Such passive aggression isn’t going to get you very far. I would suggest that you politely let people know that they are slowing you down when they do this, but that you keep the issue right where it belongs on your priority list. That’s the professional thing to do. People who communicate tend to work better together. People who enjoy furtively punishing others without trying a direct approach first aren’t too useful.
No, if someone pisses me off for a specific reason; like say when I spend the time to load and tune a new system for them, give them full admin rights, explain to them that they have the power to royally screw things up, or use the computer as a tool to complete their work… and then they click ‘Yes’, Accept’, or ‘Downloand Now!’ on every damn pop up they can find… then I will make sure they pay.
And pay dearly.
Professional? Meh. What the fuck is ‘professional’, anyway? Working in a company where there are 4 hour conference calls twice a week to schedule the next conference call, and where the first 2 hours are taken up by reading through the participant list taking attendance, and the next 2 hours are spent going through the same list asking if you are going to be at the next meeting? (And no, I didn’t make that up).
I quit being a professional years ago.
Being a professional sucks ass.
No, you can’t have a Blackberry.
No.
We have both a VPN and webmail. You can use that brand new notebook I just bought you. There are Starbucks every twenty feet around here.
I don’t care if all the other sales guys in the other companies have them. You can’t. I’m not going to spend the better part of a month (not to mention some coin) buying Exchange/Domino/Groupwise, completely recofiguring our mail system etc, just so you, alone out of the entire sales team, can have a fucking Blackberry.
The CEO doesn’t want one.
The CIO doesn’t want one.
So the junior veep of sure as hell isn’t going to get one.
You know, I’m kinda busy, you know, attempting to work with the electricians to get the generator set up so we don’t go completely out of business in the event of a power failure.
So quit bugging me about your fucking Blackberry.
Ask me about it again, and I’m going to block your access to every site on the NCAA tourney you could possibly be interested in checking.
Yes, I can do that.
No, you can’t have a Blackberry.
Junior veep of sales, natch.
Though he’s also the Junior VP of Sure As Hell Not Gonna Get A BlackBerry.
Jebus, I sure am not going to endear myself to the IT crowd in this thread. Let me tone down the sarcasm and give some honestly well intentioned input.
Your company’s product is probably not an efficient network nor trouble free laptops. These things exist for the sole purpose of enabling others in the company to manufacture, sell, service, and support whatever these products are.
If a Veep, even a Jr. Veep, of sales thinks he can close even one more deal if he has immediate access to email, it is his call. He’s your internal customer, and if your company allows you to overrule him based on reasoning such as the amount of time and effort you will have to invest, your company is sorely dysfunctional.
This goes back to one of my own pet peeves from page one. If I have adequately justified an investment of IT time to increase or support sales, excuse time is over, kids. IIF (if and only if) my boss thinks my justification is flawed will IT be spared the effort. Want to ask him? Be my guest, but don’t whine when this leads to a vigorous arse booting for you. I can tell you the front office has little tolerance for anyone putting their own personal interests above revenue.
Three words that bring up my venom: “I need toner”
That’s nice. [mentally pats user on head through the phone] Call Staples or go to the internal purchasing portal. We have an account there. Call by noon, and they’ll even deliver it tomorrow!
“So you won’t bring me any toner?”
Not like I even know what kind of printer you have, since I’m in California and you’re in Denver. And what part of “Information Security” - it’s how I answer the phone - even sounds like office supplies?
Fifteen minutes later, Ms Toner is back in my ear. “I can’t get into the ordering system. Can you reset my password?” No. You need to call the number on the website where it says “Problems logging in? Call us at …”
I just know she’s going to call back in a couple days complaining that her printer’s broken and won’t print even after changing the toner. Did you pull out the sealing strip?
Fellow IT geeks, techies, network engineers, system administrators and call-center agents - feel free to copy this down and hang it in your cube as a reminder:
**
There is no patch for human stupidity
**
Ok, ok, I’ll stop making jokes and add a few of my own.
Part of my job description is local IT contact. Now I don’t have any formal IT training, but I can handle it in one of two ways:
Most of the problems are simple problems, settings, etc.
When they are not simple problems, I know who to call to get an answer quickly.
But the questions I get asked!
“Can you make my e-mails come faster when they get sent?” Um, no, they are routed through National. I don’t know why yours come a little slow. Maybe because you have 5,0000000000 (ok too many zeroes) e-mails in your mailbox, which you refuse to delete? Or maybe not! I don’t know! The tech bigwig came and looked at it. He found nothing. I’m no genius!
National called me the other day. “Oh no, we have a MAJOR problem, your backup tape drive is not working!” Calm your ass down. Are we still under warranty? Is Dell going to send a new person to replace the tape drive? Then why is it a MAJOR problem! I consider almost nothing on the computer a major problem, if it can be fixed. Is it your aorta or your PC? jeez.
How about this one? “I can’t find this PDF file on the computer.” Go and look, and she’s looking through Word. :smack:
And the thing my boss does, which really frustrates me: every time it crashes, she bangs really hard on the keyboard. Bang! Bang! Bang! Hits keys over and over. So even if it was just getting ready to recover, all the new input confuses it and she has to reboot. That is not the way you treat an expensive piece of machinery!
I don’t know about that. I was trying to make a list of companies that use non-mainstream operating systems, and I found one called:
The Silver Hammer Group Ltd.
The ceo is named Maxwell. Youd think he could sell you his solution.
If this is true, you owe it to yourself to either speak up and change things, or move on.
Actually, everything ticks along pretty well. 95% of the network problems I deal with are problems on the customer’s end, such discovering that one of their IT folks made a change to a firewall or something and unknowingly screwed up the connection.
Pfft.
He doesn’t need one.
I know this, because while he’s been here all of three weeks, the CEO has managed to double our revenue, through increased sales, in the past year. We’re not in the kind of business where closing a deal depends on getting a email while sitting on the crapper at an airport. Our product requires quite a bit of time, planning, and careful consideration on the part of the customer.
Perhaps you missed the part where I said I’m busy making sure that a power spike and/or failure at the datacenter doesn’t put us out of business. Our ability to satisfy the needs of our current customers will have a helluva lot more impact on his ability to make sales than his ability to receive emails at 30,000 ft.
Not to mention that adding that one little hunk of plastic to his breifcase will necessitate us buying several tens of thousands of dollars worth of hardware and software, and a couple of hundred man hours, plus some kind of bottom-up internal network redesign for security purposes.
Where did I ever mention that this guy has ever justified his investment in any way?
We’re a small company, and pretty freewheeling as far as IT policies go, which is probably why this guy’s under the impression that if he asks me for something enough, I’ll finally cave in like some overstressed mother of a toddler. But the CEO’s already told me that it’s my call, and my call is this: No, you’re not getting a Blackberry.
I’m a geek. I like my electronic toys. But I’m smart enough to know that the length of my toys, laid end to end, bear no relationship to the length of my penis, and making a significant investment in an infrastructure migration that may or may not provide some marginal benefit to the company is waaay down on the list of Shit That Needs To Get Done, Right Now.
You won’t find very many IT geeks who are more IT geeky than me, but this thread bugs me. IT is a SERVICE industry, and while I understand the frustration(boy do I ever) at having to deal with users who lack the technical understanding of what they are doing to properly explain it or understand what it would take to fix their problem, I still don’t see where that gives anyone on the service provider side of the equation a right to make threats, jokingly or not. IT techs are paid, relatively well in many cases, to support these systems so the work of the business can get done. The user is the customer and they are what matters. They are the majorly inconvenienced party when they experience an IT issue, self-caused or otherwise. They are the ones falling behind on their work because of the issue. Their impatience and frustration are every bit as valid and understandable as the frustration of the Tech.
IT techs are there to keep the business people working smoothly and effectively. Not as an elite class of rulers with power over all things web-y and email-y who must be appeased and spoken to respectfully at all times. The job is to deal with issues experienced by users and to enable them to complete their jobs in a more efficient and expedient manner. That’s what the businesses need, and that’s what IT should provide. The BOFH urge should be fought down for the greater good. Fix the issue quickly and professionally and cut the users a bit of slack. They’re the ones out of time and productive work because of something they don’t even begin to understand and that is a pretty helpless and frustrating feeling. If some of the crack stupid jokes or show the impatience, that is merely human.
Enjoy,
Steven
When rant make words go more good.
I’ve got no problem with this notion. I was in as series of semi-professional customer service jobs before I was in IT, and helping the less-clued isn’t a problem.
What chaps my ass are the users who think we need to upgrade from a T1 to an DS3 so they can download videos faster.
First, for those of you who haven’t seen it, Computer Stupidities.
Second, to the IT guy who last visited- Yes, this LaserJet is a network printer. Yes, it has been for the two years I have been here. Yes, computers from this room, this room, and that room way up there print to this printer. No, it’s not fucking “impossible,” you dip, now get the fuck out of my office.
In my status as a low-level geek, IT people get, at the very least, the benefit of the doubt, but pompous and ignorant is a bad combination, no matter what you do.
When presented with unrealistic requests I find the ten minute cost/benefit analysis to be extremely helpful. If they are willing to foot the costs in additional man hours and hardware/software costs then they get what they want. If they don’t have the money, then they at least now understand why we need to stay with what we have.
Enjoy,
Steven
You didn’t, I was talking about my own gripe here, because I think the situation is somewhat similar.
If you think it will take tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours to get a blackberry working, you are either exaggerating, or your network is an X-Box and a 1200 baud modem. I’m no fan of blackberrys, but be realistic here. You can set up very complex forwarding rules with off the shelf office software and a broadband connection.
For your own sake, don’t get caught exaggerating in an effort to quash his request. He’s likely to get pissed of and burn you for it. I’ve seen it all happen before, and it ain’t pretty.
You know what pisses me off? When people come to me to solve problems and provide information about systems and divisions that I have nothing to do with and may never have heard of just because I am usually helpful and stick with the problem until it is solved. I do that when it is my area. ONce, ok you did not know, but every week?
I work in company with 50,000 employees, I can’t and should not work on all areas of IT for it. I direct them to the right helpdesk, sometimes even conference them in to a call with it to make sure they are being helped, but I need to get other things done.
Oh, BTW, I am tier 3-4. Yes, I can solve tier 1 problems, but really, I am not supposed to. Call the right people.
Or he has the change control system from hell to deal with. An eight page document template for the first document for any changes. 3 week lead time and 5 hours of meetings or more for enterprise wide changes and anything that touches email is enterprise level. Implement in test environment first, and if there is no test environment, build one! List all scenarios and write everything in non-technical language. Notify and get approvals from every team that has a system that is impacted by the one you are changing. If part of the change template is not applicable explain why.
Forwarding rules with the desktop redirector can work, but I much rather the total integration that the Blackberry Enterprise Server brings. If black455 is thinking that way as well then I could see it costing a fair chunk to implement. The software alone is 3000 bucks, plus some companies would require an additional server, UPS, etc. I can see 100 manhours to bring a server online, testing, rollout into production, and finally documentation and training.
Or on preview, what lee said.
Two words for you…Sarbanes-Oxley.