I’m a High School Tech Coordinator for Chicago Public Schools. I was able to work from home from the start of lockdown until August 31st. All support staff were ordered to return to full time in person as essential workers. It was myself, an administrator, the clerks, the custodians and security guards. I had offered to come in for 2 4-hour chunks during the week for families that needed to bring a Chromebook in for repair, but no, I had to be there all the time. It was very boring. I’d get a few visitors a week, and the rest of the time I was in my office answering emails etc. That lasted until the next January or February when the parents were too tired of the their kids being home to let school stay remote any longer.
I’ve naturally bettered my relationships with IT since I started over twenty years there. We’ve got separate mobile device, laptop and other departments. Some of the staff were initially unwilling to guide me and would actually get mad when I would ask for any guidance.
As background I don’t independently do anything extra with the work devices besides cleaning the keys and dumping the trash. I think the IT managers may have assumed everyone fidgets with the devices but I don’t do that.
The climax that changed how they treat me was when a top IT admin asked me to network with her so she could update the laptop and then she accidentally assigned everything on the laptop to another employee. (I assumed she was displaying examples for unknown reasons) She said to me “I’ve screwed the pooch and I’ll bet you’re mad. You’ll have to physically bring the laptop to me.” My reaction was more approachable, like “Why would I hold anything against you?”
This was years ago… One of our IT guys was pulled over for a DUI. He threatened the deputy that he could delete all his information (he could have) if he got a ticket.
Said drunk driver found a box on his desk the next morning for his shit instead of a keyboard.
He’s lucky he didn’t get in hotter water.
Holy shit, I wish every customer was like you.
I end up asking the IT personnel for more than my share of tickets because of error messages where I’ve accidentally violated protocols. I’m looking for online and other hard copy resources I can access to learn from my little screw ups. If some of you fine people would be able to recommend any resources off hand, you can bet I’d be thrilled to learn more.
It’s weird that I post here because I respect IT people. I worked for a few years with a ‘computer program analyst’ type of person and spend time in his home but we don’t talk about mundane stuff like computer glitches. I understand if what I wrote above isn’t an ordinary question to ask but at least I’m feigning interest.
I’m not sure what you’re asking for here.
Eric, like Atamasama, not quite sure what you are asking. If you could expand a bit about your ‘little screw ups’, I’m sure someone here could help.
For instance, what protocols? Computer protocols, or company protocols (really policy).
Most IS/IT departments don’t want you fiddling with your computer set up. It should be set up so you can’t. But a simple Excel or Word question is not something that should go to the Help/Service Desk IMHO. For instance, a bad Excel formula? That’s for you to figure out.
I’m in IS. Not service desk but plenty of questions get routed to me due to particular specialties.
My wife, and most people just want computers to work. That’s fine. It’s not their job to fix them so they can do their job.
Conversely, it’s not the IT departments job to figure out how to do your job. We just provide tools. If you need new tools, that should go through channels (your boss).
Thanks enipla and Atamasama for writing. I get error messages for Windows 365 that are constantly reported to IT. I wondered if there are references for it. I’ve checked out material and been lookinh through Admin about it mostly because I haven’t had any windows courses at my job. I’m not trying to take action steps but I like to have descriptive language when writing my ticket requests.
Give them this:
As an IT person who is constantly responding to such things as my daily job, just give me all the info you can. I don’t need you to do the troubleshooting, that’s my job. Just give me the info. If you learn how to take screenshots, so much better.
Think of it like going to the doctor. Your doctor isn’t going to want you to look up your symptoms on WebMD and then come into an appointment to tell them what the problem is. They just want all the info so that you can give you a diagnosis. Interpreting the symptoms and coming up with a treatment is their job.
That’s actually a very common problem at work for me. Someone will come up to me to declare what’s wrong. The worst I get is, “I need a new computer.” No, you are not qualified to make that determination. Just tell me what’s wrong.
I mean, literally I’ve had an office manager who came to me insisting that her smartphone was broken and she needed a new one. It took me a while to convince her to stop asking for a new phone (seriously, every answer to any question was “I need a new phone”).
Finally, I got her to describe the problem; her emails in her phone app vanished even though they were visible on her computer. Immediately after telling me that, the first thing I said was to tap in the top-right corner of her mail client window to turn off the “only show unread mail” filter I knew was enabled. They magically appeared!
But honestly, that’s probably one of the hardest parts of my job; reminding people that it’s my role to diagnose their problems and give a solution. I sometimes have to say, “I am not Amazon and you’re not ordering a device from me, I’m your IT person.”
Once again our company’s VPN stopped working for me. I call in. Same shit: “Oh, you’re on a Mac? We don’t support Apple products so I can’t help you”.
I was briefly (one day) able to remote in like Windows users do, using a Windows 10 virtual machine. Next day, nope, timeouts, requests for starting over with login and password, etc, never arriving there.
It now looks like it might be a side-effect of that CrowdStrike thingie and not that the VPN security dropped support for my version of MacOS. I hope so.
Their attitude really burns my butt though. It reminds me of how my lower eastside girlfriend described going to the doctor a couple decades ago with early menopause symptoms: “She spoke to me like I was a bank customer who’d written checks my account couldn’t cash. ‘There are no more eggs in there willing to come out, so you’ve forfeited any chance of being a mother. You’re old now and you’re just going to have to suck it up and live with it’.”
Bloody hell, you don’t have to act like me owning a Mac is an irresponsible behavior on my part. Try “We’re not trained on supporting Macs so I may not be very useful” – ? If you knew the VPN status agency-wide was in disarray you could have told me that. Instead of “Oh you’re on a Mac, well fuck you, you suck and we won’t help”.
I don’t understand why companies allow or even expect people to use personal devices for work, not do I understand why people would allow a company to have access to their personal devices. I don’t trust my employer enough to do that and if they want me to work or be reachable or productive, they must provide the tools for it. If something on the work laptop breaks so I can’t work, I don’t pull out a personal laptop, I charge that time to the IT Failure code and wait for it to be fixed (or do another task if possible)!
When I got hired at this job, it was explicitly a remote position, I’m never going to relocate for this. Somehow the company didn’t want to provide me with a cell phone because I wasn’t a manager (don’t ever wanna be, I’m in a senior technical role). They expected me to use my personal phone and, worse, provide that number to clients! Hell, no!
Not being an insane corporate drone, I flat out refused. It had to get escalated pretty high but it did get sorted out after a couple of weeks, but the fact that they’d even think this was remotely ok is astounding. They’d sent a laptop so I could at least use Teams and email but I wasn’t reachable otherwise during that time and that was entirely their responsibility.
Yes, I carry two cell phones. I use the work laptop exclusively for work and have another old one at home for personal stuff.
Listen to The Offspring, folks! “You gotta keep em separated!”
I actually bought a computer I did not otherwise need to be my “work from home” computer, although in all honesty I would have continued to use my everyday rig if they had not required a minimum OS for VPN that my everyday computer wasn’t qualified to run.
Since 1993 (first professional job) I’ve nearly always worked using my own computer with my own tools on it. I know it’s unusual. I was never required to do so, but it was tolerated.
I don’t like using an employer-supplied computer for the same reason that I don’t want to cook a fancy meal in your kitchen, having to rely on your kitchen equipment that I’m not familiar with and which may lack items I depend on (and I’d be constantly opening drawers looking for basic things and cursing about the delay).
If you had to use a company computer, you’d get used to it though. It might not be your preference, but just as you’d learn my kitchen after a few cooking sessions, you’d be able to function just fine.
As for available tools; I hear you there, but again I don’t trust my employer enough to take on any “risk” of using tools they didn’t authorize. If they can’t provide me with what I need to do the job, or if it means doing the job is less efficient, lower quality, or just really slow …that’s on them. I’ll do my best with what I have, but if they give me shit tools, they deserve the outcome. Let the system fail.
I’m very good at what I do. I sell my time, skills, and expertise in return for salary and benefits, but efficient use of my skills means giving me what I need to apply them. Otherwise, they get what they pay for.
I’ll use that salary to buy personal devices for my own convenience and entertainment, but I will not “give it” to my employer. It isn’t theirs to dictate, control, access, or use.
You know damn well the corporate fucks at the top of the chain will throw you under a bus and gleefully drive over you a few times because you used “unauthorized software” as an excuse to avoid responsibility for their own fuckups. Don’t give them the opportunity.
Now you know how IT people feel when they’re asked to support your personal computer.
When COVID hit and we all got sent home, I bought a new desk top and a 43 inch monitor. I just remote into my work machine with that. Works great. Still doing it.
I’m a part of IS.
Some coworkers use laptops when working from home. They remote into their VM (Virtual machine at work). I guess some have additional screens set up. I could no more use a laptop, with a single screen than I could use a baseball bat for golf.
Laptops have their place, I own two. But their place is not to replace my desktop/VM setup.
I certainly don’t expect work to trouble shoot my personal machine. Not had a single problem.
I’ve seen that happen live and in person. And watching what happened to my coworker, I decided in that moment that I’d never use personal equipment at work for anything more than email notifications, no matter how cool my employer.
That made my relationship with IT a lot better as well. Something broke? IT will handle it front to back while I take a nap. And IT knows that when I call, the problem I hand them is 100% in one of their playbooks.
I can understand adding a mouse or keyboard that’s more comfortable, or even spending personal money on a monitor. In my case I do use my own mouse and keyboard but the company gave me 2 big monitors and the docking station so I have three screens including the laptop one.
But not the computer itself, not ever. I wouldn’t want to download anything that belongs to my employer into a personal hard drive or anything of that nature, even temporarily. If the employer wants all traces of their data back, will you give them all your personal data too?
I don’t use a virtual machine, I just have the laptop. I literally don’t have a desk/office anywhere else in the world. The laptop is adequate for my needs. If it wasn’t, I’d request they send me a desk top or better device, but I’ll never buy my own for work.
Not my data, I won’t provide the tools. I just don’t trust them.
Not even email.
They want me to be aware of emails away from my desk? Give me a phone for that. Too much corporate information goes through email. I refused to download Duo on my personal phone too. If that’s the 2FA method they want to use, they have to give me all the tools for the process to work.
I barely look at my phone after hours or on weekends either. Fortunately my employer recognizes the general right to disconnect and we keep pretty standard business hours, so I might only finish up a Teams conversation with someone in another time zone, or check my schedule for the next day, but otherwise that isn’t time I’m choosing to “sell”.
I hold a very hard line on this stuff.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I remote into my work systems. Nothing other that the connection happens on my home machine, except the display of my work machines.
All the processing, database work and everything happens on my work machines.
This works great. I generally work 7-4 or 5. And I can work weekends as well if I want to make up time have a pressing task or whatever. Or for Maintenance windows which are after hours and weekends. I can do that from home.
Yup, same here. They know I’m not checking Teams on the weekend. If something blows up, give me a call. I’ll do what I can.