Roll The Tape
I work as an Executive Support Technician for a large company. I have a team of eight people under me and we support high-ranking executives and their administrative assistants. Because of the nature of our work, we have the ability to “get things done” that the standard help desk cannot.
We can force upgrades that would otherwise be denied, get things expedited, skip the normal procedures and talk directly with the people who fix the issues. While we are executive support, there are still levels. When the CEO is in town, one of us is camped outside of wherever he might be in case there is any sort of issue.
For lower people, we make sure things get done as quick as possible, but it’s not a drop everything situation. As we prepped for the releases of the new iPhones, we braced for the flood of “I NEED this” that inevitably happens. We slot in orders immediately for the top of the pyramid guys and then work our way down, replacing or sometimes having to tell them that they have to wait because the device they have is too new to warrant replacing.
So on Monday, the assistant of a lower-end executive put in a request to get both herself and the executive new 256 Gig iPhone Xs. The executive was put on the approval list, with a wait, but the assistant was denied. She had just been issued an iPhone 7 a few months ago, and she began to raise heck about “I have to support him, so I need to have the exact same phone etc”.
Still denied. On Tuesday, I get a ticket from the assistant. Her iPhone will not turn on, and she requires a replacement with and attached ticket for an iPhone X request. I send one of my drones out to investigate. It got weird fast. I immediately get a text saying I have to get out there.
I get out there and the iPhone is wet, not just wet, but dripping wet, like just pulled out of a glass of water wet with a screen that could only be called heavily cracked. The assistant states, “I was using it and it fell into my water bottle”. So we take the phone back to our area and I’ve called my manager over and we explain it.
It’s obvious what has happened. We’ve toweled it off and when we turn it over, water drizzles out of the cracked screen. Well as luck would have it, we have spares, so I pluck a nice 64 gig Rose Gold iPhone 6s that was returned when the previous owner departed the company. I call and have the SIM card reprovisioned, then I re-assign the phone in Airwatch and I have the phone returned to the assistant.
10 minutes later, said assistant is at our door, ranting, screaming and saying that she can’t work like this, she needs a new phone and if we don’t give her one the “EXECUTIVE” will make us give her one. I step in and tell her “A permanent replacement is just beginning the process, we have had to issue you this phone as a loaner so you can continue working until a permanent replacement is sourced”. It did not go the way she wanted.
Cue Wednesday. The approval process has come back denied for her replacement, and the loaner phone is now her permanent phone. This info is relayed to the assistant, who is fuming, lots of “EXECUTIVE WILL HEAR ABOUT THIS” and statements of “I can’t believe this is happening to me, how will I work”?
Wednesday afternoon, same assistant, new ticket: iPhone broken, need replacement. I head out myself to see the issue and the phone looks like it was dragged behind a semi-truck for 100 miles. The screen is shattered, a big chunk is missing out of the top near the camera, big dents are in the back.
I calmly ask “What happened? This phone was perfect this morning”? The reply: “Well, since you gave me an old phone, my case didn’t fit and it slipped out of my hands and fell down the stairs”. “Well ok, could you tell me when and what stairwell this happened in”?
She does, and I take the mangled phone, I grab my manager and we head off to the security office, and we pull the tapes. Oh, the footage was so good. On the video we see the assistant walking up the stairwell (concrete stairs, metal hand rail, your typical big building non-public stairwell). She reaches the top and proceeds to fling the phone, like one would skip a stone, down from the 6th floor to the mid-floor landing.
It lands, and then she steps on it and kicks it down to the 5th floor. It bangs off the metal fire door and she picks it up, examines it, and then tosses it down the stairs to towards the 4th floor, bouncing off a few steps before landing on the mid landing between 5 and 4.
She picks the device up and pries a large section of something off the phone (we suspect this was the chunk missing on the camera) and then heads back up the stairs, running the phone against the cinder block wall as she climbs. Welp.
We grab a copy of the video, we head straight to HR, we sit with the personnel director, we show her the video, we show her the two damaged iPhones, we show her the tickets, I relay her demanding an iPhone X and how she has taken to destroying company property to get it.
Termination follows, however the she has gone home for the day. Meanwhile her accounts are disabled, her security badge flagged.
7:30 am today, the assistant attempts to get into the building and her badge does not work, so she has to walk to the security office. The security officer takes the badge and walks her to HR.
8 am, the security officer and two members of HR are escorting the assistant out of the building. She’s alternating between yelling and crying, and demanding that the executive be called and that she’s being framed.
As she’s brought through the main foyer, I’m on the second floor balcony that overlooks the entrance. She looks up at me, curses me, and is gone. Both phones, her laptop and other equipment have been placed with the company lawyers as a precaution.
Maybe I’ll buy my team pizza for lunch today, seems like the right thing to do.