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

[Sideroxylon]

"Dear Service Desk
I am unable to access <system> can you help please.
Thanks Robbie"

Our backlog of emails would be halved if people exercised a little thought before sending us emails. Just phone us! The wait time on the phone is ten minutes, but the wait time for an email is two and a half days. Yet most of the emails we have are marked "Urgent". Or "URGENT!!!".

Before reaching out to a cow orker everyone, including myself, must take a deep breath and ask themselves if their perceived need really is a business need in this radically new and changing landscape of priorities. Some solutions to problems that can wait could just be making unnecessary work and new problems.

 

[arthwollipot]

Before reaching out to a cow orker everyone, including myself, must take a deep breath and ask themselves if their perceived need really is a business need in this radically new and changing landscape of priorities. Some solutions to problems that can wait could just be making unnecessary work and new problems.

In this case <system> is our high security clearance restricted environment and is considered business critical in all cases.

 

[Wudang]

You know what also annoys me? When a technician and a customer are having a back-and-forth email conversation, and the Service Desk is ccd in on each message. Every message autopolls a new incident. We have a system where replies to autogenerated emails are automatically appended to the original incident, but when the back-and-forth message don't include the incident number in the subject line of the message, our system has no idea the emails are related. We either have to find the original incident and link each one, or just close them saying "no further action required by Service Desk". I prefer the latter.

Oh I'd be closing those as "user training required".

The "with a cattle prod" is silent.

 

[novaphile]

I'm there with you bro.

Slight difference though, I was the first one kicked out.

"Tell us everything that goes wrong"

Went home, installed Citrix on linux and everything worked perfectly.

Seriously Citrix, I want to have your baby, everyone should be using your stuff.



Been happily grinding through my work ever since.

The only side effect for me, my team is sending a million emails an hour until we can get some kind of team chat up and running.

Sorry Arth, I'd help if I could, but I have a magnificently appointed study with two 27 inch monitors, and two very happy dogs at my feet.

It does not suck to be me right now.

 

[quadraginta]

If you hogtie the dog you can put it in your lap and set the laptop on the dog.

Kidding aside, I don't think I've ever used my laptop on my lap while at home.

I have it on the table (on a stand which lifts it up so I don't get a stiff neck.)

I have a wireless Logitech keyboard which finds its way onto my lap from time to time, and a wireless Logitech trackball which ends up in all sorts of places.

Largely depending on where the cat happens to be lying on the table.

It's a cat. You have a mouse... What more can I say.

You weren't reading carefully enough.

I don't use a mouse. I have a trackball. One of these, as it happens ...



As I said, I can use it all sorts of places. Including on top of the cat, if need should arise.

They're more attracted to the keyboard, anyway. It gets them more of a reaction out of me when they walk around on it.

Which is one reason it spends more time in my lap than they do. They can stretch out on the table and get their petting, and I can do my typing on my lap.

Everybody's happy.

 

[Norman Alexander]

You weren't reading carefully enough.

I don't use a mouse. I have a trackball. One of these, as it happens ...

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_324435e7b3554ccbc2.jpg[/qimg]

As I said, I can use it all sorts of places. Including on top of the cat, if need should arise.

They're more attracted to the keyboard, anyway. It gets them more of a reaction out of me when they walk around on it.

Which is one reason it spends more time in my lap than they do. They can stretch out on the table and get their petting, and I can do my typing on my lap.

Everybody's happy.

Meh. Cats are more your broad-picture creatures. It's a mouse, generically speaking. It will be dealt with as such. As for the keyboard, you play with them if they play with it (I see you spotted that). And you are a walking life-support system for cat-food, and a free scritching machine. You are being played, sir!

 

[quadraginta]

Meh. Cats are more your broad-picture creatures. It's a mouse, generically speaking. It will be dealt with as such. As for the keyboard, you play with them if they play with it (I see you spotted that). And you are a walking life-support system for cat-food, and a free scritching machine. You are being played, sir!

True, but I don't have to take them out for walks every day.

 

[theprestige]

ERROR MESSAGES PEOPLE!

Give us a little bit of information about the problem you're having, or you're just wasting everybody's time.

So much this.

All of my troubleshooting conversations go something like this:

"Hi!" says the user with the problem.

"...," say I, waiting for them to explain why they've attracted my attention.

"Hello," I say, half an hour later, when they still haven't spoken up.

"I'm having a problem with X," they say, another half hour after that.

"What are you trying to do, what happens when you try, and what's the error message you get?"

"I'm trying to upload Y."

"Okay, but how are you trying to upload Y? What's the actual command you're issuing? Upload Y to where? What happens when you do this? What's the error message?"

"I'm using curl."

"I mean, what is the actual curl command you're using. And what is the error message?"

Three hours later, after the workday is done, they tell me the actual curl command. I still don't know the error message.

Ethical dilemma: With the actual curl command, I have enough info to track down the error in the logs. Do I go ahead and tell them what's gone wrong and how they can fix it? Or do I let it ride until they come through with the error message themselves?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Yeah I seriously don't know what I'm going to do with all the freetime I'll have if I ever get trouble tickets that aren't stream of consciousness, all caps "MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN AND NOT WORKING CAN YOU FIX IT?"

I honestly don't think people outside of the IT field fully appreciate how much of our time is spent just getting people to tell us what the problem is.

 

[Dr. Keith]

I honestly don't think people outside of the IT field fully appreciate how much of our time is spent just getting people to tell us what the problem is.

I think this is one of the reasons I feel such empathy for IT folks, we have the exact same problem in legal. People come in who don't know if they have a problem or not, feel like legal should be in the loop, but don't know why, and then give us the story of their life so we can understand why this purchase order needs to be looked at again. Luckily, I bill by the hour.

<insert pointless attempt at humor where I make a request for help on something that I should be able to do on my own>

 

[theprestige]

Yeah I seriously don't know what I'm going to do with all the freetime I'll have if I ever get trouble tickets that aren't stream of consciousness, all caps "MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN AND NOT WORKING CAN YOU FIX IT?"

I honestly don't think people outside of the IT field fully appreciate how much of our time is spent just getting people to tell us what the problem is.

The frustrating thing for me is, if you just run your salutation and detailed problem description all at once, I can start fixing it immediately as soon as my attention swings your way.

I assume people want me to fix their problems as quickly as I can. But that assumption is laughably wrong.

 

[Dr. Keith]

The frustrating thing for me is, if you just run your salutation and detailed problem description all at once, I can start fixing it immediately as soon as my attention swings your way.

I assume people want me to fix their problems as quickly as I can. But that assumption is laughably wrong.

Yes, laughably wrong.

It is so much easier to say "project x is behind schedule because it took me four days to get any meaningful support from IT" than it is to say "project x is behind schedule because I really wanted to focus more on the new Animal Crossing for Switch released this week."

[empathetic sidebar]I have no doubt that I am currently being blamed for a two week delay in a process that I tried to start earlier and have been pulling teeth to get moving for the last month. Up until the last day critical data was missing and the person responsible for it was asking me if I knew where they could find it. If I knew that I wouldn't have ******* asked you to get it for me, *******![/sidebar]​

Many folks have been trained to believe that an excuse is just as valuable as a result.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I assume people want me to fix their problems as quickly as I can. But that assumption is laughably wrong.

I'm dead serious when I say if you put a gun to my head and made me guess.

40% of my trouble calls are from users who actually want it fixed.
40% of my trouble calls are from users who want the problem to be going on as long as possible so they can sit on their keisters doing nothing because "their computer is down."
20% of my troubles calls are from people who just get a little self esteem boost when "service people" jump to attention for them.

 

[catsmate]

Had a “setup my home printer” ticket. FFS

Request a MOPP suit.

 

[catsmate]

Yeah I seriously don't know what I'm going to do with all the freetime I'll have if I ever get trouble tickets that aren't stream of consciousness, all caps "MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN AND NOT WORKING CAN YOU FIX IT?"

Resolution: Insufficient information supplied, does not meet criteria.
Disposition: Closed

ETA: And support cases that don't meet standard criteria are billed to the originating department.

 

[quadraginta]

Yeah I seriously don't know what I'm going to do with all the freetime I'll have if I ever get trouble tickets that aren't stream of consciousness, all caps "MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN AND NOT WORKING CAN YOU FIX IT?"

I honestly don't think people outside of the IT field fully appreciate how much of our time is spent just getting people to tell us what the problem is.

Strictly for the purposes of appreciating this particular gripe, do you think that savvy users who find themselves a (sometimes reluctant) resource for assorted relatives and friends could include themselves as people inside IT?

Because I think I can feel your pain.

 

[arthwollipot]

Ethical dilemma: With the actual curl command, I have enough info to track down the error in the logs. Do I go ahead and tell them what's gone wrong and how they can fix it? Or do I let it ride until they come through with the error message themselves?

Oh boy yes. I generally come down on the side of "educate the user" but sometimes you just want to throw it all in the air and just do it for them.

 

[Norman Alexander]

So much this.

All of my troubleshooting conversations go something like this:

"Hi!" says the user with the problem.

"...," say I, waiting for them to explain why they've attracted my attention.

"Hello," I say, half an hour later, when they still haven't spoken up.

"I'm having a problem with X," they say, another half hour after that.

"What are you trying to do, what happens when you try, and what's the error message you get?"

"I'm trying to upload Y."

"Okay, but how are you trying to upload Y? What's the actual command you're issuing? Upload Y to where? What happens when you do this? What's the error message?"

"I'm using curl."
"I mean, what is the actual curl command you're using. And what is the error message?"

Three hours later, after the workday is done, they tell me the actual curl command. I still don't know the error message.

Ethical dilemma: With the actual curl command, I have enough info to track down the error in the logs. Do I go ahead and tell them what's gone wrong and how they can fix it? Or do I let it ride until they come through with the error message themselves?

A: Have you tried COBOL instead?

 

[grmcdorman]

{snipped for brevity}
"I'm using curl."

A: Have you tried COBOL instead?

Nah. Use telnet. (You don't need secure connections, do you? )

 

[arthwollipot]

So I'm back in the socially-distant office right now. But due to my recent health problems, my boss has offered for me to work from home four days a week. I'm okay with that, to be honest. The existing arrangement for now is 2 days home, 4 days in the office (rotating because we don't do 6 day weeks). I'd be cool coming in only on Wednesdays.