Chris had spent years protecting the office from Barry. Barry was dangerous—not in a criminal way, but in a “this guy once tried to microwave a USB drive to ‘dry it off’” kind of way.
So when Steve from accounting announced that Barry would be leading an IT project, Chris immediately felt his blood pressure spike.
“This will be a great leadership opportunity for Barry,” Steve said cheerfully.
Inner Thought #1: This will be a great disaster.
Chris tried to protest. “Barry’s in sales. What exactly is he ‘leading’?”
“Oh, just a simple project,” Steve replied. “Barry’s in charge of migrating our company’s shared drive to the new server.”
Chris blinked. “You mean the server we just spent $25,000 upgrading?”
“Exactly!” Steve clapped Barry on the back. “He’ll work closely with you, of course.”
Barry beamed. “I won’t let you down, boss!”
Chris resisted the urge to scream into his coffee mug.
Phase 1: Barry’s “Plan”
To Barry’s credit, he approached his new role with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, enthusiasm does not equal competence.
“Alright, team!” Barry declared in their first meeting. “Here’s the plan: I’m going to move all the files myself.”
Chris almost choked on his coffee. “Barry, that’s ten years’ worth of company data.”
Barry shrugged. “How hard can it be? I’ll just drag and drop everything.”
Inner Thought #2: This man is going to single-handedly delete the company.
Chris spent the next hour desperately explaining why migrating terabytes of data required structure, backups, and not treating it like a playlist on Spotify. Barry nodded along like he understood.
Then he asked, “But… could we technically just copy and paste everything?”
Chris excused himself before he could be charged with assault.
Phase 2: The Barrypocalypse Begins
Chris had one rule: Barry was NOT allowed to touch the migration software unsupervised.
So naturally, Barry tried to do it anyway.
At 3:00 AM, Chris’s phone buzzed.
🚨 TEXT FROM BARRY: “Hey, I got a head start on the migration. Should be done by morning!”
Chris sat up so fast he nearly fell out of bed.
Inner Thought #3: Oh no. No, no, no, NO—
Throwing on his clothes, Chris raced to his laptop and logged in remotely.
The damage?
- Barry had dragged and dropped half the files into the wrong folders.
- Some documents had mysteriously vanished.
- Random files were renamed things like “Final_Final_V2_NEW_RealFinal.xlsx”.
- And worst of all… the accounting department’s files were now labeled “BARRY’S STUFF – DO NOT TOUCH.”
Chris physically clutched his chest.
Inner Thought #4: I am going to jail for murder. I just need to accept this now.
Phase 3: Cleaning Up Barry’s Mess
By the time Chris got to the office, the entire accounting department was in full meltdown mode.
Steve: “WHERE ARE OUR FILES?!”
Lisa: “WHY DOES EVERYTHING SAY ‘BARRY’S STUFF’?!”
Gordon: “WHY IS OUR BUDGET REPORT IN THE ‘EMPLOYEE MEMES’ FOLDER?!”
Barry, oblivious to the chaos, smiled proudly. “Told you I’d get it done fast!”
Chris counted to ten in his head.
Then counted again.
Then simply said: “Barry, sit down. Do not move.”
Chris spent the next 14 hours manually undoing every idiotic mistake Barry had made. He recovered lost files, reorganized everything, and locked Barry out of the system so this could never happen again.
When he was finally done, Steve patted Barry on the back and said, “Great effort, buddy. Maybe next time, we’ll give you something bigger to manage.”
Chris grabbed his coffee and walked out.
He was officially taking next week off.