When just one person is keeping everything running, managers should probably back off.

So, what would you do if you were the only sysadmin for a cutting-edge medical transcription firm and running on empty, when a doctor asked you to go to his home to fix his computer on your own time? Would you go? Or would you refuse?

In the following story, one sysadmin deals with this scenario and refuses to help. Here’s what happened next.

Doctor had me fired, my company imploded

Back in the Dark Ages, around 1993, I worked for a medical transcription firm as their SysAdmin.

We were doing some cutting-edge IT stuff, getting transcriptions printed at hospitals remotely using print queues with the modem number hard-coded in, and the system would look for queues with anything in them and dial the number if it found one.

It worked really well, until it didn’t.

His job was pretty stressful.

I was the only SysAdmin in this city, so I was on call 24/7/365 and averaging 3 hours of sleep per night, when I could go home and try to catch little catnaps here and there. Anytime something would go wrong on the hospital side, I would have to go to the hospital and fix it.

A few months after I started, two of the VPs from Corp relocated to my city because we were the most productive and profitable city. The first thing they did was come up with an excuse to fire the current director, then they took over operations themselves.

Then my job went from taking care of our systems to taking care of the doctor’s computers, too. I did what I could, but I was also sending out resumes. Then I was told to go to a hospital and see why the printing stopped.

The doctor didn’t like his response.

I remember this day, I hadn’t been home for two days and had been going nonstop for 18 hours. I got there, and someone had unplugged the modem. I plug it back in, the call comes in, and the jobs start printing.

This doctor walks over and tells me that VP#1 told him that I would go out to his house and work on his home computer. I politely explain to the doctor that I can’t do that, and that I’m heading home to get some sleep. Then I head back to the office to pick up a few things before heading home.

As soon as I walk through the door, I get escorted straight to the VP’s Office, both VP#1, VP#2, and the Office Manager are there. They proceed to start chewing me out.

Suddenly, they fired him.

I just started laughing at them. I’m the only person within 1000 miles who knows anything about this system. They lose their temper, tell me I’m fired, and that I’m to leave immediately.

I really said, “Thank you.” Then left.

This was December 15th, my oldest son’s birthday. On the way home I stop a Mom & Pop computer store where I know some of the people to drop off a resume. They tell me that they have no openings right now, but will call me when they do.

Now, his job is much better.

I talk to a couple of friends while I’m there, then head on home. The only thing I’m worried about is telling my gf that I got fired. I walk through the door, and she’s at work. I see the answering machine blinking, so I hit play.

It was the Mom & Pop Computer Store, and they said, “Our primary Novell Engineer just quit. Are you still available?”

I called them back and let them know I’d be there tomorrow. That began a much more peaceful career, with better pay, rotating on-call, and almost every weekend and holiday off.

BTW, the medical transcription firm imploded. The VPs were fired. They floundered for about a year before being bought out by a competing firm.

Wow! He got really lucky with that one.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit relate to this story.

This person sounds like they’ve encountered something similar.

For this reader, it’s just corporate.

Here’s an interesting thought.

This person is happy it worked for him.

That could’ve gone differently, but instead, it turned out to be perfect timing.

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.