Imagine working in tech support, and you’re supposed to send in some old work computers because the employees’ computers are being upgraded to new laptops. Would you send in the computers as directed or lie about it and keep them?

In this story, one new hire is tasked with sending in the laptops, but when the laptops don’t show up, his coworker does some digging and confronts the guy about what exactly happened to the old computers.

I’m still not sure if the new guy really thought what he did was okay or if he just hoped nobody would notice.

Keep reading for all the details.

Of course this is theft!

Just over a month ago, we hired a new tech, he was young, fresh faced, and eager, knew his stuff, had a few Certs under his belt and was looking to get his foot into the industry.

I interviewed him, as did my boss, and we all got a good vibe from him.

Tech support, requires a specific personality, as you would all know, can’t be too rude, can’t be too soft, you get a feel for the kind of person who will survive here.

He’s on the standard 90 day trial, and he’s killing it, good reports, good tickets, we’ve got a winner here, he’s high spirited, punctual, everything is going good.

I wonder what happened to all those laptops.

Yesterday, we received our balance sheet from the depot where we lease our laptops and we find we are 22 laptops deficient. Meaning they have expected to receive 22 laptops under lease back from us.

Now this happens, when the lease is up, sometimes people are traveling, sometimes people are resistant to change, the company migrated from HP to Lenovo a few years ago and we have some people who refuse to trade in for a Lenovo as they don’t like or trust them.

But 22 deficient is a bigger number then we’ve seen in a long time.

OP did some digging.

I start searching the serials and every single one is from a departed employee, hmm the plot thickens.

I pull the departure paperwork and they are all done by the new guy.

Check list is done, everything done properly, impressive so far, disabled, account remapped, removed from mailing lists, yeah.

Form says “Laptops returned to depot cabinet”

But they’re not actually in the cabinet.

The Depot cabinet holds at most, 10 new boxed laptops and 5 loose laptops for return, there is no way that he’s just filled the entire thing up right?

I get the key, open the cabinet, and it’s empty

OK then, maybe they are in transit? We use Fedex and they can sometimes suck, check with the parcel department, and nothing has gone out from us in a month.

So I grab the new guy, pull him into my office and ask him

At least the new guy was honest.

$ME – So hey, I’m missing 22 laptops, and they all seem to have passed through your hands, did you just stick them in the wrong place?

$NG – No, they are all home

$Me – Home? Home where? I checked the cabinet, it’s empty

$NG – No like my home, they were old laptops so I just took them home

How did the new guy think this was okay?

$Me – Wait what? did anyone approve this?

NG – No, I just figured rather then paying to get rid of old computers, I would put them to good use somewhere else.

$Me – Oh ok, you know what, wait right here for a minute

So I grab my supervisor, and explain whats going on. We’ve got issues now with a security breach, data breach and employee theft.

The new guy really messed up.

I’m told to go and keep an eye on New Guy, he will call the police and inform the security team.

So I walk back into my office, slide a can of Coke to NG and start some idle chat, ask him how he likes the job, etc etc. just killing time until suddenly my door pops open, my supervisor and 2 police officers walk in. NG is placed under arrest and then walked out of the building.

Police were able to recover 7 laptops from his apartment, and NG has stated that he re-imaged the laptops and sold them on craigslist.

Never Miss a Story

Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.

His statement to the police said he took items that were slated for disposal and were otherwise garbage and did not think this was an issue. The computers were mostly T440’s or T450’s some of which were still under lease.

Never a dull day

Yikes! Was the new guy really that clueless or was he just hoping to get away with it? Considering how honest he was, it seems like he was clueless. Even if he thought it was better to put them to use instead of sending them in, he should’ve asked someone first.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Always get it in writing.

Another person knows that you never take a computer unless you have written approval.

This person worked with a similar employee.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who thought HR was doing them a favor, only to realize they were really saving the company money.

This would be awful!

It seems that the new guy probably was completely clueless. However, you’d think he’d know enough to ask the supervisor before just taking the laptops home.

Even if he didn’t think of it as stealing, surely he realized it was wrong to lie about what happened to them. While he was honest when his coworker confronted him, he lied in writing saying they were in the locker even though he never actually put them there.

Lying. Stealing. Definitely not a good employee.