Usually, the worst workplace mistakes are made by people who think they know better.

So, what would you do if you looked up from your desk and saw someone who definitely shouldn’t be there walking into your most sensitive room with equipment they don’t even understand?

Would you stay out of it? Or would you spring into action and try to protect the equipment?

In the following story, one man opts for the latter, but he’s too late.

Here’s how it all played out.

HR & Fire Detectors

The IT department (actually, they called it MIS way back then) was on the lower/ground floor.

The floor plan was offices and a hallway, my office with a glass wall, IT bullpen (my guys), another glass wall, computer room, another glass wall, hallway, and more offices.

So from my desk, I could look all the way through to the other side of the building. You could get into the computer room from either end if you had a card to swipe at the door. Nobody other than IT had those cards…..or so I thought…

Suddenly, he jumped over his desk.

Sitting there midmorning one day, pounding away on my keyboard, and some movement caught my eye. Looking through my window, across the bullpen and through the computer room, I see the {explative deleted} HR manager and some guy carrying what looks like a leaf blower (????).

I’m rather P.O’d that the HR had a card I didn’t know about and just walked in there. They were looking at the ceiling, and the guy raised the “leaf blower” and OH CRAP!!!! That’s a smoke wand, and the idjits are “checking” the detectors.

I vaulted over my desk, ran through the bull pen, and into the computer room just in time hear an IBM4361 mainframe, AS400 B50, Sparc fileserver, Novell fileserver, ROLM phone switch, and (3) T1 muxes (for data/voice to the remote plants) all winding down to dead silence.

The guys were shocked at what they had done.

We didn’t have a Halon system in there, thank the powers, but the smoke detectors killed the big UPS and all power in the room…

The HR guy and the other just stood there, eyes wide, mouths open with the patented “What just happened?” look.

And, with the glass walls, a bunch of other department managers who came to see what happened stood there and greatly enjoyed watching me jump up and down, ranting and raving at those two.

Wow! Bet they won’t do that again.

Let’s check out what the people over at Reddit think about what happened.

This person thinks that was the best scenario.

That was smart.

Yeah, that sounds “fun.”

Sounds like something HR would do.

Sheesh! It seems like HR should’ve known better than to even try this.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.