Intel Corp. Chief Information Officer Kim Stevenson faces complex enterprise technology issues on a daily basis. But perhaps none was as baffling as the staffer who reported a PC bursting into flames.
“After an investigation, it was clear the user had thrown the PC into the fireplace,” says Ms. Stevenson, who ranks the employee’s explanation for turning in a charred computer among the worst excuses she’s ever heard for a technology failure. Her tip for anyone planning to throw a work-issued device into a fireplace: “You need to clean of the ashes off before you hand it over to the PC service center.”
As 2015 winds down, we asked CIOs in a range of industries to share some of the lousy excuses they heard for tech failures, missed deadlines and other IT bloopers – from apps with agonizingly slow processing times, to entire systems going dark.
Bill Bradley, CIO of CenturyLink Inc., says often the most unbelievable or unacceptable excuses are those that blame the customer. “Accountability demands that IT delivers solutions without excuses,” he says.
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