Idiots, stop calling me (An IT woe-is-me rant)

The BBQ Pit
1

Caller Number 1 - The Moron From Missouri: You called the emergency help number on Friday evening at around 6:00pm. You said you’ll be needing to work the next morning, and your password is locked out. Fair enough - I go back home to reset your password so you can work. No big deal, I had only started out to go to dinner a few moments before I received the page, so I merely had to drive about a mile back to the house. I called you back at 6:05pm and left a message stating your account was ready to use again. Apparently you decided you need not wait for a response and went home.

Saturday morning - 10:00am. You page again. I figure you’re preoccupied with building the world’s first head-ass supercollider and fat-fingered your password a few more times, locking yourself out again. I call you back, at home this time, and see what the problem is. Ah, you locked yourself out last night. Did you perchance listen to the message I left you a few minutes after you paged me last night? No? Oh you’re at home. You know that thing you used to call me? It can also be used to call yourself, and check your own messages, you festering fuckhole! Next time you call me you’re getting a penalty hold like you’ve never seen. (A penalty hold - for the blissfully unfamiliar - is when a technical person puts someone on hold to “ask a question” to other members on the team. In most cases the question regards what they’re doing this weekend)

Caller Number 2 - The Admin from Alabama: You called on Saturday as well. You’re trying to send an email out to the company. You cannot, however, because your mailbox has exceeded our size limits. I don’t feel like dealing with it, so I remove the limit from your mailbox so you can send the email. As it is a Saturday, and the message is to the entire company, I assume it’s something important (e.g. Congrats, you’ve all been decruited!), so after I leave a message telling you the problem has been resolved, I wait to see what the email says. After half an hour with no new mail, I call you again. This time you answer, and tell me that everything is working fine now. We hang up and I check my box again. Still, no email. Later that evening, I check again. Nothing! Why the hell did you page me to fix the problem if you weren’t going to send the damn email anyway?!? (It’s Tuesday now, and there still hasn’t been any company-wide emails since then)

Caller Number 3 - The Dickhole from Denver: You’re my favorite of them all. You think you know so much. You don’t know anything. You never call during normal hours. Do you get anything done before 10:30pm? You can’t get to a site on our intranet. You believe the problem is with the security settings. I mention that I can get to the page fine using your account from my computer. I think you try upgrading Internet Explorer to the latest version. You fail to see the correlation. Fucker, just do it! I’d be astonished to find out you’re able to see the correlation between the sun going down and it getting dark. I suppose that’s a common problem among those whom have their heads permanently lodged up their asses. After an hour you finally acquiesce and upgrade IE, of course not offering to let me off the phone while you do it. You get it installed, and lo and be-fucking-hold! It works! Get off my phone, and don’t call back. Instead see if you can find an army munitions testing range to play on.

Ah well, back to work. The funny thing is, as I typed this up - the pager hasn’t gone off once. That’s a good thing - it’s hard to post on the SDMB while crouching in a tower with a high powered rifle.

Anyone else having a good week at work?

2

As another IT guy, I get this one all the time. Frankly, I don’t care if you don’t see the correlation. You asked for my help, I’m suggesting something. Can you at least pretend that I may know more than you and just fucking do it?

Is there a profession out there that is more underappreciated than IT helpdesk?

3

DId you at least give them a:

[Nick Burns]

Oh, and by the way…YOU"RE WELCOME

[/Nick Burns]

4

Is there a profession less deserving of appreciation then helpdesk?
[sub]Just kidding, but as a former third-tier support guy about half of my problems were caused by helpdesk incompetence.[/sub]

5

I’m of two minds about these types of threads.

On the one hand, I guess this is what the pit is for–to vent those daily frustrations of everyday life that your wife and friends are tired of hearing about.

On the other hand, you signed up for a job the description of which is basically to help people when they call you. People call you that need help, and you get all pissed off about it. It’s kinda like a professional shit-shoveler getting all pissed off that he has to shovel so much shit.

I dunno . . .

6

I’m the IT coordinator for my tiny satellite office of a big company, which means I’m one the phone with the Help Desk what seems like daily. Perhaps we have the best one in the world, because they can get just about anything fixed. Whether the rest of my office does or not, I appreciate them!

(Thanks, Red, Darlene, and Lonnie, if you’re Dopers!)

7

Yeah, some calls just suck. Reminds me that I’m supposed to be applying for a help-desk job pretty quick here though. :dubious:

It’s not all bad though. When I was an intern, I was in charge of everything to do with this one piece of software (I was updating the source code and everything). My worst call ever was this one guy who went ballistic when I told him the substandard piece of hardware he had was unsupported. (I really did try too.)
Since this was a gov’t project, he complained right to the minister in charge, and the next week it filtered down to my boss, who came in and asked me if there was anything we could do about it. The answer was the same that week (still no), so my boss went away to say we’d done everything we could. :smiley:

8

Actually 99% of the time it’s fine. Most employees are friendly, attentive, and respectful. It’s that one percent that brings out the rant on occasion. I just happened to get hit with several inconsiderate people all at once this week, and I was up at work until 3:00am last night trying to fix a problem, so I went off.

Think of it as the different between being asked “Pardon me, could you possibly shovel a little extra shit tonight?” and being told “Hey asshole! Start shoveling that there shit! And by the way you’re doing it wrong!” :wink:

9

Aha, that makes sense. Thanks for the enlightenment. You hereby officially have my permission to rant away :slight_smile:

10

Brothers, I feel your pain. I run a mid-sized network here at work…all by myself. 100+ users, printers, phones, faxes, cabling, Novell, Microsoft, Cisco…you name it. I’m the network admin, the desktop support guy, the helpdesk guy…hell I even take care of the phone system. Every now and then I’m struck by the stupidity of certain questions, but when I really look at the situation it usually turns out to be plain laziness rather than lack of brain cells. Some people just don’t give a rats ass and want you to do the thinking for them.

11

I loved my IT emergency pager. I got paid an extra 3 hours a day to carry it, plus if I had to drive into work during non-office hours I got to charge another 4.

Plus we had a different mandate for our IT pager as it was for production emergencies only. If a server went down, that’s an emergency. If the system that prints the shipping labels went down, that’s an emergency. If a user deleted their powerpoint document on a Sunday night and needed a restore for their Monday morning meeting, that’s not an emergency, and it can wait until regular IT hours.

12

Great rant, right on target and extra bonus points for not being about coffee cup CDROM trays, 5.25" diskettes cut down to fit in 3.5" slots, or trying to operate the mouse like a sewing machine’s foot pedal. :slight_smile:

Good timing, too, since Tech Tales is out of date and overdue and I need my fix!

13

Heh. It’s funny. I went from Tech-Support to Managment while many of my old tech-support cohorts went into IT/Helpdesk. It’s odd. Other supervisors and managers come to me and ask why I don’t have helpdesk problems like they do. Why I don’t get the “We have two weeks to resolve your problem and it’s only been 13 days” crap. And I want to reply

  1. I’m specific in my e-mails. “User X’s computer isn’t doing that thing that does the thing.” is not helpful. “User X’s webbrower can’t access such-and-such site. He tried from station 123. I tried him on another box (at station 234) and he was still having the same problem. Three other agents, A, B and C can access that site. Could you check his network permissions and verify that they’re the same as A, B and C’s? If they are, I’m stumped. Any suggestions?” is

  2. Everything is not an emergency. When I report an emergency, and/or use the “catestrophic failure” button, I usually have an IT guy and two help desk guys at my desk within minutes trying to solve the problem. That’s because I don’t use it to “Cry wolf!”. Hint folks: “Our client is due to inspect our facility in 15 minutes and no-one’s phone or computer is working at all. We have power, but they’re all unable to log on to either. And we’ve got 40 people in queue and the queue is getting bigger every minute!” is an emergency. “Hey! My daughter sent me a picture and when I click on it, it doesn’t run!” is NOT a “catestrophic failure”

  3. I treat the IT/Helpdesk guys like part of the team. Case in point. We had an emergency this Tuesday. There was a miscalculation and we were 10 desks short for the agents we hired for a new department. I asked if the Helpdesk guys could do an emergency set-up rather than wait for the formal bi-weekly meeting since our new client was due out the next morning. They (very kindly since they had to put other work aside) helped. Guess who got invites for “grand opening celebration” donuts in the morning and pizza at lunch. They helped us, they’re part of the team too. They get invites to all our potlucks and holiday meals. When’s the last time you included them?

It’s not that they’re playing favorites with me 'cause we all came from the same department back when, it’s that I treat them as co-workers, not flunkies and you’d get better results if you’d do the same.

14

I really like the part about shoveling shit wrong.

15

I love this insult! Thanks for the laugh.

(And on behalf of my husband, who does support, I feel your pain.)