trixtah: (Servalan)
Trixtah ([personal profile] trixtah) wrote2007-04-12 03:56 pm
Entry tags:

Shoulder-tapping

So, I get the acting "Technology Services" manager coming up to me today, saying "Is there an issue with the mail?" He is not my manager, he's one up and one to the side. I pause a bit, to let the stupidity of his question sink in a while (since I was calmly browsing the net at the time, and not pulling my hair out going fuckfuckfuckfuck), and reply "No."

"Oh," sez he, "$EXECUTIVE_PA went to $CUST_SERVICES_MGR and said that she wasn't getting any email from her Optus account. He told her to print out all the errors she was getting, and then he gave them to me to investigate." While $TSM was telling me this, he was standing there clutching a sheaf of at least 20 pages, presumably the errors that $EXECUTIVE_PA had carefully printed out from her home account. In colour.

I grabbed the top printout, and sure enough, it says in words of one syllable that the sender domain is being blocked by the RBL. There is even a dinky little link that the user can click to see what that means. At present, Optus has a whole network of their servers being blocked by Trend Micro, and if they can't be bothered getting rid of their spammers, Trend can't be bothered removing them from their RBL (they're very proactive when they get a removal request - it's a paid service). Evidently the $EXECUTIVE_PA didn't bother contacting Optus with regard to their problem but buttonholed $CSM instead.

What gets me is that none of the parties in this little chain of events went to the Helpdesk, whose job it is to log ALL technology-related issues, who (in this instance) would have known what the issue is (this isn't the first time, duh), known the fact that they can request an exemption, logged a call to me, and the whole thing would have been fixed in 1/2 an hour, tops. No. We have button-holing. We have a CSM who is a third-level manager, with the Helpdesk in his purview. There is in fact a Helpdesk Manager (who could have dealt with the problem if there had been no satisfactory resolution to the original call... if there'd been one). If $CSM didn't have the balls to tell $EXECUTIVE_PA to walk the three steps past his office door to the Helpdesk counter to log a call, he could have done it himself. So, after his "help", she trots home like a good girl, and massacres a few trees to print out multiple copies of the same error msg. The following day (who knows how long?), CSM still can't be bothered walking three steps to the HD, or 15 metres to my desk, no, he fobs it off to $TSM. Who isn't normally based in Canberra anyway. And then we get to me, finally.

I told $TSM to log the call. I fixed it in 10 minutes. Fuckers.

...By the way, I don't have any problem with someone like $CSM cruising by or asking me while I'm making a cuppa if I know of any related issues. I just object to the waste of time, and the involvement of one third-level manager and one fourth-level manager in getting me to do a routine part of my job. Especially when the established procedure would have been at least a day faster.

[identity profile] cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com 2007-04-12 06:47 am (UTC)(link)
Managers seem to have this idea that they need to speak to someone at least as important as them, otherwise it like doing there own dishers or something, I never really understood it.
ext_8716: (Default)

[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2007-04-12 11:16 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I really can't stand that kind of behaviour when I encounter it, which is thankfully rare. And one reason why I couldn't be in the military (even if I wasn't mostly pacifistic). Captain: "Sergeant, dismiss the men." Sergeant: "Company, dismissed!"

WTFevah.

[identity profile] reynardo.livejournal.com 2007-04-12 07:31 am (UTC)(link)
Optus has a lot of trouble with idiot customers who get hit with spam and then complain when we the AUP guys cut off their service. But then, with about 1M connections, it's not surprising that some of them have machines full of spyware and trojans.

Dammit, and I was enjoying this week off, and now I'm going to have to go back to a pile of angry customers. *sigh*

Sorry that you had to deal with the backlash result.
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2007-04-12 11:20 am (UTC)(link)
Hm, if Optus are so proactive about bouncing their zombied machines, I'm surprised that Trend are still blocking what appears to be several Class C networks (if not an entire Class B). While I've only got about a score of exemptions to worry about so far, it is getting tedious putting them in...

[identity profile] micheinnz.livejournal.com 2007-04-12 09:24 am (UTC)(link)
Gah! Fuckers! And now you know why I quit IT.

Of course, as a sparky I'll just have to deal with a different _kind_ of fuckers, but still.
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2007-04-12 11:21 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, if we have to have procedures (and, actually we should), it's nice if people actually use them. GRAR.

[identity profile] saluqi.livejournal.com 2007-04-12 10:23 am (UTC)(link)
Is this PA either a) conventionally attractive or b) the PA of a boss further up in his food chain? Or does this guy have a small penisimage issue?

One of the ways people show they (think they) are important and influential, is by bypassing the usual arrangements to go direct to the guru/person in charge of X. It's not only irritating to the people who wind up being buttonholed by these idiots, but it's bad for general morale. It is deliberate tho', and not done out of ignorance (well, not directly anyway)

This is one reason why when I do rely on personal relationships to get a job done, I do it very politely and QUIETLY and only after having established that the normal arrangements will not work (fast enough). If I don't have a personal relationship, I don't try it.

While the rule is never piss off a PA or EA, there should be a corrollary - do not piss off key enabling areas of the organisation in order to suck up to a PA/EA. There are so many ways one's life can be made miserable.
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2007-04-12 11:28 am (UTC)(link)
Heh, yes, I tend not to piss off the PAs myself. This particular EA works for the biggest cheese himself, and I do think she has a healthy sense of Entitlement, shall we say. And Mr CSM has a bit of an "image" issue as well, methinks. Not to mention his unpleasant habit of bypassing me at all opportunities recently, and which he knows I've been irritated by.

While I think it's amusing that her not even attempting the normal process has reaped its own karma in the delay to resolve it, I think the most vexing aspect was that CSM's behaviour. Other than bypassing the thing himself, for no need, imagine bringing another manager into it, one totally outside my own chain of command!

As for misery-making opportunities... well, yes. I think I'd better revise quota levels on certain mailboxes tomorrow - I'm sure some of them have been inflated way past their actual needs. *sigh* I wish. :-)
sraun: portrait (Default)

[personal profile] sraun 2007-04-12 05:58 pm (UTC)(link)
In a company I used to work for, the manager of the external customer service department always had his secretary call us (the help desk) about any computer problems - he never did it himself. One time I had the fortune to fix his problem while he was present. I asked him 'What would you do if one of your customers consistently had a subordinate call who did not have immediate access to the hardware to trouble-shoot?' He told me that they would tell the customer that they could not fix the equipment reliably under those circumstances, and that customer should call himself. I then asked him, 'How is that different from you having your secretary call us about your computer problems?' He started calling us himself after that. :-)
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2007-04-13 01:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Nice technique.

One thing I loathe and detest about our Helpdesk staff is their habit of logging calls under the name of the PA who made the call, rather than the actual user who has the problem. I've lost track of the amount of times I've gone gaily searching through logs or whatever, only to discover I've been looking for the wrong user.

And even if I do read about 1/2 way down the page, when they finally get to mentioning who the user with the problem actually is, I tend to get just their name or email address (and not the userid, which is filled into the call ticket if the ticket is logged properly), thus necessitating more searching. < /rant>
sraun: portrait (Default)

[personal profile] sraun 2007-04-13 07:14 pm (UTC)(link)
That's one thing that management in my last three positions has been good for - the person with the problem is the name on the ticket, not the person who called it in! At my current position, there's a field for customer and a different field for caller - that helps. But I can go to someone and ask 'why did you say X had the problem when it was really Y?', and that's usually enough to get them to stop doing it.
ext_8716: (Default)

[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2007-04-14 11:28 am (UTC)(link)
Eeee, now that's a good idea! I might get the person who maintains the call-logging system to add a "caller" or "contact" field... if he can do it. It would certainly save a bloody ton of confusion.

[identity profile] do-not-opine.livejournal.com 2007-04-12 09:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, I so hear you.

But I *do* loathe people stopping me to ask me questions, mainly because I am helpdesk, requisitions manager, software trainer, sysadmin, etc, etc.
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2007-04-13 01:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Heh, I actually hate being shoulder-tapped when it becomes a regular thing. So much so I actually implemented a call-logging system and made my other two colleagues use it (as well as any user who had problems, obviously). I'm such a bitch. Honestly, people strolling past your desk going "Could you...?" is no fun when there are a couple of hundred staff and a few thousand students to look after. My tolerance is pretty much limited to one such incident per day, and I'm protected by a "proper" helpdesk in my current role.

I sympathise. Lots.