Here’s a funny story… some section chief begged me for a favor, a particular data query formatted a particular way that could be used when the primary system was down. I whipped up a little database gateway on my own workstation, gave him the address, and said “Remember, this is unsupported, it’s just to help you out this one time.”
Fast forward 3 months later. My workstation is horribly slow. It can hardly even open a spreadsheet. Analysis shows that the database gateway is eating up the CPU. Barely remembering what it was, I thought “hmmm, I haven’t rebooted my workstation in a while, maybe this is a good time.” So I rebooted it.
Panic ensues! A crisis message is sent out to all pagers! The data gateway is down! Operations are at a halt! It turns out that the recipient of the original favor had distributed the address of my workstation to his entire department and written it into their job aid documents. They’d gotten so used to avoiding the primary system that they just started depending on my alternate system. I was called into the division chief’s office to explain why I rebooted this critical system serving 1000 users in the peak of the business day. “Um… because it’s my personal desktop computer and I thought the most important thing running on it was Excel?”
And they acted so shocked when I stopped doing favors or ad-hoc solutions…
User: I’m having a problem with <insert application here>. I get an error every morning when I first log on. Me: OK, are you getting any error message? User: Yes
<5 seconds of silence>
Me: And the message said…? User: Um, something about not being able to connect to the server, or something like that…
Right, because it’s not like HAVING THE TEXT OF THE ERROR MESSAGE might make it a teensy bit easier to troubleshoot!
**User ** (standing at my desk): My email isn’t working. Me: I see. User: I would have put in a ticket to the Help Desk, but I can’t because my email isn’t working.
Your email problem has apparently spread to your phone, because OTHERWISE YOU COULD HAVE CALLED THE HELP DESK!
And your eyes must be infected as well, because YOU WALKED RIGHT PAST THE HELP DESK ON THE WAY TO MY DESK!!!
Oh, and by the way, I’M NOT IN DESKTOP SUPPORT!!!
If you’re calling for phone support, make sure YOUR FRAKKIN’ SCREAMING BRAT IS OUT OF EARSHOT, I DON’T APPRECIATE BEING FORCED TO LISTEN TO IT, hearing “mommy, mommy, mommy…” ad infinitum or listening to it whine/wail/cry/scream is enough to drive me insane, and will have me doing whatever it takes to give you simply the most basic information and end the call
i have no problem helping you over the phone, just do me the common courtesy of calling after you quiet the brat, or at least call from another room that’s acoustically seperate from it, you’ll get much better troubleshooting if i don’t hear shrieking in my ear, and, please, for the love of Og, don’t have the aforementioned brat on your lap when you call and permit it to scream into the phone while you “apologize” for your brat screaming, hang up, quiet the brat, then call back!
don’t call me, ask me for tech support, then ask if our COMPETITORS have the same product for less, you really think i want to sabotage my company? the most you’ll get for that answer will be “i don’t know, have you tried calling <competitor?>”
My friend, this isn’t just a tech support issue. It’s an issue for every person who has friends with children. And it’s not just the issue of screaming, it’s the problem of paying more attention to the kid than to the person on the other end of the phone.
I get so frustrated when i’m on the phone with my sister or some of my friends with kids, and they spend more time during our “conversation” talking to their kids than they do to me. “Ooooooh, isn’t that a nice drawing. You’re very clever, yes you are…Sorry, what was i saying?”
I mean, i can understand interrupting our conversation if the kid is in pain, or is doing something dangerous, or whatever. But just because it’s a kid doesn’t mean that you must give him or her your absolute attention every minute of every day. Children need to be taught that there are times when it’s rude to interrupt. I start to get pretty pissed off on my end of the phone sometimes, waiting to be deemed important enough to talk to again.
but at least with your freind, you can be “blunt”…
“i’m sorry, did you want to talk to me or dote over your little DNA-packet, call me back when you want to spend time talking to me”
here’s a clue to those sort of people…not everyone thinks your genetic packet is cute, and we’d appreciate not being forced to interact with it, or be relagated to “second class” object of attention
unfortunately, we in Tech Support can’t be that blunt with customers, not if we want to keep our jobs that is…
oh, and another one (kid-related)
our store IS NOT a daycare center or playpen, you might think it’s cute that your spawn is running around the store, trying to get behind the tech counter (where there are dangerous machines and sharp, pointy objects) pounding on computer keyboards, wrecking our merchandise displays and generally wreaking havoc, but you’re not the one that has to clean up after your spawn ransacks the store
if your brat is throwing a tantrum, take it outside until it’s done, the employees don’t want to hear it, other customers don’t want to hear it, but we can’t bluntly tell you to leave, we have to be “diplomatic” and drop subtle hints that you’re (obviously) too dense to pick up on, your “adorable” little brat throwing a fit in the store isn’t “cute”, it’s annoying, and you can be sure that we’re seething in annoyance behind our “cheery” facade
take the kid outside until they work it out of their system…
okay, to bring the thread back on track and get off the “brat bashing” kick…
if you’re calling for support, please be IN FRONT OF YOUR MACHINE AND HAVE IT TURNED ON!
i had a call not 5 minutes ago…
“hi, i’m having problems printing to a network printer, how do i fix it?”
well, what type of Mac do you have?
“an iBook”
okay, what version of the OS are you running?
“i don’t know”
is the machine running, can you go to the Apple menu and select “About this Mac”?
“uhh, no, i’m calling from my car, the computer’s back at the office…”
<groan>
well, would it be possible to call back when you’re in front of the machine, it’ll make troubleshooting easier
“okay”
stupid (L)user didn’t realize that you need to be IN FRONT OF THE MACHINE IN QUESTION for me to troubleshoot it over the phone…
All apologies to Waverly, but he just pinged one of my biggest complaints.
We (well, not I per se, but everyone I work with and around right now) are the IT people. We implement the IT rules that are given to us, even if we know they are complete garbage.
If the company thought you needed a DVD player, they would have given you one. Just becuase you think you need Opera/Netscape/Firefox/trendycoolbrowserofthemonth doesn’t mean it’s true… and catering to you means we have to do something totally different for updates (that WE HAVE TO DO, we can’t just trust that you’ll do it… again, the rules given to us by the folks that sign our checks) just for you. It’s a huge pain in the ass.
In fact, most of your rant can be beaten down with that one thought… we do what we’re told, so we can continue to eat and live in a place with a roof. You and your special needs are not, as a general rule, worth me having to buy a Sharpie and making a “Will run your batch processing for food” sign and standing by an offramp.
Also, to our endusers: We run payroll batches. Usually more than 1000 companies, each and every day. On heavy days, 2500 is common.
Please don’t call at 3pm and ask us not to run this payroll that you balanced through half an hour ago. It’s already gone through, and probably printed already. You’re screwed. Realize and accept that we run things around here quick. We always will.
sigh
And again, Waverly, nothing personal against you. You just managed to hit one of my biggest issues right off the bat.
Tristan,
No need to apologize. You are welcome to disagree. You seem to be using the rationalization, “I do what I’m told to do.” Fair enough – if we were in this situation I’d gladly take it up with your boss, or his boss. I don’t get a sick enjoyment from getting IT folks in trouble with their superiors.
Do I need a DVD player to do my job? Of course not. It’s admittedly a perk; one that I think is reasonable for someone who spends months on the road and multiple weeks overseas every year. I wouldn’t die on this hill, but I wouldn’t roll over immediately either.
Do I need a Palm? Yeah, I rather do. I could never invest enough time to keep a paper address book as up to date and organized. I’d pick this battle as one to fight if I had to. I hate Blackberry’s, but if I really thought in my heart of hearts that I needed to be that connected, I’d defend that hill too.
Do I need Opera? Sort of. You see, no one bothered to keep me up to date on patches and service packs, so I did indeed catch some malware through IE. It might be fun to think I was surfing for porn on company time and got myself infected. In reality it’s more mundane than that. I was keeping up on messages over vacation, using whatever wireless networks were available, and probably spent some time on one that had no firewalls.
I’ve never turned down a chance to make the company I work for more money, but something like adding a blackberry server to the IT infrastructure with the concomitant changes in the mail system will require a significant increase in revenue to justify it for a single individual.
Show me a way to impact my entire organization, and I’ll work weekends for it. Show me nothing but a status symbol and neat gadget and you can work your own weekends.
rubbing temples
Do I type in invisible ink? It must be Opera. Until someone proves otherwise, I’m still working of the assumption that a single Blackberry is at least functional using just forwarding rules and manual synchronization of calendars and address books. It’s a bit more than an assumption really, since I know about a half dozen people who do it.
ION was nothing like physically impossible. The technical part of ION actually kicked ass. The part that sucked about it was the business support infrastructure. Billing, account setup, etc. Once the wires were connected and turned on it was a thing of beauty. Getting the service was like pulling teeth, and it had a ridiculous wait time(and price point) but once you had it you kicked serious ass. Read any of the reviews of the service on BroadbandReports.com(formerly dslreports.com) written by someone who had managed to hang in there through the three re-submits of the order, the six re-tries to get an install date, and the two+ months it took to get the service set up and see what they said about service. A co-worker of mine had it and he investigated his options with a lawyer to sue Sprint when they pulled the service because he had a 2-year contract and didn’t want it turned off! Short version, they can terminate service at any time for any reason and he was screwed, it was in the contract.
I know a ton of stuff about ION. I know the project from when it was called “FastBreak” and required NDAs to work on. I still shudder a bit when I hear someone say 3.5b
Not saying the project wasn’t a nightmare and the execution of it even worse, but the technical pieces worked when they were put together right. Putting them together right with dysfunctional support software which sent the wrong part and provisioned the ports wrong(if at all) as often as not and where the technical implementation details were hand-written and passed along by fax, when they were passed along at all, was the hell part. Once it was up and working the only problem I ever knew of was a slight buzz on the VOATM phone lines.
See, that’s the problem. The IT department doesn’t care and doesn’t need to care about what you, specifically, consider neccessary, unless your just important enough to get it anyway. Don’t expect me to give a rat’s patootie about what you want when the rest of miserable pack of slime working with you wants something different.
Don’t expect special treatment. That’s where most problems start.
ION is a discontinued product from Sprint. It was a high-speed DSL connection(8 megabit max) coupled with between two and four digital telephone lines(Voice over ATM). The service was about 120 bucks a month for those who could get it(very few service areas were rolled out). It was kind of the “power users” broadband, at least in theory.
The project failed for lots of reasons, not the least of which was because, even at the high price point, it was too expensive for Sprint to continue to offer the service. The whole thing was a result of Sprint putting the pedal to the metal to be “First to Market” with a fully-digital service which combined Internet and phones. They did too much too fast and the lack of good planning and execution caught up with them and blew the costs out of the water, so the whole thing was killed and the customers who had the service were refunded and their service shut down.
To be honest the only reason I say I shudder at 3.5b was because it was the largest release(man-hours wise) ever done and it was kind of the pinnacle of the whole trainwreck. I fully agree that the early days were worse and more confusing, but the sheer SCALE of 3.5b(over a million man-hours) was the big deal there.
