Some IT policies feel like they were designed by someone who’s never actually used a computer.

So, what would you do if you just needed access to an old folder at work, but IT insisted you submit a separate ticket for every single subdirectory?

Would you explain why that was a bad idea? Or would you get right to work submitting tickets?

In the following story, a tech company employee finds himself in this scenario and decides to give them what they asked for.

Here’s what happened.

IT wanted a ticket per sub-directory

I work for a power-electronics tech company.

The company has been in operation for about 40 years and, within the last decade, was bought out by an American-based global conglomerate, which brought the local IT support team into its global helpdesk.

What is my job, within this vast international machine? I fix units that the customer breaks.

They could be returned 2 months into the warranty, or relics that haven’t been looked at for 20 years and have been run into the ground by nonstop use.

It was due to one of these abused legacy units that I needed to fix that led me to engage IT in mortal combat – IT help desk edition.

He set out to collect the info he needed.

I needed data sheets, circuit diagrams, and test procedure documents, given that it was an out-of-production, barely supported legacy unit made during a time when design schematics were created with pencil and rulers…

So not exactly sensitive corporate intellectual property.

Anyway, I liaise with some of the veterans who were here before Fred Flintstone was hammering out designs, and they point me to a legacy data store that was collected and stored within the terabytes of documentation on the company’s servers – and, of course, I do not have access.

Company/product/test/VCRM/ – Something like that.

By now, he was already a week behind.

I put in an access request with IT, and after a week, I got a response stating that, after consulting with the Global Head of IT, they had approved access to the company/product/test/VCRM/XR_Series/

Well, that’s great, it’s not the product I had in front of me. Additionally, they had only given me access to that root directory, and not all of the sub-directories within… So really, I had gained access to nothing except some folder names.

I had already been delayed a week, so I fired back with as little sarcasm as I could muster, something along the lines of “Ok, thanks a bunch! But I’ll need access to the entire directory, and all sub-directories within each product series.”

He started submitting the tickets as requested.

They reply, “Unfortunately, you’ll need to submit individual tickets for each drive location due to IT Policy and data-protection initiatives.”

Well… Alright then. You get what you ask for.

After quickly confirming what they’re asking, I start firing off tickets as fast as the crappy IT web client can process them.

I start copy-pasting the same ticket, the only change being the file paths. Firstly, for each sub-directory within the XR_Series (about 12 sub-directories), and then assuming the file paths are the same for the rest of the product ranges, I also start requesting access for each product range and each sub-directory.

Apparently, the IT rep had misinformed him.

Of course, I decided to close my Outlook, since every raised ticket would shoot two emails at me with “Ticket Raised” and “Ticket Assigned”… Also, because I thought it would be funny if they couldn’t get hold of me.

My manager comes to talk to me, saying it’s time to stop winding up IT. They called him, apparently, having so many open tickets would destroy all their metrics and KPIs.

It turns out I was misinformed by the IT Rep, and only one ticket would be required. Hazah.

Only took about an hour of data entry to upset IT enough to give in. Maybe not as funny if you weren’t there.

Wow! They really need to work on their policies.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit have to say about this mess.

According to this reader, they would’ve hated him.

This would’ve been amazing.

Here’s what this person thought would happen.

Too funny.

They left him no choice.

Next time, that IT rep will do their job from the start.

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