Accountability very rarely seems to be a trait they impart to folks aspiring to become leaders in a corporate setting. Often, once a minor thing goes wrong, the approach turns into finger-pointing instead of problem-solving.

How would you handle someone far above your pay grade trying to set you up to fail? One guy recently shared a wild situation like this that he found himself in, which he ultimately came out on top of. Here’s what happened.

But it was working on Friday

I was tech support for a $90m automotive company that had a secondary operation making the same product, but for the aftermarket crowd.

That plant was about 8 mi away, just far enough to be a PITA.

Maybe 20 PCs, local LAN and a Novell server for local storage.

Sounds manageable for a seasoned professional?

Anyway, I got a call on a Monday morning that a shop floor PC could not log in.

No details, no errors, the office person calling was just relaying that the worker couldn’t do their job, loss of production and MY fault, yada, yada.

So I grab a cuppa coffee and head out. Get there, head to shop floor area and….

The anxiety of this type of situation is nightmare fuel.

Nothing- literally nothing – the desk was gone, the PC was gone the entire work cell machine was gone.

Grabbed the plant manager and he said: “Oh yeah, they moved it over the weekend”.

He took me the “new” area where the PC was sitting in a pile of wires, power cords, power strips, printer – you get the picture.

This definitely doesn’t seem like the quick fix they think it is.

We started looking at it and the “new” area did not have any power even close, no network drop, basically just a pile in the middle of the floor.

I told them to call me when power and network were ready and left.

I did make a point to snap some pictures and, back at the office, talked with the division manager on the incident.

I’ll bet that went over well.

He told me to play it quiet for a while.

Sure enough, on Friday, I was called into the production staff meeting, already in progress.

The other plant manager had just told the group that the production in that area was off because the PC didn’t work and I had been called.

These people wasted no time with finger-pointing.

But I had my laptop plugged into the projector they were using, and lo and behold, there were pics I had taken and enlarged the one of the plant manager with his hands in his pockets, looking at pile of PC stuff.

I said, you were going to call after you had power/network squared away, Is it Done? Response “Uh, no”. “Ok, call me whenever it is ready”.

Turned to the division manager, asked “Anything else you need me for?”

He certainly wasn’t expecting all of that.

Straight-faced, he replied: “No, thank you”…and he did buy the refreshments after work…

Things happen, but this was bad planning of the manager’s part.

I would have let it slide but he DID make a point of throwing me under the staff meeting bus, so there ya go.

Seems like a rational enough response on his part to me. Let’s see if the Reddit community agreed.

The comments immediately shared some pithy remarks.

Some folks could relate all too well.

And even took the time to share their own anecdotes.

Apparently, this is an issue across many arenas.

But one person was able to game the system.

When has throwing the IT person under the bus done any good for anyone?

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who refused to keep giving his coworker rides to work because he left a mess in his car.