The tiniest little tech mistakes can cause profound damage to a company and its employees.

See why this worker doesn’t feel worthy of the praise she received after she fixed a problem.

AITAH for “saving” payroll when it was actually my fault it broke?

I work in IT and last week the payroll system at my company totally crashed the night before checks were supposed to go out.

HR and finance were freaking out because the files looked corrupted and it honestly looked like nobody was going to get paid.

She’s afraid it’s her fault.

The problem is, the backups hadn’t been running for a few days. And that was on me.

I did a server update and forgot to restart the script. So if the data was really gone, it was 100% my fault.

I tried everything I could think of and finally just restarted the system because I was desperate.

Somehow it rolled itself back to like 3 days earlier and all the payroll info was there. It just… worked.

Now she’s praised like a saint.

Everyone acted like I was some kind of hero.

HR clapped, my boss called me a lifesaver and even the CFO thanked me in front of the execs. Meanwhile I knew it was just dumb luck and I was the reason it broke in the first place.

Now people at work are joking they owe me drinks for saving their paychecks and I feel kind of guilty. Like yeah I fixed it but also I caused it.

So AITAH for not telling anyone the truth and just letting them think I saved the day?

Here is what folks are saying.

Learn from this!

Maybe she was tired? It happens.

Don’t mess this up!

I love the solidarity here.

Checklists are so important, especially for mission critical tasks.

Phew! Nice save.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.