For about a month now I’ve been connected to an odd unfolding mystery. A user contacted the help desk because his company email wasn’t listed in the ticketing system. As is their wont, the help desk chucked it over to me.

The first thing I do in such cases is check their user account, and here I saw that while he had access to one account, another had him marked as terminated, which is why the problem was happening. I sent it back to the help desk, given that it wasn’t the first time we’d seen a user incorrectly labeled as terminated, and told them that HR would need to make sure they had him listed properly.

Naturally the help desk sent it straight back to me saying, no really, he’s employed, just transferred divisions (a common cause of this problem). I explained it in smaller words that HR still had to look at it, and they didn’t understand that part either, so I contacted HR my damn self.

HR agreed that he looked terminated and said that if he really had transferred, it could be that the other division hadn’t filed the correct re-hire transfer papers. So together, we contacted the division’s HR. That HR looked up a totally different user and said no, he was never at this division. When we corrected them, we got no answer.

Meanwhile the help desk was continuing to talk to the guy who keeps calling in. One of them put a note in the ticket saying that he’d confirmed the guy was employed… but didn’t bother to list how or with whom he confirmed it. Idiots.

My HR helper, growing frustrated along with me at the lack of answers from the division HR people, escalated it over their heads with the suspicion that the guy might have gone from a permanent employee to a contractor or a temp (which would be very unusual). The new division HR people came back and said that the only employees they ever had with that name were terminated some time ago, and we’re not certain their records were the same guy. Otherwise they can’t find any records for him, employee or contractor.

I’ve been trying to gather what information I can find to work out who might know if/when he was an employee, but when an account as terminated it removes a good chunk of it. No manager listed, department isn’t clear, no updates beyond his termination/transfer date so a lot of the old info is probably outdated anyway….

It’s getting odd.