Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

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arthwollipot said:
Well like I said it wasn't hard to find the answer, but it was an approach that neither he nor the T1 who called me for the consult had thought of.
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I agree. It sounded like a sensible and simple approach towards a solution. Which suggests the other two don't have that...gene?

Frankly, if I was managing a web developer who could not do something as basic as tracking down simple web page links using basic tools and common sense like you did, then I would be advising them to possibly review their career choices.
 
Blue Bubble said:
I am well aware of what overflow means (my first programming was more than 50 years ago, I'm a Computer Science graduate from one of the best places in the world, and I have been working in IT for more than 40 years up until my retirement 1 week ago). My issue was with the very strange phrase highlighted above.
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Wudang said:
Not just you.
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It's been several years, and I forget the exact terminology as it wasn't my area of expertise. But it was enough of an explanation for the manager and the users. I had a stack of papers and detailing my research in detail here would probably get me a yellow card for a wall-o-text. :p
 
Filippo Lippi said:
Stack overflow?
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I have the t-shirt
stack-overflow.jpg


My next most nerdy t says "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script."
 
Norman Alexander said:
I agree. It sounded like a sensible and simple approach towards a solution. Which suggests the other two don't have that...gene?

Frankly, if I was managing a web developer who could not do something as basic as tracking down simple web page links using basic tools and common sense like you did, then I would be advising them to possibly review their career choices.
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Yeah, maybe, but that's not my call. We're generally not in the business of saying "sorry, that's not our job, go away". Except in those cases when we are.
 
"Good morning, Service Desk, how can I help?"

"Uh, so I've got a laptop and I need... um... hang on... uh... I need... so I've got this laptop and... um... I... ah, just a sec... ... ... ... ... Okay so I've got this laptop and it's... um, it's..."

"Take your time..."
 
arthwollipot said:
"Good morning, Service Desk, how can I help?"

"Uh, so I've got a laptop and I need... um... hang on... uh... I need... so I've got this laptop and... um... I... ah, just a sec... ... ... ... ... Okay so I've got this laptop and it's... um, it's..."

"Take your time..."
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This will be followed (eventually) by something like:

"So the problem is right there on the screen when I do this."

"Do what exactly? I can't see your screen from here just now."

"Umm, when I move my clicker to here and click it. That's the problem."

"...again, I can't see your screen from here. You are going to have to tell me what you are seeing."

"Well I move the clicker and I click it. Then the problem happens."

"OK, do you think you can share your screen with me? Do you know how to do that?"

"Yes. Just tell me which button to press. It is one button, right?"
 
In my new job on Tier 2 I'm taking exclusively followup and VIP line calls. There are fewer calls, leaving me free for other tasks, but those calls are vastly more annoying.
 
I'm so tired of explaining, over and over, to the same people, that if the data they want hasn't been entered into the database then I cannot pull that data out of the database. "But we need it!" Okay, then, whine some more, that will make it happen. I'm not kidding about having to explain this over and over. I've had to draw pictures. I've had to cite analogies. "Go to your pantry. Are you there? Now take out the saffron-infused goat jerky. It's not there? Nobody's bought any, and nobody's put it in the pantry? But you want it! So take it out of the pantry."

I'm going to have to tell someone that if he has a problem with the way the company implemented the new system then he needs to take it up with the executives, and perhaps they'll agree that the eight hundred million dollars they spent was a waste and they'll agree to start over, just so he can get the one piece of data he thinks he needs.
 
And this really is the mentality that pushes supporting computer users into nightmare territory.

These people would never get in their car with the tank on the last notch on the gauge above Empty for a 1,000 mile an hour road trip, start driving, ignore the low fuel warning, drive right past a half dozen gas stations, and finally when their car sputters and dies because it is out of gas just start yelling at the car (or the roadside assistance person who shows to help) about how important where they are driving to is and how important it is that they get there in time as if that's magically going to more gas appear in the tank.

But that's exactly how they treat their computers. I honestly wonder how much of it is some sort of weird byproduct for these computers and programs replacing actual humans that they could just yell at until the problem went away.

Like they never bothered to develop any other problem solving skill beyond "Yell at it and act important" and can't grasps that a little slab of silicon processing 1s and 0s could not care less.
 
"I scanned in a bunch of documents into a shared folder a few days and now I can't find them. Oh and I already shredded the original documents. No I don't remember what I named the files or when exactly I scanned them. Can you find them?"
 
TragicMonkey said:
I'm so tired of explaining, over and over, to the same people, that if the data they want hasn't been entered into the database then I cannot pull that data out of the database. "But we need it!" Okay, then, whine some more, that will make it happen. I'm not kidding about having to explain this over and over. I've had to draw pictures. I've had to cite analogies. "Go to your pantry. Are you there? Now take out the saffron-infused goat jerky. It's not there? Nobody's bought any, and nobody's put it in the pantry? But you want it! So take it out of the pantry."

I'm going to have to tell someone that if he has a problem with the way the company implemented the new system then he needs to take it up with the executives, and perhaps they'll agree that the eight hundred million dollars they spent was a waste and they'll agree to start over, just so he can get the one piece of data he thinks he needs.
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And now the stupid bastard thinks going over my head will make it happen. The current state is how the company chose to implement our system. It's a fundamental aspect of it. To change it wouldn't just be adding information to a database, it would mean hiring hundreds of staff and training them to do their jobs differently than the current staff does. They'd also need to have higher certifications and be paid more. This stupid bastard thinks he can talk to my boss because I'm being uncooperative about a line of SQL, when in actuality he's proposing a sea change in business operations that would affect thousands of employees and cost in the tens of millions of dollars to implement. It would also, needless to say, have to come from a lot higher up the totem pole than this stupid bastard.

For the sake of one goddamn data extract that's worth at most five digit returns to the company per annum.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"I scanned in a bunch of documents into a shared folder a few days and now I can't find them. Oh and I already shredded the original documents. No I don't remember what I named the files or when exactly I scanned them. Can you find them?"
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I've had this:

Them: "I deleted a load of files I need."
Me: "That's OK, go to your Trash bin" (Mac user)
Them: "There's nothing there"
Me: "Oh you mustn't have deleted them, perhaps you've moved them..."
Them:"Definitely deleted them, I always delete my files and then go to the Trash Bin and delete them again".
Me: "When did you do this?"
Trash: "About 5 minutes ago"

Apparently we should have had them backed up...
 
TragicMonkey said:
And now the stupid bastard thinks going over my head will make it happen. The current state is how the company chose to implement our system. It's a fundamental aspect of it. To change it wouldn't just be adding information to a database, it would mean hiring hundreds of staff and training them to do their jobs differently than the current staff does. They'd also need to have higher certifications and be paid more. This stupid bastard thinks he can talk to my boss because I'm being uncooperative about a line of SQL, when in actuality he's proposing a sea change in business operations that would affect thousands of employees and cost in the tens of millions of dollars to implement. It would also, needless to say, have to come from a lot higher up the totem pole than this stupid bastard.

For the sake of one goddamn data extract that's worth at most five digit returns to the company per annum.
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Clean up what you said here, add lots of financial information about cost of time, of software procurement, of retraining, etc. Get it all ready, including an executive summary at the beginning of the document. Print it out on 20-lb paper.

Then when someone higher on the totem pole shows up or calls you in to discuss this, just open your file drawer, pull out the copy, and hand it to them.

Yes, this requires a little time on your part, but it will probably stop your SB in his tracks.
 
xterra said:
Clean up what you said here, add lots of financial information about cost of time, of software procurement, of retraining, etc. Get it all ready, including an executive summary at the beginning of the document. Print it out on 20-lb paper.

Then when someone higher on the totem pole shows up or calls you in to discuss this, just open your file drawer, pull out the copy, and hand it to them.

Yes, this requires a little time on your part, but it will probably stop your SB in his tracks.
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Meh, above my paygrade, this is executive crap. I'm resorting to the tradititional database report monkey approach: somebody else put it in the database, and then I can report it. Not my problem how it could possibly get into there. My CYA skills are only exceeded by my jobsworthing.
 
TragicMonkey said:
And now the stupid bastard thinks going over my head will make it happen. The current state is how the company chose to implement our system. It's a fundamental aspect of it. To change it wouldn't just be adding information to a database, it would mean hiring hundreds of staff and training them to do their jobs differently than the current staff does. They'd also need to have higher certifications and be paid more. This stupid bastard thinks he can talk to my boss because I'm being uncooperative about a line of SQL, when in actuality he's proposing a sea change in business operations that would affect thousands of employees and cost in the tens of millions of dollars to implement. It would also, needless to say, have to come from a lot higher up the totem pole than this stupid bastard.

For the sake of one goddamn data extract that's worth at most five digit returns to the company per annum.
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Sound like he's an idiot or on a power trip. Or both.
 
Blue Mountain said:
Sound like he's an idiot or on a power trip. Or both.
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He's actually a pretty nice guy, which makes it more frustrating because I don't want to drop the wolves on him or scream all the things I want to. He just doesn't get it, no matter how many times I explain it. He was actually delegated this project and doesn't want to be involved, but he's determined to wade in and do his best to manage things. But it doesn't need managing, this is a busywork thing that all the moving pieces just do to fill in time. Everybody else knows what we're doing and are doing it (although at 1/100th speed) and everything will be fine in the end if we're left to it. It won't be the perfect ideal the other parties wish they could get, but they're asking for the literally impossible. It will be good enough.
 
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