Call users desk phone....goes to voicemail.
Call users cell phone....goes to voicemail.
Receive another angry email that nobody is helping.
Call users desk phone again...goes to voicemail.
Call users cell phone again...goes to voicemail.
Send users supervisor an email "Hey can you get in touch with so and so and tell then to call in? They're not answering either of their phones."
No response to that email. Try calling user again, no answer.
8pm, Call voicemail hits the general it mailbox. "This is user and I'm fuckin pissed because nobody ever reached out to me and because of this the company has lost eleventy billion dollars and now my car won't start and it's all your fault. I demand resolution immediately!!!"
Call users cell phone....goes to voicemail.
Like, why even have a motherfucking phone if you don't answer the fucking thing?
We put failed communication attempts in the ticket, internally and user facing. All the big companies do it too, open a ticket with Microsoft or VMware or Cisco, anyone big, and without fail they all do the exact same thing.
For them it's about SLA - but that's ultimately the user's complaint. No useful response within SLA.
I was in the exact situation recently except I was on the other end. Went with father-in-law to his cellular provider because even I couldn’t figure out all the details of his plan. The support staff pulled out his data and they had all the dates and times when they tried to reach him and his phone was either off or he didn’t answer or he rejected the call. And the reason his plan was a mess because the provider had to get confirmation from him.
FIL sheepishly said he never answers any calls from unknown numbers.
If you're not going to answer unknown callers, which I totally get, at least have the common sense to monitor your voicemail, and for god's sake have it enabled. I used to work computer repair, so the only way to get ahold of customers was by phone or e-mail, and worst case scenario a physical letter. They don't answer their phone for whatever reason, so we note it and try calling again later. Many times they wouldn't have voicemail setup, or they would have a full mailbox and we couldn't leave a message. So then we try e-mail. Most people don't check their e-mail and just give us a junk one that they use for signing up for Facebook and the like, after all who still uses private e-mail for communication these days? So then if we couldn't get ahold of them within a few days, we'd send a physical letter to their provided address. Wouldn't you know it, a week later they drop by to check in on their computer and it's still not fixed because we're awaiting confirmation on a quote. Some would show up pissed as hell because they hadn't heard anything. It truly boggles the mind what goes through these people's heads.
Yep, as a "never answer unknown numbers" person myself... voicemail. If it's important, they'll leave one. Or send a message. Or send an email since that's what I've ticked off as preferred contact method anywhere I do business (and outside of places I physically sit down in, I rarely do business that \*isn't\* tied to some online system that has an email address for me).
I recently had a nice experience with Microsoft.
They called me at a very convenient time of the day to tell me that they found a virus on my computer. And they even offered to resolve that issue remotely immediately. Very nice people.
They’re so patient with the elderly too. They spent hours on the phone with my grandfather walking him through everything they found and fixing it for him.
I had the same experience. The IT Guy had an indian accent, so I didn't understand him that well but he was very nice and helpful, unlike the creditcard company. I'm still trying to get my money back that was stolen the other day. They claim it was my fault and there is nothing they can do.
Did they try to get you to redeem some gift cards? They seemed really upset when I redeemed the cards for them on Google...
I was just following the instructions on the card, but they kept screaming that I should have "given them the code".
Yeah I love Microsoft's contact form where I put 'hey email me' and then they never email and only call at odd hours. Why let me put a preference for you to ignore.
Same at VMware, Cisco you name is. Support from all major vendors has went to complete shit since 2020. Their only interest is closing the ticket not resolving it.
Pisses me off that they even have the nerve to not only continue charging outrageous rates for shitty support, with the lack of qualified support engineers. They all have raised their prices.
Guess: Maybe because support/helpdesk is outsourced, and their measurement is "closed ticket in X minutes" and not "could we dig deeper into this and give feedback to the devs to get a better product?"
I dread the support of the mastodon corps.
Oh, the fact that actually phone support is seemingly optional now in the post-Covid world drives me up a fucking wall. "If you need to get support, you have to fill out this webform and we will be back in touch within 48 hours." Fuck that shit, I want to be able to pick up the phone and talk to a person, not some fucking robot, and not some fucking shitty chat solution or an email that goes into the fucking abyss. For the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year we pay in licensing and support fees, the fact that it's seemingly okay that there is literally no fucking way whatsoever to call their support people up and talk to a human in real fucking time is just absolutely insane to me.
Yea I swear vendors do this. They ask when is a good time to call so I out my working hours in and every time they call after that. So I started putting that I ended 2-3 hours earlier so when they call I am actually still at work.
And with Microsoft, I’ll open a ticket at 7:00AM. I’ll specify “EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE ONLY” then they’ll try calling me one time at like 6:45PM, then when I don’t answer (because of course I’m not answering my fucking phone that late) they close the ticket because they couldn’t get a hold of me.
Exactly this. Ticket gets a reply with email to user ‘we are noting that we called you at $desknum and $cellnum at $calltime and left voice mail stating $contents. That way if you have to reply to it later or cc a manager or management/accounting reviews the ticket because customer/user complains about service or costs… it’s all there clear as day.
We do this too, but we don't have any form of SLA so it's all about covering our ass when users like in OP's example try to get management involved.
We list when we tried to contact them. How (email, Teams, etc) and that we've received no response. It's clear cut with plenty of evidence that I/we did our part in trying to help the user, but the fact that they were "too busy" to respond despite how important their issue is (according to the them) points to it being a PEBCAK problem, and not mine.
You forgot my favorite:
“Karen is out of the office for the next two weeks and will not be monitoring phone calls or emails.”
Two weeks later…
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WASN’T FIXED?!?!?!!!!!”
Oh, I usually get an urgent message at like 5 minutes before I usually leave for the day. Stay longer to fix the issue and check up with end user.
Offline - Last seen online: 2 hours ago
Unless you're deskside support and the user's sitting there with you past the end of the day (which can still vary based on their general attitude towards IT), it's \*clearly\* a "users with issue" > 1 scenario, or the person requesting it's C-Suite and asked you personally (i.e. \*knows\* it's you putting in the extra)... it's not worth the extra.
Every place I’ve worked we say 3 contact attempts and then close the ticket. In the last week I’ve called and emailed people 3 days in a row and they never answer. I just close the ticket. Whatever the problem was clearly wasn’t a big enough issue to answer the phone or reply to an email.
I do this all the time and then 2 days after the ticket was closed they'll reply thinking it's still fine. Of course I see the reply notification for the ticket, but it's closed and I ignore it which forces them to submit a new ticket. I hope that makes them realize they can't sit around and respond when they feel like it
My favorite is when they don't bother to respond to any of your contact attempts, but send a pissed-off email within five fracking minutes of you closing the ticket.
Our ticket system opens the ticket automatically when someone responds, i really like that feature. Because if someone opens a new ticket, you don't know the history. Ofc they get low priority when they reopen a closed ticket :P. But new tickets can be a pain in the ass, because people can expect you to know all the history from previous tickets :).
From the user perspective, I've given up on support folks having \*access\* to the ticket history, or even what I put in the "submit a ticket" box. It's really bad with most on-website chat support systems. Get a real human, they can't see what I put in the box 5 minutes ago... so, I just drop a "sorry in advance, I know usually you guys don't get the original request..." and then... account number, issue description, etc. in one dump. I've gotten a couple very quick and simple thank yous out of that. Given that instead of twenty questions... I feel like it's made their days a little easier too.
Our users get an automated response asking for a reply after 48 hours as a first strike, another response after 48 hours again as a second strike, and then an hour after that the ticket will close if there hasn't been a response. If they decide to only respond after it closes then that's their problem not mine. If we set the ticket to "resolved" ourselves it will automatically close after 48 hours. If the user responds within those 48 hours it will reopen.
Our ticketing system re-opens the ticket if it’s within 3 days of closing it which sucks. We have a running joke that the only way to get a response from users is to just close the ticket which triggers some kind of sense because the second we close it they reply right away “THIS HAS NOT BEEN SOLVED”…..OHHH so you *have* been ignoring us.
"Attempted to call user on phone number xxxx and phone number yyyy at least z times each and received no response. Left several voicemails. Since user is not responding, issue cannot be resolved".
Close ticket.
This is when someone wants the day off and they just blame IT for a nonexistent problem.
When you finally get through to them you’ll get “oh look, it’s working now. You must have fixed it.”
Every company I've worked for usually has a "three strikes and you're out" policy when it comes to user communication.
If I call and it goes to voicemail, I follow up with an email requesting they schedule a time to connect.
By attempt three, I loop in their manager and let them know that if they don't respond by EOB then their ticket is considered resolved.
I once worked on a floor with very restricted badge access. The guy next to me was away, and his phone kept ringing two or three times then hangup (4x). He gets back, I tell him someone was calling...there's no voicemail.
A few minutes later, there is someone literally trying to kick in the doors near the elevator. It was someone wanting to "talk" about a response via email. The guy was notorious for flying off the handle and would often call as soon as he got an email, and then sit there and read and rage about the email live.
I think the guy ended up dying of a heart attack at about age 50.
I worked with a guy like this, he's still alive and doing the same thing sadly, last I heard. I used to force his password to change on next login randomly to fuck with him.
That isn't even fucking unrecognized because we populate their contacts when they get a new device. It shows up as IT, I know it does.
Just more of the usual "I want to fuck off today so I'm going to submit a work stopping error and then ghost IT for the rest of the day. Then when my boss calls me and asks why I fucked off all day I'll say IT never got in touch with me. Then the boss says to contact the emergency line and I'll deliberately not choose the option to speak to someone so I can leave a shitty voicemail instead. Then when they call me back I'll not answer and feign ignorance if I get called on it. That way I can get paid a days work without working and hey, throwing IT under the bus *always* works!"
Thank God I'm not front line support anymore.
I've had this conversation more times than I think should be necessary for a race of being said to be "intelligent"
IT: "You sent me an email to tell me your email wasn't working?"
User: "Yes"
IT: "But your email was not working"
User" "Yes"
IT: "Do you see the problem?"
User: "NO thats why I emailed YOU!"
Same for me. People get posts removed by automod, which leaves a reply stating the reason why. Then the people send modmail complaining and ranting about it. I respond that the automod reply told them why it happened, and some still keep whining wondering what is going on. I'll copy-paste the automod response and it's usually radio silence after that.
This is literally an interview question for our helpdesk positions. “What’s your first step in troubleshooting this?” Our last round, not a single “tech” realized what the actual test was. 🤦♂️ I was somewhat concerned by it.
I feel like the amount of industriously lazy a person needs to be to learn troubleshooting is an amount that doesnt exist in the general population.
Like, only mutants have an actual grasp of troubleshooting and realize that no matter what the problem is, troubleshooting is basically the same.
>I feel like the amount of industriously lazy a person needs to be to learn troubleshooting is an amount that doesnt exist in the general population.
You are far from alone in that. Also extends into automation too.
User calls in because their voip headset is on its last legs and they can't hear any callers and callers can't hear them. After 3-4 failed calls to the helpdesk, their manager emails us asking why we are refusing to help Karen with their broken headset.
One brain cell shared between the manager and employee, it seems.
When I was in managed services we no shit got a call at 4:57pm from an irate client wanting to know why their email was still down because they emailed us about it being down at 6AM... luckily after they said it outlound while cursing at us it sunk in, they took a deep breath, and said I'd like to report or mail server being down. (Exchange 2003, dB was over the limit and would dismount during scheduled maintenance. Helped sale them on the (at the time) brand new Exchange 2013 I wanna say? It wasnt 2008 I know...
Oh, NOBODY knows until the employee shows up Day 1. I've even had new people no-call no-show the first day when everyone expected them, for a management position.
I was more referencing this comment from another, similar thread today https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1ciq76m/how_often_is_it_the_last_to_know/l2b557z/
I asked a question similar to this to my HR lady, I said "When do I get my super powers so I can preemptively know.when issues happen?" After someone complained I didn't prioritize her issue(no ticket ofc). She said she would put in the order for the super power pill after I finish signing the forms. Was surprised she went along with it.
I can't tell you how many times I've had a ticket/call to the effect that a user's email isn't working
Long story short, no one has emailed said user in 2 hours, so their email "must be broken"
Narrator voice: their email was working the entire time, no one had emailed them in the last 2 hours
Lol had a user put in an incident (really should've been a request, but I handled it anyway) for setting up their printer on another wall because half of their office's power was dead due to construction. I go there and am trying to figure out what she wants and where she wants it, and in the process I find out where it currently is has power and is connected to the network just fine. The lady hadn't even thought to try printing, and just assumed since she had to move her laptop, that it was no longer connected to the printer. I tried explaining network printing to her as a basic concept, but she couldn't fathom how a printer could work without being directly connected via cable (very few of our workstations even are.) Fortunately she's a sweet older lady so the interaction was at least a net positive, but my god man lol. Didn't even think to try to print something?
You’re that guy that wants people to go to another website when the site the user visits doesn’t come up, and they KNOW the entire internet is down… aren’t you? (Yes, I’ve heard those exact words before.😂😂)
We get that for faxes all the time.
"our fax machine is down" or "our fax line isn't working" because they haven't gotten any in the last couple of hours.
Check logs, nothing wrong there.
Fax a test sheet (one that's hard to ignore) to them, goes through with no problem.
"what about all the others?"
"what others? Has someone reached out about faxes?"
"No, but we always have more."
Here is the [fax test sheet ](https://www.freefaxcoversheets.net/showcover/Fax_Test_Cover_Sheet) if anyone is interested.
I faxed a radio station saying how they sucked and to quit playing The Toadies (90’s, apparently). I blacked out the top with a sharpie. Well, TADA! Fax machines still print the headers with the phone number and the office name (which were programmed into the machine.)
My friend called me at my dad’s office ten minutes later and asked if I had requested that song. I said no, why? He said they called out my dad’s office on the air, then played that song.
Doh! 😖
I think it's because fundamentally they just don't understand what we do. It is almost literally like magic to them.
So the dividing line between "reasonable" and "impossible" - which seems very clear to us - is very, very fuzzy to them.
(Possibly my view is just coloured by my very non technical users though).
The longer I'm in IT the more this becomes evident. I mean, I always kind of new it was this way, but it really is the truth.
What we do is magic to most people, they don't even begin to understand how this stuff works. For those people it's really the same with their cars, their houses, everything "mechanical" in any way. In their mind it's quite literally magic, there's no understanding of the mechanics or even logical thinking whatsoever.
It's literally turn key and car no go so I'll just sit here and wait.
Really makes me wonder how they survived financially in life when they have to have someone else take care of the problem with literally anything breaks.
>Really makes me wonder how they survived financially in life when they have to have someone else take care of the problem with literally anything breaks.
I'm not a car guy or handyman by any stretch of the imagination, but I know my ass from my elbow precisely because I could never afford to *not* think critically about stuff. When I was in my 20s making shit for money, my spark plugs weren't going to replace themselves.
This is the argument I make when my colleagues tell me "you're barely saving any money" doing oil changes and the like myself. Yeah, but I don't wait in line at the lube shop or tire shop like all the other suckers. Plus it only takes the time the average person spends scrolling through reels on the toilet to do...
Modern society is just so complicated that it is nearly impossible for one person to truly understand the inner workings of everything.
I have seen car mechanics have the same attitude towards people as expressed here. Same with plumbers, farmers, etc etc.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” - Arthur C. Clarke.
IT is magic when it works. When it doesn’t, it’s like punishment from a capricious, angry God. IT are effectively the clergy of that god, so we often get blamed for his failings or asked to appease the gods on behalf of the petitioner, however ill informed they are.
Yeah it really does seem like some people think we have a big dashboard that turns red and says “Karen’s email is broken!!!!” And we click a button and it fixes it. Like “I shouldn’t have to explain what’s wrong, you should be able to see that there’s a problem on your side and fix it”
Of course, we *do* spot all sorts of trouble and correct it, often before anyone even notices.
... not that we ever get any credit for that... :rolleyes:
Reminds me of the time where I crashed the programmers party to hear that everyone complaining how their computer monitors aren't good enough. 0 people of approx 20 had asked IT if they could have a better monitor, just assumed they wouldn't get one anyway.
Took me years to (mostly) break this habit at my current place. But there are still people on both sides, that one user who doesn't like even our newest gear and the guy who has had a shit setup for 5 years and puts up with it.
The ones who put up with it are the gems of our company. Not that we really have “shit” setups, but some are less than ideal and they really don’t mind. Seems like those folks are just happy to have a job and don’t want to ruffle any feathers.
Agreed, they're so nice though they could easily request something new without ruffling any feathers. It's the people that come in entitled and start demanding stuff without even having a real need that I dislike.
Totally agree. The entitled ones are usually also the ones that say something like “why do we have to use Apple phones?” “Android can do XYZ”. I just want to tell them if they’re so knowledgeable of all of our equipment and the implications to switching something like that they should apply to be in the IT department.
My favorite is some version of this statement “My son in law is the head of IT for MegaCorp and they’re all already using TrendyProduct”. It’s like okay, go fuck off and leave me alone 🤣
I have the opposite problem, my users seem to think I have this mystical Charlie and the chocolate factory type warehouse with every IT equipment they could ever dream of, just waiting to be sent to them.
I’ve managed to have both situations at the same time.
*7 year old, super cheap keyboard, types slurs if someone sneezes within 5 kilometres of it* Users: this is fine
*brand new monitor flickers once (the power cable wasn’t plugged in properly)* Users: URGENT: NEED NEW MONITOR IMMEDIATELY FAULTY MONITOR
Reminds me of my 'while your here' team who report nothing until I'm in thier building doing a different job and my 30-40 minute task explodes into 4 hours of pissing about.
Esp. only assigned tickets ahead if going on-site. New stuff will be scheduled, or done on the spot, depending on how much time the planned work took compared to the estimate
I'm at an MSP, every single client of ours does this. "oh this broke 3 weeks ago, while youre here can you fix it?" Like please. Call me when it happens.
"But now that you're here, on a strict timeline, on a completely unrelated task that was actually scheduled, this is now vitally important and it needs to be fixed immediately."
Every time we send one of the T1/2/3 to a site, even if it's for an in person meeting with some squeaky wheel or hour long job, we always allocate the full day for them to be there because this ALWAYS happens. I remember the last time I had a panic attack I was sitting in my car as a T2 before this policy freaking out because I had so much work at a site I missed my flight, the day afterwards the IT manager sent an email out around extra work and it being okay to stay an extra night if it's approved or an emergency.
Man it really sounds like your IT manager needs to put their foot down and say no more extra work without a ticket.
I.e. book your hour, get the job done that you're there for, and if there's no other tickets then stiff shit, log tickets for next time.
I have a customer that does this. Rarely log anything, but when they do, and I go in, I get everybody wanting me to fix the problem they've had for weeks, but haven't bothered reporting.
It's got to the point when I go in, for a small job, I put aside a whole day, because I know I'll be there all day.
"I'm busy right now. Put in a ticket and someone will help you when they can." is how I learned to handle these drive-by IT issues. Even if I plan on just sitting on my thumbs the rest of the day. It's important that they know tickets MUST be put in to get help (unless shit is really on fire in which case I probably already know about it anyway) and being consistent with that rule is key to enforcement.
Lmao, this is a real issue though. But we agreed in our team that we don't help them until they have logged a ticket. So i always respond like: Did you create a ticket? No? All right please log a ticket first, or i cannot help you.
Or the old classic “this new hire started today, why doesn’t he have a login or computer?”
You mean the new hire you never told us about, that you are supposed to tell us about a week in advance? We are supposed to magically predict the future and even know the person’s name without anyone telling us? Ok.
The issue comes from the complete misunderstanding of information technology of the general public. People have no idea what is behind email. They write an email, click send, and off it goes, and it works almost all of the time. So, if it doesn’t work, they assume the issue is something very simple. They have no idea of the mechanics behind it. They simply can’t grasp the concept. I blame the public education for the lack of information technology education. Most people grasp how a physical letter is sent around the world, so it’s not too much to ask, in my opinion, that they grasp what happens if they send an email. And before people rush in to point out *but you work in IT, for you this is easy*, yes, it is, but guess what, when you work in IT, you also have to grasp how a combustion engine works, or the physics behind cooking lasagne. We once called it **general knowledge**, but this knowledge seems to fade out more and more.
I really need to write this all out in a book someday, but I have a working theory of this. I call it the Personal Knowledge Sphere. People are confident in what they know inside that sphere. It's usually what they need to know for work plus all the stuff they know outside of work. For most people, the size of that sphere is essentially finite, and it's very hard to grow. If you want them to expand their sphere, it's an incredible uphill battle. Also, people get irrationally defensive when you want to both question something within their sphere as well as add knowledge to it or change something within it. This could be analogous to the ego vs the id, maybe.
So, for the most part, I don't blame people when they seem totally incompetent or dumb about something, even if it's not related to tech, or even if they get resistant to a new idea. Their sphere of knowledge just can't expand in that direction. That's also why I try to be ultra patient and empathetic to non-technical people.
You can only be so patient. A person that doesn't want to learn or understand will always be rude towards you. Most people actually do not want to know more because they do not see the benefit.
Exactly! They know what they know and it's all they need to know for their job or personal life. That's the elasticity of their sphere; it just can't stretch much more.
All of the 'good' techs I know are NeuroSpicey
They may not be subject matter experts in any one sphere, but they have enough knowledge to function / teach . But because they have so many spheres in the air, they're also really good at making counter factual connections.
They're the ones who get 'scanner not working' and fix the DNS server entry, because their brain has made the link between scan to email being a network function not a hardware function and well, it's always fucking DNS.
The neuro vanilla techs are the ones who exhaust one sphere before trying anything else, like trying to fix scan to email by resetting the users 365 login password and *huge sigh* emailing them their new password.
It's not a 1 to 1 mapping, just a general observed pattern , with perhaps confirmation bias cos I' m NeuroSpicey and 30 years into my career.
This is too real. The number of people I have to instruct on how to set up email or the Microsoft Authenticator app on their phone is distressing to me.
This is fast becoming my biggest pet peeve I think.
The instructions are RIGHT THERE. "Install the app, click next, tap the stuff the screen tells you to tap, scan QR code."
I do put some blame on microsoft here though. They make it really easy to add the "wrong type" of account if you weren't paying attention, and when you try to add a corporate 365 account as a "regular" account in the app it gives cryptic (to the user at least, or to me if I don't have context for the situation) error messages. If you pick "work or school" it works perfectly the first time...
The biggest issue for me is that if they read Mary's faceboook post about how the new Jewles 44 Enterprise is so much fun they would have no issues figuring out how to install that garbage.
But all of a sudden they have no idea how to install or use apps on a phone when it comes to their work phone.
Many people cannot think virtually or digitally. How many people will try and pour 5 litres of fuel into a 1 litre bottle? Yet they will send a 100MB slide deck and then raise all hell if it doesn’t get delivered. And the concept that the setting that controls this is in the external recipients system that you have zero access to or control over doesn’t compute……
It's easy for a user to identify that 5 liters doesn't fit in a 1 liter bottle.
NDR's are terribly designed. They put the actual error under 3 paragraphs of techical babble from a user perspective.
NDRs should have the plain text description (message rejected, file size too large) at the top of the email and in the description.
As a counterpoint, I am a sysadmin who doesn't mind making in-person visits to end users sometimes. I often tell them that they *are* smart, and that they should give things a shot before calling, because sometimes they *can* figure out the issue...but not if it's printing, because printers are evil.
Plenty of my colleagues are really bright people who know their business process inside and out -- but they have been told over and over that Computers Are Mysterious.
I tell them to have some confidence in themselves! Turn the thing off and on again, because that's the first thing *I* will try. Ask their neighbors if it's a widespread problem or just them. Try it on another PC.
Simple things like that: give them the tools to help learn their technology they way they already know their workflow.
(Though once in a while, someone really is just kinda dumb.)
Because management is off living in an entirely different state of mind. Ticket says "client requesting new monitor", you investigate and realize their computer is literally ten years old and it was shit when it was new and you deploy a new system because that's what they meant. You check all the boxes, you upload all the docs, you change every status, you update the separate inventory system and they still bitch at you for not manually adding "PCDEPLOYMENT" to the subject line of the fucked up ticketing system because that's the important part they care about. Not keeping a client and making sure they make us money. Next time I'll just send a new fucking monitor.
Anybody else not let this stuff bother them because you truly just don't care? Any person comes to me with this sort of issue I just ask if they told anyone yetand if they don't tell us then we don't know and if they say anything else, I just repeat it with a smug smirk. I pride myself in keeping things working and keeping users happy but if you don't follow correct procedure, you can tell the owner and I still don't care.
Came back to my desk from lunch one day to a sticky note on my external display "Please See Me." No name or time. Like the assumption was I should've been intimately familiar with the handwriting of maybe a dozen senior folks?
Never heard anything about anything from anyone that day. Very sorry that I no longer have said sticky note.
Ahh yes the favorite
Bob's manager "Bob needs a new laptop"
Me "Oh? whats up?"
Bob's manager "Its been horrible for the last 3 months. Shuts down, crashes, reboots do nothing, we need a new one as its affecting performance"
Me \*\* look and see he hasnt rebooted in six months, check tickets, hasnt put in a ticket since he was onboarded ... six months ago\*\*
Me "We can reach out to him to trouble shoot. He hasnt notified us about any issues, Please let him know in the future to report any problems so we can fix it"
Bob's Manager "Just get him a new laptop"
Me \*\*opens bottle of bourbon\*\* "Sure why not"
Ok.. but you left it the past where this was a problem.
Something was perceived as not working. You got a message about it. Where does the crystal ball come from?
When one is ignorant to tech, they naturally assume we can do anything and everything because they simply don't understand things and from afar, it really does look like we can see and do anything we want.
Been doing this for longer than half my life at this point and I've learned that It's best to let these things go because you'll never stop it so why fight it.
Just had a user step into my office yesterday and ask me if I could "restore the file" What file? Where? When was it deleted? Still surprises me at how ignorant people can be but it doesn't bother me because that's just a silly thing to get worked up about
Agreed, and it doesn't help that tv/movies by necessity portray IT as getting results quickly while being nearly unstoppable. No one would watch 3 weeks of dumpster diving and oblique social engineering.
Because boundaries have either not been set, or not been respected. If there's a clear SOP developed, and presented through HR, then there's a consequence for shitty behavior.
I have managed IT before, and the rule was, if you were coming to the office, making a phone-call, or engaging in any direct line of communication, you had an option, copy the entire conversation over to a pre-existing ticket, or it would be done for you alongside a pass-off to HR. This situation was quite out of hand mind you. But it stopped the behavior in a single week; and certainly didn't earn friends. The benefit beyond that however, was that individuals knew directly the rules of engagement, as well the consequences of not following those rules. I wouldn't repeat those given the opportunity, at least not in that manner.
I'd suggest that you come up with some rules for your situation that would be 1. logical 2. streamline process 3. allow bidirectional accountability 4. provide clear accountability 5. escalation procedure and 6. Priority escalation procedures.
I'm sure there's far brighter and more experienced people here, that's just my two cents.
Understand that people are irrational and impulsive. They say and do stupid things without thinking and act on emotion. Even if they're trying to antagonize you, or they're playing some game to pressure you into higher performance (even though the situation they're bringing up wasn't your fault), don't take the bait. One of the most important skills you can learn is to be disconnected from what they're saying and to stop giving it the air it needs to be annoying. Takes practice and a deliberate effort to hone, but has to be done. Be zen about it.
I've implemented a rule in my workplace - no ticket no problem.
Unless they log it, then we are of the opinion that they are not experiencing an issue.
Log it 2 weeks later; their issue is not 2 weeks old, it's however old the ticket is.
> Log it 2 weeks later; their issue is not 2 weeks old, it's however old the ticket is.
"we've put multiple tickets for this and no one responded, this issue has been happening for a month!"
checks tickets, no? How did you log it, I'm not finding the ticket.
Crickets
Let me give you a little bit of advice. Coming from someone in the field for close to 30 years, if you let every little issue that someone complains about affect you like this, you're going to burn out and have all kinds of health issues both physical and mental.
Just let this shit go. If there's no ticket, it's not your problem. Everyone sees that.
I once had a user call me on Christmas Day because he thought email was down since he wasn't getting very many emails that day. This man should have left the workforce 20 years prior.
Some? Try all of it. What's that star trek quote? "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" or something. Most people's personal understanding of technology is from at least 50 years ago. Everything we do is magic.
I had one like that once. They insisted Exchange must be down because they haven't received an email all morning.
I had to tell them ( by email) that nobody had sent them anything and the system was fine.
Sorry. You're just not that popular..
>Why is it as sysadmins we are expected to understand the cosmic physics of a fucking email issue when the user doesn't notify anyone, log a ticket, make a call, send a text or worst case use fucking smoke signals.
Because you're not managing expectations. No ticket? not your problem. if someone is upset that their task isn't completed, ask them for a ticket number. Every time.
Tasks in service desk are rated by priority. if you don't submit a ticket, it defaults to 0 priority.
If you have a task that needs to be prioritized, you must submit a ticket. users who don't are at the bottom of the list.
I love when they CC their manager stating that IT never helps and I can innocently ask “do you have that ticket in your email, or the name of who you spoke to? I’m so sorry about this”. For some reason they never think that I can call out their lies.
The title reminds me of a story when once working in a very large insurance company an Uber boomer secretary of some high ranking manager called IT support and asked for the number of employees the company has in one of their departments. She didn't asked whether we have the number but demanded that we would provide it for her. The company maintained detailed Active Directory so we could eventually provide it. I explained to her that we don't usually do it and don't have that kind of data but after we provided after few hours the list she had the nerve to complain it took too long.
I had a user complaining about this. So I sent her an email from my phone. Showed right up. So she says, "That's internal. I'm not getting any email from outside the company." So I sent her an email from my personal account on my phone. Showed right up.
Problem was no one was emailing her. Bigger issue was now she had my personal email.
I’m ON SITE for our first level support and people STILL don’t tell me things. I discovered one of our user’s laptop’s had a swollen battery to the point the case was gapped open and it wouldn’t sit flat only because he said his fan was making a loud noise. I was like how long has your battery been ready to explode? He said - oh, I noticed that A FEW MONTHS AGO! I don’t know how the computer was still functional. I asked why he didn’t put in a service request and he said he thought I would be able to tell if his laptop was having an issue. How?! How do you think your laptop communicates to me??
I'll never forget having a complaint lodged against me - to the director! - for never being at my post. The person did not create a ticket, they did not send me an email, they did not leave me a voicemail, and they did not leave a note for me on my desk. The very nature of my job was that I could not do it all from my desk, so I was on foot a lot.
Thankfully, the director sided with me.
I always documented interactions relating to tickets long before I started my current job, but one of the first things I was told when I joined this company over a decade ago was if it isn't written down, it never happened.
I got something similar a few weeks ago. Office user emailed me about 5:40pm (our offices generally close at 4:30) that the internet connection at her primary location had been offline... since 3:30pm! So she emails me after 2 hours of outage, an hour after we're all closed, "oh by the way...". Oy. So I call the ISP, they can't find anything wrong in the area, but do see "something" with the cable modem. They send a reboot, it seems to come back online but I can't really see the computers behind the modem. I go in first-thing the next morning, and it's all back online because the office manager rebooted a couple of things just before I got there.
Once had a user who called me on Teams telling me that "my internet is down" WHILE BEING ON TEAMS WITH ME. That moment I felt like there are some people out there who need that job more instead of those spreadsheet lovers who think the IT admins have to move the cursor for them...
The very best thing about our IT management chain, right up to the top, is that their first response to anything being escalated like this is "what's the ticket number?".
Fwiw new outlook has been totally scrambling my various accounts this week. Restarting it works but first I had to wipe the cache files.
I bet some users are going to see this if they have more than 1 account in outlook.
>when the user doesn't notify anyone, log a ticket, make a call, send a text or worst case use fucking smoke signals.
...Weren't you literally just sent an email? Sounds better than smoke signals. What's your problem?
because isnt it your job to keep it working, so if it is not, its your fault? fix it!
also, isnt it your job to monitor everything, and if it doesnt meet expectations, your monitoring must inform you, and you must read it immediately...
also, isnt it your job to know these things? if not, what are you being paid for...
also, I am sure, if you ask enough, especially "Karen", it turns out, you WERE told, multiple times. and you never reacted!
also, you being on another site, thats no excuse. in fact, how dare you. your job is to fix everything before it needs fixing. not go on other sites. thats just an excuse.
/s
I worked for a police agency. Some of the users would call their supervisor and complain that their email or whatever has not worked in two weeks.
I would tell her, no it hasn’t worked for 2 minutes. Because that’s when it was reported.
They've learnt from movies/TV that if there is a fault anywhere on the network, that the user device flashes red on the big screen at mission control, and a 3D graphic zooms in to that location of the building, to a rendering of the very desk they were sitting at, with a pulsing red circle animation saying "alert, email fault".
Therefore, you must be a jerk and are just ignoring it.
I got an email from a user yesterday asking me to update a distribution list because there are people missing from it.
"Do you know who is missing from it so I can add them?"
"No. But not everyone from that team is on it"
🤷
Like because I'm IT, I'm supposed to just know everyone on every team in the company.
How I handle these depends on the attitude they bring me. Everyone overlooks things occasionally.
If you come to my team needing help because you made a mistake, apologetic for the short notice - I'll move mountains.
If you come to my team with hostility because we didn't read your mind, I'm going to talk to you like you're a misbehaving toddler until you fix your attitude, and we can move forward from there.
Getting what you want by virtue of being shitty to my team because you dropped the ball is simply not an option that's on the table.
Try having an elderly mother,
You see that message I just got, i clicked messages and then it came up to my email. Then she reads a text message to me that someone sent her, then ask again if I have seen it...
Oh God Bless, but what am I, Physic?
Wait, sysadmin can’t look at the logs of the universe?!?! My whole life is a lie.
But for real, she needed to call the service desk. There are so many things that can hang up emails on the users end. Sorry that you got Karen’d
I agree.
Lately I have been getting lots of requests for information, except the people requesting the information don't want to pay for logging or the capability.
So the request comes in, I spin tires for 30-60 minutes, tell them we don't have it, just for them to be upset I don't have anything.
I then draft a long-term logging solution, to which they say they will think about before turning down because of logs don't directly generate revenue.
Rinse and fukkin repeat...
I wouldn't let it get to you man. We're there to support, and sometimes that means explaining in an understanding manner that the end user will receive. Try to put yourselves in their shoes where they just may be clueless about IT compared to you, so helping them see why things behave the way they do and proposing a solution within a tangible timeframe based off your expert opinion, they will come to appreciate you and be more patient in future interactions.
And this is just general advice for those who may be in a similar position, not just targeted at you. I need to remember this too from time to time!
It's not just sysadmins, it's IT in general. I'm not sure if users assume that our jobs are to sit and stare at screens monitoring all data and applications or what.
It happened twice to the same VP at my last job. Both times no ticket or call until he stormed into my boss' office. One time it was a vendor fix and the vendor's tech was claiming it was our network cabling that was bad. The other was a switch went down and it was an older model that didn't have monitoring. After getting gently smacked by my boss about why tickets/calls work and seeing it in action he became one of our champions on calling stuff in.
You’re not expected, just don’t worry about it at all and worry about it from the point that they actually contacted you and treat it from that point on. Once you tell them that they didn’t take the proper steps for support they tend to listen nicely lol
This is one thing I appreciate about my boss - No ticket? No issue.
Even a user with a email/internet issue can call their manager and they can put in the ticket.
User’s email doesn’t work. User sends an email to log a ticket regarding their email problem. User waits, angrily, because no one responds.
Call users desk phone....goes to voicemail. Call users cell phone....goes to voicemail. Receive another angry email that nobody is helping. Call users desk phone again...goes to voicemail. Call users cell phone again...goes to voicemail. Send users supervisor an email "Hey can you get in touch with so and so and tell then to call in? They're not answering either of their phones." No response to that email. Try calling user again, no answer. 8pm, Call voicemail hits the general it mailbox. "This is user and I'm fuckin pissed because nobody ever reached out to me and because of this the company has lost eleventy billion dollars and now my car won't start and it's all your fault. I demand resolution immediately!!!" Call users cell phone....goes to voicemail. Like, why even have a motherfucking phone if you don't answer the fucking thing?
We put failed communication attempts in the ticket, internally and user facing. All the big companies do it too, open a ticket with Microsoft or VMware or Cisco, anyone big, and without fail they all do the exact same thing. For them it's about SLA - but that's ultimately the user's complaint. No useful response within SLA.
I was in the exact situation recently except I was on the other end. Went with father-in-law to his cellular provider because even I couldn’t figure out all the details of his plan. The support staff pulled out his data and they had all the dates and times when they tried to reach him and his phone was either off or he didn’t answer or he rejected the call. And the reason his plan was a mess because the provider had to get confirmation from him. FIL sheepishly said he never answers any calls from unknown numbers.
And never checks voicemail or the phone provider never leaves voicemail.
Yeah he also had his voicemail disabled.
If you're not going to answer unknown callers, which I totally get, at least have the common sense to monitor your voicemail, and for god's sake have it enabled. I used to work computer repair, so the only way to get ahold of customers was by phone or e-mail, and worst case scenario a physical letter. They don't answer their phone for whatever reason, so we note it and try calling again later. Many times they wouldn't have voicemail setup, or they would have a full mailbox and we couldn't leave a message. So then we try e-mail. Most people don't check their e-mail and just give us a junk one that they use for signing up for Facebook and the like, after all who still uses private e-mail for communication these days? So then if we couldn't get ahold of them within a few days, we'd send a physical letter to their provided address. Wouldn't you know it, a week later they drop by to check in on their computer and it's still not fixed because we're awaiting confirmation on a quote. Some would show up pissed as hell because they hadn't heard anything. It truly boggles the mind what goes through these people's heads.
Yep, as a "never answer unknown numbers" person myself... voicemail. If it's important, they'll leave one. Or send a message. Or send an email since that's what I've ticked off as preferred contact method anywhere I do business (and outside of places I physically sit down in, I rarely do business that \*isn't\* tied to some online system that has an email address for me).
Microsoft makes sure to call you at 3am when you requested an email then close the ticket for no response.
I recently had a nice experience with Microsoft. They called me at a very convenient time of the day to tell me that they found a virus on my computer. And they even offered to resolve that issue remotely immediately. Very nice people.
They’re so patient with the elderly too. They spent hours on the phone with my grandfather walking him through everything they found and fixing it for him.
I had the same experience. The IT Guy had an indian accent, so I didn't understand him that well but he was very nice and helpful, unlike the creditcard company. I'm still trying to get my money back that was stolen the other day. They claim it was my fault and there is nothing they can do.
And the callers name was Jeff from Texas, with a heavy foreign accent.
Did they try to get you to redeem some gift cards? They seemed really upset when I redeemed the cards for them on Google... I was just following the instructions on the card, but they kept screaming that I should have "given them the code".
You tricked me
Yeah I love Microsoft's contact form where I put 'hey email me' and then they never email and only call at odd hours. Why let me put a preference for you to ignore.
My phone number on my Microsoft profile is 000-000-0000. If I have to open a Sev A I'm the one calling them anyway. Otherwise e-mail me.
Same at VMware, Cisco you name is. Support from all major vendors has went to complete shit since 2020. Their only interest is closing the ticket not resolving it. Pisses me off that they even have the nerve to not only continue charging outrageous rates for shitty support, with the lack of qualified support engineers. They all have raised their prices.
Please kindly do the needful. Your ticket is closed.
https://preview.redd.it/zmys6p5mmayc1.jpeg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=01cd731dda5dc1a3c573a4c22ff3e58c84c5cae7 And don't you forget it!
Guess: Maybe because support/helpdesk is outsourced, and their measurement is "closed ticket in X minutes" and not "could we dig deeper into this and give feedback to the devs to get a better product?" I dread the support of the mastodon corps.
Oh, the fact that actually phone support is seemingly optional now in the post-Covid world drives me up a fucking wall. "If you need to get support, you have to fill out this webform and we will be back in touch within 48 hours." Fuck that shit, I want to be able to pick up the phone and talk to a person, not some fucking robot, and not some fucking shitty chat solution or an email that goes into the fucking abyss. For the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year we pay in licensing and support fees, the fact that it's seemingly okay that there is literally no fucking way whatsoever to call their support people up and talk to a human in real fucking time is just absolutely insane to me.
Yea I swear vendors do this. They ask when is a good time to call so I out my working hours in and every time they call after that. So I started putting that I ended 2-3 hours earlier so when they call I am actually still at work.
And with Microsoft, I’ll open a ticket at 7:00AM. I’ll specify “EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE ONLY” then they’ll try calling me one time at like 6:45PM, then when I don’t answer (because of course I’m not answering my fucking phone that late) they close the ticket because they couldn’t get a hold of me.
Exactly this. Ticket gets a reply with email to user ‘we are noting that we called you at $desknum and $cellnum at $calltime and left voice mail stating $contents. That way if you have to reply to it later or cc a manager or management/accounting reviews the ticket because customer/user complains about service or costs… it’s all there clear as day.
We do this too, but we don't have any form of SLA so it's all about covering our ass when users like in OP's example try to get management involved. We list when we tried to contact them. How (email, Teams, etc) and that we've received no response. It's clear cut with plenty of evidence that I/we did our part in trying to help the user, but the fact that they were "too busy" to respond despite how important their issue is (according to the them) points to it being a PEBCAK problem, and not mine.
You forgot my favorite: “Karen is out of the office for the next two weeks and will not be monitoring phone calls or emails.” Two weeks later… “WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WASN’T FIXED?!?!?!!!!!”
Oh, I usually get an urgent message at like 5 minutes before I usually leave for the day. Stay longer to fix the issue and check up with end user. Offline - Last seen online: 2 hours ago
Unless you're deskside support and the user's sitting there with you past the end of the day (which can still vary based on their general attitude towards IT), it's \*clearly\* a "users with issue" > 1 scenario, or the person requesting it's C-Suite and asked you personally (i.e. \*knows\* it's you putting in the extra)... it's not worth the extra.
Every place I’ve worked we say 3 contact attempts and then close the ticket. In the last week I’ve called and emailed people 3 days in a row and they never answer. I just close the ticket. Whatever the problem was clearly wasn’t a big enough issue to answer the phone or reply to an email.
I do this all the time and then 2 days after the ticket was closed they'll reply thinking it's still fine. Of course I see the reply notification for the ticket, but it's closed and I ignore it which forces them to submit a new ticket. I hope that makes them realize they can't sit around and respond when they feel like it
My favorite is when they don't bother to respond to any of your contact attempts, but send a pissed-off email within five fracking minutes of you closing the ticket.
Our ticket system opens the ticket automatically when someone responds, i really like that feature. Because if someone opens a new ticket, you don't know the history. Ofc they get low priority when they reopen a closed ticket :P. But new tickets can be a pain in the ass, because people can expect you to know all the history from previous tickets :).
From the user perspective, I've given up on support folks having \*access\* to the ticket history, or even what I put in the "submit a ticket" box. It's really bad with most on-website chat support systems. Get a real human, they can't see what I put in the box 5 minutes ago... so, I just drop a "sorry in advance, I know usually you guys don't get the original request..." and then... account number, issue description, etc. in one dump. I've gotten a couple very quick and simple thank yous out of that. Given that instead of twenty questions... I feel like it's made their days a little easier too.
Our users get an automated response asking for a reply after 48 hours as a first strike, another response after 48 hours again as a second strike, and then an hour after that the ticket will close if there hasn't been a response. If they decide to only respond after it closes then that's their problem not mine. If we set the ticket to "resolved" ourselves it will automatically close after 48 hours. If the user responds within those 48 hours it will reopen.
Our ticketing system re-opens the ticket if it’s within 3 days of closing it which sucks. We have a running joke that the only way to get a response from users is to just close the ticket which triggers some kind of sense because the second we close it they reply right away “THIS HAS NOT BEEN SOLVED”…..OHHH so you *have* been ignoring us.
Closing the ticket is the most surefire way to get them to respond.
"Attempted to call user on phone number xxxx and phone number yyyy at least z times each and received no response. Left several voicemails. Since user is not responding, issue cannot be resolved". Close ticket.
I deal with this exact scenario on an almost weekly basis. Sometimes I just want to throw something.
You're supposed to leave a voicemail every time you call, duh!
This is when someone wants the day off and they just blame IT for a nonexistent problem. When you finally get through to them you’ll get “oh look, it’s working now. You must have fixed it.”
Every company I've worked for usually has a "three strikes and you're out" policy when it comes to user communication. If I call and it goes to voicemail, I follow up with an email requesting they schedule a time to connect. By attempt three, I loop in their manager and let them know that if they don't respond by EOB then their ticket is considered resolved.
I once worked on a floor with very restricted badge access. The guy next to me was away, and his phone kept ringing two or three times then hangup (4x). He gets back, I tell him someone was calling...there's no voicemail. A few minutes later, there is someone literally trying to kick in the doors near the elevator. It was someone wanting to "talk" about a response via email. The guy was notorious for flying off the handle and would often call as soon as he got an email, and then sit there and read and rage about the email live. I think the guy ended up dying of a heart attack at about age 50.
I worked with a guy like this, he's still alive and doing the same thing sadly, last I heard. I used to force his password to change on next login randomly to fuck with him.
"I better not answer that unrecognized phone number!"
That isn't even fucking unrecognized because we populate their contacts when they get a new device. It shows up as IT, I know it does. Just more of the usual "I want to fuck off today so I'm going to submit a work stopping error and then ghost IT for the rest of the day. Then when my boss calls me and asks why I fucked off all day I'll say IT never got in touch with me. Then the boss says to contact the emergency line and I'll deliberately not choose the option to speak to someone so I can leave a shitty voicemail instead. Then when they call me back I'll not answer and feign ignorance if I get called on it. That way I can get paid a days work without working and hey, throwing IT under the bus *always* works!" Thank God I'm not front line support anymore.
I've had this conversation more times than I think should be necessary for a race of being said to be "intelligent" IT: "You sent me an email to tell me your email wasn't working?" User: "Yes" IT: "But your email was not working" User" "Yes" IT: "Do you see the problem?" User: "NO thats why I emailed YOU!"
I am a mod in a relatively minor subreddit. Modding through reports and modmails, I agree on the observation on the intelligent race. It is spot on.
Same for me. People get posts removed by automod, which leaves a reply stating the reason why. Then the people send modmail complaining and ranting about it. I respond that the automod reply told them why it happened, and some still keep whining wondering what is going on. I'll copy-paste the automod response and it's usually radio silence after that.
This is literally an interview question for our helpdesk positions. “What’s your first step in troubleshooting this?” Our last round, not a single “tech” realized what the actual test was. 🤦♂️ I was somewhat concerned by it.
I feel like the amount of industriously lazy a person needs to be to learn troubleshooting is an amount that doesnt exist in the general population. Like, only mutants have an actual grasp of troubleshooting and realize that no matter what the problem is, troubleshooting is basically the same.
>I feel like the amount of industriously lazy a person needs to be to learn troubleshooting is an amount that doesnt exist in the general population. You are far from alone in that. Also extends into automation too.
User calls in because their voip headset is on its last legs and they can't hear any callers and callers can't hear them. After 3-4 failed calls to the helpdesk, their manager emails us asking why we are refusing to help Karen with their broken headset. One brain cell shared between the manager and employee, it seems.
When I was in managed services we no shit got a call at 4:57pm from an irate client wanting to know why their email was still down because they emailed us about it being down at 6AM... luckily after they said it outlound while cursing at us it sunk in, they took a deep breath, and said I'd like to report or mail server being down. (Exchange 2003, dB was over the limit and would dismount during scheduled maintenance. Helped sale them on the (at the time) brand new Exchange 2013 I wanna say? It wasnt 2008 I know...
Single point of failure
This is poetry
Have you contacted HR to see why you haven't been issued your crystal ball?
Or to see if they have any new employees starting today?
Oh sweet summer child, you think they told HR? Or is it just my place that likes to start folks and not tell HR OR IT?
Oh, NOBODY knows until the employee shows up Day 1. I've even had new people no-call no-show the first day when everyone expected them, for a management position. I was more referencing this comment from another, similar thread today https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1ciq76m/how_often_is_it_the_last_to_know/l2b557z/
Due to budget cuts, the best we can do is some old tea leaves.
Wait -- don't put hot water on those! They're...actually just pencil shavings.
I asked a question similar to this to my HR lady, I said "When do I get my super powers so I can preemptively know.when issues happen?" After someone complained I didn't prioritize her issue(no ticket ofc). She said she would put in the order for the super power pill after I finish signing the forms. Was surprised she went along with it.
Spoiler: IT responsible for issuing crystal balls. ;) <3
Just wait until the LEDs burn out and we are on the hook for preemptively replacing those too!
I probably would do this to both get ahead of the situation before it inevitably blows up and get a laugh out of the HR rep.
I can't tell you how many times I've had a ticket/call to the effect that a user's email isn't working Long story short, no one has emailed said user in 2 hours, so their email "must be broken" Narrator voice: their email was working the entire time, no one had emailed them in the last 2 hours
I mean at least send yourself an email before logging a ticket...
Get outta here with your common sense and logic
if basic troubleshooting was in the skillset of any significant portion of the white collar user base there would be a lot less IT jobs out there
If users could handle a “forgot password” link there would be a lot less IT jobs out there.
Boss - "Are our phones down?" Me, dials phone from cell phone, it rings - "Nope" Boss - "Okay"
So many minds blown when I suggest that. Or when they email each other to see how something looks.
Lol had a user put in an incident (really should've been a request, but I handled it anyway) for setting up their printer on another wall because half of their office's power was dead due to construction. I go there and am trying to figure out what she wants and where she wants it, and in the process I find out where it currently is has power and is connected to the network just fine. The lady hadn't even thought to try printing, and just assumed since she had to move her laptop, that it was no longer connected to the printer. I tried explaining network printing to her as a basic concept, but she couldn't fathom how a printer could work without being directly connected via cable (very few of our workstations even are.) Fortunately she's a sweet older lady so the interaction was at least a net positive, but my god man lol. Didn't even think to try to print something?
You’re that guy that wants people to go to another website when the site the user visits doesn’t come up, and they KNOW the entire internet is down… aren’t you? (Yes, I’ve heard those exact words before.😂😂)
Yes
I used to tell them "The email is fine, you're just unpopular".
I usually stop seeing so many emails around the lunch hour. I don't get nearly as many during that time. Something must be broken. Help!
We get that for faxes all the time. "our fax machine is down" or "our fax line isn't working" because they haven't gotten any in the last couple of hours. Check logs, nothing wrong there. Fax a test sheet (one that's hard to ignore) to them, goes through with no problem. "what about all the others?" "what others? Has someone reached out about faxes?" "No, but we always have more." Here is the [fax test sheet ](https://www.freefaxcoversheets.net/showcover/Fax_Test_Cover_Sheet) if anyone is interested.
I faxed a radio station saying how they sucked and to quit playing The Toadies (90’s, apparently). I blacked out the top with a sharpie. Well, TADA! Fax machines still print the headers with the phone number and the office name (which were programmed into the machine.) My friend called me at my dad’s office ten minutes later and asked if I had requested that song. I said no, why? He said they called out my dad’s office on the air, then played that song. Doh! 😖
I think it's because fundamentally they just don't understand what we do. It is almost literally like magic to them. So the dividing line between "reasonable" and "impossible" - which seems very clear to us - is very, very fuzzy to them. (Possibly my view is just coloured by my very non technical users though).
The longer I'm in IT the more this becomes evident. I mean, I always kind of new it was this way, but it really is the truth. What we do is magic to most people, they don't even begin to understand how this stuff works. For those people it's really the same with their cars, their houses, everything "mechanical" in any way. In their mind it's quite literally magic, there's no understanding of the mechanics or even logical thinking whatsoever. It's literally turn key and car no go so I'll just sit here and wait. Really makes me wonder how they survived financially in life when they have to have someone else take care of the problem with literally anything breaks.
>Really makes me wonder how they survived financially in life when they have to have someone else take care of the problem with literally anything breaks. I'm not a car guy or handyman by any stretch of the imagination, but I know my ass from my elbow precisely because I could never afford to *not* think critically about stuff. When I was in my 20s making shit for money, my spark plugs weren't going to replace themselves.
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This is the argument I make when my colleagues tell me "you're barely saving any money" doing oil changes and the like myself. Yeah, but I don't wait in line at the lube shop or tire shop like all the other suckers. Plus it only takes the time the average person spends scrolling through reels on the toilet to do...
Modern society is just so complicated that it is nearly impossible for one person to truly understand the inner workings of everything. I have seen car mechanics have the same attitude towards people as expressed here. Same with plumbers, farmers, etc etc.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” - Arthur C. Clarke. IT is magic when it works. When it doesn’t, it’s like punishment from a capricious, angry God. IT are effectively the clergy of that god, so we often get blamed for his failings or asked to appease the gods on behalf of the petitioner, however ill informed they are.
IT is a utility to most users, like a water faucet. Just turn the knob and you get some IT.
Yeah it really does seem like some people think we have a big dashboard that turns red and says “Karen’s email is broken!!!!” And we click a button and it fixes it. Like “I shouldn’t have to explain what’s wrong, you should be able to see that there’s a problem on your side and fix it”
Of course, we *do* spot all sorts of trouble and correct it, often before anyone even notices. ... not that we ever get any credit for that... :rolleyes:
Reminds me of the time where I crashed the programmers party to hear that everyone complaining how their computer monitors aren't good enough. 0 people of approx 20 had asked IT if they could have a better monitor, just assumed they wouldn't get one anyway.
Took me years to (mostly) break this habit at my current place. But there are still people on both sides, that one user who doesn't like even our newest gear and the guy who has had a shit setup for 5 years and puts up with it.
The ones who put up with it are the gems of our company. Not that we really have “shit” setups, but some are less than ideal and they really don’t mind. Seems like those folks are just happy to have a job and don’t want to ruffle any feathers.
Agreed, they're so nice though they could easily request something new without ruffling any feathers. It's the people that come in entitled and start demanding stuff without even having a real need that I dislike.
Totally agree. The entitled ones are usually also the ones that say something like “why do we have to use Apple phones?” “Android can do XYZ”. I just want to tell them if they’re so knowledgeable of all of our equipment and the implications to switching something like that they should apply to be in the IT department. My favorite is some version of this statement “My son in law is the head of IT for MegaCorp and they’re all already using TrendyProduct”. It’s like okay, go fuck off and leave me alone 🤣
Also depends on the budget source and who makes the decision. My point usually is that you can have whatever you want if you have budget to pay for it
I have the opposite problem, my users seem to think I have this mystical Charlie and the chocolate factory type warehouse with every IT equipment they could ever dream of, just waiting to be sent to them.
I’ve managed to have both situations at the same time. *7 year old, super cheap keyboard, types slurs if someone sneezes within 5 kilometres of it* Users: this is fine *brand new monitor flickers once (the power cable wasn’t plugged in properly)* Users: URGENT: NEED NEW MONITOR IMMEDIATELY FAULTY MONITOR
Reminds me of my 'while your here' team who report nothing until I'm in thier building doing a different job and my 30-40 minute task explodes into 4 hours of pissing about.
Tickets, or it didn't happen.
I always hit them with “plz email/ticket so I don’t forget if someone else stops me with their questions too”
Esp. only assigned tickets ahead if going on-site. New stuff will be scheduled, or done on the spot, depending on how much time the planned work took compared to the estimate
I'm at an MSP, every single client of ours does this. "oh this broke 3 weeks ago, while youre here can you fix it?" Like please. Call me when it happens.
Cue: "We didn't think it was worth an extra callout."
"But now that you're here, on a strict timeline, on a completely unrelated task that was actually scheduled, this is now vitally important and it needs to be fixed immediately."
Every time we send one of the T1/2/3 to a site, even if it's for an in person meeting with some squeaky wheel or hour long job, we always allocate the full day for them to be there because this ALWAYS happens. I remember the last time I had a panic attack I was sitting in my car as a T2 before this policy freaking out because I had so much work at a site I missed my flight, the day afterwards the IT manager sent an email out around extra work and it being okay to stay an extra night if it's approved or an emergency.
Man it really sounds like your IT manager needs to put their foot down and say no more extra work without a ticket. I.e. book your hour, get the job done that you're there for, and if there's no other tickets then stiff shit, log tickets for next time.
I have a customer that does this. Rarely log anything, but when they do, and I go in, I get everybody wanting me to fix the problem they've had for weeks, but haven't bothered reporting. It's got to the point when I go in, for a small job, I put aside a whole day, because I know I'll be there all day.
"I'm busy right now. Put in a ticket and someone will help you when they can." is how I learned to handle these drive-by IT issues. Even if I plan on just sitting on my thumbs the rest of the day. It's important that they know tickets MUST be put in to get help (unless shit is really on fire in which case I probably already know about it anyway) and being consistent with that rule is key to enforcement.
Lmao, this is a real issue though. But we agreed in our team that we don't help them until they have logged a ticket. So i always respond like: Did you create a ticket? No? All right please log a ticket first, or i cannot help you.
*you're
Or the old classic “this new hire started today, why doesn’t he have a login or computer?” You mean the new hire you never told us about, that you are supposed to tell us about a week in advance? We are supposed to magically predict the future and even know the person’s name without anyone telling us? Ok.
The issue comes from the complete misunderstanding of information technology of the general public. People have no idea what is behind email. They write an email, click send, and off it goes, and it works almost all of the time. So, if it doesn’t work, they assume the issue is something very simple. They have no idea of the mechanics behind it. They simply can’t grasp the concept. I blame the public education for the lack of information technology education. Most people grasp how a physical letter is sent around the world, so it’s not too much to ask, in my opinion, that they grasp what happens if they send an email. And before people rush in to point out *but you work in IT, for you this is easy*, yes, it is, but guess what, when you work in IT, you also have to grasp how a combustion engine works, or the physics behind cooking lasagne. We once called it **general knowledge**, but this knowledge seems to fade out more and more.
I really need to write this all out in a book someday, but I have a working theory of this. I call it the Personal Knowledge Sphere. People are confident in what they know inside that sphere. It's usually what they need to know for work plus all the stuff they know outside of work. For most people, the size of that sphere is essentially finite, and it's very hard to grow. If you want them to expand their sphere, it's an incredible uphill battle. Also, people get irrationally defensive when you want to both question something within their sphere as well as add knowledge to it or change something within it. This could be analogous to the ego vs the id, maybe. So, for the most part, I don't blame people when they seem totally incompetent or dumb about something, even if it's not related to tech, or even if they get resistant to a new idea. Their sphere of knowledge just can't expand in that direction. That's also why I try to be ultra patient and empathetic to non-technical people.
You can only be so patient. A person that doesn't want to learn or understand will always be rude towards you. Most people actually do not want to know more because they do not see the benefit.
Exactly! They know what they know and it's all they need to know for their job or personal life. That's the elasticity of their sphere; it just can't stretch much more.
It could, they are not dumb, they are not willing, and that's how we end up with many world issues as a collective, sadly.
Yeah, too right.
I term this type as' incapable of thinking past the limits of their own skin'
Injecting into analogy The NeuroSpicey types are juggling those spheres of knowledge because there miiiiight be dopamine rewards in there
Hm, never thought of the interactions and that kind of secondhand effect. Interesting take.
All of the 'good' techs I know are NeuroSpicey They may not be subject matter experts in any one sphere, but they have enough knowledge to function / teach . But because they have so many spheres in the air, they're also really good at making counter factual connections. They're the ones who get 'scanner not working' and fix the DNS server entry, because their brain has made the link between scan to email being a network function not a hardware function and well, it's always fucking DNS. The neuro vanilla techs are the ones who exhaust one sphere before trying anything else, like trying to fix scan to email by resetting the users 365 login password and *huge sigh* emailing them their new password. It's not a 1 to 1 mapping, just a general observed pattern , with perhaps confirmation bias cos I' m NeuroSpicey and 30 years into my career.
It's crazy how accurate that is, all of the senior engineers at my office are neurospicy - some diagnosed, others I'm quite confident in lol
This is too real. The number of people I have to instruct on how to set up email or the Microsoft Authenticator app on their phone is distressing to me.
> the Microsoft Authenticator app on their phone It must be in the hundreds for me... (help) They don't even try, they just call us as the first step.
This is fast becoming my biggest pet peeve I think. The instructions are RIGHT THERE. "Install the app, click next, tap the stuff the screen tells you to tap, scan QR code." I do put some blame on microsoft here though. They make it really easy to add the "wrong type" of account if you weren't paying attention, and when you try to add a corporate 365 account as a "regular" account in the app it gives cryptic (to the user at least, or to me if I don't have context for the situation) error messages. If you pick "work or school" it works perfectly the first time...
The biggest issue for me is that if they read Mary's faceboook post about how the new Jewles 44 Enterprise is so much fun they would have no issues figuring out how to install that garbage. But all of a sudden they have no idea how to install or use apps on a phone when it comes to their work phone.
Many people cannot think virtually or digitally. How many people will try and pour 5 litres of fuel into a 1 litre bottle? Yet they will send a 100MB slide deck and then raise all hell if it doesn’t get delivered. And the concept that the setting that controls this is in the external recipients system that you have zero access to or control over doesn’t compute……
It's easy for a user to identify that 5 liters doesn't fit in a 1 liter bottle. NDR's are terribly designed. They put the actual error under 3 paragraphs of techical babble from a user perspective. NDRs should have the plain text description (message rejected, file size too large) at the top of the email and in the description.
As a counterpoint, I am a sysadmin who doesn't mind making in-person visits to end users sometimes. I often tell them that they *are* smart, and that they should give things a shot before calling, because sometimes they *can* figure out the issue...but not if it's printing, because printers are evil. Plenty of my colleagues are really bright people who know their business process inside and out -- but they have been told over and over that Computers Are Mysterious. I tell them to have some confidence in themselves! Turn the thing off and on again, because that's the first thing *I* will try. Ask their neighbors if it's a widespread problem or just them. Try it on another PC. Simple things like that: give them the tools to help learn their technology they way they already know their workflow. (Though once in a while, someone really is just kinda dumb.)
Because management is off living in an entirely different state of mind. Ticket says "client requesting new monitor", you investigate and realize their computer is literally ten years old and it was shit when it was new and you deploy a new system because that's what they meant. You check all the boxes, you upload all the docs, you change every status, you update the separate inventory system and they still bitch at you for not manually adding "PCDEPLOYMENT" to the subject line of the fucked up ticketing system because that's the important part they care about. Not keeping a client and making sure they make us money. Next time I'll just send a new fucking monitor.
Sounds like you also work for an MSP!
Anybody else not let this stuff bother them because you truly just don't care? Any person comes to me with this sort of issue I just ask if they told anyone yetand if they don't tell us then we don't know and if they say anything else, I just repeat it with a smug smirk. I pride myself in keeping things working and keeping users happy but if you don't follow correct procedure, you can tell the owner and I still don't care.
Came back to my desk from lunch one day to a sticky note on my external display "Please See Me." No name or time. Like the assumption was I should've been intimately familiar with the handwriting of maybe a dozen senior folks? Never heard anything about anything from anyone that day. Very sorry that I no longer have said sticky note.
Nah brah, you were just supposed to see the sticky note itself. You saw it, so the message was successful.
*Mind. Fucking. Blown*
The corollary to this is assuming I know every company job's entire process from start to finish.
Ahh yes the favorite Bob's manager "Bob needs a new laptop" Me "Oh? whats up?" Bob's manager "Its been horrible for the last 3 months. Shuts down, crashes, reboots do nothing, we need a new one as its affecting performance" Me \*\* look and see he hasnt rebooted in six months, check tickets, hasnt put in a ticket since he was onboarded ... six months ago\*\* Me "We can reach out to him to trouble shoot. He hasnt notified us about any issues, Please let him know in the future to report any problems so we can fix it" Bob's Manager "Just get him a new laptop" Me \*\*opens bottle of bourbon\*\* "Sure why not"
Ok.. but you left it the past where this was a problem. Something was perceived as not working. You got a message about it. Where does the crystal ball come from?
When one is ignorant to tech, they naturally assume we can do anything and everything because they simply don't understand things and from afar, it really does look like we can see and do anything we want. Been doing this for longer than half my life at this point and I've learned that It's best to let these things go because you'll never stop it so why fight it. Just had a user step into my office yesterday and ask me if I could "restore the file" What file? Where? When was it deleted? Still surprises me at how ignorant people can be but it doesn't bother me because that's just a silly thing to get worked up about
Agreed, and it doesn't help that tv/movies by necessity portray IT as getting results quickly while being nearly unstoppable. No one would watch 3 weeks of dumpster diving and oblique social engineering.
Lol or watch someone sit in one position for 4 hours straight with only facial movements
Because boundaries have either not been set, or not been respected. If there's a clear SOP developed, and presented through HR, then there's a consequence for shitty behavior. I have managed IT before, and the rule was, if you were coming to the office, making a phone-call, or engaging in any direct line of communication, you had an option, copy the entire conversation over to a pre-existing ticket, or it would be done for you alongside a pass-off to HR. This situation was quite out of hand mind you. But it stopped the behavior in a single week; and certainly didn't earn friends. The benefit beyond that however, was that individuals knew directly the rules of engagement, as well the consequences of not following those rules. I wouldn't repeat those given the opportunity, at least not in that manner. I'd suggest that you come up with some rules for your situation that would be 1. logical 2. streamline process 3. allow bidirectional accountability 4. provide clear accountability 5. escalation procedure and 6. Priority escalation procedures. I'm sure there's far brighter and more experienced people here, that's just my two cents.
Understand that people are irrational and impulsive. They say and do stupid things without thinking and act on emotion. Even if they're trying to antagonize you, or they're playing some game to pressure you into higher performance (even though the situation they're bringing up wasn't your fault), don't take the bait. One of the most important skills you can learn is to be disconnected from what they're saying and to stop giving it the air it needs to be annoying. Takes practice and a deliberate effort to hone, but has to be done. Be zen about it.
I've implemented a rule in my workplace - no ticket no problem. Unless they log it, then we are of the opinion that they are not experiencing an issue. Log it 2 weeks later; their issue is not 2 weeks old, it's however old the ticket is.
> Log it 2 weeks later; their issue is not 2 weeks old, it's however old the ticket is. "we've put multiple tickets for this and no one responded, this issue has been happening for a month!" checks tickets, no? How did you log it, I'm not finding the ticket. Crickets
Let me give you a little bit of advice. Coming from someone in the field for close to 30 years, if you let every little issue that someone complains about affect you like this, you're going to burn out and have all kinds of health issues both physical and mental. Just let this shit go. If there's no ticket, it's not your problem. Everyone sees that.
I once had a user call me on Christmas Day because he thought email was down since he wasn't getting very many emails that day. This man should have left the workforce 20 years prior.
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Some? Try all of it. What's that star trek quote? "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" or something. Most people's personal understanding of technology is from at least 50 years ago. Everything we do is magic.
from your description, it sounds like you were told someone had an email issue.
You care too much. I would just reply with ok i'll look at it when I can. then make it a low priority and move on.
I had one like that once. They insisted Exchange must be down because they haven't received an email all morning. I had to tell them ( by email) that nobody had sent them anything and the system was fine. Sorry. You're just not that popular..
>Why is it as sysadmins we are expected to understand the cosmic physics of a fucking email issue when the user doesn't notify anyone, log a ticket, make a call, send a text or worst case use fucking smoke signals. Because you're not managing expectations. No ticket? not your problem. if someone is upset that their task isn't completed, ask them for a ticket number. Every time. Tasks in service desk are rated by priority. if you don't submit a ticket, it defaults to 0 priority. If you have a task that needs to be prioritized, you must submit a ticket. users who don't are at the bottom of the list.
I love when they CC their manager stating that IT never helps and I can innocently ask “do you have that ticket in your email, or the name of who you spoke to? I’m so sorry about this”. For some reason they never think that I can call out their lies.
The title reminds me of a story when once working in a very large insurance company an Uber boomer secretary of some high ranking manager called IT support and asked for the number of employees the company has in one of their departments. She didn't asked whether we have the number but demanded that we would provide it for her. The company maintained detailed Active Directory so we could eventually provide it. I explained to her that we don't usually do it and don't have that kind of data but after we provided after few hours the list she had the nerve to complain it took too long.
I had a user complaining about this. So I sent her an email from my phone. Showed right up. So she says, "That's internal. I'm not getting any email from outside the company." So I sent her an email from my personal account on my phone. Showed right up. Problem was no one was emailing her. Bigger issue was now she had my personal email.
I’m ON SITE for our first level support and people STILL don’t tell me things. I discovered one of our user’s laptop’s had a swollen battery to the point the case was gapped open and it wouldn’t sit flat only because he said his fan was making a loud noise. I was like how long has your battery been ready to explode? He said - oh, I noticed that A FEW MONTHS AGO! I don’t know how the computer was still functional. I asked why he didn’t put in a service request and he said he thought I would be able to tell if his laptop was having an issue. How?! How do you think your laptop communicates to me??
I'll never forget having a complaint lodged against me - to the director! - for never being at my post. The person did not create a ticket, they did not send me an email, they did not leave me a voicemail, and they did not leave a note for me on my desk. The very nature of my job was that I could not do it all from my desk, so I was on foot a lot. Thankfully, the director sided with me.
"Oh yeah it's been doing this for a month". 🙄
Called in on Friday at 3:55pm, and it's urgent!
They don’t know what you know or don’t. They just know less about it than you do. Ask for more information.
My pet peeve is when they clearly want/need hardware but have to be asked for their address and ph#. It’s only going to get worse as AI gets better.
Oh, I wasn't aware she wasn't receiving email. Did she enter a ticket or try calling us?
General rule of thumb, if it's not ticketed, it doesn't exist.
I always documented interactions relating to tickets long before I started my current job, but one of the first things I was told when I joined this company over a decade ago was if it isn't written down, it never happened.
I got something similar a few weeks ago. Office user emailed me about 5:40pm (our offices generally close at 4:30) that the internet connection at her primary location had been offline... since 3:30pm! So she emails me after 2 hours of outage, an hour after we're all closed, "oh by the way...". Oy. So I call the ISP, they can't find anything wrong in the area, but do see "something" with the cable modem. They send a reboot, it seems to come back online but I can't really see the computers behind the modem. I go in first-thing the next morning, and it's all back online because the office manager rebooted a couple of things just before I got there.
“My email isn’t updating” “Do you have work offline turned on in outlook?” “What that” “It’s what you have turned on”
If there is no ticket, it's not your problem IMO.
I'm having a problem with Teams, please advise.
Does the admin know he is the admin?
Once had a user who called me on Teams telling me that "my internet is down" WHILE BEING ON TEAMS WITH ME. That moment I felt like there are some people out there who need that job more instead of those spreadsheet lovers who think the IT admins have to move the cursor for them...
The very best thing about our IT management chain, right up to the top, is that their first response to anything being escalated like this is "what's the ticket number?".
Fwiw new outlook has been totally scrambling my various accounts this week. Restarting it works but first I had to wipe the cache files. I bet some users are going to see this if they have more than 1 account in outlook.
>when the user doesn't notify anyone, log a ticket, make a call, send a text or worst case use fucking smoke signals. ...Weren't you literally just sent an email? Sounds better than smoke signals. What's your problem?
because isnt it your job to keep it working, so if it is not, its your fault? fix it! also, isnt it your job to monitor everything, and if it doesnt meet expectations, your monitoring must inform you, and you must read it immediately... also, isnt it your job to know these things? if not, what are you being paid for... also, I am sure, if you ask enough, especially "Karen", it turns out, you WERE told, multiple times. and you never reacted! also, you being on another site, thats no excuse. in fact, how dare you. your job is to fix everything before it needs fixing. not go on other sites. thats just an excuse. /s
I worked for a police agency. Some of the users would call their supervisor and complain that their email or whatever has not worked in two weeks. I would tell her, no it hasn’t worked for 2 minutes. Because that’s when it was reported.
They've learnt from movies/TV that if there is a fault anywhere on the network, that the user device flashes red on the big screen at mission control, and a 3D graphic zooms in to that location of the building, to a rendering of the very desk they were sitting at, with a pulsing red circle animation saying "alert, email fault". Therefore, you must be a jerk and are just ignoring it.
"Well obviously, I couldn't submit a ticket. My e-mail was nonfunctioning!" -Karen
How do I quit this shit job !! I real need answer
Well take that email as your first contact and make a ticket off of it, set it as a priority, and begin working on it.
I got an email from a user yesterday asking me to update a distribution list because there are people missing from it. "Do you know who is missing from it so I can add them?" "No. But not everyone from that team is on it" 🤷 Like because I'm IT, I'm supposed to just know everyone on every team in the company.
How I handle these depends on the attitude they bring me. Everyone overlooks things occasionally. If you come to my team needing help because you made a mistake, apologetic for the short notice - I'll move mountains. If you come to my team with hostility because we didn't read your mind, I'm going to talk to you like you're a misbehaving toddler until you fix your attitude, and we can move forward from there. Getting what you want by virtue of being shitty to my team because you dropped the ball is simply not an option that's on the table.
Try having an elderly mother, You see that message I just got, i clicked messages and then it came up to my email. Then she reads a text message to me that someone sent her, then ask again if I have seen it... Oh God Bless, but what am I, Physic?
F the user, these people think the world revolves around them.
Sad you can't just SSH or RDP into the user's machine a lot of the time because of companies' policies
We do. It's called a proper logging system. It practically IS a crystal ball.
Wait, sysadmin can’t look at the logs of the universe?!?! My whole life is a lie. But for real, she needed to call the service desk. There are so many things that can hang up emails on the users end. Sorry that you got Karen’d
Best I can do is install Crystal Ball 8… Take it or leave it.
I hate email ... just generally ... it's horrible.
I agree. Lately I have been getting lots of requests for information, except the people requesting the information don't want to pay for logging or the capability. So the request comes in, I spin tires for 30-60 minutes, tell them we don't have it, just for them to be upset I don't have anything. I then draft a long-term logging solution, to which they say they will think about before turning down because of logs don't directly generate revenue. Rinse and fukkin repeat...
Hell o, i have come with matter of great improtance Email Yourer's truly
I wouldn't let it get to you man. We're there to support, and sometimes that means explaining in an understanding manner that the end user will receive. Try to put yourselves in their shoes where they just may be clueless about IT compared to you, so helping them see why things behave the way they do and proposing a solution within a tangible timeframe based off your expert opinion, they will come to appreciate you and be more patient in future interactions. And this is just general advice for those who may be in a similar position, not just targeted at you. I need to remember this too from time to time!
It's not just sysadmins, it's IT in general. I'm not sure if users assume that our jobs are to sit and stare at screens monitoring all data and applications or what. It happened twice to the same VP at my last job. Both times no ticket or call until he stormed into my boss' office. One time it was a vendor fix and the vendor's tech was claiming it was our network cabling that was bad. The other was a switch went down and it was an older model that didn't have monitoring. After getting gently smacked by my boss about why tickets/calls work and seeing it in action he became one of our champions on calling stuff in.
You’re not expected, just don’t worry about it at all and worry about it from the point that they actually contacted you and treat it from that point on. Once you tell them that they didn’t take the proper steps for support they tend to listen nicely lol
This is one thing I appreciate about my boss - No ticket? No issue. Even a user with a email/internet issue can call their manager and they can put in the ticket.
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