You’re kinda thick in the head. Of course I don’t answer the phone that way when it comes to our users. I’m not stupid and the fact that I’m still working here and still the go-to person whenever someone needs something urgent/very important done means I know how to answer the phone. Next time, think things through before giving me “advice”.
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Some advice is worth what you paid for it. Most advice isn’t.
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Actually, most advice is worth what you pay for it (given that it is usually unsolicited). Some advice is worth a lot more 
I beg to differ. Most unsolicited advice is worth less than what you pay for it.
Dear $luser,
Your account keeps getting locked out at the webmail server. This happens for one of two main reasons:
- Your password has expired, and you’ve changed it on your laptop but not the phone
- You have (or someone has) set up your work email on a personal fondlepad or spare phone somewhere and forgotten about it
Given we’ve re-entered your password at least 10 times on your phone, changed it at least twice, sent you a replacement phone, deleted your Exchange account from your phone in readiness for another new phone and it’s STILL locking out, my money is on the second one. Or, you lied through your teeth when you said that you’d removed the account, even when I walked you through the steps. Either way, I’m not buying your bullshit.
If I find out that you have been telling porky-pies and wasting hours of my time, your manager will be hearing about it from mine. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of my boss.
Update: trawling through the webmail server logs this evening reveals that there are… wait for it… two devices accessing Exchange from $luser’s account. Gee whiz, that’s strange isn’t it?
Tomorrow he will be asked some very specific questions.
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Do not leave us hanging on this, I want to see the blood flow.
Whoops, I was in the wrong TYWYCS thread. Mods: please feel free to move appropriately.
Well.
I found out that the device that is locking out $luser’s account is the phone he had immediately prior to his current phone. You know, the one that should have been switched off and sent back.
$luser insisted that it’s in a drawer in his office with a flat battery, and has been there for close to a year (when it was replaced). I called his boss to confirm, and… it wasn’t there.
So there are a few possibilities - the most likely one is that he’s given it to his wife/kids. A bit dubious, but not the end of the world… if he’d come clean and not lied about it for months.
As it happens, $luser was already skating on thin ice… I am told that there will be a discussion with HR next week.
If there’s blood, get video. We can sell it for more if there’s blood.
I can probably dub enough screaming to satisfy our target demographic.
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I larfed at that more then I should’ve. 
There’s no joy greater than soaring high on the wings of your dreams,
except maybe the joy of watching a luser who has nowhere to land
but the ocean of reality.
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Just because we’ve been restructured and I’m being made redundant does not mean you can ignore the social niceties of replying to a “Good morning” or “See you tomorrow”.
So $luser has produced the phone after (prendending to be) searching the office for it all morning. ID numbers match up with our records, which I have cross-referenced to our server logs. $luser’s boss turned the phone on and called me, and we discovered the following:
- The battery was fully charged (very unusual for a phone that has been sitting dormant in a drawer for a year)
- The old $company-supplied, inactive SIM card was in the phone (I’d burnt his number to a new SIM around the time he got his current phone) - a potentially smart track-covering move grossly outweighed by all the other things he’d done to scuttle that attempt
- Probably most damning of all: the phone had been hard-reset.
Funnily enough, there are no entries in the server logs for $luser at all now - the offending phone banged away at the server until about 4:15pm our time, and has not been seen since.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that at just about any point here he could have done a mea culpa, thrown himself at the mercy of the company and said “Oh yeah, I gave that phone to my kid/wife/monkey sex slave, that probably wasn’t the right thing to do, I’ll bring it right in, sorry.”
I doubt if it would have been painless, but it’s obvious the phone wasn’t important to the employer, so it wouldn’t have been as big of a deal as lying multiple times and attempting to cover up your tracks after the fact.
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That’s a nugget of hindsight I typically file under, “If Woody had called the police, none of this ever would have happened.”
Exactly my point, @Woodman.
What’s really funny is that $luser tried to pull something similar last year using his Bluetooth car kit as the failure point. He’d heard that a certain model of company vehicle had had issues with the model of phone we were dishing out at the time… my boss however had a list of people in the company with that vehicle and $luser wasn’t on it, so I asked him point blank what kind of car he drives, and he said “It’s a Ford something…” and then dithered for a full 20 seconds (with me saying nothing) and finally gave me a completely different make and model.
So I told him to go into the dealer for his car to get a software update.
4 weeks later he calls and says they can’t do it, so I ask for a compatible handset list.
2 weeks after that he emails me a PDF copy of… the manual for an Alpine single-DIN head unit. Yes folks, he was trying to pass off his non-factory, non-company-supplied Alpine stereo as reason for a new phone. His rationale: “Oh, the company paid for the head unit to be transferred from my wife’s car into my work car.”
I think this little nugget went quite a way to shape the outcome for the most recent episode.
Wait, what? The company paid to move his Alpine unit from his wife’s car to his car? Is such an awesome employee that having is proper tunes in place was worth the company paying for it?
I’m not against that in theory, I was thinking about executive washrooms, and secretaries, and other rainmaker perks the other day. If you earn the company $1 Million a year or more, who gives a crap if you need a WSJ on your desk every morning, or a $80k company car, or whatever the hell you want. I have noticed that some people get to that level with promises and stay there by stomping on other people’s fingers though.