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Cont: Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 11

arthwollipot said:
Interesting. Mine were about privacy, fraud, and FOI. :D
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First Aid wi. CPR, Trenching and Excavation, Scaffolding and Fall Protection. etc. You get the idea.

TBH, most of the classes were pretty good. Even the ones that were repeats. Rules and regs. change, and the people giving the courses worked hard to keep people engaged. Well ... as much as they could with a bunch of good ol' boy superintendents and foremen.

The OSHA class was three days. The T & E class was two days. And we got to play with real dirt. And water. Yes, we made mud pies ... sorta. One of the scaffolding courses came with a somewhat dismal punch line which we were sworn to secrecy about, so the next folks taking the class wouldn't be spoilered.
 
Healthcare has tons of annual mandatory training, even for people who don't go near a patient. I think I counted this year's total at 26 online "courses" total, most of which were "watch this video and then take a test on it". We had everything from "lift with your legs not your back" to "if the hospital is on fire don't throw patients out the windows" to "just because you're working from home doesn't mean you can't sexually harrass someone" to "if Mary in accounting looks up her neighbor Fifi's medical records because she heard a rumor about Fifi having an STI is that okay" (the real question is who the hell is named Fifi) to "should you click on suspicious links in emails and give them your credit card number".

The real fun is when someone makes a mistake and assigns the real clinical courses to people, like the time I got assigned a slew of courses "to maintain your certification in infant cardiac care"; I know I sometimes forget I got certified in ITIL and Lean 6 Sigma years ago but I'm pretty sure I'd remember that one.

My favorite is the fire safety one from years back, someone did Flash animations for it and had adorable cartoon people running back and forth while engulfed in flames. They stayed on fire until you answered the question underneath.

eta: least favorite: Infection Prevention. The takeaway is that basically every surface everywhere is filthy with deadly germs and there's only a small degree of mitigation possible, and you'll probably **** it up and do it wrong anyway. That one was unpleasant pre-Covid, after Covid it's downright scary.
 
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No I'm not installing a new workstation where your solution to the fact that you want a workstation nowhere near any outlets is to daisy chain 3 cheap, Office Depot quality surge protectors end on end and stretch them out across the floor AND you've already plugged a space heater into the far end.

I'm not putting my finger prints on THAT train wreck.
 
*Sighs*

I'm done. I am no longer going to bother with CYA if CYAing doesn't actually C my A.

I've talked before about how having a client/provider system you have to follow is super-frustrating if the client is going to get their way in the end no matter what and both sides know it.

I keep getting stuck in this loop where a client tells me to do something that's not part of our procedure, I don't do it, and I get "Well your not wrong for not doing it..." (wait for it... wait for it... wait for... "... but" (there it is) and then just get a vague, glib speech about "Okay but we still have to keep the client happy" which just functionally loops back to "You should have just done it when they asked."

My direct supervisor (who is a genuinely decent guy and I don't think this is coming from an intentional place of "Let's put the guys in a no-win situation") has basically started falling back on this for everything to the point where we functionally don't have procedures to follow. I mean we have them but they are meaningless because "Keep the client happy" renders them all moot.
 
I actually had to explain to someone why, when trying to match lists of names to what's stored in the database, I am more confident in the match on the name "Waafhodster, Brynlythette Xerella" than I am on the match on the name "Smith, Mary".
 
TragicMonkey said:
I actually had to explain to someone why, when trying to match lists of names to what's stored in the database, I am more confident in the match on the name "Waafhodster, Brynlythette Xerella" than I am on the match on the name "Smith, Mary".
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Try geneological research for Nolans in 1900s Dublin....
 
Lets have a moment of silence for the help desk personnel at TPG group.

(Internode, TPG, OzEmail, iiNet, WestConnect).

Apparently the parent company has decided that email is not 'core business' for an ISP, and they are dropping this functionality so that they can concentrate on trying to flog mobile phones on Australia's ********* network.

Imagine the response from their customers and the calls they're receiving...
 
Here's a case of 'not knowing your business' programmers...

Our local rural store now requires customers to log in to access their account/order stuff etc- but what has changed is they now require '2 factor authentication' to log in- you type in your password and it sends an SMS you need to enter before it lets you access your account...
Um- did I mention its the local RURAL store (hay, fencing supplies etc)
As in it's kinda- you know- rural- as in the country???
90% of their clients don't even HAVE a mobile phone (as they work in town and about 5-10km outside of town- then its an hours drive to get to the next spot it works...)

Most of them have to basically drive almost to town to get reception to make an online order- in which case- they would just keep driving and do it in person...

A good proportion of them are STILL on dialup even- its basically that or 2 way sat internet...
And that adds a new level of issues- too many websites now include video, or have a massive amount of data needed to even just load- and on dialup- it can take a half hour or more for some websites to even load!!!
:-O
 
I like how the Amazon app on my phone uses 2FA by sending a text to the same phone I'm already on and using. So secure!
 
No, caller. After a request has been approved, you do not get to make changes to the details of the request without getting it re-approved.
 
Things I Wish More People Understood #9372: Email Is Not Necessarily Instantaneous.

Sometimes it takes a couple of minutes for an email to be delivered. Sometimes it takes longer, especially when automation is involved. Once we have sent an email, we no longer have any control over it.
 
Me in chat with our dispatch team.

Me: "Hey can I get an alert sent out? We've got a site down, power outage. Here's the tracking number from the local electric company. Now we have a lot of sites with similar names. This one is at SITE NAME, not SIMILAR SITE NAME.

Literally 30 seconds later I get an email

From: My Company's Dispatch and Alert Team
TO: All the big important people in client's company.
CC: Me.
SUBJECT: PRIORITY 1 OUTAGE AT, YEP YOU GUESSED IT, SIMILAR SITE NAME.
 
Sigh. Dear User: yes, different numbers result when you run Report A, an out-of-the-box standard, self-service, non-customizable report that came with the system versus Report B, which operates by running 8,704 lines of SQL to math upon ten times the amount of data by applying several committee-defined formulae developed over three years and which has nine critical elements determining inclusion/exclusion curated manually each month. If we could use Report A we wouldn't have wasted my time (and the company's money) creating Report B in the first place.
 
*On a moonlit night one of my users gets in their car. They drive for hours, out until the roads turn to dirt, then out further still. One the road finally ends they get out and start walking. They walk for days, further and further away from civilization. Finally the reach a secluded valley. They walk into the deepest, darkest part of it. They turn over a rock. They dig a small a hole. They put their face down to the hole and whisper "My computer isn't working." They fill in the hole. The replace the rock. They walk back to their car. They drive back home.*

1 week later: "I REPORTED MY COMPUTER ISN'T WORKING WHY HASN'T ANYONE HELPED ME YET!"
 
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Them: "This file you sent me, the one that's named 'September 2023 Data', does it contain data from September or is it from August?"

Me: "I'll look into that and let you know".

I have no plans to reply any further.

Ever.
 
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