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

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arthwollipot said:
Ugh. My worst nightmare. I would flat out refuse to participate.
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TragicMonkey said:
Teamwork, I have been informed, makes the dream work.
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About twenty years ago a supervisor, not mine, in fact we were of equal status, took it in himself to demand from me, in front of my team, why I wasn't down to attend the "party" that the company has decreed for the following Saturday. After overcoming the urge to tell him to go **** himself I told him that I wasn't attending because I had better things to do with my time, that because I worked for a company didn't mean I wished to socialise with them, or him, and to mind his own damn business.
I then stood up, told him to get out of my way, and complained to his boss's boss.
He was required to apologise.
******* idiot.
 
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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Oh gawd. Please tell me they didn't make you do that on your own time. It was bad enough when I had to go to that crap on company time and not get my actual work done.
 
Trebuchet said:
Oh gawd. Please tell me they didn't make you do that on your own time. It was bad enough when I had to go to that crap on company time and not get my actual work done.
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Well, it was during the workday so "company time"...but I ended up having to work extra hours for no extra pay to do all the work I couldn't do in that time, so I think it worked out to being on my time after all.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I'm in America, overtime isn't a thing for most people here.
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I had the expectation of unpaid overtime dropped in me when I was seconded to USAia, years ago. I laughed at my "boss", reminded her that my contract was in a civilised country and that I would be paid for every hour I worked, regardless of her beliefs.
 
catsmate said:
I had the expectation of unpaid overtime dropped in me when I was seconded to USAia, years ago. I laughed at my "boss", reminded her that my contract was in a civilised country and that I would be paid for every hour I worked, regardless of her beliefs.
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We lose our healthcare if we lose our jobs, and most of us can be fired at any time for any reason or no reason, without advance notice, and without severance pay or anything. It's truly a paradise here...for those who own companies.
 
TragicMonkey said:
We lose our healthcare if we lose our jobs, and most of us can be fired at any time for any reason or no reason, without advance notice, and without severance pay or anything. It's truly a paradise here...for those who own companies.
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Hence my reference to a "civilised" county, rather than USAia.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I take exception to that remark! We're very civilized here: we always say "excuse me" when we fart on the dinner table.
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How rude!

Emily Post said:
Acceptable noises. These are noises such as burping or the sounds accompanying choking, to which the response should come from the noisemaker himself, provided that the choking was not complete, in which case he is absolved of all social responsibility except that of having left his papers in order. Society acknowledges that these noises are made from time to time, but does not dignify them with a response. The offender says “Excuse me,” and the subject is considered closed.

Unacceptable noises. Miss Manners does not plan to mention them, chiefly because they are unmentionable, but you all know who you are. What they are. At any rate, these are noises that are acknowledged by neither the noisemaker nor the noise recipient, because socially they do not exist.
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The Man said:
Heck, even computer people do it. Almost 2 decades ago I was training customer technicians (at another site) on some of our equipment being installed. As always, the first thing you do when there is an error is to look at the error list to see what it is.
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Coincidentally, Ms Theprestige was venting about work this morning. She's very much a computer person. Strong technical aptitude, better troubleshooter than I am. She's telling me about how she doesn't understand SSL certs at all. "I've just blocked that out as too weird and complicated," she says.

"I thought so too," I say. "But then I started looking into it, and it turns out it's really quite simple."

"I don't want to hear it. I've blocked it out. I don't even read the error messages."

"But the error messages are super easy and clear," I say. "Just like all the other error messages you grok without breaking stride."

"Nope," she says. "I'm gonna keep blocking it out."

I get that. I'm the same way. All my computer aptitude, there's still mysterious domains, that I had to make an effort to demystify. This business of blocking out clear, helpful error messages is something that even actual computer people do.

A lot of people get stuck a lot earlier in the journey, and reflexively block out a lot more than just SSL. And I bet every single computer person in this thread has some area of computer technology that they just ignore. "Nope, don't need to know that. Never gonna learn that." Etc.

The IT community needs less snobbery towards end users, and a lot more understanding and empathy.
 
theprestige said:
Coincidentally, Ms Theprestige was venting about work this morning. She's very much a computer person. Strong technical aptitude, better troubleshooter than I am. She's telling me about how she doesn't understand SSL certs at all. "I've just blocked that out as too weird and complicated," she says.

"I thought so too," I say. "But then I started looking into it, and it turns out it's really quite simple."

"I don't want to hear it. I've blocked it out. I don't even read the error messages."

"But the error messages are super easy and clear," I say. "Just like all the other error messages you grok without breaking stride."

"Nope," she says. "I'm gonna keep blocking it out."

I get that. I'm the same way. All my computer aptitude, there's still mysterious domains, that I had to make an effort to demystify. This business of blocking out clear, helpful error messages is something that even actual computer people do.

A lot of people get stuck a lot earlier in the journey, and reflexively block out a lot more than just SSL. And I bet every single computer person in this thread has some area of computer technology that they just ignore. "Nope, don't need to know that. Never gonna learn that." Etc.

The IT community needs less snobbery towards end users, and a lot more understanding and empathy.
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mr-clippy.jpg
 
theprestige said:
The IT community needs less snobbery towards end users, and a lot more understanding and empathy.
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I agree. Users don't, for example, want to notice the tool they use, it should be an invisible part of their work and just let them get on. I look on this more as a venting thread. And, as a side note, for most of my career my end users have been IT staff, programmers, ops, service delivery etc. It brings back memories of the newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery.
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
Anyone here in devops/sre?
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I'm an SRE, but I don't really consider myself one. I think I'm a horrible developer. I'm a 1990's sysadmin with a 2010's title.

Being oncall is horrible in some ways, but it's a lot more fun than writing code. The other day someone accidentally used our automation system to delete our automation system. When you ask the automation system to put itself back, that doesn't work....
 
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Dear Users: when someone names something with a very elaborate name it might be a clue to what it is. So you don't have to ask questions like "Hey, TM, this metric that you labelled 'Metric 4: Weekly Intake of New Units YTD 2021 (includes only Types 1,3,4,9,11,19) In Departments A-E, G, and J *see Tab B for complete logic'...what does it represent?" Gee, Molly, I don't know. Perhaps it's an annual count of fish consumption per capita among Norwegian albinos. There's just no way to tell.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Dear Users: when someone names something with a very elaborate name it might be a clue to what it is. So you don't have to ask questions like "Hey, TM, this metric that you labelled 'Metric 4: Weekly Intake of New Units YTD 2021 (includes only Types 1,3,4,9,11,19) In Departments A-E, G, and J *see Tab B for complete logic'...what does it represent?" Gee, Molly, I don't know. Perhaps it's an annual count of fish consumption per capita among Norwegian albinos. There's just no way to tell.
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