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

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TragicMonkey said:
Request made by A to TM.
TM determined he cannot fulfill request, it can only be done by B.
TM forwards request to B.
B communicates with A about request, getting more details, etc.
B tells TM that B needs C to do X in order for B to fulfill request from A.
B waits for TM to ask C to do X.

WHY? Shouldn't TM be out of this process entirely, having handed request over to B?
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Not necessarily. If TM owns the ticket then it’s TM’s job to coordinate the resources on it. There are good reasons why that is a reasonable way to organise the work.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Boss.

I actually like you as a boss but you have got, got, GOT to learn that:

"We have no assigned roles, we just do whatever the customer says."

and

"We have a contract that lays out our duties and responsibilities dot dot dot but we have to keep the customer happy or we'll lose the contract so just do whatever the customer says. "

are the same thing.
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You also have a budget and if you do everything the customer says including stuff outside the contract, it may be more profitable to lose it.
 
jeremyp said:
Not necessarily. If TM owns the ticket then it’s TM’s job to coordinate the resources on it. There are good reasons why that is a reasonable way to organise the work.
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Just because the ticket was raised to TM incorrectly doesn't mean it's his ticket.
It looks like it should be B's ticket and TM forwarded it to them to deal with as he has no more input on it, that's how tickets should work as the other option is "Not my job, ticket closed. Re-raise with correct recipient".
 
Mongrel said:
Just because the ticket was raised to TM incorrectly doesn't mean it's his ticket.
It looks like it should be B's ticket and TM forwarded it to them to deal with as he has no more input on it, that's how tickets should work as the other option is "Not my job, ticket closed. Re-raise with correct recipient".
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It depends on exactly the details and how the organisation works. Personally, if I was A I would be grateful if B did take over because TM seems to be a whiner constantly complaining about the people he is supposed to be helping.
 
jeremyp said:
It depends on exactly the details and how the organisation works. Personally, if I was A I would be grateful if B did take over because TM seems to be a whiner constantly complaining about the people he is supposed to be helping.
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Heh. I can see how you'd get that impression from this thread, but that's precisely why I started it: to vent the frustrations and complaints we'd never air at work. I'm actually fearfully upbeat and professional at work. A is my boss's boss and I do work for them all the time, that's why they came to me.

The organization's a bit complex. My team doesn't use tickets at all. B's team uses tickets when interacting outside our silo but not within our silo, and not between my team and theirs. C's team is in another silo and only operates if there's a ticket.

The convention in this situation is that I pass the request along to B and B's team handles it from then on. Me opening a ticket to C means C will communicate with me and I'll have to redirect all of it to B. I can't contribute anything to the work; literally, it's not just a task reassignment preference: this is all about data to which I do not have access and cannot be given access. Data is strictly segregated by security, and the critical element A needs this time resides in a region I am barred from accessing but B isn't. And I mean really, really barred: not only can I not build a query or report to return this data, but if I run a query or report someone else builds that contains this data it will either not run at all for me, or it will return completely blank rows. Which means I can't even contribute an opinion on B's work afterwards, not so much as a "looks nice!" A, B, and now C will all be seeing things invisible to me.
 
jeremyp said:
You also have a budget and if you do everything the customer says including stuff outside the contract, it may be more profitable to lose it.
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Yes but no contract means no job and I need food to live.

Again not everyone has the privilege of negotiating from a place of sufficient financial freedom and career flexibility.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yes but no contract means no job and I need food to live.

Again not everyone has the privilege of negotiating from a place of sufficient financial freedom and career flexibility.
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If a company’s expenses exceed its income, it will eventually go bankrupt and the employees will have no jobs. I can’t speak to your specific circumstances, but, as a general rule, it’s a good idea to keep within the scope of the contract or things will eventually go tits up.
 
Happy New Financial Year everybody!

83 calls waiting in the queue. Network issues all over the place. Contractors waiting on extensions that they didn't think to submit until this morning. Dogs and cats living together. Total chaos.
 
arthwollipot said:
Yep. Once Enterprise Management had resolved the networking issues, everything else just cleared like a normal Monday. It's still Monday-busy, but it's not chaos any more.
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office-chaos-fire-chaotic.gif
 
Heh. Today is a Monday, with tomorrow being one of the few holidays my workplace actually recognizes. So about a third of the staff have taken the day off officially, and the other two thirds are only pretending to work...except at the very end of the day somebody, somewhere, is going to put in a request for something to prove they "worked" today, and also possibly out of anger for not getting the day off when their coworkers did.
 
TragicMonkey said:
except at the very end of the day somebody, somewhere, is going to put in a request for something to prove they "worked" today, and also possibly out of anger for not getting the day off when their coworkers did.
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And the prophecy has been fulfilled! But I anticipated what would be requested and had it done already.

But I'll wait until 5:01 to send it to them.
 
Blue Mountain said:
Too late. I would have waited until 4:04. :p
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No, there would be a risk the requestor would wait until a few minutes after 4 to log off, and then send a reply amending the request. But they wouldn't wait all the way until 5, not with a holiday tomorrow. So now I look like I worked slightly beyond 5, how dedicated of me!
 
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