Posts filed under 'Work'
Number two in a continuing series I call Supporting Corporate Users Sometimes Exercises My Endurance
Or, ‘SCUSE ME? for short.
Ned* called the Help Desk the other day, saying his account was locked out. I looked it up and sure enough, he was in fact locked out. I unlocked it, and he was able to log back in just fine. Now, the only way anyone’s account can get locked out is to enter the wrong password three times in a row. Ned knows this, because this has happened before. It happens all the time. It even happened to me once when, in a blur of flying fingers, I tried to log in one morning (before my bucket of coffee) without realizing that Caps Lock was on. (Which raises an interesting question: Who does the Help Desk call for help? If the Help Desk unlocks accounts, who unlocks the Help Desk? This is a subject for another post.)
So aaanywaaaay, Ned apparently is one who will absolutely never admit that there is the slightest possibility that he may be, gasp, at fault. Our conversation went like this:
Ned: “So what caused this?”
Me: “Well, the only way your account can be locked out is for the wrong password to be used three times in a row.”
Ned: “But I know I entered it right. Could there be something wrong with the server?”
Me (in my head): First, we have more than 200 servers altogether. Second, there is not a single server that is responsible for verifying your login credentials, there are many. Third, they are all working just fine. Fourth, even if they were all simultaneously off-line or malfunctioning when you were trying to login, it would not lock out your account, it would simply not allow you to login. Fifth, it’s O.K. to admit that you fat-fingered your password. You don’t have to try to blame the technology when you make a mistake. I know better, and it just makes me think even less of you.
Me (out loud): “Maybe, Ned. Maybe.”
Sometimes, it’s just easier to agree.
* All real names have been replaced with names of Simpsons characters.
November 3rd, 2006
My 9-5 job (which is actually 7am-4pm, but whatever) is computer support. More specifically, there are six of us who support 800+ users, 1000+ PCs, 250+ printers, and various other pieces of networking equipment, spread out over many locations in the Portland area.
Doing tech support in a corporate environment is interesting, and is very different from supporting the general public. I did that for several years, taking calls on Gateway’s 800 number for general tech support, and I know I’ll never go back. There are too many uncontrollable variables to contend with when trying to help Joe Sixpack get the kid’s new computer game Santa left in the stocking to run on the old family PC.
In a corporate environment, on the other hand, especially in-house on-site support like I and my co-workers do, we have a great deal of control over that which we support. All PC are generally configured identically; users don’t have the ability to install any software (since it may be incompatible and/or unlicensed, or may break the computer); we can take remote control of any PC on the network from our own desk; and we are all certified to troubleshoot and submit warranty parts replacement requests to the PC manufacturers. And generally, we are respected by our co-workers, the users that we support.
All this makes for a pretty enjoyable work environment.
However, there are always going to be frustrations. After reading Tanya’s recent blog entry, I was inspired to share some of my tales of frustration with you. So here begins a continuing series I will call…
Supporting Corporate Users Sometimes Exercises My Endurance
Or, ‘SCUSE ME? for short.
Here is the first of many stories…
Lisa* is a user who travels between many of our locations, so her computer is a laptop, and she has a docking station, monitor, keyboard and mouse that stay at her desk. She called me a few mornings ago:
Me: “IT Help Desk, this is Bill.”
Lisa: “I need to log in to Lenny’s* laptop, but Lenny is already logged in to it and he has locked it with his password.”
Me (seeing from the phone display that she is calling from her own desk):
“You need to log in to Lenny’s laptop at your own desk? Is something wrong with your own laptop?”
Lisa: “No, but it’s too heavy this morning, so I left it in my car. When I got upstairs, I saw that Lenny wasn’t in the office today, so I took his laptop and brought it here.”
Me: “I can force Lenny’s account to disconnect from his laptop, but he will lose any documents he may have open that he has not yet saved. I’m not really comfortable doing that without checking with him first.”
Lisa: “Well, he’s going to be out all day, and his manager said that it was OK, he probably won’t lose any important data.”
After verifying with Lenny’s manager that he does in fact approve of this, I forced Lenny’s account off, and helped Lisa log in. Keep in mind that the laptop weighs a little over four pounds and is in a lightweight case that has a padded handle and shoulder strap, and she travels with it almost daily. For some reason, it was just “too heavy” for her that day.
* All real names have been replaced with names of Simpsons characters.
October 18th, 2006
Big apologies for not posting regularly for quite a while. Things have been quite hectic at work.
My department used to have about 15 people in it, then a reorganization moved some people to other departments, cutting us down to about 12. Another reorg resulted in several layoffs, cutting our numbers to 8. Then, economic factors outside the organization’s control resulted in management making the decision to layoff 10% of the workforce. Because of federal, state and local laws governing our financial structure (we are a large public agency), the 80+ positions would be removed from departments that made up about 50%-60% of the organization. My department was hit the hardest, with half being laid off, including my infamous manager Ted. You can read more about Ted here (and here, here, here, here, here and here.) We were all not so surprised that Ted somehow managed to be the only laid off employee interviewed on the air by KOIN 6 news on the day the layoffs were announced (yup, it was that big a deal when that many people were laid off here, it was one of the top news storys on that day back in September 2004.)
So aaanywaaaay, at that point there were four of us, in effect doing what 15 people used to do, doing all the end-user IT support for an organization with close to 1000 users. Just recently, after our industry’s economy started picking up again, it was announced that we would be hiring another Technical Analyst like the four of us, as well as a supervisor, bringing our number up to six. We all applied for the supervisor position as well as many people from outside the organization, and one of my co-workers got the position. I’m not at all upset at the decision (you know I would have no problem venting my frustration here otherwise), and I’m really glad that management and HR decided to promote from within.
However, in addition to all that is happening at work, I have even bigger news: we bought a house. It is a three bedroom, 2.5 bath common-wall (one half of a duplex) here in Beaverton, with 1480 square feet. It sits right next to a greenspace that will never be developed, so the kids have literally acres of fields right outside the back door to run and play. It was built in 1995, and is in great shape.
Several things were found when the home inspector walked through the place. Most are pretty minor, like the garage door opener not working, but a few were pretty serious, like failing LP siding. So far, the seller has agreed to all of our requests for repairs. If nothing goes wrong, we will be signing all the paperwork in a few weeks, and we will pick up the keys on May 18th.
I’ll post some pictures of the place here as soon as I can, so keep checking back!
May 1st, 2006
I am 37 today. As always, life itself is good (see my previous birthday posts here and here). However, in a different development from past years, I have now joined the ranks of folks who hate their jobs. I may go into detail some other time, but then again, maybe not.
February 22nd, 2006
The following is an example of how much of a dork I am. The faint of heart should probably refrain from reading this post.
Continue Reading November 12th, 2005
At work, I drink a lot of Coffee Mate Hazelnut creamer, flavored by adding a few drops of coffee and a few packets of sugar. Recently, out of frustration, I had to tape a note to my bottle of creamer in the fridge:
I truly am a generous person (ask anyone who knows me), so I honestly don’t mind if folks help themselves to a swig of my creamer.
But PLEASE close the lid when you are done! TWICE now I have had to clean creamer off the side of the refrigerator (and the counter, the floor, my pants, my shirt) when I “shake well before using” only to find that lid has been left open.
-Bill
July 27th, 2005
And I don’t mean incredible in a good way.
As you read in my previous post, Kathy was hospitalized last Sunday the 12th with a severe asthma attack. It was also the last week of school for the kids. They go to three different schools, at three different times in the morning, and get home at three different times in the afternoon. Needless to say, I was busy feeding them and shuttling them around, plus taking care of the two cats and six dogs (oops, I mean five dogs… more on that in a moment.) Between all this, I made sure I was at Kathy’s side at the hospital as much as possible, and that the kids got to visit her at least once each day.
The first few nights, I sit with Lexi as she cries herself to sleep because she misses mommy, and she knows that mommy won’t be there to wake her up in the morning. I explain that I will be there in mommy’s place each morning this week. This does not make her stop crying, which makes me feel even worse. At least she likes the breakfast I make for her.
Some friends from church brought me and the kids dinner on Wednesday, which was a wonderful relief. I didn’t have to cook anything, and we didn’t have to go out for fast food. Again.
Then comes Thursday. I get the kids off to school, the adult dogs are brought in from the backyard, the two puppy’s kennel is cleaned, and I notice that the smaller of the two puppies (the apricot colored one) is barely able to stand on his own. I put him by himself so he can eat as much as he wants before his brother pigs out, but he barely touches any food, and doesn’t seem to want to drink any water either. His eyes are closed, and his hair is starting to fall out (poodles don’t have fur that sheds, they have hair that continues to grow, just like people.) I go to the hospital to have lunch with Kathy again, then rush to make it back home before I have to pick up Lexi at school, not knowing that her school let out an hour early on that last day. When I get home, she is already home and is having a snack; she had walked herself home. It is only 1/2 mile or so, but she is only seven, and has never walked it alone. She is mad at me for not being there waiting for her. I feel like a monster.
Billy has already arrived home, and is giving the apricot puppy a bath because he stinks. We think it is because he has been wetting himself, but we will soon find out otherwise. Billy, Lexi and I take the puppy to the vet. He is 11 weeks old, and weighs only 1 pound 1 ounce. His temperature is ten degrees below normal. He is skinny and dehydrated, and he still stinks. Since the other two dogs from the litter are fine (one was sold a few weeks ago, and the other is active, and weighs almost twice as much), the doctor thinks this one has some sort of congenital liver and kidney problem that is not uncommon in small breeds. When the organs start failing, the body in effect starts secreting through the pores the toxins that are normally filtered through the kidneys. Basically, the puppy is sweating urine, and he is dying. I pay the doctor $25 for the office visit, $35 for euthenasia, and $1.12 for the cremation, based on the weight. Lexi is hysterical, wants me and the doctor to make the puppy healthy, and is mad at me because we can’t just take the puppy back home. She cries again for hours.
Kathy slowly got better towards the end of the week, and she came home yesterday morning. She was in the same tiny room for the entire seven days, leaving only to be wheeled to the X-ray lab a few times, and to walk around the nurses station the last couple days when she started getting better. She was going crazy being cooped up. Most of the nurses were great, but one of them was straight out of school, literally (this was her first nursing job, and she had been employed at the hospital for just two weeks.) Kathy had to actually tell her how to administer one of the medications into her I.V. (”NO! WAIT! You have to flush the line first! FLUSH THE LINE! Then you can inject it!”) She is now on twelve different prescriptions, at a grand total of $185 out of pocket. I shudder to think how much all of this would have cost if I didn’t have good health insurance.
I missed work every day last week, but everyone at the office was really great about everything. I have a bunch of forms I have to turn in to HR, some of which I had the doctor fill out, and I can charge the 40 hours against my sick leave. I went back to work today. Duirng the week I was out, I guess I kinda forgot how completely swamped my department is. By the time I left today at 4:00, I actually had more things outstanding than when I first got there at 7:00.
Still, just about anything’s going to better than last week.
June 20th, 2005
Two of my company’s laptops were recently stolen. After a brief investigation, it was determined who stole them (an employee and two accomplices), they were arrested, and the laptops were recovered.
You all know that I revel in making fun of the stupid. So it is with immense pleasure that I point out how dumb it is to think that you can bypass a computer’s logon screen by disassembling the computer.
I am not making this up. Here is proof:
My group was then responsible for putting the laptop back together and making it work again. With a few parts purchased to replace those damaged during disassembly, it was a success.
P.S. - Big announcement about the blogger picnic soon, either later today or first thing tomorrow. Be sure to check back!
May 31st, 2005
So things are starting to get back to normal. Kathy’s been in Alabama attending a huge reunion, meeting a bunch of her biological family that she didn’t even know existed until a few years ago when she and I worked some Internet magic and found them.
I took vacation days away from work so I could perform her regular duties while she was away. Even without going to the classes she normally attends full-time, I was exhausted just doing the other things: Taxiing kids to and from three different schools at three different times of the day, plus taking them to guitar lessons and gymnastics class, attending parent/teacher conferences, fixing meals for home and school, chaperoning Billy’s birthday dinner with friends at a sushi place (my fist time trying sushi, btw, and I kinda liked it), and many, many other things that I was too exhausted to make note of.
I’ll have more to post, and I hope to be back on some sort of regular schedule, very soon.
May 25th, 2005
I worked with a guy a few years ago who was quite a joker. He was a real riot. I thought it was all fun and games until he crossed the line: He kidnapped my favorite piece of desktop office equipment, my Swingline stapler, and held him for ransom. Here’s the story:
My office is near a small conference room that’s often used by others in the building. For some reason, this conference room’s stapler was always disappearing. When people in a meeting needed something stapled, they would invariably come to my desk and ask to borrow my stapler. I would let them take it back to the conference room with them, but would always make them promise to bring it back at the end of their meeting. If I was away from my office, people would sometimes just take it off my desk and then leave it in the conference room after their meeting was over.
Each morning when I would reach for my stapler to attach the new cover sheet to my TPS reports, it would be missing. I would have to wait until the current meeting was over and then scour the conferece room for my beloved Swingline. The whole time, I put up a pretty vocal fuss about all this (I never threatened to set the building on fire, however.)
So, as I’m going through my normal routine one morning, I discover that my stapler is not on my desk. I trudge over to the conference room to retrieve it, but it’s nowhere to be found there. When I get back to my desk, I find a ransom note sitting on my keyboard. It has also been delivered to my inbox as a Microsoft Word document attachment, sent from one of our anonymous mailboxes we use for testing. Here is a PDF file I created of the ransom note.
With the help of a trusted neutral co-worker, I dissected the Word document and discovered who had actually created it. As soon as he left his desk, I swooped in and took his Intel bunnysuit figure, and created my own ransom note, being careful to create it while logged in with a completely anonymous user name, so it couldn’t be traced back to me. Here is a copy of that ransom note in PDF format.
A trade was arranged, and he got his Intel bunnysuit figure back unharmed, and I got my Swingline stapler back, but he had been roughed up by his captors, and his injuries are evident. Oh the humanity!
He still works flawlessly, and I haven’t missed a TPS report deadline since then.
May 17th, 2005
Who the hell started calling Wednesday “hump day”, and why?
I mean, I understand the concept that Wednesday is the middle day of the work week, so once Wednesday is done, you’re “over the hump”, and the week is more than 1/2 over. But still, I can’t help but look with disdain at people who I see early Wednesday morning, before my four cups of coffee, and say “It’s hump day!” with a bright smile on their face.
May 4th, 2005
So my company participated in the Bring Your Child to Work Day last Thursday. Matt came with me, and we were treated to a tour of the Airport Fire Department at PDX. We watched as two giant fire engines shot water at each other with their huge water nozzles (the firefighters described it as a huge water gun fight). We also saw a presentation on wildlife that lives on the airport grounds. It was amazing.
I’ve implemented a new Photo Gallery on this site, and I’ve uploaded a bunch of photos of that day. Click here to see them.
May 3rd, 2005
Sorry, guys, I have no time to post anything worth reading today. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll have a new word of the day.
March 31st, 2005
I’m working the evening shift today, starting at 3:00. We’ve all been taking turns working this shift with Vince in the computer room, so that we are ready to cover for him when he goes on vacation in a few weeks.
I’m kinda bored. Kids are all at school. Kathy’s in class. I think I’ll go to the grocery store. That’s always been a surefire cure for boredom.
Maybe later I’ll write somthing about the scary/strange transvestite who was staring at me on MAX yesterday.
March 3rd, 2005
This is one of my personal favorite Words of the Day:
Word: Apparition
Usage: Used in place of “aberration”
Example: “The huge number of Help Desk calls we took yesterday was an apparition, due to the print server unexpectedly crashing.”
March 1st, 2005
More liberties taken with the English language:
Word: Whosever, pronounced with a “z” sound
Usage: Used in place of “who ever is”
Example: “Assign this work request to whosever going out in the field today.”
February 23rd, 2005
My old boss Ted* is a master of the English language, in the same way that a hungry gorilla is a master of a bunch of bananas. During the several years I worked for him, I collected many funny examples of interesting word abuse. Here is the first of many:
Word: Pitcher
Usage: Used in place of “picture”
Example: “I took some pitchers of my house’s expensive new front door so everyone can admire it.”
* Not his real name of course.
January 27th, 2005
I turn 35 in two days. My oldest son starts high school next year. It’s weird though, I don’t feel old at all.
A lot of things have happened since the last update. On January 12th, just four days after the last update in fact, 12 people in the IT department were laid off, most from my division. 11 of the 14 people in my division were let go, and one person from another division was moved to ours.
Last Sunday, our dog Sissy had puppies again. Kathy was here to help with the delivery, and actually did a little bit of puppy CPR on one of the little things when it came out limp and unresponsive. All four made it, and they are doing fine. Here are some pictures:
February 20th, 2004
We have been stuck at home since Tuesday afternoon. My office was closed at about 10:00 am, and I was able to leave at about 11:30 after helping make sure the nightly computer backups were still going to take place. My office was closed all day Wednesday and Thursday, and the whole city pretty much came to a standstill. It looks like the ice and snow may stay frozen again tonight, and I may be stuck home again tomorrow.
Here are some pictures from our house
January 8th, 2004
We just got back from vacation, a week long camping trip at Beverly Beach on the Oregon coast. We all had a wonderful time.
This is the first time I can remember that I was actually glad to get back to work. Nothing against the trip or my family in any way, I just really do enjoy my job. Weird.
September 2nd, 2003
My boss Ted* can never be wrong. Whenever backed into a corner, realizing that he is wrong, Ted poses a bogus question that can only be answered one way, and which, when answered, at first thought seems to bolster his position, but which is totally irrelevant. Example? Sure:
Ted is the manager of the IT division at our public organization whose responsibility includes the IT Help Desk. My job is to schedule the Help Desk work that comes in so that everything is fixed in a timely manner, and efficiently. We don’t want to send three technicians to work on three different problems at the same off-site location; we’ll send one tech to take care of all three, prioritizing as appropriate. This is an extremely simplified description, and I have many other responsibilities, but this gives you an idea of one of my primary duties.
I have a meeting every morning with all the field technicians, local technicians, and phone support technicians, where we go over all outstanding work and brainstorm on difficult problems, and I reassign things as necessary. At a recent meeting, Ted tried to make a point about our opinion of a problem vs. the customers’ opinion of the problem. He used a recent trouble call from a conference room as an example. While we may have interpreted the problem as dead batteries in a wireless keyboard, or maybe the frequency of this keyboard being changed inadvertently by the user, the customer’s real problem is that he cannot control his PowerPoint presentation. I completely agree with this part of his argument.
I used as an example a recent problem I was troubleshooting where, on a customer’s primary PC, large .TIF images were taking up to two seconds to open from a document server on the network. When the same images were opened on a dedicated research PC (identically configured), they opened in about 1/2 second. I explained to the group that, at first, two seconds seemed plenty quick to me. Before I was able to add the fact that I am still troubleshooting, since 1 1/2 seconds is truly a big difference when you open thousands of images a day as this customer does, I was cut off. Ted said that not only did he think that my opinion was completely irrelevant, but that he was stunned that I would share that opinion with the rest of the group. After all, it didn’t matter at all what I thought, as along as we met the needs of the customer. I (mostly) agreed with him on that point, but explained that I completely disagreed with him about having an opinion and sharing it with the rest of the group in this informal pow-wow we have each morning.
I brought up how we, including Ted himself, routinely make fun of a certain customer who calls the Help Desk often, for mostly simple problems that have been solved many times before. We joke about her to each other, never to anyone else, and we are always nothing but professional when dealing with her time and again. We obviously ALL have an opinion of her, and we share that opinion with the others in our group, but we never let it compromise the service we provide. I had, in effect, shown him that he does the very thing for which he was currently berating me.
His response was to bring up an article he read recently about how many organizations are outsourcing their Help Desk. How it would probably save the organization money to farm it out, at the expense of customer service. If we are going to start second guessing the customer’s real problems, and inserting our own interpretations of what the problem is, and having a different opinion than the customer, then we might as well let some call center in India answer the phones and troubleshoot the problems that come in. Is that what we really want? Will that be the best thing for the organization, service-wise? He actually asked these two questions of us.
How can you answer loaded questions like those? Obviously, the answer to both questions is no. Someone walking into the meeting when these questions were asked would think that we had been suggesting the opposite until Ted showed us the light. Of course his questions had no bearing on the previous example I was sharing, but because we were “forced” into answering his questions in the way he wanted them answered, it made it seem as if we were acknowledging that he was completely right about the whole thing from the beginning.
Some people just piss me off.
Not his real name of course.
June 24th, 2003
