My company in a nutshell

dmn23

dmn23

Duller than cardboard
Thursday: I box up my old computer and use the label provided by my tech department to FedEx it back to the office in Nashville.

Tech Guy #1: "Hey, where's that computer? We needed you to ship it back to us last week."

Well guys, when I enter the FedEx tracking number that you gave me I see that it's in Nashville but it hasn't been delivered yet, presumably because of weather delays. All of this is clearly documented on the FedEx tracking screen. You checked FedEx tracking before you sent an email crawling up my ass and copying God and everybody, right?

"Hmm. Tech Guy #2, this is Tech Guy #1, can you confirm that we've received the computer?"

Literally no one can be bothered to check FedEx or glance at the screenshots I've provided. :facepalm:
 
One of our therapists has been waiting for a new laptop charging cable since January 24th. She's had to use an iPad since then to do all of her charting and notes.
Our IT kept emailing asking me if it had arrived. I responded "I don't know, you guys have the tracking numbers!"
 
GilmourD said:
It's amazing how many people in my field can't find the goddamned power button.
Click to expand...

I had an IT job where the other IT staff thought I was a genius because I was the only person who ever looked anything up in a book or on Google.
 
In fairness, those poor fuckers catch grief from a hundred directions a day. Middle management dictators, computer-illiterate employees, IT crews in meltdown mode, etc. I don't envy them at all.

Still, when I receive an email saying, "Hey, where's the computer with FedEx number ________? Here's our company policy, here's the consequences for not returning it within the 48 hour window, etc." my expectation is that they've at least checked the tracking.
 
jp_nyc said:
I had an IT job where the other IT staff thought I was a genius because I was the only person who ever looked anything up in a book or on Google.
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My coworker's wife works for another school system and the hard drive in her laptop was dying. It had her masters thesis on it and she didn't have a backup. The IT guy at her job said he couldn't get the data off. I told my coworker to bring it to me. I pulled the drive, hooked it up to my adapter and realized it started clicking when it got warm. I turned on my air conditioner and stuck the drive in the vent until it was cold. Once it was nice and cold I put it in the adapter and had the AC blow right on it until I got all the data off the drive.
 
GilmourD said:
I work in IT.

It's amazing how many people in my field can't find the goddamned power button.
Click to expand...

Or they complain about a problem. I fix the problem and email them to make sure that it is fixed for them and then to let me know. Two weeks later I email again and maybe I will get an answer. Maybe.
 
I got a new iphone back in March, right before my company went to remote work due to coronavirus. I know, I'm a virologist, but I'm the head so I just plan strategic stuff and focus on directing science these days, so I work from home. I still have the old phone, which I took home to transfer just before we went remote. I got a series of "where is the old iPhone" and "can you bring us the iPhone at this time" for weeks/months. Finally I got tired of the automated replies and responded by email to someone that I have the new and old iPhone, and I will bring it back when the pandemic has subsided to the point where people at my level are allowed to return. This escalated through the halls of the IT department (for some reason people there think the return of an iPhone is sufficient reason to violate cantonal and federal law), and got to the desk of someone that insisted I get approval from the Head of Virology that it was unsafe for me to return my iPhone in a timely manner due to the coronavirus rules. I simply copied that persons request and added "IT IS UNSAFE" underneath in text. This led to a bit of an angry response that I needed more than that, to which I then replied to clarify that I was the Head of Virology and I was determining that it was unsafe for me to return my iPhone. They could appeal that decision to the head of Biological Agent Safety, if they like, which is also currently me. lol. My old phone is listed as "missing/lost" in the tracking system now. I finally managed to get through the automated system and random offsite IT support to a person that understands real life.

We do something similar about once every couple of years when someone accidentally brings a cell phone into the virus biosafety containment labs, which means it can't come out without being sterilized to the point that the electronics are toast, so they are declared missing. We have a drawer in the virus room that is like a history of company communications back to the Blackberry era. It feels wrong to destroy them, so they just take up space.
 
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Tiltsta said:
I got a new iphone back in March, right before my company went to remote work due to coronavirus. I know, I'm a virologist, but I'm the head so I just plan strategic stuff and focus on directing science these days, so I work from home. I still have the old phone, which I took home to transfer just before we went remote. I got a series of "where is the old iPhone" and "can you bring us the iPhone at this time" for weeks/months. Finally I got tired of the automated replies and responded by email to someone that I have the new and old iPhone, and I will bring it back when the pandemic has subsided to the point where people at my level are allowed to return. This escalated through the halls of the IT department (for some reason people there think the return of an iPhone is sufficient reason to violate cantonal and federal law), and got to the desk of someone that insisted I get approval from the Head of Virology that it was unsafe for me to return my iPhone in a timely manner due to the coronavirus rules. I simply copied that persons request and added "IT IS UNSAFE" underneath in text. This led to a bit of an angry response that I needed more than that, to which I then replied to clarify that I was the Head of Virology and I was determining that it was unsafe for me to return my iPhone. They could appeal that decision to the head of Biological Agent Safety, if they like, which is also currently me. lol. My old phone is listed as "missing/lost" in the tracking system now. I finally managed to get through the automated system and random offsite IT support to a person that understands real life.

We do something similar about once every couple of years when someone accidentally brings a cell phone into the virus biosafety containment labs, which means it can't come out without being sterilized to the point that the electronics are toast, so they are declared missing. We have a drawer in the virus room that is like a history of company communications back to the Blackberry era. It feels wrong to destroy them, so they just take up space.
Click to expand...
I hate politics and bureaucracy like that.

Where I am there's only one person in the IT department above me and his usual response to things is "What Tom said." because he knows I don't have my head up my ass and I keep shit running.

What has been SUPER frustrating is that we've been left doing a lot of phone support. Teachers harp on kids about following instructions but are possibly worse at following instructions than the kids. It's to the point where when we finally are able to get our hands on devices ourselves it turns out that they just ignored what we told them was the fix and just kept trying what wasn't working over and over again instead of the 20 second fix.
 
GilmourD said:
Teachers harp on kids about following instructions but are possibly worse at following instructions than the kids. It's to the point where when we finally are able to get our hands on devices ourselves it turns out that they just ignored what we told them was the fix and just kept trying what wasn't working over and over again instead of the 20 second fix.
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Yup.
 
I sure don't miss doing end user support....especially when your company gets big enough to chain techs to ITSM workflows.

These poor bastards are probably working out of an ITSM system that is bugging them daily about your missing computer or phone (which they actually don't care all that much about but it's one of dozens of stale tickets in their personal assignment queue that their manager keeps complaining about). You probably aren't tagged as a VIP in their system who deserves white glove treatment & the unintended consequence is that often non-VIPs tend to get scant attention because the system says you're just another nobody. Their email is a never ending slot machine that dispenses more work & complaints by users who's problem has not been addressed to their satisfaction. They're probably on dozens of corp email lists so there's tons of chatter they have to scan through before they get to your email. Individual emails get maybe 15-30 seconds of actual focus before hitting reply. What? the critical issue support slack channel is blowing up. Great, now my manager wants me to drop everything to help this engineer over in logistics. bye.

Their manager's bonus is directly related the team KPIs defined by the ITSM data. Unrecoverable equipment might negatively impact his bonus. So he hounds his team to close out those stale tickets while he's imagining all those bonus dollars going up in smoke. His director has a buddy over in logistics that is always complaining about the the support so he knows if he can keep this group happy, he can keep his director off his back. The logistics group knows they get preferential treatment so every time they put a ticket into the ITSM, they shoot him an email so he'll go arm grab someone right away to help them, which he does...unless they are working with a VIP. He just wants to keep upper management from looking at him negatively and impacting his career trajectory. If he's lucky, he's got a few competent staff that can solve issues in their scope with out following KBs or playbooks but they can only close so many tickets each day. The rest are just following the script. The managers of the teams escalation groups are regularly complaining to him about the shitty tickets his team punts over that they should have resolved or at least collected data before reassignment.
 
Denverdave said:
Or they complain about a problem. I fix the problem and email them to make sure that it is fixed for them and then to let me know. Two weeks later I email again and maybe I will get an answer. Maybe.
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“Hey. Remember when you fixed my computer? My phone has been doing this completely unrelated thing ever since.
What do you change? Why did you do that to my phone? And now my water heater leaks!”
 
GilmourD said:
My coworker's wife works for another school system and the hard drive in her laptop was dying. It had her masters thesis on it and she didn't have a backup. The IT guy at her job said he couldn't get the data off. I told my coworker to bring it to me. I pulled the drive, hooked it up to my adapter and realized it started clicking when it got warm. I turned on my air conditioner and stuck the drive in the vent until it was cold. Once it was nice and cold I put it in the adapter and had the AC blow right on it until I got all the data off the drive.
Click to expand...
There's only two kinds of data: data that is backed up and data that IS going to be lost.
 
Lerxst said:
I sure don't miss doing end user support....especially when your company gets big enough to chain techs to ITSM workflows.

These poor bastards are probably working out of an ITSM system that is bugging them daily about your missing computer or phone (which they actually don't care all that much about but it's one of dozens of stale tickets in their personal assignment queue that their manager keeps complaining about). You probably aren't tagged as a VIP in their system who deserves white glove treatment & the unintended consequence is that often non-VIPs tend to get scant attention because the system says you're just another nobody. Their email is a never ending slot machine that dispenses more work & complaints by users who's problem has not been addressed to their satisfaction. They're probably on dozens of corp email lists so there's tons of chatter they have to scan through before they get to your email. Individual emails get maybe 15-30 seconds of actual focus before hitting reply. What? the critical issue support slack channel is blowing up. Great, now my manager wants me to drop everything to help this engineer over in logistics. bye.

Their manager's bonus is directly related the team KPIs defined by the ITSM data. Unrecoverable equipment might negatively impact his bonus. So he hounds his team to close out those stale tickets while he's imagining all those bonus dollars going up in smoke. His director has a buddy over in logistics that is always complaining about the the support so he knows if he can keep this group happy, he can keep his director off his back. The logistics group knows they get preferential treatment so every time they put a ticket into the ITSM, they shoot him an email so he'll go arm grab someone right away to help them, which he does...unless they are working with a VIP. He just wants to keep upper management from looking at him negatively and impacting his career trajectory. If he's lucky, he's got a few competent staff that can solve issues in their scope with out following KBs or playbooks but they can only close so many tickets each day. The rest are just following the script. The managers of the teams escalation groups are regularly complaining to him about the shitty tickets his team punts over that they should have resolved or at least collected data before reassignment.
Click to expand...
That's really good insight and now I feel bad. Thanks :)
Seriously though, you're spot on and sometimes it's tough to remember that. Still, there are always a few in the group that just suck. lol
We have one guy in particular that will look you in the eyes while you explain the issue and when you stop speaking he goes "Wait, what's the problem?" like he was off in lala land the whole time. It's irritating.
 
MonkeyZero said:
That's really good insight and now I feel bad. Thanks :)
Seriously though, you're spot on and sometimes it's tough to remember that. Still, there are always a few in the group that just suck. lol
We have one guy in particular that will look you in the eyes while you explain the issue and when you stop speaking he goes "Wait, what's the problem?" like he was off in lala land the whole time. It's irritating.
Click to expand...

Yeah it can be pretty shitty for everyone.

The worst part is that sooner or later a new Sr Director or VP will come along and want to prove their worth to the board by enacting some "operational efficiency" re-org where they offshore the tier 1 & 2 support teams to an Indian 3rd party provider, laying all those folks off, leaving just a small escalation group domestically.

Big big cost savings that they can say "see I did this" & bounce into their new role as CIO/CTIO at their next company.....right before the reality really sinks in with upper management on how completely awful the support has become and they have to decide if they want to bring it back onshore or keep saving that tasty bottom line.
 
LULZ...I just saw another team in our org is working on "automating" designating ITSM VIPs via AD memberships.
 
dodgechargerfan said:
“Hey. Remember when you fixed my computer? My phone has been doing this completely unrelated thing ever since.
What do you change? Why did you do that to my phone? And now my water heater leaks!”
Click to expand...
I did a valve job on this idiots car one time. He showed up at my house one night at 2:30 in the morning wanting to know what I did that caused his tail light to burn out. Because, "It never burned out before you worked on the car."
 
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