Workplace systems are supposed to streamline problems, not accidentally reveal them.

One IT tech fielded a routine payroll issue, only to discover HR quietly passed him the task of delivering news no IT ticket should ever contain.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

Crazy Request from HR

So I got a call today from a user who doesn’t work in the corporate office.

Basically, they were unable to log in to see their pay stub, which is accessed through a web-based SSO portal.

So the more IT looked into it, the stranger things got.

I asked a coworker to check, and it looked like the user had been terminated.

I asked the user if they were an active employee, and they said yes.

I eventually told the user I would call them back after I looked into the problem a bit more.

But once they asked HR, their intentions became abundantly clear.

Then I got in contact with one of our HR people to try and find out what was going on with this user’s account.

The HR rep told me that the user was terminated and asked me to reach out to tell the user.

The IT worker could hardly believe their ears.

Yep. Our HR department asked me, a helpdesk tech, to reach out to a user and tell them they had been fired.

Guess that’s IT’s responsibility now.

The nerve!

What did Reddit think?

This commenter imagines what this nonsensical exchange would have sounded like.

One way or another, HR needs to own up to their responsibilities.

IT issues often give employees a small clue that something’s amiss.

It’s never a bad time to leave a paper trail.

Nothing like finding out IT now handles terminations along with password resets.

Just another day working in the corporate world…

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