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

[Winston_Smith]

So, the concensus is that 1) Tickets do, indeed, suck. And 2) For the most part, Tech Support sucks, too!

*Originally posted by Billdo *
**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. **

Billdo Please? Just this once can you listen to my rant without a ticket? You used to listen to my rants all the time without tickets before! Please?

*Originally posted by LolaCocaCola *
**Never mind the tickets, did ya get the memo about the TPS reports? **

LolaCocaCola That’s exactly how it feels sometimes. I’m going golfing this afternoon, instead of fishing. Tomorrow when I wander into the office at noon, I’ll scrape the Goose Poop out of my cleats onto the TPS Report (instead of fish guts). That’ll fix 'em.

*Originally posted by masonite *
**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?

**

masonite If that wasn’t so sad & true, it would be funny.

*Originally posted by alice_in_wonderland *
**What’s a ticket?

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

alice_in_wonderland] See below…

*Originally posted by SPOOFE *
**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… **

SPOOFE Wait for it…

*Originally posted by Cheesesteak *
**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. **

Cheesesteak That’s right on the money. Users here have two options. They can use the Web Site, or call an 800 number if their PC is incapacitated. It’s a really simple and quick process either way. I know because I have to log tickets every day. Pat of my job is entails assigning work to IT Support folks, and they need them tickets.

*Originally posted by E-Sabbath *
**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. **

E-Sabbath Yes. They complain. Lord, do they complain. It wouldn’t bother me so much, but they inturrupt me while I’m bitching about my job.

*Originally posted by alice_in_wonderland *
**O I C **

alice_in_wonderland QED

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by El_Kabong *
**

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

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? **

El_Kabong Sometimes it actually feels that way. I’ve toyed with the idea of getting another full-time job. Most days I can wrap things up in a couple hours. But it’s kind of like being a Life Guard. You sit and get a tan for thirty-nine-and-a-half hours a week, but nobody complains because the thirty minutes you work, you’re saving somebody’s life. In a business sense, that’s exactly what I do.

*Originally posted by Fenris *
**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 **

Fenris You forgot Blood type and Next of Kin.
If it was that bad, I’d really understand where these people were coming from. It’s so simple to log a ticket, though, and not doing so is costing people their jobs. If we were still in the economic and IT Job boom of a few years ago, it would be one thing, but if you’re an NT Administrator in New England, in April 2003, losing your job is like a professional death sentance. There’s nothing out there. Too scary.

*Originally posted by fluiddruid *
**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.) **

fluiddruid Yes. Sometimes people slip through the cracks. I wouldn’t let that happen here, though. I really do care about the customer here. I wouldn’t go out and fix your problem myself, but I’d beat the bushes until I got a technician in front of you.

*Originally posted by petcat *
**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??? **

petcat YEAH!! FUCK THE (L)USERS!!! w00t!!! heh-heh. My experience with side work is the same as yours. As of last summer, I just won’t do it anymore. And worse than the small-business people is the home network folks. You can’t pay me enough to spend four hours in someone’s shadow rapping on their semen-encrusted keyboard scrubbing out a virus while they comment on your every keystroke. Ugh.

*Originally posted by Leaper *
**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.” **

*Originally posted by gotpasswords *
**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.”

**

Leaper & gotpasswords I immediately thought of Silent Bob in Dogma tossing Ben Affleck off the train.

*Originally posted by E-Sabbath *
**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. **

E-Sabbath Don’t you love it when they wander into your cube and sort of mill around until you acknowledge them? I got to the point where I’m like Les Nessman from WKRPi in Cincinatti - if users come in without ‘knocking’ I ignore them. If that doesn’t work, I leave the cube and go to the men’s room or something and leave them stranded in my cubical all alone.

*Originally posted by AmbushBug *
**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 **

AmbushBug Our Desktop support guys serve remote offices, too. Usually, the standing procedure is they will be at Site A on a certain date, and it’s up to all the users to who require assistance to be there. That’s the way it’s always been, and invariably, users can’t be there on that date. Miss two appointments, and two things happen - 1) you’re now two (or more) months deep into your problem, and 2) The Support guy is pissed that he’s been blown off twice, and that user in question gets Extreme Prejudice. I’m not suggesting that’s what has happened in your case, sometimes these things just slip through the cracks, like fluiddruid mentioned. so, did you have a party for your tickets birthday? Any excuse for cake, I always say.

*Originally posted by petcat *
**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. **

petcat When I was in my rookie year(s), I used to love those complex and obscure problems. My first day of my first IT job, I was sat down in front of a pile of derelict PCs (286 & 386), and told to get one working by the end of the day. That was my trial by fire, so to speak. I Frankensteined one up, and got it to boot to the network from floppy, with no HD or OS. It was beautifully ugly, and I was proud of myself.

As far as Ticket Slamming, that’s strongly discouraged. When Tickets are “Re-Opened”, the penalties are harsh. Imminent shunning and so forth.

*Originally posted by gotpasswords *
**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. **

gotpasswords It’s also helpful to be able to say “Hmmm. Look at Frank’s numbers. He’s closed 3 tickets this month. What the F does he do all day. Frank? Can you come into my office, please? Yes. Close the door behind you.” Prior to getting promoted, I worked with a guy that’s been slacking off for about two years. He’s lazy and shiftless and spends all day surfing the internet and fighting with his wife on the phone. He’s getting the pink slip May 1st, and although I feel bad for him and his family, he really deserves it. I had to work twice as hard to pick up the slack for him for two years.

*Originally posted by E-Sabbath *
**Pet? See… I like those issues. 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. **

E-Sabbath Don’t be dissin’ poorly written software. That’s our life’s blood. Any Program that’s guaranteed to run poorly and generate tickets gets immediate approval and is fast-tracked into production. We’ve got a whole department dedicated to finding, testing, and implementing bad software. Most of it comes from MicroSoft.

[Tally-Ho]

*Originally posted by gotpasswords *
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.

Metrics? :mad: Metrics is why we’re so bloody behind on finishing our tickets. Everyone is so busy collecting the metrics that no one has time for supporting our clients.

As for ticket vs no ticket… oh gods yes, please fill out a ticket! All it takes is a quick phone call or a short stop at our Intranet site to fill out four whole fields. Counting up our tickets for those bloody metrics is the only thing that has kept us from being outsourced these past six months. They may even give us an additional tech or two come the new fiscal year which we badly need!
Tally

[Number]

It sounds like you need to issue yourself a new uniform.

[Fenris]

*Originally posted by Tally-Ho *
**As for ticket vs no ticket… oh gods yes, please fill out a ticket! All it takes is a quick phone call

:mad:
They. Turned. Off. Their. Phone. Number.

Seriously. If I call, I get an IVR saying to go to their quick-n-easy website and fill out a ticket.

Hint, guys. I run a call center. If the inbound lines are down, I’m paying 60+ people to sit around picking their noses and reading “People” magazine. Since they’re the ones who actually make the money, it behooves us to have an emergency line.

**

or a short stop at our Intranet site to fill out four whole fields. **

Four fields? < sob >

I would kill to have to only fill out the square of that number.

Fenris