When you get moved into a new role at work there will always be some type of learning curve before you figure things out.

What would you do if your boss told you to implement a change that you didn’t understand and it ended up bringing down a major system at the company?

That is what happened to the technician in this story, and it ended up costing the casino where he works over a million dollars and his boss his job.

Check it out.

First day on the job, I was asked to run faulty code, I did, and the business lost a lot of money.

I work at a Casino, I’m the technician that handles all the surveillance cameras.

Originally I worked in the casino warehouse, but was hired to be the tech after a glowing recommendation from my former boss.

I’ll preface this with the fact that I had no IT or mechanical experience professionally when hired to this position.

I was told many times during the interview and orientation that I didn’t need any experience and that I would be trained by our other tech.

This story begins on my ride to my first day on the new job.

The previous mentioned tech, we’ll call him Walter, and I actually live close together so we began carpooling.

During the ride, Walter (who is really a nice guy but this story might make him seem like a jerk) began telling me that there were some orders I would be given by our boss, that he doesn’t feel is part of his job that he refuses to do and that basically he’ll be mad at me if I try doing them for him.

Sometimes, when you are new, you just have to do as you are told.

I tell him that since I’m so new, I’ll have to follow expectations because I don’t want to cause waves.

This sets Walter off, berating me with all sorts of nonsense like “How are you gonna say you have pride in your job if you do things that aren’t your job” he basically called out my pride.

My pride doesn’t come from the things I do while I slave for pennies to pay for some rich guy to have a fourth Porsche and a ninth mansion, so whatever, I shrugged it off.

Now when we get to work, our job is to install new cameras in the bar, which is going through complete renovation.

In order to do this, we had to integrate these new cameras into our very dated, very disorganized camera network that only Walter knows how to work with. (Former techs left the department in disarray.)

After working with a hub that acts as a landing point for our new inputs, he began getting frustrated, swearing and throwing his tools.

I begin to distance myself, I go to the bathroom and come back.

It is ok to push back on a boss who is giving you extra work.

He is then very angry and begins accusing me of doing the things my boss tells us to do that apparently isn’t our job.

Walter goes to our boss’s office (we’ll call him Todd) and tells him none of this is his job and leaves for the day abruptly.

I come to the office a few minutes later (I went on and did other work for a while) and Todd tells me that since he left, it’s now my responsibility to integrate the new inputs.

I explain to him that the error can only be solved by entering lines of code I know nothing of, and that tech support won’t be back until the following Monday (this is a friday).

Todd says “Well it’s broken now, you couldn’t mess it up any further than it is, go do it, I don’t have time for this I need to go home. Make sure it’s done by tonight because our executive committee (EC) will be inspecting the bar.”

I explain that this issue is a network issue and potentially could take down cams that are necessary for state compliance.

I told him the only other thing I heard was that the code that tech support had given us kept doing something weird with cams we needed for compliance, and that Walter knew how to bring them back online and I did not.

He doesn’t care, and leaves, but not before telling me to just run the code.

By this time, I’m at about 10 hours logged on this shift, my ride home is gone and I’m starting to get a little angry.

I decided to comply, with malicious intent.

I read for another two more hours about how to even look at the settings for this hub.

I plug a laptop into it and open up putty.

I was able to figure out through trial and error how to enter commands.

Before I enter the lines of code, I ask my boss via phone call one more time if this is a good idea, he tells me not to call him at home unless its an emergency and reiterates his prior command.

I bet people started freaking out immediately.

So, I start entering the code and suddenly I see all of our cameras start dropping off one by one.

I start getting calls from the surveillance observers, wondering what was going on.

I told them that I was following the instructions that Todd gave me.

They were all very mad, and began calling Todd, our directors, and after nobody cared, they called Gaming.

They issue the command to shut down the casino until the problem is resolved.

Eventually, Todd stops whatever he was doing and comes back to work just in time for the EC to show up.

Todd scolds me, and says that I can be the one to face the EC since it was my mistake.

I was more than happy.

The EC is all in a conference room along with two state gaming regulators and the actual CEO of the Casino company.

They ask for Todd, Todd sends me.

I get into the room and everyone is demanding answers: where’s Todd?

Why is this happening?

Every minute a casino stays closed can potentially be thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

So this is a really, really serious deal for these suits.

The EC unrelentingly grills me, and I have to take a second to clear my head before I respond or I might just start slapping people the tension in that room was crushing.

So, I sit down, grab a bottle of water and explain to them what happened, and that it was my first day and the other tech just took off some place and nobody knows where he went.

At least they aren’t blaming him.

The CEO actually apologized and told me to go ahead and head home and that I wouldn’t be blamed for anything.

I took the bus home. (HR comped the ticket luckily)

The next day (the casino floor still being down) I pass Walter in the hall, who had just been transferred to another department, and then I go into the surveillance room where the observers showed me on video what had happened once the EC tracked down Todd.

Apparently one of the EC members found him hiding in an elevator service room.

I got to watch him walk, shoulders slumped, into that conference room.

I got to watch and hear them harshly call him out, his poor decisions and his poor leadership.

I got to listen to them tell him how unfair and poor a decision it was to assign me to the task when he himself had the skills to complete it.

One of our directors told him that he was no longer needed here.

He definitely deserved to lose his job.

I watched the footage of him pack his stuff, and have two security officers escort him off property.

The feels were great.

I then worked with a flown-in tech specialist who was very helpful and actually showed me quite a bit while we solved the issue together.

Later, I found out the Casino lost almost a million dollars in revenue over the evening between fines and the fact that this was a high roller event weekend gone wrong.

I still love thinking about it 5 years later.

I am shocked the fallout wasn’t worse with even more people losing their jobs.

Let’s see what the people in the comments say about this.

This person is glad the casino lost so much money.

Good question.

Oh, good point.

Having one person know everything is a mistake.

Casinos make insane amounts of money.

This was a disaster right from the start.

But at least it all worked out in the end.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.