Monday Pain

I'd like to tell you a little bit about today. This is a story of pain and despair. This is a story of people who call the HELP desk, then get testy when we have the nerve to try and HELP. The nerve of us, I tell ya, some nerve.

My day starts off normally enough. Get into work, reply to 50,000 emails that came in over the weekend, same ole same ole :-) Then I decide to take a few calls. First mistake right there.

Nice lady can't login remotely. Ask her is she's getting a password prompt, she says yes. Groovy, this one will be easy. Ask her which of two different types of tokens she is using. She gets all testy and says "Hold on! I am NOT done yet!"
Me: Yes ma'am, terribly sorry, please continue!(I love my continued employment, I am always achingly polite)
User: *crickets chirping*
Me: Ma'am, you said you had more to say?
User: No I didn't! You're hearing things! *blah blah blah*

Le sigh. This is the way I wanted to start my day. Truly I did.

Next user starts off just peachy too. He has his ticket number, has been in contact with the Tech assigned to the ticket, knows that he's waiting on a vendor visit. Spectacular :-) Don't yet know what he wants, but I can work with this.

Dude demands status (uh-oh, starting to get a little testy).
Me: Sir, I do apologize, but the ticket is updated with exactly the information you just told me. If you require additional information, you will need to contact $tech directly.
User: Whatever!
Me: *my turns for crickets*
User: I just need this escalated!! NOW!!

Did I mention this was 7:15 in the morning? With NO one in yet, never mind the vendor he was waiting for? And the dude was in the same building as me and KNOWS this?

And then there was the interviewee. HUGE Le Sigh. Within 30 seconds of being introduced and my purpose being made known, he says "Oh, I thought you were here to bring us sweets and coffee".

Ok, he was really nervous the whole interview, so I chalk his comment up to that. Then I'm bring him downstairs. In a thirty second ride, he manages to to get out "Don't you cook??" and "Don't you have children?" Yeah, buddy. Just when I was starting to like you. Yep, smooth move.

And Then There Was Wednesday

Yes, I read minds. I purposely choose to ignore yours. I did know that when you sent back a ticket for one item (which was explicitly stated as not existing), you were really were after an entirely separate bit. I also know each and every detail about the ticket in question, even though I am clearly not the original submitter. I am just that good.

Now for the real rant. I work for a Technical Suppport desk. Note that phrase. Technical Support. We fix things when they break. Due to the scope of the job, we are purposely separated from 98% of account requests, how-to trainings, billing, etc. It is very important for our own personal sanity that we keep things this way too. I make a point to train it from the get-go into our newbies.It makes our lives easier and gives our customers a more direct line to the people who actually can assist with these things.

That being said, why have a panic attack when I tell you that some question or issue is beyond the scope of our support? No, no, no, not our customers, they're cool with it. I am talking about our Tier 1 team. The one's for whom life is easier because we can say no. The one's who have no problem quasi-insulting the users to their face, yet inexplicably refuse to say that the customer may be barking up the wrong tree. Yep, those people.

In all seriousness, why is it a crime? Why am I a bad person for daring to suggest a customer needs to call their manager or someone else? To me, it seems perfectly reasonable to say "I do apologize, but we are the technical support desk. For Billing/ How to/ Product/ etc inquiries, please contact the following people." Oy. I suspect it may be just me though.

Save me Jeebus! (mad brownie points to anyone who gets that reference)

I Have Survived To Another Weekend

I have indeed survived, however barely. Silly coworkers, silly users, and silly McKesson all work against me in my eternal quest for weekend bliss.

All other things aside, on Thursday I Googled "McKesson Service Desk". Lord knows why I did it, but something put it in my head to do so. First link was rather interesting. Go ahead, check it out, I'll wait.

You back yet? Well, for the lazies out there who don't want to click ;-) It is an announcement that McKesson will be putting out a RFP to outsource our entire help desk/ fts department. Long story short, we were not supposed to know. No one is denying anything. The most construcitve piece I got out of anyone was "It may affect no teams, some teams, or all teams." Yeah, nice.

I am not generally one to panic, but all signs are pointing to it being time to put out some feelers and see what other opportunities await me. My team is pretty kick ass - we do a great job for a lower price than most other groups could conceivably dream of. My worry is that we are such a small drop in the bucket that a company would take the hit to take over our services if it meant taking over all the rest (email, networking, telco). Cross your fingers for me.

Women Can't Be Geeks?

So, one of my friends just told me that women can't be geeks. What? How long has she known me? No, she says:

"I believe that girls and women can be intelligent, technologists, scientists, ambitious, professional, you name it, but when I say geek, I have a certain idea about what it characterizes and it does not in my mind come even close to a woman. Geek to me stands for someone like my husband, addicted to his gadgets and his email and his Internet connection, very intelligent when it comes to machines, technology, and Internet and not so savvy when it comes to dealing with people, fashion and emotions."

Let's see. Addicted to email? Check. Addicted to my gadgets? Quadruple Infinity check! The rest of it? Oh man, yeah. But I am female and therefore must have "some RAM left over for other less geeky things". I'm just not sure how to take it!

NEW HIRES!!!

My new hires are going to kill me. That, or I'm going to kill myself just to get away from them.

We've had 6 new hires join the company in the last seven weeks. Yes, there's the RFP (see above). Imagine that, we're losing people. However, combine that with the uptick in the IT market lately, and we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel to get in our contractors. So, we have six of what walked through our doors.

One is a gem. She's a reall go-getter who will be running the place soon enough (assuming we don't all get outsourced!). The only thing I worry about with her is keeping her entertained long enough to hire her full time.

Then the rest. One is treading water, but barely. But he won't ask questions. Then another who is so admanmant in his attitude that he knows everything so he doesn't have to listen to us, despite the fact that it is severly affecting his performance.

There's the quiet one who is desperate to go nights despite the fact she's not ready, but won't give us a convincing reason why she has to go. There's one that either won't or can't learn and has not progressed in weeks. Then the really newbie who lately has taken to randomly dismissing me and generally flat out ignoring me. Let me add to that one, I get ignored in the same IM conversation when he asks a question that I answered in the line RIGHT before!

Ok, done for now.