The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

[Ryujin]

What's worse - dealing with the calls, or dealing with the higher ups who are not motivated to address the issue?

What's worse: Dealing with a situation in a timely manner, of waiting until it lands on the desk of the CIO?

 

[RealAlHazred]

To quote Homer Simpson, "I've done nothing and I'm all out of ideas!"

ahem... That was Flanders' Mom, talking to the Dr. Foster in "Hurricane Neddy," Season 8 Episode 161. "You gotta help us, Doc. We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas."

Look, schools are run like corporations now, and in corporate IT, procrastination is great! It frees up your day, and now you have activities for tomorrow! In corporate IT, you open a trouble ticket for, say, a printer issue, and the very first response, the first one, is, "Is this working now? Can I close the ticket?" Like, sir or ma'am, you have done nothing. I have done nothing. And the printer, well, it is still doing nothing...

 

[RealAlHazred]

At my workplace, some Galaxy Brain Executive decided to create a "Rapid Response Team" chat group, to which every group has been added. The idea is, this is a way to escalate issues directly to the responsible team, without waiting for people to respond to trouble tickets in the Ticketing System (which is how you're supposed to do it, but, you know, people procrastinate). So now, my desktop is pinging every few minutes with a new person, screaming into the Void for help. It's basically like herding the entire company into an auditorium and asking everybody to shout out their issues, all at once...

 

[Ryujin]

ahem... That was Flanders' Mom, talking to the Dr. Foster in "Hurricane Neddy," Season 8 Episode 161. "You gotta help us, Doc. We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas."

Please forgive me. It's been a while

Look, schools are run like corporations now, and in corporate IT, procrastination is great! It frees up your day, and now you have activities for tomorrow! In corporate IT, you open a trouble ticket for, say, a printer issue, and the very first response, the first one, is, "Is this working now? Can I close the ticket?" Like, sir or ma'am, you have done nothing. I have done nothing. And the printer, well, it is still doing nothing...

In Canada, schools run like schools. If we procrastinate on something then it could mean that a class doesn't get taught. Unfortunately, my group (End User Computing) tends to be a dumping ground for when the helpdesk doesn't know who does a particular thing, or the people who actually do the thing can't be bothered to do all of the leg work that's required to qualify the issue.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Unfortunately, my group (End User Computing) tends to be a dumping ground for when the helpdesk doesn't know who does a particular thing, or the people who actually do the thing can't be bothered to do all of the leg work that's required to qualify the issue.

My group gets all of the questions because we (stupidly) actually respond to each email, and each ticket. We even answer the phones!

 

[Ryujin]

At my workplace, some Galaxy Brain Executive decided to create a "Rapid Response Team" chat group, to which every group has been added. The idea is, this is a way to escalate issues directly to the responsible team, without waiting for people to respond to trouble tickets in the Ticketing System (which is how you're supposed to do it, but, you know, people procrastinate). So now, my desktop is pinging every few minutes with a new person, screaming into the Void for help. It's basically like herding the entire company into an auditorium and asking everybody to shout out their issues, all at once...

My director created a similar group, but only gave internal staff access to it. No one uses it, because no one wants to listen to this director prattle on for a half an hour about something that in no way impacts our function. Having to sit through weekly meetings that he generally makes a half an hour longer than necessary is bad enough.

 

[Ryujin]

My group gets all of the questions because we (stupidly) actually respond to each email, and each ticket. We even answer the phones!

Same, though I have taken to making all of my communications via verifiable text (either email or our trouble ticket system), because someone has tried to throw me under the bus far too many times.

Director - Why didn't you do task XYZ that <insert lazy colleague> asked you to do?
Me - Because, as I stated in <note tagged in trouble ticket app> I don't have that access and it's their job.

 

[Umbran]

What's worse: Dealing with a situation in a timely manner, of waiting until it lands on the desk of the CIO?

That's a question that can only be answered in the context of your organization. I can only speak to "typical" organizations, for some value of "typical".

C-level execs don't usually come down on low level employees (like the ones who take the calls at the help desk) - they come down on department heads. And, it isn't typically the job of the people who take calls to push their superiors to get work done. That isn't what they are paid for. The phrase "above their pay grade" generally applies.

Under what conditions is the person actually taking the calls going to take on extra labor trying to manage upwards to save their department head grief? Only when that department head has earned a great deal of goodwill with their department. Such a department head is likely the sort who was on top of things, such that they wouldn't need the phone techs to take on work to save them.

 

[Ryujin]

That's a question that can only be answered in the context of your organization. I can only speak to "typical" organizations, for some value of "typical".

C-level execs don't usually come down on low level employees (like the ones who take the calls at the help desk) - they come down on department heads. And, it isn't typically the job of the people who take calls to push their superiors to get work done. That isn't what they are paid for. The phrase "above their pay grade" generally applies.

Under what conditions is the person actually taking the calls going to take on extra labor trying to manage upwards to save their department head grief? Only when that department head has earned a great deal of goodwill with their department. Such a department head is likely the sort who was on top of things, such that they wouldn't need the phone techs to take on work to save them.

My department has about 250 employees and handles the majority of IT work for the university. The CIO is the top of our food chain, within the department. I started there over 20 years ago, when the CIO was a manager for one of the sub-groups. He's hands-on.

The job of helpdesk is to qualify calls and send them to the correct group. That includes spotting trends and reporting them up the chain. Unfortunately, they don't really care to do their actual jobs, and try to offload a lot of that basic function to my group. Other than helpdesk there are only two other groups, EUC and media services, who are designed for direct client contact. As MS is more specialized and my group more generalized, we become the dumping ground. They literally think that since most of my group have been around for 15+ years and know the school, they don't have to know that part of their actual jobs. "EUC will know. Just send it to them, to figure out." BTW, most of heldesk's staff have been around for 10+ years.

EDIT - To put into perspective how little helpdesk does to "qualify" calls, they frequently fail to obtain the location for where on-site work needs to be performed. They fail to give simple contact information like phone extension. If these guys worked for a pizza delivery chain they would never as you if you wanted a 2L of Coke or some twisty bread with your order, while simultaneously failing to ask your address.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Something just occurred to me...

I just did make a comment in another thread (cuz I'm a rebel like that) about how, with every tv show and movie in existence having been remade or rebooted in the past twenty years, how is it that nobody has ever attempted to redo Night Court? (That show was hilarious...)

...And that's when I realized I'm actually mildly offended that nobody has bothered to remake it.