Weak job rant

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
E

Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
20,466
3,586
126
Some days I feel like I spend my time standing up for the voiceless - being the crusader for those that have no say - the defender of those that would be scapegoated.

I don't know if it was laziness or just being resigned to the inevitable but the previous IT person let people blame whatever they wanted on 'the computers' so it a common theme around here.

Earlier today:
"I never got these emails. It is critical that we be able to rely on our IT infrastructure for something as important as email delivery. Please look into this ASAP and let me know what is being done to address the issue."

So I looked into it and the emails were in his 'deleted items' folder having been delivered 2 seconds after they were received by the server. It was tempting but I resisted a smartass email reply.

30 minutes ago:
"The system took this customer off of credit hold 2 hours ago but they never should have been taken off. Due to this system error we shipped product we shouldn't have. This is unacceptable and must be fixed"

My reply: "The system didn't take the customer off credit hold. Monica did. For future reference in situations like this you can check the change log located here which will tell you the credit modification history of the customer."

"Why did Monica take them off of credit hold?"

Me: "I would recommend contacting Monica to find out"

It gets wearing being the investigator of mis-communications and mistakes from people who think they are infallible or don't bother to do even 5 seconds of research before emailing me

Weak rant over

TL;DR:
-Weak rant not worth your time to read
 
G

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
126
Hahaha email is the best. How many times I get a call "What is wrong with our email server?" Apparently anytime an email doesnt arrive in a mili-second, or the person mistypes an email alias, or they have a rule that moves mail to the deleted items folder it is our mail servers fault.

I really enjoy providing them with log information with precise times when the mail was delivered to their mailbox. And if there is no record of incoming email, then tell them chances are the other person never sent said email. It is fairly surprising how many follow ups I get where they got the other person to admit to never sending the email.
 
HardcoreRobot

HardcoreRobot

Lifer
Nov 7, 2000
16,403
3
81
its a great feeling when you can blame the user for the problem they think you caused.

it would be different if they approached for help in a friendly cooperative/collaborative manner, but it always seems to be impatient & condescending.
 
T

takeru

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2002
1,206
8
81
email from me:
Can you do a ipconfig/all in cmd prompt and tell me the ‘default gateway’ ip address?
Trying to verify the gateway you are imaging from is ok.

only email response from tech:
Yes I can see it.
 
MrPickins

MrPickins

Diamond Member
May 24, 2003
9,067
699
126
takeru said:
email from me:
Can you do a ipconfig/all in cmd prompt and tell me the ‘default gateway’ ip address?
Trying to verify the gateway you are imaging from is ok.

only email response from tech:
Yes I can see it.
Click to expand...

Along a similar vein:

Me speaking to client: "I need explicit confirmation on whether we are to take course of action "A" or "B" before we can proceed. Please advise.

Client: "Yes"

Me: <bashesheadagainstwall>
 
C

cubby1223

Lifer
May 24, 2004
13,518
42
86
Genx87 said:
Hahaha email is the best. How many times I get a call "What is wrong with our email server?" Apparently anytime an email doesnt arrive in a mili-second, or the person mistypes an email alias, or they have a rule that moves mail to the deleted items folder it is our mail servers fault.

I really enjoy providing them with log information with precise times when the mail was delivered to their mailbox. And if there is no record of incoming email, then tell them chances are the other person never sent said email. It is fairly surprising how many follow ups I get where they got the other person to admit to never sending the email.
Click to expand...

Or when the person "accidentally" sorts the inbox by whether the email has a file attachment or not :)

"What is wrong with the email server, some emails are never making it into my inbox!!!"

Worst was an irate client because one employee's email with work hours for the month never made it to the person in charge of payroll, threw a fit trying to get us fired from hosting their email, when finally given the chance to investigate what is going on, we found the "lost" email sitting in his Outlook drafts folder...
 
Last edited:
kranky

kranky

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
21,014
137
106
I'd be mad too, OP.

We had a new guy last year who was burning up the help desk with a never-ending litany of "system problems". Finally one of the head techs called me up because I work in the next aisle over from the guy to ask if I had any idea what was going on (thought I might have overheard some discussion of the guy's problems).

From what I could overhear, the guy is an impatient Type-A who starts clicking and typing furiously if things don't happen instantly, and he's causing his own problems. So I did a little social engineering and when I happened to see the guy in the breakroom, I introduced myself and asked if he was the new hire in his group, he said he was. Then I said I had heard about him from the IT techs and he might want to cool it on the help desk requests because in three weeks he's opened as many tickets as the average user does in five years, and they're about to escalate things to his manager because of the added workload. His eyes got big and thanked me for the tip.

They don't ever do that, of course. I told my IT contact what I did, things settled down, and the IT guys invited me to stop over for donuts as a thank you.
 
lxskllr

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,914
8,178
126
I'm not in IT, but I can relate. The day is long past when blaming your computer is an acceptable excuse. Computers are usually good at doing what they're told to do, and if it worked correctly yesterday, it's probably working correctly today, and the user's the issue. Blaming the computer is the adult equivalent of saying "I'm a lame ass, and the dog ate my homework".
 
L

LevelSea

Senior member
Jan 29, 2013
942
53
91
Don't give me any of your techno-babble. Just make it work. When I say dance, you need to get off your lazy ass and dance.

Now dance, IT monkey, dance!!
 
Paladin3

Paladin3

Diamond Member
Mar 5, 2004
4,933
877
126
You just have to be brutally honest with people. If they come in asking for help you will bend over backwards to do so. If they come in looking to blame IT for their mistakes, then you'll do your best to gut them like a fish and hang up the evidence for all to see.

Maybe post a public hall of shame somewhere so other users in the company can learn from their coworkers mistakes.
 
Dirigible

Dirigible

Diamond Member
Apr 26, 2006
5,960
30
91
LevelSea said:
Don't give me any of your techno-babble. Just make it work. When I say dance, you need to get off your lazy ass and dance.

Now dance, IT monkey, dance!!
Click to expand...

It's as if they think they are people.


Fix the internet, IT monkey. It's broken.
 
DrPizza

DrPizza

Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Mar 5, 2001
49,601
166
111
www.slatebrookfarm.com
I'm happy that I'm not a tech guy where I work. We have multiple users who still don't know how to address an email. The only way they can send an email is to reply to an old email. And, of course, if the person they're replying to is busy, and the reply has a title that implies "this is not important at all," it might be a little while before it's addressed - "omg, I procrastinated and waited until the last second, and why wasn't my email read immediately??!" If it's so important, why was the subject of your email, "Re: tech guy fixed the copier, it's running now."
 
M

Mide

Golden Member
Mar 27, 2008
1,547
0
71
Good thing about IT is that there are logs and evidence in that proves that the users are idiots.
 
B

BikeJunkie

Golden Member
Oct 21, 2013
1,390
0
0
Yep, I can relate, too. It's sad that IT needs to spend so much time and effort deflecting others' attempts to blame systems and IT personnel for their own incompetence and inadequacies.

I'm very fortunate right now in that out of a thousand people, I only have one true problem child. She routinely deletes things, renames them, moves them, reassigns them, you name it, and then gets flustered because "the system lost her info" (her favorite phrase). The worst part about people like this is that they also tend to be the type of person who crumbles under the slightest bit of pressure, so they scream the loudest when things appear to go wrong. But thanks to obsessive levels of system logging (this isn't my first rodeo), deflection is usually quite simple.

It's a joy hitting "reply all" (hey, she thought her boss needed to hear her screams of displeasure, shouldn't he also hear that nothing went wrong in the first place?) and noting "Hi! Great news! Nothing went wrong... you just clicked DELETE and then CONFIRM. Would you like me to restore it to its original state?"

I like being helpful.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom