No, I don't do support anymore. Get over it. (Long and kind of lame)

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m in IT, and we were outsourced last year. Since then, I changed roles, and no longer provide local Desktop or Network Support. That was almost 6 months ago, and people still wander over to my cube requesting assistance for desktop issues. I try to explain that I don’t do local support anymore, and they look at me like I’ve got freakin’ polka-dots or something. Here’s a typical exchange…

User: Um, Winston? My printer doesn’t work. Can you come and look at it?

Me: Sorry, User, but I don’t do local support anymore. Do you have a ticket?

User: No. Do I really need to open a ticket? I’ve got a very important J Lo Biography I have to print so I have something to read while I have my afternoon constitutional.

Me: Well, User, I’m sorry. I really can’t help you. You’ll have to open a ticket and wait for one of the Desktop Support Guys to help you.

User: But can’t you help me? You fixed my printer last fall when I had to print out that very important recipe for Thanksgiving!

Me: Um, yeah. Well, like I said, I don’t do local support anymore.

User: :looks at me fixedly: Can you help me just this once? Puh-leeeeze?

Everyone’s been told repeatedly that they need to open tickets, and that I’ve been promoted and don’t perform local support anymore. The other issue at hand is that we live or die by ticket closures. That’s how my company generates revenue. The guys I used to work with were really slack about requiring tickets, and half of them (yes, half) are getting pink slips May 1st. I can’t tell the users that, though. At least not yet. So after May 1st, it’s actually going to get worse because we won’t have the head count to support the user community, and the guys that are leaving are the worst offenders for working without tickets (go figure), so that amounts to a big increase in actual work load that the bean counters aren’t factoring in. The worst thing is that the users have been told time and time again that they need tickets, and just refuse because it’s “not the way we used to do it”. I actually had a user storm off saying he’d go buy his own toner because he didn’t want to open a ticket. :rolleyes:

I’m almost as angry as my former colleagues for not enforcing the ticket requirement as I am with the users.

All I can say is :smack:

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading my lame Pit Thread. I’ll try to cuss more next time. :smiley:

2

I’m sorry, Winston, I can’t review your rant until you open a ticket. I know that you used to not have to open a ticket, but that’s the new way we’re doing things around.

3

Never mind the tickets, did ya get the memo about the TPS reports?

4

What you don’t understand is that desktop service isn’t an actual skill, worth compensation or accounting for. It’s just a quirkly little knack that you have. You didn’t learn it or earn it, you were just born with an ability to fix complicated stuff like computers. So, why don’t you drop the attitude and just do that thing that you do which, helps people do their REAL work that actually matters?

:smiley:

5

What’s a ticket?

(No - really - I get the rant but that part is really confusing. )

6

Just a quick question from someone that has never worked in an office… what does “opening a ticket” entail? Do you just fill out a quick form and send in the request to the IT guys? Or is it acres of paperwork and red tape or all that?

If it’s an arduous process, I’d understand people’s resistance to it. But if it’s a simple matter, then I’d be utterly baffled as to why they simply don’t go along with it…

7

A ticket is basically a work order for IT, you call the IT folks and they assign you a ticket number, logging it in a database. They use them to keep track of the work done, so you know if you’re over or understaffed, and other things about the work in general. Doing work without a ticket basically tells management that you did nothing for that hour, real smart career move. :rolleyes:

I think “opening a ticket” is going to vary wildly from office to office and luck plays a part. Sometimes it’s arduous, sometimes easy. I had one get misrouted and it took a full day to just get the ticket assigned to someone at my location. This was very irritating since my worksation was basically DOA. Others, I get a call back and it gets solved quickly and efficiently over the phone.

8

Nontheless, and nevertheless, they do. In my office, it’s Name, Phone Number, Description of problem. Many times I get merely description of problem… no name or number. Then they complain.

Or they don’t want the ticket at all. Then they complain.

Eh, it’s life.

9

O I C

10

[Quote]
I’m in IT, and we were outsourced last year

[Quote]

So obviously you aren’t doing anything at all anymore, so why the heck don’t you go help Clueless over there with the J.Lo biography, ya big meany? :smiley:

11

What drives me nuts is that the folks at work have decided to fuck up the ticket-getting process.

In the olden days, I’d be able to shoot an e-mail to “helpdesk@mycompany.com” saying “Howdy, user X has forgotten her network password. Her network ID is “userX” Please reset it to “hello”. Thanks!” or “User A, B, and C have all got the same problem: they can connect to our intranet site, but not the internet or any of the network printers. Thanks!”

Now, I have to fill out a Javascript based webform. That requires triple entry of data (and the “autocomplete” feature of IE is disabled for it. :rolleyes: ) , so there’s questions like:
Your Name? _________________________
Name of Supervisor of user with problem___________________
Person who wants the problem solved_____________________
Name of your Father-in-law’s daughter’s husband_____________

Then there’s minutae that’s just insane for most problems: the network password reset for one:

Printer that user prints to_____________________
User’s phone jack ID_________________________
Type of chair user sits in______________________
User’s Supervisor___________________________
Your E-mail address_________________________
User’s e-mail address________________________
Brand name of computer user is using______________
Band name that the user likes____________________

etc.

And they make you fill out EVERY question regardless of the problem.

etc.

What was a 10 second e-mail is now a 10 minute chore. And since they laid off a bunch of my buddies in the IT department, I’d think they’d want to generate more tickes, not less, but as an old tech-support guy, I’m getting shitloads of informal “Hey Fenris, can you help me with the printer? Last time they “power cycled” it and it fixed the problem. They told me how, but I forgot”

I’m torn, because I know most of the IT people and like 'em (we all came out of the same department…I just didn’t go the IT route because IT is always the second to go in tight times…QA is first), but at the same time, I sympathize with someone who doesn’t wanna spend 15 minutes filling out a fucking IT rectal examination to get a 5 word reply (“Turn it off, then on”)

Fenris

12

Sending forth a ticket at my office is the correct response also, but most people run around trying to find someone who knows about the problem anyway because IT never seems to get around to fixing these issues. I had a problem with my computer that made it unusable, and I had to move all my stuff to a different desk. I was there for three weeks when the lease luckily went up on the computers and we got new ones, otherwise gods know how long it would have been. (Estimates as long as three months for a minor problem.)

13

Yes, nothing says “Customer Service” like the arrogant IT M$ certified (or worse, UNIX admin) wonk who can’t be bothered to help the people who are actually making the money. Especially Network Services, “why, if it wasn’t for the (customers) this network would be working fine!”

I sympathize, a little, sometimes a customer’s “simple” problem can turn into a vast sucking toilet bowl devouring hours of time only to end with the dreaded “we’ll have to reimage it.”

Putting in tickets is a huge pain for all concerned, however, how are you going to insure the DS folks aren’t all out smoking again? Or playing with their new flat panels? Since, of course, if it wasn’t for the customers, we’d have a fine setup! They’re all idiots anyway, don’t they know ANYTHING about computers? I should run this place! If we just force them to login to the domain and lock down the PCs and use SMS to monitor them we can go back to patching our pathetic M$ servers and playing with our new toys. What? you want help??? Get in line bub, why don’t you try studying for the XP exam?
I stopped opening tickets and only respond if a customer calls me directly or the helpdesk phones and has opened a call for me. Still sucks. Usually if the PC’s hosed I can hand the call to a DS person.
But I’m there to serve THEM. I create no wealth for the company, only facilitate it. They pay me out of overhead and that means if somebody needs my help then I go. Damn your helpdesk ticket.

Now offsite, I’ve had a hell of a time getting out of situation’s like Winston’s. Once you volunteer to help out some little old lady with her AOL good luck saying sayonara - they call years later to ask even more stupid questions! Didn’t you learn anything about viruses when I was there last year? What happened to the firewall I gave you? I told your son to stop file sharing, you wonder why you’re infected? Have you even cleaned the rollers on this mouse??? And payment?? Forget it. No amount of money will get me back there, no I don’t know anyone else stupid enough to help you out. What was I thinking???

14

Can’t wait until Winston grabs one of those users demanding local support and defenestrates him, so he can explain that the reason was…

Wait for it…

“No ticket.”

15

I’m sole support for about 200 people and 150 computers over eight sites. I can’t do ‘one more thing’, because it’ll screw my schedule. I’ve implemented two things. A power user policy… one person at each site is a power user who can solve most trivial issues (Flip the damn power switch) or can be walked through simple tasks.

And tickets. No ticket, no fixit. All I need is an accurate description of the problem. “Doesn’t Work” is not one. And your extension or room number. That’s all.

Do I get it? Nope.

16

AAHHH!!! The horror of blimps!

Harrison Ford (in one of the Indiana Jones flicks chucks a Nazi out of an airborne blimp. Passengers stare aghast as he deadpans “No ticket.”

17

I work at a “remote office” of about 40 people. We have no IT people at this office; they’re 7 hours away by car if they want to visit (they handle support tasks remotely or call outside consultants).

I have a “ticket” I opened with company IT on April 11th which hasn’t been addressed yet.

That’s April 11th, 2002.

It’s not really much of an issue (it could really just be closed) but I like to mention my orphan ticket on special occasions, such as when I want to rant about something else home office is not doing right :smiley:

18

I hated the calls that you knew were too far gone to deal with. Not the ones where a new PC would solve it, the ones where you just knew you were gonna get pulled into making some obscure serial port printer work with NT and a Foxpro database written in-house under DOS. Or the email file was shot since the user didn’t know about any 2G limit in Outlook and could you get it back? Or they “forgot” to tell you about the extra software they installed (did THAT have anything to do with it??) They’re always irate or puzzled when you close the call a year later.

On the other hand, when you get into the mindset that “we live or die by ticket closures.” You get Desktop people who slam calls closed after one call back to the customer (and no reply) or who force customers into doing what IT wants, (getting rid of the pesky customers) which isn’t always what the customer wants (ie: J Lo Biography). Thankfully M$ desktops have gotten more stable and remote access can fix many problems other than the usual I-D-10t errors between the keyboard and the chair. Printers (esp. cheap ones) always suck.

Building enterprise servers is much nicer.

19

Seriously, now. The whole point behind service tickets is to collect metrics on what’s going wrong and track whether it’s clueless users, or failing equipment.

Being able to say “Our group reset 1,248 passwords and bounced locked-up servers 17 times” is also pretty useful come budget time.

20

Pet? See… I like those issues. :slight_smile: And I did pretty much the equivalent of that exact problem… URS, a state programmed package… poorly written… is essentially single user Foxpro made to run in a network environment. Not only serial port printers, but it charfs on new printers. Like HP Laserjet 6s and after.

It works now.