Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

[Filippo Lippi]

Also, environment team made a change that's screwed us over completely. Dozens of critical jobs failing daily and they refused to back out the change. It's unbelievable

Hardly slept a wink that week. Crawled into work late the following Monday and it was suggested that I was too exhausted to be there, so I went home, burning more of my TOIL. Was I thanked by senior management? No, I got a bollocking for not completing my timesheet and for having a non-standard out of office message.

 

[catsmate]

Nonsense.

Replacement AI for call centre staff :

Whatever the caller says reply with: "Switch it off and then back on. Has that fixed the problem?"

If "yes" say "is there anything else I can help you with today?"

If "no" say "I'll need to raise a ticket with the second tier support team"




Don't hit me!

Don't forget asking them if they've used the Self Service Support Portal.

 

[catsmate]

Hardly slept a wink that week. Crawled into work late the following Monday and it was suggested that I was too exhausted to be there, so I went home, burning more of my TOIL. Was I thanked by senior management? No, I got a bollocking for not completing my timesheet and for having a non-standard out of office message.

Has your corporate screw-up been aired in parliament? If not consider yourselves let off easily.

 

[Trebuchet]

I miss Hanners. But at least Sven's made a return.

ETA: Oops, didn't see there was a whole 'nother page and failed to quote. That was in response to this:

It reminds me of Hannelore's drawing lesson.

 

[rdaneel]

I miss Hanners. But at least Sven's made a return.

Hope she hasn't been eaten by an allosaurus.

 

[novaphile]

Hardly slept a wink that week. Crawled into work late the following Monday and it was suggested that I was too exhausted to be there, so I went home, burning more of my TOIL. Was I thanked by senior management? No, I got a bollocking for not completing my timesheet and for having a non-standard out of office message.

My favourite in line with this:

1. Sent home at mid-day in preparation for an ten pm start for a major systems release. (So complex we had 50 people rostered on for the change)

2. Worked a ten and a half hour shift, including some last minute emergency repairs at the database level.

3. Found out later that I wasn't entitled to overtime because I hadn't worked an eight hour shift on the same day as the system release.

4. Also found out that I was deducted time from both days because I hadn't worked a full seven and half hours on either day.

Guess what I told them when they asked me to do another major release?

Edited to add: Forgot the part about mandatory breaks, that I wasn't able to take, which reduced my hours below the 7.5 per day.

 

[Trebuchet]

Management got a bonus for that!

 

[Filippo Lippi]

Yep. My colleague was told he wasn't allowed to claim some money for being on standby to assist me that he would have definitely been allowed to claim if we hadn't run up such a massive overtime bill.

 

[arthwollipot]

I miss Hanners. But at least Sven's made a return.

I'm really liking the recent Sven/May ship.

 

[Norman Alexander]

I'm really liking the recent Sven/May ship.

I liked the Station visit arc a few years back.

 

[arthwollipot]

I liked the Station visit arc a few years back.

Oh Station was cool. I like how we're getting occasional glimpses into what Hanners is doing, but I like her character and I hope she comes back as a regular soon.

Seriously, QC is my soap opera. I re-read the complete archive from time to time.

 

[Norman Alexander]

My favourite in line with this:

1. Sent home at mid-day in preparation for an ten pm start for a major systems release. (So complex we had 50 people rostered on for the change)

2. Worked a ten and a half hour shift, including some last minute emergency repairs at the database level.

3. Found out later that I wasn't entitled to overtime because I hadn't worked an eight hour shift on the same day as the system release.

4. Also found out that I was deducted time from both days because I hadn't worked a full seven and half hours on either day.

Guess what I told them when they asked me to do another major release?

Edited to add: Forgot the part about mandatory breaks, that I wasn't able to take, which reduced my hours below the 7.5 per day.

I've been subject to that sort of mindless bean-counting timesheet jockeys in the past. It is worse when you are an insultable contractor and disposable. They don't care that this will be the only work, i.e. income, you get this week. If they can halve that cost, they will.

From then on, all my timesheets had my hours "magically shifted" to fall neatly within whole days, all overtime accrued, etc. Turns out the bean-counters are NEVER around to check what your real clock-on/clock-off times are (they do 9:00-4:30 only). So a 10pm to 6am shift became midnight to 8am...plus a mandatory paid meal break until 9am. Was never called on this!

 

[Wudang]

Turns out the bean-counters are NEVER around to check what your real clock-on/clock-off times are (they do 9:00-4:30 only). So a 10pm to 6am shift became midnight to 8am...plus a mandatory paid meal break until 9am. Was never called on this!

I used to have to work 10pm to 10am every 4th* Saturday night for years. Software updates and full backups taken etc. HR kept arguing with IT that it was just a money spinner for us. The head of IT ops kept answering "OK if it's an easy money spinner come work it with us, just once" cue tumbleweed. They also kept arguing we shouldn't be allowed to take Monday off as our TOIL day (after they stopped arguing we should not be allowed TOIL) as we should be available to discuss any issues from the weekend. All issues were in a) the shift leader's log b) the ops diary c) recorded in the CMDB (Infoman then CA Service Desk) and discussed in the ops handover sessions at shift change. Whenever someone tries to tell me that HR protect staff I sneer. HR's role is to protect the company from being charged with violations of workers rights legislation.

*because there were 4 of us with sufficient knowledge and experience to do it.

 

[zooterkin]

From then on, all my timesheets had my hours "magically shifted" to fall neatly within whole days, all overtime accrued, etc. Turns out the bean-counters are NEVER around to check what your real clock-on/clock-off times are (they do 9:00-4:30 only). So a 10pm to 6am shift became midnight to 8am...plus a mandatory paid meal break until 9am. Was never called on this!

Yes, if your manager is not standing up for you (I've been pretty lucky with managers, in such a situation they usually made sure I was compensated properly somehow), then I'd say it was perfectly acceptable to massage your time sheet so you get what you're entitled to.

 

[Myriad]

The complete text and context of a trouble call I just received: Spelling, grammar, and punctuation left as it was.

"they saw a cockroach and in the mist of killing and following it unplugged a few things"

That's one very strong cockroach.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

That's one very strong cockroach.

Cockroaches can do more than you might think. Take this story I heard long ago:

A lady takes her kitchen countertop mixer to the repairman, telling him it just won't run at all anymore. He undoes a couple of screws and opens the case up and a dead cockroach falls out.

"There's your problem lady", he says. "Your engineer died".



Ok, it's not so much a story as a joke. But having chased a couple of cockroaches, lots of spiders, flies, and other miscellaneous bugs out of various computer cases over the years, I've always been tempted to tell a user this. Never quite had the right opportunity.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Yes, if your manager is not standing up for you (I've been pretty lucky with managers, in such a situation they usually made sure I was compensated properly somehow), then I'd say it was perfectly acceptable to massage your time sheet so you get what you're entitled to.

I did make sure to never overstate my hours or claim what was not claimable. Just that the timesheet "clock" was set to a slightly different timezone.

 

[Trebuchet]

Cockroaches can do more than you might think. Take this story I heard long ago:



A lady takes her kitchen countertop mixer to the repairman, telling him it just won't run at all anymore. He undoes a couple of screws and opens the case up and a dead cockroach falls out.



"There's your problem lady", he says. "Your engineer died".







Ok, it's not so much a story as a joke. But having chased a couple of cockroaches, lots of spiders, flies, and other miscellaneous bugs out of various computer cases over the years, I've always been tempted to tell a user this. Never quite had the right opportunity.

I had a Keurig coffee maker destroyed by ants. Very small ants.

 

[arthwollipot]

Just had a bit of a blow to my professional pride.

Client was working in a macro-enabled Word document. She selects Save As, edits the filename and selects the location and clicks Save. Word thinks for a few seconds then the Save As dialog box comes back up and the document is not saved. Tried multiple different filenames and locations, same result. No indication in Properties or Protection of any issue. I absolutely could not determine the cause of the problem. I tried every trick I've learned about Word documents since 1995. No luck. The document just would not save.

She had to finalise the document somehow tonight, so I closed it as an unresolved issue.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Just had a bit of a blow to my professional pride.

Client was working in a macro-enabled Word document. She selects Save As, edits the filename and selects the location and clicks Save. Word thinks for a few seconds then the Save As dialog box comes back up and the document is not saved. Tried multiple different filenames and locations, same result. No indication in Properties or Protection of any issue. I absolutely could not determine the cause of the problem. I tried every trick I've learned about Word documents since 1995. No luck. The document just would not save.

She had to finalise the document somehow tonight, so I closed it as an unresolved issue.

Is a macro or some VBA still running? Or paused without being stopped? Sometimes in debug mode.