HR told me to “just go do it,” so I gave one employee the nicest desk in the office
I’m technically a help desk employee, but my role is mostly system administration. I have a home office I go to very rarely, only as needed, but I mostly work remotely since most of my job doesn’t need to be done in person.
On a Thursday, I got an email from HR with a single picture from someone requesting that their monitors be relocated, their wires “untangled,” and that they be given a matching monitor. Their desk looked fine from the picture. I couldn’t see anything obviously wrong with it.
So I did what any sensible IT person would do and asked for more information so I could arrive on Monday with everything needed to get the job done correctly the first time.
I asked whether extra equipment would be shipped to the location, including a new monitor setup and new cables. I asked for additional pictures of the tangled wires so I could see what needed to be fixed, and I asked for more specifics on the goal of moving the monitors. Did they want the setup rearranged? Did I need to drill a hole in the desk to route things better? Very basic questions. The most important one was whether hardware would be shipped out.
My manager replied and told me to just go out there and do it.
DO WHAT?
I can’t do anything without new hardware and more information. HR then replied with another picture showing that the power cords were hanging under the desk and the power strip was floating in the air. That was clearly a problem and would have been very helpful to know from the start. But I still didn’t have any confirmation that hardware had been shipped, and I already knew that office didn’t have the equipment needed to do what they wanted. The existing cables were simply too short, even if I drilled a new access hole in the desk.
Some important context: I’d heard they might be axing the entire IT department and outsourcing it, and I had a feeling I was being set up to fail so they’d have justification to write me up or fire me. I haven’t been written up yet, but companies are doing this kind of thing all the time right now.
So I decided I wasn’t going to get played.
This person was going to end up with the nicest desk in the office. I spent about $400 on two brand-new 27-inch monitors, a dual monitor arm, and 10-foot cables so I could route everything perfectly. I’ll submit an expense report and get reimbursed for it.
This person works at the front desk, so everyone is going to see this setup, and it’s going to make the other employees jealous. The rest of the office has a random assortment of mismatched equipment, so everyone else is going to look at this and ask, “Why did they get that? I want that too.” Which, of course, is going to create a huge headache for the office manager and HR.
The employee got exactly what they wanted, and because it came through HR, this was probably some kind of health-related accommodation request, which means we have to do it.
Now HR gets to deal with the fallout of buying a bunch of equipment to accommodate everyone else. Three $5 longer cables could have solved the problem, but instead I’m hoping this turns into a flood of complaints and at least $5,000 worth of monitor arms and displays.