Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

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What you SHOULD have done was made her balance on one leg on her office chair with the other up in the air while you did the techno-magic-wand stuff. Then tell her that is all that is needed to fix it next time.

Then wait an hour or so until her office is full of people and disconnect her Outlook again.

:D
 
Here's a true story. It involves the Deputy Service Desk Manager, who I will call Lisa, because that is her name.

Lisa was assisting people putting up Christmas decorations around the office. Our building has something of a competition, you see, for the best-decorated team. At one point she asked me if I wanted some tinsel to put around my monitor.

"I do not," I said. Okay, so establishing my place as office Grinch right there. I am not a fan of the traditional trappings of Christmas and have no desire to participate in them. However, I also don't want to spoil anyone else's fun or tell them they can't have fun doing something. In short, I have no desire to be this guy. This was taken in good grace and we moved on.

A few minutes later, Lisa was saying something about "it's all about getting into the spirit of things". She was halfway between sarcastic and playful. I mean she was having fun, right? Well, in response to this the following words proceeded unbidden from out of my mouth-hole:

"Oh shut up."

Beat.

Oh my god did I just really say that? I don't think I could have made it sound any more disdainful if I had tried. I really said it. Out loud. Not loudly, but clearly enough that everyone around me heard it. Lisa was staring at me, mouth open in shock.

Fortunately, it was universally perceived as absolutely hysterical. Like, really funny. Everybody was laughing and Lisa took it well. I apologised, all was good. I'm fortunate that I work in a fun and casual workplace, otherwise it could have been a Career Limiting Move.
 
We were told that a business critical process had "a known issue" for a "few days," but that it had been fixed. Our team being somewhat reliant on that process, I asked for more details. Answer came there none. I am clearly a nuisance.
 
arthwollipot said:
Here's a true story. It involves the Deputy Service Desk Manager, who I will call Lisa, because that is her name.

Lisa was assisting people putting up Christmas decorations around the office. Our building has something of a competition, you see, for the best-decorated team. At one point she asked me if I wanted some tinsel to put around my monitor.

"I do not," I said. Okay, so establishing my place as office Grinch right there. I am not a fan of the traditional trappings of Christmas and have no desire to participate in them. However, I also don't want to spoil anyone else's fun or tell them they can't have fun doing something. In short, I have no desire to be this guy. This was taken in good grace and we moved on.

A few minutes later, Lisa was saying something about "it's all about getting into the spirit of things". She was halfway between sarcastic and playful. I mean she was having fun, right? Well, in response to this the following words proceeded unbidden from out of my mouth-hole:

"Oh shut up."

Beat.

Oh my god did I just really say that? I don't think I could have made it sound any more disdainful if I had tried. I really said it. Out loud. Not loudly, but clearly enough that everyone around me heard it. Lisa was staring at me, mouth open in shock.

Fortunately, it was universally perceived as absolutely hysterical. Like, really funny. Everybody was laughing and Lisa took it well. I apologised, all was good. I'm fortunate that I work in a fun and casual workplace, otherwise it could have been a Career Limiting Move.
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I love Xmas and Xmas decorations, but tinsel is garbage. It's messy and unpleasant and is tacky enough to look awful but not tacky enough to possess any camp-value charm. Also it sheds and makes extra work for the cleaning staff.
 
Wudang said:
Ahem, the term "murdered" is deprecated. We prefer non-user initiated wetware process termination.
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I consider everyone to have an unspoken field named "MURDERED_YN", and while everyone begins with 0 in there eventually it'll flip to 1 by some process or another. It's inevitable! There's a batch job that runs constantly, comparing the individual's birthdate field to the current date, and sooner or later that one gets everybody.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I love Xmas and Xmas decorations, but tinsel is garbage. It's messy and unpleasant and is tacky enough to look awful but not tacky enough to possess any camp-value charm. Also it sheds and makes extra work for the cleaning staff.
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I confess to having a little bit of difficulty when there are flashing coloured lights in my field of vision, but not so much that it causes real problems.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I consider everyone to have an unspoken field named "MURDERED_YN", and while everyone begins with 0 in there eventually it'll flip to 1 by some process or another. It's inevitable! There's a batch job that runs constantly, comparing the individual's birthdate field to the current date, and sooner or later that one gets everybody.
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Should not be a boolean field. Should be a small integer. I've been murdered twice already.
 
arthwollipot said:
You know that one customer? The one that has a reputation? That everybody dreads getting a call from? Ours is named Ann. We have a standing instruction that if we get a call from Ann and she starts to become abusive and difficult, we are to transfer her directly to our manager or deputy manager. She was once placed on administrative leave for being abusive towards Service Desk operators.

She just called me a magical fairy.

She was having problems with Outlook not being able to connect to the Exchange server. By the simple trick of putting Outlook into Working Offline mode and then returning to Online, I was able to resolve it for her.
I think I just scored bigtime with this customer.
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So basically you just turned it off and on again? You mean that really works? :)
 
This week I had a similar triumph of professional excellence! An exceedingly difficult and complex request was made and I just tore into it instantly, diving deeply into databases and searching documentation and in a mere matter of hours I was able to conclusively prove that the task could only be accomplished by someone else. There is an immense satisfaction in information work when you know how to do it right.
 
Filippo Lippi said:
We were told that a business critical process had "a known issue" for a "few days," but that it had been fixed. Our team being somewhat reliant on that process, I asked for more details. Answer came there none. I am clearly a nuisance.
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Oh, we're writing an alternative, but we didn't tell us that we were doing it
 
gnome said:
Perhaps not direct murder, but they're pretty literal. Tricking someone into arranging their own death would be right up their alley.
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Absolutely, but TragicMonkey was talking about murder and that's far too direct.

alfaniner said:
So basically you just turned it off and on again? You mean that really works? :)
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Well, there's a reason why that stereotype exists. When it was the opening line of the first episode of The IT Crowd, I knew that show was going to be too real for me to be able to enjoy.
 
arthwollipot said:
Absolutely, but TragicMonkey was talking about murder and that's far too direct.
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You are speaking ill of the best tool in the technician's toolbox! It allows a permanent solution to not just the user's current problem but also prevents all of their potential future problems!

I see what's going on here: you're against murder because you fear for your job security if you perform your job too well and solve all the problems, you'll become disposable. But let me assure you, with the benefit of my vast experience: you will never run out of people who ought to be murdered.
 
TragicMonkey said:
You are speaking ill of the best tool in the technician's toolbox! It allows a permanent solution to not just the user's current problem but also prevents all of their potential future problems!

I see what's going on here: you're against murder because you fear for your job security if you perform your job too well and solve all the problems, you'll become disposable. But let me assure you, with the benefit of my vast experience: you will never run out of people who ought to be murdered.
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But the problem here is that when murder is in the toolbox, what do you think happens to people who become disposable? They get murdered. So I'd rather not, thanks.
 
arthwollipot said:
But the problem here is that when murder is in the toolbox, what do you think happens to people who become disposable? They get murdered. So I'd rather not, thanks.
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You mean you haven't made yourself indispensible yet? You need to get on that, pronto. I recommend the path of being the only person who does a task which is important but boring, necessary but not so vital anybody else needs to know how to do it. Ideally this task will be imaginary. If you can't pull that off, arrange it so you have a list of actual tasks you do but nobody else knows how long they actually take or what you actually do to complete them. Automate things but let people believe they require hours of manual work. Create a cloud of unknowing around yourself and your work, and be cheerful but quiet. Never complain about your work, make no waves, always appear moderately busy, and you can ride this sort of thing out for decades. If you attend meetings always be seen to be writing things down, people will assume you are acquiring work from what is being said when actually you're getting your shopping list down, brainstorming names you'd give to a pet otter, or trying to anagram your own name into a more interesting one you might one day use as a pen name if you write a novel. And you'll have plenty of time to write a novel, what else are you going to do when you're supposed to be working?
 
TragicMonkey said:
You mean you haven't made yourself indispensible yet? You need to get on that, pronto. I recommend the path of being the only person who does a task which is important but boring, necessary but not so vital anybody else needs to know how to do it. Ideally this task will be imaginary. If you can't pull that off, arrange it so you have a list of actual tasks you do but nobody else knows how long they actually take or what you actually do to complete them. Automate things but let people believe they require hours of manual work. Create a cloud of unknowing around yourself and your work, and be cheerful but quiet. Never complain about your work, make no waves, always appear moderately busy, and you can ride this sort of thing out for decades. If you attend meetings always be seen to be writing things down, people will assume you are acquiring work from what is being said when actually you're getting your shopping list down, brainstorming names you'd give to a pet otter, or trying to anagram your own name into a more interesting one you might one day use as a pen name if you write a novel. And you'll have plenty of time to write a novel, what else are you going to do when you're supposed to be working?
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SHUT UP!


Jeeez....


You're giving our secrets away!
 
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