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How you know your IT Dept. sucks...

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scooter1369;768125; said:
One of my favorite Dilbert strips ever..

Caller: "I have a prob-"
Dogbert: "Shut up and reboot."
(next panel)
Caller: "Hey! That worked!"
Dogbert: "Shut up and hang up."
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people get pissed when you tell them to just reboot and call you back if the problem isn't fixed - then about 90% of the time you dont hear from them again.
 
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iambrutus;768122; said:
most IT guys come off as pricks because they are jaded from users that don't tell them the whole story. ie - i don't know what happened, i was just sitting there and all of the sudden - bullshit. I've done help-desk support for 8 years now and I've heard every story. I'm cool with the people that will admit that they don't fucking know everything - because i don't know everything either (but i know where to find answers), but i will blow my top on people that try to "fix" the problem themselves without first communicating it to IT - because at the end of the day, even if a user fucked it up by trying to fix it, it always comes back on the IT guy. The worst user (and big papa can tell you that i'm not making this up) will try to fix all of the comptuer problems in her department - because her son "knows comptuers" - then when she has fucked it up bad enough, she will come talk to IT - or better yet, send an email and just say that the computer is "acting up" - if there were no repercussions i would curb stomp that cunt.
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Being Customer Service is a pain no matter what industry it's in. People call in with tons of stupid bs, try to rip you off, you're being pulled in different directions by the company and customers, etc.
But, in my experience, customer service will generally be straight with you so long as you're straight with them. I consider myself relatively tech savvy and I have tons of hands-on experience and education with electronics -- but I've never dealt with IT department who can deal with people respectfully. It's either form letter type advice (always the first step, and understandably so), suspension of disbelief (the example I gave), or they get pissed off at the person who reported the problem because they -- apparantly -- can't do their job (contracted civilians when I was in the military).
On the few times I've had to get help on problems, I've included everything I've done -- all the symptoms I've noticed, etc. Every time I've received an email back telling me to do what I already said I did (restart, reinstall, DL updated drivers, etc.) -- so it's obvious they didn't even read the email. Then I'll basically email them back a copy of the 1st email (not exactly, but there's nothing new to report and obviously the idiot or automated system needs another email to "escalate" the problem). Then I'll get some illogical nonsense probably reiterating the same, but actually written out this time. Then they start getting pissy -- as do I, because there should be no reason to repeat myself a million times. In the military, I helped my associate redirect his complain to somebody who was actually accountable and could make them pull their heads out of their asses -- IT then searched his email just like OCBuck said and found some stuff and tried to get him in trouble. It's fucktarded. :roll2:
 
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iambrutus said:
most IT guys come off as pricks because they are jaded from users that don't tell them the whole story. ie - i don't know what happened, i was just sitting there and all of the sudden - bullshit. I've done help-desk support for 8 years now and I've heard every story. I'm cool with the people that will admit that they don't fucking know everything - because i don't know everything either (but i know where to find answers), but i will blow my top on people that try to "fix" the problem themselves without first communicating it to IT - because at the end of the day, even if a user fucked it up by trying to fix it, it always comes back on the IT guy. The worst user (and big papa can tell you that i'm not making this up) will try to fix all of the comptuer problems in her department - because her son "knows comptuers" - then when she has fucked it up bad enough, she will come talk to IT - or better yet, send an email and just say that the computer is "acting up" - if there were no repercussions i would curb stomp that cunt.
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Bingo! I don't care if you fucked up your system, but at least tell me what you did. The person that has no clue what they're doing is much preferred over the person who THINKS they know what they're doing. Those are the ones that make it 10x worse to fix.
 
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CleveBucks;768343; said:
Bingo! I don't care if you fucked up your system, but at least tell me what you did. The person that has no clue what they're doing is much preferred over the person who THINKS they know what they're doing. Those are the ones that make it 10x worse to fix.
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the people that think they know what they are doing are dangerous.

what scares me are these guys coming right out of college now, that have had lots of "computer experience" because they have taken all of the computer classes and they have a home computer, and they think they can just do whatever they want. We run a BES server and have about 20 people that carry company paid blackberry's - we had a piss on new hire kid (who was an intern for a year first) ask us if he could get his email send to his Q if he bought one. I thought that BigPapa was going to explode
 
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Yeah, I understand why a lot of people hate tech support people, because a lot of places that you call you either end up with someone that doesn't speak good English or you end up with someone that talks down to you. I hate that shit too, and I work in IT for a living. But IAB is right, the blame falls on both sides of the fence. A lot of times, end users do stuff to their computer thinking they can fix it and make problems worse. Then when they do actually call for help they are not honest about what happened or they are so frustrated by that point that they take out their emotions on you and try to project the fault on to the person who is supposed to help them. After days on end of doing this IT support people can get burned out and frustrated themselves and start to have a really bad opinion of the people calling into them. Some of them just don't have the ability to suck it up and just do their job appropriately. But my advice to tech support callers if you want the most useful and positive experience is to be honest as to what caused the problems and what steps you or whomever has taken yourself to resolve it and don't go on a tangent about how this sucks and you hate computers, etc, etc. Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
 
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23Skidoo;768091; said:
In my experience, this is how most IT / technical customer help sections are. The civilians we had in the military were complete dicks and condescending, as were all ITs I've dealt with from companies.
They absolutely hate dealing with people who know just as much, or at least more than a stereotypical "soccer mom" should (in their estimation).
For instance, a couple years ago I bought a wireless card (b/g) for a laptop w/Win2k on it. XP was out and perhaps most-common, but the card said it specifically supported 2k. I got everything installed textbook, it didn't work. I read through some material and discovered the installation program wasn't working how it was supposed to (some functions and buttons were completely missing). So I DL'd all the relevant software from their site and reinstalled 2 or 3 times, with the same result. Contacted IT and they acted like I was an idiot the entire team "reinstall drivers, restart computer, etc." Finally they suggested I rma it -- so I did. Next one comes in, same damn problem. I had been troubleshooting electronics for 5 years at the time and knew it was a software problem. It was obvious to me. So I tell them that (note that all this convo between me and them is archived under the same customer code -- so they have the entire history at their disposal everytime we talk.) They just keep sending me form-letters about reinstalling and downloading and shit. I finally just gave it to a friend who had XP -- and he bought me a wireless that worked. Six months later (I wouldn't let them "resolve" the "customer complaint" so I checked them out every 2 or 3 weeks), I saw that they had an entirely new version for Win2k. Imagine that.
I've got other stories too... many examples of IT guys being dicks and holier-than-thou.
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Well this is one view, but here's the point most people don't get. IT is the single most shit on department of any company, for example, my current company we're expected to be on call 24/7, we're expected to support peoples home connections so they can vpn in and top that off with the fact that are VOIP phone system works any where in the world.

So, take a slight pause and think about the stupid fucking questions I get. I have been called at 5:00 AM because someones power went out and they were afraid to turn on thier computer, I have had the "advanced" user fuck up their network settings so bad and then feed me flat out lies saying "it just happened." In the 12 years I have been doing IT I have spent almost 30 grand on certifications, my company even more. Needless to say I spend more time working than doing anything else.

Do I treat my users like shit? no, I treat my users with the same respect they treat me with. Some are really cool, some aren't, and more people come to me with attitude than I will ever give them. I don't think I am holier than thou, but I get more people who will whine to the owner about how their pc isn't fast enough after I tell them the current specs are fine for performing their job function.

My job is to keep the company up and running and to make sure my users can connect and that Exchange, SQL, and every other fucked up application we have runs and in 12 years i have had 3 business days of downtime.

There's two sides to every coin, sorry if your IT department treated you like shit, but users would rather see us fired so thier son who plays games could come in than let us do our job correctly.
 
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OCBucksFan;768776; said:
Well this is one view, but here's the point most people don't get. IT is the single most shit on department of any company, for example, my current company we're expected to be on call 24/7, we're expected to support peoples home connections so they can vpn in and top that off with the fact that are VOIP phone system works any where in the world.

So, take a slight pause and think about the stupid fucking questions I get. I have been called at 5:00 AM because someones power went out and they were afraid to turn on thier computer, I have had the "advanced" user fuck up their network settings so bad and then feed me flat out lies saying "it just happened." In the 12 years I have been doing IT I have spent almost 30 grand on certifications, my company even more. Needless to say I spend more time working than doing anything else.

Do I treat my users like shit? no, I treat my users with the same respect they treat me with. Some are really cool, some aren't, and more people come to me with attitude than I will ever give them. I don't think I am holier than thou, but I get more people who will whine to the owner about how their pc isn't fast enough after I tell them the current specs are fine for performing their job function.

My job is to keep the company up and running and to make sure my users can connect and that Exchange, SQL, and every other fucked up application we have runs and in 12 years i have had 3 business days of downtime.

There's two sides to every coin, sorry if your IT department treated you like shit, but users would rather see us fired so thier son who plays games could come in than let us do our job correctly.
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:bow:

the supporting of the home computers is the one that pisses me off the most.

We actually had a marking guy bitch to us becuase his laptop (company owned) didn't have a dvd drive (before they were cheap) because he wanted his kids to watch movies when they went on vacation.
 
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OCBucksFan;763893; said:
One last note, the IT dept is the last enemy you want in any company. When Management tells me to start investigating someone there's 3 steps we take.

1) We look at the security system to verify the time's they come and go match their clock in times.

2) We look at their email, everything here is archived for 7 years so odds are if you ever received a dirty joke, picture or other unacceptable dataset it's saved.

3) Traffic logs, what sites have you visited? are they all work related? Hope so.

Just some food for thought.
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It's all fun and games until someone plants a controlled substance in the desk of every IT person and places an anonymous tip.
 
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We coulda had a decent conversation here but . . .
JoJaBuckeye started this with a funny quote from the E-mail, and I quote again, "fails to meet unacceptable levels." Thats funny . . .

unless you are the target . . .. or unless you feel you represent the target, as in IT!!
In this case, the target is not IT, the target is the connection speed. Connection speed has nothing to do with end user/operator error, so tone down the rhetoric on the computer user. The responsible party to fix a connection between two physically separated offices is IT.
The problem with IT is the same problem with EVERY department of any production operation: The "they couldn't live without us" complex. In too many operations I've become familiar with, the IT department has a dysfunctional view of their role. IT is not the product, IT brings the product to the market efficiently. The job of IT is to maximize operational efficiency by exploiting technology while providing for the security for technology based information, assets and resources.
Alas IT guy, you are not alone. The sales team says the same thing, "they couldn't live without us." So does R&D, so does accounting, so does HR, everyone thinks they are the key to an operations' success. Well, and I include myself in this, we are not! You want to know how quickly we can be replaced? Try this: put your finger in a glass of water. Now when you pull your finger out, water will displace your finger. That's how fast you'll be replaced. YOU are not important to your company's success. What you do is important. So can someone get back to work and fix that connection to Ft Collins? The people in Denver have work to do and the connection . . . not the IT department . . . is in need of repair!
 
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OCBucksFan;768776; said:
Well this is one view, but here's the point most people don't get. IT is the single most shit on department of any company, for example, my current company we're expected to be on call 24/7, we're expected to support peoples home connections so they can vpn in and top that off with the fact that are VOIP phone system works any where in the world.

So, take a slight pause and think about the stupid fucking questions I get. I have been called at 5:00 AM because someones power went out and they were afraid to turn on thier computer, I have had the "advanced" user fuck up their network settings so bad and then feed me flat out lies saying "it just happened." In the 12 years I have been doing IT I have spent almost 30 grand on certifications, my company even more. Needless to say I spend more time working than doing anything else.

Do I treat my users like shit? no, I treat my users with the same respect they treat me with. Some are really cool, some aren't, and more people come to me with attitude than I will ever give them. I don't think I am holier than thou, but I get more people who will whine to the owner about how their pc isn't fast enough after I tell them the current specs are fine for performing their job function.

My job is to keep the company up and running and to make sure my users can connect and that Exchange, SQL, and every other fucked up application we have runs and in 12 years i have had 3 business days of downtime.

There's two sides to every coin, sorry if your IT department treated you like shit, but users would rather see us fired so thier son who plays games could come in than let us do our job correctly.
Click to expand...

I've never been an "IT" guy -- but I have a lot of experience dealing with moronic air traffic controllers telling me to fix things that aren't broke, breaking equipment out of stupidity and arrogance, dumping the entire network because they wanted to know what switch does, and generally being ingrateful little shits, etc. If you want stories, PM me. The difference between my estimation of most IT departments and how I handled things is that I could still treat controllers like people, despite that 10%, and fix things when they were actually broke.

In keeping with the IT stereotype, you've decided to put everything in terms of how stupid the people you have to deal with are. And how it's you against the world.
Congrats on your job success, but if you're really so succesful and don't have any of the problems enumerated w/IT departments -- why is it so personal to you?
 
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I found the real solution. Try it. It'll work. :wink2:

dilbert_theinternetisfull.gif
 
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