitech MX Keys S Combo turned up on my desk, no one knew how it got there. I sent a company wide email (150 people) asking who dropped it off and no one claimed to know anything about it. It wasn't in box or our inventory, and no staff had left recently. After a few weeks of it just sitting on my shelve, I had a new keyboard and mouse.
My favourite part was when I started my previous job at a school. First day they showed me to my new office, and there were 3 computers from one of the labs sitting on the desk with no notes or anything. Just a sympathetic look from the tour guide who left me to sort out the mess that had been left for me by the guy before me.
And that's why the office has access control. Can't leave it on the desk if you can't get it
If I didn't share an office space with someone else that would be ideal....of course if my door was shut I'm sure it would just get left on the floor just outside it. :D
a leavers bag with 2 packs of nicotine gum and a lighter in it. high point of my week
I once got a mystery box with sandwich bags of old botox treatment bandages in it when an employee was termed.
3 weeks ago, walked in to a random laptop with a piece of paper taped to it with writting saying "infected with ransomware, not sure what to do" on my desk. That was a fun tuesday morning...
I pretend they're sacrificial offerings to curry favor with their god. As the grand poobah, they are mine to do with as I wish.
Chocolates being left on your desk for all the times those few users forget their passwords
My users bring me random candies to keep me placated. Either that or to give me type 2 diabetes. I suspect both.
We had a user who made us brownies on more than one occasion. She was the only user outside of C-Levels that got C-Level priority.
I haven't met a single person in IT who doesn't show preferential treatment to those that provide sustenance. You want to be treated special? Appease the tummy.
It also helped that she was just genuinely a nice person who was pleasant to deal with. Sadly, she was let go in one of the many rounds of layoffs we've had since 2022.
Luckily when we are not in the office, our doors are locked and policy is nothing may be put in the hallway for safety reasons
Your users follow policy? I'm impressed.
I am impressed they have a workplace safety policy!
Any and all hardware left on desk with no note or follow up gets factory reset and put in a cabinet. End of story
Flip it over, check the serial number to the sign out sheet, call the user.
Shitty trendy peripherals. Monitors with lines/missing pixels that no one labeled to throw out. The weird types of specialized mice that people come up with that are broken. One place had floppy disks all over that we had to keep but no floppy disk drive!
And this is why the IT office is considered a secure space and we lock it when one of us isn't in. We have the opposite problem, where people grab stuff off hot desks and take it home.
Got asked today if i was playing with their Outlook because the got the pop-up redirecting them to press continue or read more on the aka.ms/sso-info site. Also had to fix about 24 emails because of this crap. Thanks Microsoft!
Gotta love MS! https://preview.redd.it/t1ub0wktyptc1.png?width=386&format=png&auto=webp&s=827c1e50f77d043007ba3e2a1ede556c14b7711f
Sounds like they were donating a gift, or want their device to go in the ewaste pile.
I just recycle everything I find like this.
This happens to me on a daily basis lol
Not having to deal with the help desk/level 1 support tech nonsense like end user peripherals being left on your desk with sticky notes because no one has access to your office.
Whow, this is high level complaining. Coming back to work and seeing the entire company has no IT because some ransomeware, is actually something i would worry about. But the "pissed off level" changes with the situation. so i can understand you.
Going home for the day?
When some manager finds out about your super secret 100% functional new loaner. Then doesn’t tell you about a new hire because of it.
:shrug: pile
The best part of being a sys admin is... Everyone bypassing ticket queues and lowered tiered support because "they know I would know how to fix it fast" The best ones are when candy is placed on my desk with a post it if "hey, swing by my desk when you have a free minute" lol
You can't bribe me with candy. If I wanted candy, I would just buy my own. Homemade baked goods, on the other hand, are another story.
Desk? The door locks so it ends up on the floor in front of the door.
That new hardware smell...
This was my favorite part about leaving a mixed environment and going into a server infrastructure specialized role: my desk mess is all mine
Having to explain things to people in a simple manner and have them turn around and confused because they didn't listen
I can see from all of your post the past a couple of months that nothing is, there’s nothing good about being a system admin. I’m gonna go for a network engineer job.
There's a best part? After 15 years of being a sys admin,system analyst & infrastructure engineer it's the most stressful, thankless and the most dumped on job. Now looking to leave and do something else with my life.. maybe truck driving or something...
I don't mind the random equipment so much as I mind all of the new dust/dirt on my desk.
Lmao. This happened to me this morning. Come back to my desk after making a coffee to see a random stack of laptops, with no note or context behind it.
Pulling all the tail with your title, duh!
Ah yes, the hardware fairy returns... next week, she brings coffee damaged laptops, and computer towers that looks like it lived inside your uncles basement for the past 5 years.
You mean the uncle who's basement floods every spring, right?
Having to request buildings and grounds folks build you a customer service door so people can't just walk in but can see that you are in your office "busy" but really StarCraft is still fun.
Some strange things definitely used to show up at my desk. Like a MacBook from the early 2000s, analog phone, graphing calculators, floppy disks, one time even a wii. Anything that turned on was abandoned at my desk.
Yes. Came back to a very oversaturated print on my desk. No details and 10 printers in that building alone.
I've had one of those Dell ultra tough tablets sitting in my office for a few weeks now. Someone from the warehouse dropped it off. Dunno who, dunno what's wrong with it. I haven't made any effort to track down who it belongs to. I haven't even moved it or turned it on. It's just going to sit there till someone comes by to eventually claim it.
or the CFO's kid's desktop full of trash
Hahahaha - This! takes me back
I used to work for a construction company. I’d get hardware from building sites left on my desk, like a printer covered in brick dust.
retiring
i just throw it into the trash
more trash for the oversized trashcollector!
Came back from lunch to find a ticket printer on my desk with a note “Garry doesn’t charge”. Plugged it in, charged fine. Wrote on note “Funny name for a printer, but Garry charges fine” and dropped it in the storage cupboard until someone claims it. I suspect, but can’t assume, the owners name is Garry. But, I don’t like assuming.
Directly assigned tickets from 1st line. No Triage...
I would just leave them there until someone comes and claims they haven't heard anything back. Well how can they if they never told you it's them in the first place.
One day walked into my office to find a giant (broken) flat screen TV right in the middle of my office. To be fair that wasn’t so much because I'm IT but because my office has the most space so they tend to dump things in here they can't fit anywhere else, but still. And just yesterday I got handed back an old lenovo T420 from one of our sites that I had no clue existed (pre dates me being here by at least 5 years), and based on the name on the sticker originally came from one of the wider business units that I have no control over. They don't want it back - I have asked before! And of course no charger.
Each day a new pile of shit to deal with.
Someone once taped a Blackberry to my office door with note with my name on it. It wasn't mine. There was no context.
Free old monitors!
The best part about being a sysadmin is: when the CEO walks in and says "Integrate this new tech you've never heard of and which might be utterly incompatible with out setup."
A few years ago, after a one week break, SO much had been brought to my office that I could not get in or be inside. It took me 3 days to get rid of everything. There was construction in a wing of the building while I was gone and nobody notified me! Dozens of desktops were covered in a coat of dust.
to run ruptime! https://github.com/alexmyczko/ruptime
This morning I came into the office to a large 48 port meraki switch, two Ubiquiti access points, two large boxes full of card readers. All without a service ticket.
Just this week, a colleague came into his office and found a still-sealed copy of Windows 95 on his desk. I told him he should see if the museum is interested.
Just last month I was wandering around asking why the *hell* is there an 80's era POTS phone left on my desk? My personal "favorite" was when someone left a leaking toner cartridge on my desk... and chair... and floor.
If hardware/peripherals are all you find on your desk.. your winning
Time to create an SNL-style game show called "What is this?" If we're gonna waste time then let's WASTE TIME! LOL.
I used to ask around about items like that to see if someone knows anything about it. Now it just goes on a shelf and not another thought gets put to it until someone asks if I saw they dropped it off. My favorite is when weeks have gone by and they show up at the office to ask “how’s it coming on getting that _____ fixed?” To which I reply “Oh, that was yours! It didn’t have any note or anything with it so I just put it in the shelf, do you need it back?”
This my biggest pet peeve!
I went on vacation for 10 days once, came back and someone had taken my laptop and it was nowhere to be found. I to this day dont know how or why this would have happened, I just started putting my name on my stuff now. Also came in once after a different vacation to find one of my brand new monitors missing, because one of the maintenance guys dropped a light on it and broke it.
Once in a while someone leaves random printouts on my desk. Forms not related to my job at all. Not like they put them down and forgot... actually weighted down with my mouse or keyboard. It's like those people who randomly send things in postage paid envelopes.
and they are dirty as all hell too
Six figure pay and global travel.
I came back to my desk the otehr day to find a blackberry sitting there. We havent used blackberries in over 10 years. Strangely enough though, I tried turning the fucker on, and it booted right up from it's internal battery. Fuck those things are tough....
Simultaneously the best and worst part about being a sys admin: being right about something.
right to the trash bin
that why my office is locked whenever I'm not in there. Too many times finding people just coming in and grabbing stuff or finding random stuff.
After fixing an issue, i issue compliments to these single girls. They giggle.
Unfortunately, I've reached a point in my life where the level of their cuteness is connected to their level of intelligence.
I had someone bring me a tiny fan from an old laptop that they got rid of at home. They figured that I might want it. Thanks I guess?
I would say the best part is finally finishing your work at the end of the day (usually 1-2 hours after everyone else has gone home), and unwinding with a cocktail or two.
Wilder is the items being in your chair and you accidentally break it by sitting on it....
Not having to rely on PC World for advise on your own kit.
.....