Apparently I am a veterinarian, not an IT professional.

The BBQ Pit
1

As you may or may not know from my past posts, I do some IT work for a government contractor. This means that when the computer doesn’t work, they call me. No big deal, it’s what I get paid for and the job security looks pretty good for the time being.

Anyway, yesterday one of our billing supervisors asked me to give some extra database rights to one of her employees. I was done within 5 minutes of recieving the request. I made a point of telling her that he would have to restart the program for it to take effect.

So this morning my coworker comes over and tells me that she was bitching that I didn’t grant the rights she asked for because he couldn’t access the screens. Sounds to me like something I can’t fix over the phone or by email. So I walk over there.

Me - Hi, I hear your guy is still having trouble.
Her - Yes. (very curt and annoyed tone of voice)
Me - Well, what seems to be the problem?
Her - That’s your job to figure out.

What?

Me - Well, what kind of error message is he getting?
Her - I don’t know.
Me - Is there anything you can tell me about the problem.
Her - Like I said, it’s your job, you figure it out.

So I go over to his desk, and guess what? He left his computer running all night to process some bills. Not unusual, but he never restarted the program after I granted him the new rights. I rebooted his computer and, like magic, it worked perfectly.

Listen you overworked, undersexed, uppity bitch. The only profession I know of where the person can diagonose the problem without asking questions is a veterinarian.

And that’s because the animals can’t talk!!!

I know you’re busy, but I am too. I have several VPs breathing down my neck for upgrades and custom reports and the like. The least you could do is recognize that I walked all the way across the building to help you. I’ll be as cordial as I can, but when you start telling me that it’s my job to figure out, it sounds like you think you’re my boss. You’re not. You’re just a miserable little troll who never went to college so you’re now stuck with a dead end crappy job. Don’t take it out on me.

Yet another reason I work with headphones on and hardly ever leave my office.

2

Hey, um, yeah, I, er, changed the root password on production to ‘root’ by accident, and, er, well, uh, just look at the corporate website. Can you fix that in ten minutes? We’ve got a client coming in for a demo.

Off…site… ba… what? No, we don’t have anything offsite. Accounting decided we were just throwing money away there. We never even used it!

And yeaaaaah… I’m gonna need you to come in on Saturday…

3

Can you permanently coordinate all her passwords to be “stupidbitch” and then leave for a 2 week vacation?

4

When you left, did you leave her with

“Oh by the way, YOU"RE WELCOME” a’la Nick Burns.
That, or load some porn onto her computer and “bust” her with it.

5

This is why I like to make sure all instructions on such things as the necessity to restart the program for the changes to take place, are best in EMAIL. That was a quick resend of the instructions, plus a little further explanation should embarass the rude lady. Of course if you have enough clout you could simply reply that fixing computer problems is your job, but dealing with rude and unhelpful people is not.

6

Well, you do work with members of the species equus asinus…

7

I swear that when I opened this, it said ‘vegitarian’ in the title.

:o

8

“This is not a game of twenty questions. Come back when you’re ready to have your problem solved, KTHX BYE.”

9

HA! I like this! I may have to use this sometime.

10

I read it the exact same way. I was reading the thread trying to figure out where we were going with a computer problem, animals and not eating meat. :slight_smile:

11

I used to get this same attitude when I was working on cars.
My standard response was that was no problem, I would then have re-run any diagnostics that might have been done before so I could locate/eliminate the source of the problem and my labor rate is $65./hour.
Usually this made the previous repair orders appear at almost light speed.

12

I think you need to spay her.

13

Too late. She’s already reproduced.

14

Well the SDMB site server is run by hamsters …

:smiley:

15

Oh man, that is why I ALWAYS apologize profusely when dealing with IT. IT people are treated like GODS in my company. They are never wrong, always busy and never have to explain anything, it just IS.

16

Lord Ashtar

Upon completing my diagnosis and realizing that the computer had not been restarted, contrary to my recommendations, I would have left it alone, and gone back to her…

You: “Do what I told you to do yesterday.”

Her: “And what was that?”

You: “My job was to tell you. It’s your job to remember what you’re told.”

17

Oh, man, Libertarian, that’s the greatest response ever. I HAVE to remember that.