Even the most effective security measures can’t prevent human error from causing major disruptions.

This is what happened when a VP accidentally deleted all employee access permissions at a manufacturing facility and all chaos broke loose.

Read on for the full story!

Security starts with “S”, but begins with “U”!

A friend of mine is the GM for a manufacturing facility, and he reports up to the corporate level.

The corporate VP of Operations was a big stickler about following the rules, especially related to security.

This VP’s methods for this were questionable, though.

This isn’t a bad thing, but he would often try to set up chances to catch employees in security violations for write-ups.

Things like holding open the exterior door for an employee so the following person didn’t have to badge in.

Soon the VP overstepped his bounds even further.

My GM friend gave his notice recently, and one of the things the VP demanded was to be added as an admin to all security systems, including the badge/lock system.

Which set the company up for a huge breach in their systems.

VP meant to set an expiration date of the GM’s account but accidentally deleted it outright, which also removed any permissions he assigned, which included all current employees.

Well, the team showed up the next morning to find that no badges worked.

This threw the entire day into chaos.

My friend told everyone to clock in as normal using their phone, but wait until the badges worked, because entering the building without an authorized badge went against security rules.

Their shift started at 7 AM, but VP wasn’t online until 9 AM.

He freaked out when he saw that there were no machines running, and then had to figure out how to add everyone back to the door badge system.

Finally, everything was resolved but the lesson was clear.

Apparently, the VP isn’t a real tech guy, so it was 10 AM before everyone was added back.

They all sat in their cars and would badge in once the VP sent an email.

Sometimes it only takes one small mistake to bring an entire system to a halt.

What did Reddit make of all this?

Not just anyone can do IT.

This commenter can hardly believe management’s incompetence.

Good bosses nurture their employees, not try to catch them in the act of wrongdoing.

This commenter knows what they would have done in this situation.

The employees eventually got back inside, but the disruption lingered in everyone’s minds.

This story proves that the weakest link in a security chain is often human error.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.