We recently did an upgrade that did some bad things to the system. Everyone has been working on this with the vendor pretty much non-stop. I ended up being on call on my day off because the other guys put in a ton of hours.
Yesterday we thought we had it all fixed.
We told the people using the system to call instantly if there were any issues.
So today I got in at 8 am. It has been dead all day.
Until 4:00 when one of our employees called to let me know that there are three problems related to our original issue. To make it even better, they knew about it at 9 AM in the god damned morning.
They didn’t call until 4:00. So I get to stay late because the freaking idiots couldn’t pick up the phone. Had they called at 9 in the morning the vendor would have had all day to check on the issue.
So I am screwed again. This time because some people apparently either can’t read their email or use the phone.
Welcome to the world of IT support. Without fail, every Friday afternoon between 4 and 5 someone will call it with some stupid non-urgent problem that either could have been reported at 9am, or could wait til Monday.
There are two kinds of customers: those who don’t call when they should, and those who call when they shouldn’t.
I dunno. I think that idiots who needlessly keep you at work on Friday night are pit worthy.
And while I sympathize with IT, this problem is universal. Ask anyone from the mail room to the CEO’s office, and they’ll all tell you that they eye the phone suspiciously between 4 and 5 every Friday. Well, ask the CEO’s assistant. The CEO left at 4:00, precisely to avoid this, because he can.
Yeah, we have a huge problem with people not reporting problems then getting pissed because those problems are not fixed. If we don’t know it is broken we can’t fix it. They then bitch and upper management gets pissed. Once we explain the chronology we are in the clear but this happens all the freaking time.
I’ve been doing this for years and know that people do this all the time. At the same time it still annoys the hell out of me.
On the bright side, this was a big issue. All the upper management is aware of the issue and know that the users did not report the problem in a timely manner.
My bosses answer was screw 'em, they didn’t report it.