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

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malbui said:
I'm not at all unhappy that Covid continues to mean that mandatory fun is still out of the question.
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How nice. We had to remote in via Teams to have our mandatory holiday party last year. Cameras required to be on.

At least I got some compliments on my gracious home which was beautifully decorated: people actually thought it was a Teams fake background until they saw me move around in it.
 
*Half groans, half cringes*

One of our junior techs got into mild (internal) trouble (long story short he got a stuck on a problem and basically spammed our upper echelon of network engineers and a couple of managers, jumping like two levels of escalation.)

I mean it's nothing too bad, we're not talking like anything career ending and the upper peeps seemed more annoyed at being bothered than actually any kind of "How dare you speak to me directly you peon" angry.

But it seriously has like... shaken this kid. I mean maybe it's because I'm military and an ass chewing that would leave a normal person with psychological scares is almost quaint to me. (You haven't lived until you've been yelled at by a future member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who you had to wake up at 3 in the morning to tell them a major system was down). But he's acting like he's career is ruined.

I sympathize with him somewhat because our escalation process takes time and our clients want everything fixed sometime between now and "why isn't it already fixed" and it's no fun to get stuck in the middle of that, so it's an understandable mistake if still a mistake.

Hope he can shake it off. He's a decent tech overall.
 
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TragicMonkey said:
How nice. We had to remote in via Teams to have our mandatory holiday party last year. Cameras required to be on.

At least I got some compliments on my gracious home which was beautifully decorated: people actually thought it was a Teams fake background until they saw me move around in it.
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Do they have alcohol at these mandatory parties? The ones that aren't remote, I mean?
 
TragicMonkey said:
How nice. We had to remote in via Teams to have our mandatory holiday party last year. Cameras required to be on.

At least I got some compliments on my gracious home which was beautifully decorated: people actually thought it was a Teams fake background until they saw me move around in it.
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I would have arranged a fake background. And a fake foreground - cardboard cutout of myself with a downcast face wearing a party hat. Like this.

depressed-senior-woman-doing-thumbs-up-picture-id157594492
 
Don't they all have loops now? Just record yourself for 30 seconds. include picking up a beverage and taking a sip.

Then just play that back while you step away.
 
JoeMorgue said:
*Half groans, half cringes*

One of our junior techs got into mild (internal) trouble (long story short he got a stuck on a problem and basically spammed our upper echelon of network engineers and a couple of managers, jumping like two levels of escalation.)

I mean it's nothing too bad, we're not talking like anything career ending and the upper peeps seemed more annoyed at being bothered than actually any kind of "How dare you speak to me directly you peon" angry.

But it seriously has like... shaken this kid. I mean maybe it's because I'm military and an ass chewing that would leave a normal person with psychological scares is almost quaint to me. (You haven't lived until you've been yelled at by a future member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who you had to wake up at 3 in the morning to tell them a major system was down). But he's acting like he's career is ruined.

I sympathize with him somewhat because our escalation process takes time and our clients want everything fixed sometime between now and "why isn't it already fixed" and it's no fun to get stuck in the middle of that, so it's an understandable mistake if still a mistake.

Hope he can shake it off. He's a decent tech overall.
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I tend to take a somewhat mercenary approach to such things: no condemnation or praise at work means anything unless it's accompanied with a pay cut or pay rise.
 
BowlOfRed said:
Don't they all have loops now? Just record yourself for 30 seconds. include picking up a beverage and taking a sip.

Then just play that back while you step away.
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Damn, I wish I lived in y'all's dream world! When I say "mandatory work party" did you think it would be like a real party? Eating, drinking, chilling? Of course not! There were mandatory activities! Filling out "fun" worksheets related to holidays. A "fun" scavenger hunt in our own houses! A "fun" craft! And of course, "fun" "getting to know each other better" questionaires and surveys.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Damn, I wish I lived in y'all's dream world! When I say "mandatory work party" did you think it would be like a real party? Eating, drinking, chilling? Of course not! There were mandatory activities! Filling out "fun" worksheets related to holidays. A "fun" scavenger hunt in our own houses! A "fun" craft! And of course, "fun" "getting to know each other better" questionaires and surveys.
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Seriously, don't you know when to get an unexpected broken finger that gets instantly better overnight praise Jeebus? Can't work the mouse! Here's a picture of my fabulous house interior design instead. See you Monday.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Seriously, don't you know when to get an unexpected broken finger that gets instantly better overnight praise Jeebus? Can't work the mouse! Here's a picture of my fabulous house interior design instead. See you Monday.
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I'm far too professional to do such a thing! What I did was I put my laptop on the coffee table facing away from the TV and watched DVDs with the sound off and the closed captioning on. From the perspective of the camera it looked like I was absorbed in the festivities of the team.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Damn, I wish I lived in y'all's dream world! When I say "mandatory work party" did you think it would be like a real party? Eating, drinking, chilling? Of course not! There were mandatory activities! Filling out "fun" worksheets related to holidays. A "fun" scavenger hunt in our own houses! A "fun" craft! And of course, "fun" "getting to know each other better" questionaires and surveys.
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Ugh. My worst nightmare. I would flat out refuse to participate.
 
Hellbound said:
“Teamwork makes the dream work” — Freddy Krueger
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Heh, that's pretty good. On my last team there was much hilarity when one of us received an email from someone in another department. The email itself was uninteresting, but she had (against company policy) a huge email signature including in calligraphic font "Teamwork Makes The Dream Work!!!!!!!" (there may have been more exclamation marks) in hot pink, with a graphic background of rainbows and flowers and unicorns etc. It looked like Lisa Frank had taken acid with the Care Bears and the My Little Ponies. Someone knew this lady and said it was definitely not ironic or her being funny, it was one million percent sincere.
 
Wudang said:
Can I try an analogy? 100 years ago office workers didn't think they "weren't ink people" and asked for help dipping a nib in an inkwell or sharpening a pencil again. They knew the basics of *using* the tools of their trade. They'd gone past the days if cutting their own goose quills and expected proper pens with metal nibs which they didn't make or know how to make.
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What annoys me though is when they go and change something that I knew how to do for no reason and I have to re-learn what I used to know.

Like when they came out with a new browser that had no visible menu bar, until you press the Alt key. Just have menu bar always visible. It's a feature that makes the experience worse, not better. I don't like it when they change things that I'm used to.

Apple is particularly bad in my experience. When they come out with new operating systems, I often found that functions I used all the time were no longer available. How is that better?
 
I may have said this before, I'm not sure, but one of the nicest things about my current job is knowing stuff. People come to me for information and I have it to hand and can answer them, mostly without having to look anything up. If I do need to look it up, I know where to find it. It's really cool.
 
Puppycow said:
I don't like it when they change things that I'm used to.
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And that's... sorta fine until you take it to the level of "I can no longer drive my car because someone changed my radio station presets."

1/3 of a company literally shutting down, as in coming into work on Monday, logging into their computers, and refusing to open their e-mail because the icon moved from one side of the screen to the other side of the screen, which is a literal, non-hyperbolic real world example that I had to deal with, is not.

Moving from Office 2010 to Office 2013 can be a minor annoyance, it shouldn't be a "I've been pulled out of Plato's Cave" existential crisis that leaves you unable to function.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Moving from Office 2010 to Office 2013 can be a minor annoyance, it shouldn't be a "I've been pulled out of Plato's Cave" existential crisis that leaves you unable to function.
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Clippy returns = existence is meaningless suffering.
 
Just now.

"Hey Joe you know the (Department's Name) record storage room?"
"Yep, I know it."
"We are going to turn it into 4 cubicles."
"That's a storage room. Is there any power outlets?"
"Just one."
"Any data drops?"
"None."
"Have you put in a request to have any computers or phones or devices ordered?"
"Not yet."
"Do you know when the actual physical cubicle and desk setups will be delivered and setup?"
"Not yet."
"When do you want people in there?"
"We want to go live in two weeks."
 
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