If you put a trouble call in, please put in contact info that actually works. Phones you never answer, e-mails accounts you never check, and desks you are never at don't count. Generic front end numbers that either send me to a phone tree designed for our customers or a front desk for a site with a hundred people barely count.
Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)
- Thread starter JoeMorgue
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And auto mechanics have similar complaints about how inept most people are at fixing, or even maintaining their own cars. I mean people drive them every day! Don't bother a mechanic about some weird ticking sound! I mean can you believe people actually pay others to change their own oil? Holy....
And about those IT guys - ever notice how many of them don't shave regularly or tuck in their shirts? Wear clothes that are seriously our of date, wrinkled or even dirty? Total fat slobs with food on their desks? And they're always grumpy and move so slow!
Guys - you are simply mechanics. Get over yourselves and plug my monitor back into my PC so I can be productive because I get paid way more than you do.
And about those IT guys - ever notice how many of them don't shave regularly or tuck in their shirts? Wear clothes that are seriously our of date, wrinkled or even dirty? Total fat slobs with food on their desks? And they're always grumpy and move so slow!
Guys - you are simply mechanics. Get over yourselves and plug my monitor back into my PC so I can be productive because I get paid way more than you do.
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
No you don't.
As part of a previous job as an IT support "mechanic", I often had multiple cases of "just before you go". At about ten minutes to five of an afternoon, someone would come to me and say they wanted their PC fixed, or a virus removed, or some arcane software installed, or some A/V setup constructed, or some other eight-hour piece of work, all to be done before nine o'clock the next morning when they needed it for some reason. They hadn't thought to ask before now because they had been "busy in meetings", but it's a PC and all you do is click a mouse and it's done, right? No problem, see you tomorrow morning.
My response I implemented went basically like this:
If I have to stay here and work on your PC to make it work, you will have to stay here and test it afterwards to make sure it is good to go. So you are staying right here with me until the job is done. Get yourself a coffee, call whoever you need to say you aren't meeting them, and park your arse in that chair next to mine. we will be having a nice long night together.
Oh, you don't want to stay? Got more pressing engagements? Got a life? Yeah, well so do I. If you don't want to stay and help then it can't have been that important after all. So I won't be here either. I'll be back at work at nine tomorrow and I'll start on your request then.
OK?
Surprisingly, the number of "just before you go" requests fell away, but the "I need this in a few days time" requests increased.
And I'm sure, as with car mechanics, those here reserve the right to take the mick out of users who are the equivalent of drivers who don't have a scooby how to fill up at a petrol station, or actually drive when put into the drivers seat of a different make of car. Where driving is part of their actual job.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
Things I Wish More People Knew Part LCXVVII: New Starters
You'd think, since every section onboards new starters on a pretty regular basis, more people would be familiar with the procedure, and what things need to happen in what order. But apparently not.
You'd think, since every section onboards new starters on a pretty regular basis, more people would be familiar with the procedure, and what things need to happen in what order. But apparently not.
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
Technical changes for onboards, departures and office moves are rarely, if ever, documented let alone proceeded with in a logical fashion. It's something that most HR departments I have ever encountered, public and private, have never managed to include in their numerous and arcane processes.
Great, you've joined the company! Here's your employee ID and your desk. Get to work!
...connect your PC? Uh, no. Forgot about that - here's a form.
Oh, actually supplying you a PC? Uh, sorry, we'll look into that - here's a form.
Enable your work account login? Whoops! Better fill in that form too.
Enable your phone handset (it's IP)? What? We need to do that? ...is there a form?
........your access swipe card? Yeah, well...that's not our job. Maybe Security have a form. You didn't need to go outside for lunch, did you?
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
The thing is, we do have it documented. In the online, accessible-to-everyone Knowledge Base that few people know exists and even fewer people have read.
Wudang
BOFH
Ah! At big bank that was partially a by-product of the workflow software. You want good KPIs? Don't create a form that allow you to ask for userids for 4 new people, force each to be a separate request and marvel at how much work your team achieves! It ends up costing the company a lot more as (often highly paid) staff are wasting time filling in forms, trying to remember which of several project keys to use and so on.
It amazes me how few places manage to get that right.
Being a contractor I get to go through the joys of 'onboarding' every year or two, and there's only been a couple of occasions in the past 10-20 years it's been a smooth exercise. And that's been with the smaller companies.
Being a contractor I get to go through the joys of 'onboarding' every year or two, and there's only been a couple of occasions in the past 10-20 years it's been a smooth exercise. And that's been with the smaller companies.
catsmate
No longer the 1
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I worked on one site where a three month job was over before I got an access card. And the person going on maternity leave never missed hers.
My kid had a summer job where they spent the first week waiting on login credentials and the second week not able to do anything because all of the bosses were at a conference and forgot to leave them anything to do. Time sheets were filled out properly.
Trebuchet
Penultimate Amazing
Or she knew how things worked there and left it for you!
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
Were the hours being billed to a government contract?
I have a true story about that from my very first days working a summer job in construction, but it would take too long to share here.
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
Faydra
sinning sybarite
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- 7,439
Access to my application is given by membership in an ad group.
If you are in the ad group, you can see all the stuffs.
Almost daily I have to reject a request to add a generic id to that ad group.
"But, we want all the members of the team to use your app with this screen scraping program we wrote that refreshes the screen every 3 seconds! Would you like a demo of how cool this is??".
1. Don't screen scrape my stuff, we have an api FFS.
2. We have to know WHO has access to this, it's sensitive. NO, you cannot use a generic id.
3. If you screen scrape my stuff and I catch you doing it, I'll ban your ass from it.
Yeah, annoying it can't handle it, but it CAN'T - it's old. Screen scraping slows it down for everyone. I HATE that.
If you are in the ad group, you can see all the stuffs.
Almost daily I have to reject a request to add a generic id to that ad group.
"But, we want all the members of the team to use your app with this screen scraping program we wrote that refreshes the screen every 3 seconds! Would you like a demo of how cool this is??".
1. Don't screen scrape my stuff, we have an api FFS.
2. We have to know WHO has access to this, it's sensitive. NO, you cannot use a generic id.
3. If you screen scrape my stuff and I catch you doing it, I'll ban your ass from it.
Yeah, annoying it can't handle it, but it CAN'T - it's old. Screen scraping slows it down for everyone. I HATE that.
Faydra
sinning sybarite
- Joined
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- 7,439
More fun from my day:
I don't know if I should be impressed with this little computer that could or appalled.
The system is an 11 year old Sun T5120 (well past retirement age for this hardware!) with 32gb of RAM with just ~570mb free:
RAM Total 32544.0 Mb
RAM Unusable 726.6 Mb
RAM Kernel 7141.2 Mb
RAM Locked 21481.9 Mb
RAM Used 2614.6 Mb
RAM Avail 579.7 Mb
It appears to have 14 database instances running on it and hasn’t been rebooted in 1668 days (4.5 years).
Then, as I was marvelling at that one, I found another with 6.8 years of uptime.
Wow. Just wow.
I don't know if I should be impressed with this little computer that could or appalled.
The system is an 11 year old Sun T5120 (well past retirement age for this hardware!) with 32gb of RAM with just ~570mb free:
RAM Total 32544.0 Mb
RAM Unusable 726.6 Mb
RAM Kernel 7141.2 Mb
RAM Locked 21481.9 Mb
RAM Used 2614.6 Mb
RAM Avail 579.7 Mb
It appears to have 14 database instances running on it and hasn’t been rebooted in 1668 days (4.5 years).
Then, as I was marvelling at that one, I found another with 6.8 years of uptime.
SunOS xxxxxxxx 5.10 Generic_147440-23 sun4v sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-T200
$ w
9:50am up 2513 day(s), 1 min(s), 1 user, load average: 4.03, 4.46, 4.94
User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU what
xxxxxxxx pts/12 9:49am w
$ w
9:50am up 2513 day(s), 1 min(s), 1 user, load average: 4.03, 4.46, 4.94
User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU what
xxxxxxxx pts/12 9:49am w
Wow. Just wow.
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theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
The Developer says they're getting a login error from an automated process that pulls data from a service on their behalf. The Developer volunteers that they recently changed their global password. Somehow the Developer doesn't fully integrate these two pieces of information, and asks me for help.
I tell the Developer that they probably need to update their stored password in their client software, so that it can log into the service on their behalf as before.
The Developer expresses ignorance of how their client works and how to update stored credentials in the client, and asks me for help.
I had no idea the client software had this kind of failure mode. The whole thing is a fresh mystery to me. So I do a quick Google search for "<error message> <client software> <computer OS>". The top search result is the Stackoverflow article that describes <error message>, and provides the instructions for updating stored credentials in <client software> in <computer OS>.
I give the Developer the link to the Stackoverflow article, and they confirm that it solves their problem.
Time spent by the Developer expressing ignorance and asking me for help: ~30 minutes
Time spent by me, figuring out the likely root cause, researching it, and finding the solution online: ~5 minutes
The most baffling and frustrating part:
---
ETA: 99% of computer problems can be solved by Googling "<error message> <software name> <computer OS>". Even laypersons and "not a computer person" persons can use this one simple trick to improve their quality of life.
I tell the Developer that they probably need to update their stored password in their client software, so that it can log into the service on their behalf as before.
The Developer expresses ignorance of how their client works and how to update stored credentials in the client, and asks me for help.
I had no idea the client software had this kind of failure mode. The whole thing is a fresh mystery to me. So I do a quick Google search for "<error message> <client software> <computer OS>". The top search result is the Stackoverflow article that describes <error message>, and provides the instructions for updating stored credentials in <client software> in <computer OS>.
I give the Developer the link to the Stackoverflow article, and they confirm that it solves their problem.
Time spent by the Developer expressing ignorance and asking me for help: ~30 minutes
Time spent by me, figuring out the likely root cause, researching it, and finding the solution online: ~5 minutes
The most baffling and frustrating part:
---
ETA: 99% of computer problems can be solved by Googling "<error message> <software name> <computer OS>". Even laypersons and "not a computer person" persons can use this one simple trick to improve their quality of life.
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Dear users.
There is a limit to how much "better" I can make your computing experience without making it "different." I will strive to maintain your desktop, UI, interfaces and such as much as is humanly but there is a limit.
I can't make Outlook 2016 look, feel, and act exactly like Outlook 2003, nor can I make Outlook 2003 have all the features of Outlook 2016.
I can't give you McLaren performance that handles like the Civic you learned to drive on forever.
There is a limit to how much "better" I can make your computing experience without making it "different." I will strive to maintain your desktop, UI, interfaces and such as much as is humanly but there is a limit.
I can't make Outlook 2016 look, feel, and act exactly like Outlook 2003, nor can I make Outlook 2003 have all the features of Outlook 2016.
I can't give you McLaren performance that handles like the Civic you learned to drive on forever.
catsmate
No longer the 1
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Been there, done that, looted the office supplies.
We had a three week wait over signing an NDA after I pointed out to the SAM that it violated corporate policy.
In the end one sentence was crossed out. Five people times sixteen days idle, but billable...
Faydra
sinning sybarite
- Joined
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- 7,439
I've solved a number of SAP issues this way. I've never been on an SAP system in my life. It's mind boggling.
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