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I lost my Helpdesk position because of a stupid user. He called in with the complaint "I can't get the thingy to work." Here's the text of the conversation: me:  caller:  OK, can you tell me what the thingy does? Listen, I just sell doors - I have no clue about anything technical. Fix it. Can you tell me what the thingy is supposed to do when you click on it? Listen, I just sell doors - I have no clue about anything technical. Fix it. Do you click on an icon? Is it a program of some sort? I use it to dial into the server. Excellent. Can you tell me what number you use to dial into the server? Listen, I just sell doors - I have no clue about anything technical. Fix it. Do you have to enter anything in to dial into the server, or do you just click on an icon? Listen, I just sell doors - I have no clue about anything technical. Fix it. I show that the server at your center doesn't have a modem number, so you probably use a VPN connection. Are you trying to use dial-up or broadband to connect to the server? Listen, I just sell doors - I have no clue about anything technical. Fix it. OK...can you check to make sure that your network cable is plugged in securely? It's possible that you have a loose connection. Listen, I just sell doors - I have no clue about anything technical. Fix it. I'm checking the connection to the server now - it doesn't appear that there's an issue with it. We've been having problems with VPN usernames and passwords needing to be reset. I'll send a ticket over to Tech Support to have them reset that and give you a call back.A couple hours later I get called into the manager's office and she starts ripping me up one side and down the other because the caller was a center manager and complained that I was rude and condescending to him and refused to fix the problem. I explained that I was simply trying to figure out what the problem was to fix it, but that he was not cooperating and I tried to explain things in simple terms in order to avoid confusing him further since he was technically illiterate. Boss explains that she needs to write me up and I tell her to go right ahead - it's my first write-up after working there 27 months and Thanksgiving is that Thursday. The week passes and I'm nervous because I haven't been called in to sign anything. Of course in my mind, out of sight = dead issue that will be forgotten in a week, so I try to keep my head down. Monday December 1st rolls around and at 11:00am boss calls me into her office - the dreaded write-up strikes (or so I thought). She has me close the door and when I sit down she tells me that I am no longer an employee. Talk about something hitting you from left field. I'm stunned. WTF?! One lousy complaint in 27 months and I'm canned?! She goes on to say that it was because of a history of saying things inappropriately - I would try to crack jokes with callers to lighten the mood and it didn't always go over well, but I modified my interactions so that people who weren't in a good mood got off the phone fast, while people whose bacon I'd just saved and were in a much better mood got a few one-liners to make them laugh. Worked pretty well. But the kicker was when I had gone out to train a couple of our sales districts on the new email system we were implementing - we were switching from an antiquated webmail program to Exchange 2003 using Outlook Web Access. I was made an admin for the system, handed a stack of papers to learn how to do things in Exchange, then volunteered to do presentations for the districts. At one meeting a question was asked: "Why are we switching?" I thought about it for a moment and told them "as a company we have to be paranoid about our internet security while monitoring activity over the network" - I was trying to be honest without coming out and telling them that it's because our IT Analysts all thought the field users were dumb as a box a rocks and this would simplify things on our end enormously. This was reported back as me calling the company paranoid and wanting to control everything. The complaint against me was apparently the final straw and resulted in my termination...I think. My now former boss told me that I needed to apply for unemployment and the company wouldn't contest it. She also assured me that they would not be filling my position, and that I really needed to push for getting the Master Trainer position with the Enterprise Roll-out team (which I stood a very good chance of getting because of my technical background and teaching degree). I really had to ponder this - I was terminated, but my boss was telling me to go after another position within the company. I shook my head and left. The next day I had contacted my landlord and told him I was moving out at the end of the month and had made arrangements to move from Minnesota back to Ohio. A week later I was gone. I'm still looking for work and still collecting unemployment. Moving back to Ohio allowed me to move into a friend's house and save a ton of money so I can finally pay off some bills that have been lingering. I'm also back in my hometown and able to visit my family anytime I like. I didn't realize it at the time but I was slowly going insane at my old job. Still, this is the first time I've ever been fired from a job and it seems like my old employer is deliberately sandbagging me - I've had half a dozen interviews and each time there's either no response after a couple weeks or I get a letter saying something like "while your skills and experience are impressive, we feel we need to go in another direction for a candidate". Talk about a computer janitor crashing and burning in a big way... 
Daylen Drazzi fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Feb 23, 2009 |
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Feb 23, 2009 04:42
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After the first couple months on the job I did stop trying to crack jokes, but for some reason it was always brought up even though no one was complaining about it any longer. I guess the callers didn't want to talk to someone in a good mood. Apparently the company's Helpdesk had several years earlier had a reputation for not being very patient or understanding with dense callers or people unwilling to help themselves. My former boss was brought in to reform the culture, and so users now don't feel the least bit troubled by calling the Helpdesk about anything. There was one woman who every month for the last 5 years would call on the first of the month for help with changing her printer settings so she could print out statements. Despite repeated suggestions that she write the steps down or even refer to the Computer Procedure Manual that would also walk her through changing the settings she instead called like clockwork. There was another center office coordinator who claimed that she didn't need to attend any of the training offered to help her do her job, and yet she called every day for the last year I worked on the Helpdesk at least 2-3 times per day asking for help. Part of the problem as I perceived it was that there was a very permissive culture within the company since there was never any consequence for abusing the system. On top of that, users took a lot of what the IT department did for granted. There was a common refrain that the Helpdesk had to be part Sherlock Holmes and part Guantanamo Bay interrogator to solve problems because we had to drag details out of users because they wouldn't tell us voluntarily. After a year I got pretty good at figuring out what needed to be done by what the caller wasn't telling me. My day seemed to resolve around playing 20 Questions with callers. As an additional note, after my boss told me she was going to write me up she also told me to email an apology to the manager, which I did. He responded back stating I should have spoken to him using terms and vocabulary the "guys in the field" would understand, which was odd since I was trying to do just that and he called me rude and condescending for my trouble.
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Feb 23, 2009 19:59
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ab0z posted:Hell at that point I just would have told the guy to gently caress off and die, if I was fired anyways. It would have been satisfying, but as I said before there was absolutely no warning that this was coming. I could see it happening if I'd had a couple write-ups and had been sent home once for a day without pay according to the company's disciplinary policy, but they skipped the first warning and first write-up and went straight to termination. As an aside, when I filled out my unemployment compensation request I included all the sordid details of why I was fired - in light of what I wrote down I fully expected to have my claim denied as a matter of course, but I'll hand it to the unemployment board: they really did investigate, and after investigating my claim the compensation board approved it, stating that "a single incident that was neither malicious nor intentionally negligent was sufficient grounds for denying the claim." If there was ever a time a union would have come in handy that would have been the time.
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Feb 23, 2009 20:20
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Cavepimp posted:I wish it were that simple. These people think OWA is horrible and would bitch endlessly if I recommended that as an alternative to Outlook. They have unrealistic expectations of what an Exchange server and Outlook should let them do (anything they want...including 500mb attachments...gently caress me.) Used to work at a company where there were a couple managers who stored messages in the Deleted Files box and wondered why they couldn't find anything over 30 days old.
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Jun 21, 2009 00:55
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Just started as a PC Technician last week and my co-worker's biggest pet peeve is when someone in the call center decides they absolutely must have their computer moved to their new spot when they change assignments. IT's policy has always been that only supervisors computers get moved because their machines are actually named with their employee ID number, but everything else has an assigned workstation number (350 workstations) and there is no way in hell they want to invite that kind of insanity into their lives. So even though it's a known policy, and even though the request was denied, some team lead got it into her vacuous little head that she could go ahead and move her pc and no one would notice anything, at least until stuff stopped working. So she submits a ticket and expects us to fix her screwup ... at 4:45pm on Friday. Co-worker looked at her, shrugged and told her we'd get to it on Monday and nothing she said or did would make him change his mind. Our supervisor, however, knows about this and it's very likely someone is going to catch it in the neck over this. I'm personally hoping the person is at the very least crucified, because now I get to spend 15 minutes a day walking the call center floor to spot check pc's to make sure they are at their assigned workstation.
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Jul 11, 2009 03:14
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Ticket just came in: "One of the microwaves in the kitchen was making an odd noice. It has been unplugged at this time." The entire department is chuckling over this one - we get some seriously retarded tickets, but this one is the best so far.
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Mar 1, 2010 20:06
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Farking Bastage posted:My new hate: People who bring in their personal blackberries to configure for our BES. My company has a very simple policy - if you want to use your Blackberry on our system then it becomes our property and the whole process starts with us wiping the device of all data. There are no exceptions and the rule is enforced with an iron fist.
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Apr 15, 2010 17:36
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Midelne posted:Oh good, something to look forward to for tomorrow. I got to deal with this Thursday and Friday and despite me walking into the middle of the call center floor and yelling to "NOT OPEN THE EMAIL!!!" they kept opening it...all day long. And these chucklefucks supposedly passed required Security awareness training that addressed this very issue! The worst part is when they called in to the Helpdesk and complained to me. I'd walk out of the office, go to their desk, smile politely, then pull the network cord and tell them to move. The look of horror on their face when they realize that our policy for infected computers is to remove them from the network and immediately wipe the drive and reinstall Windows XP without letting them backup emails and documents is one I treasure.
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Sep 15, 2010 02:36
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totalnewbie posted:Can't you just block the mac address instead? I mean, that should be sufficient for a temporary, office-machine-in-a-call-center block, right? And it would preclude them from getting back onto the network by plugging in somewhere else. (Not in IT so excuse me if this wouldn't work for a simple, stupid reason.) Since you're all dying to know, I am the PC Technician supporting one of the division call centers for a company with the initials T W C. There are only 7 PC Technicians in the division and we support over 3500 computers and thousands of users, who in turn deal with about 10,000 callers per day. Despite all this it's still a relaxed place to work and I don't have a boss hanging over my shoulder - in fact, I speak to him by phone maybe once a week and see him in person once a month. Sorry Dick Trauma. We have to do battle to get anything changed simply because the company has a huge, entrenched bureaucracy with senior IT personnel who have no real experience in IT (but plenty in Customer Service - go figure). So it has to be a really important issue to put forth the kind of effort it takes to get anything changed - about the only really frustrating part of the job, since innovation is not looked upon kindly. But once something is put in place it stays in place, and one of those things was the policy regarding infected computers. So when I get the hot potato I have to drop everything and get the computer off the network, and it is so much easier to just yank the computer and re-image it than it is to try and remove the infection. The only exceptions are executives and above - those computers we have to do battle with the infected files and it takes hours, even when we cheat and use the free software out there that isn't supposed to be used by corporations. And here's the kicker to all this - I'm a contract employee working my 15th month on a 12 month contract, with no end in sight. I'm hoping they hire me before I finish year 2, otherwise I'm not going to stick around much longer no matter how cushy the job is. On the other hand, it is a job and it pays ok and no one else is calling me back for interviews. Oh well, back to surfing websites and answering the phone. Sorry about the long post.
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Sep 15, 2010 14:45
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Dick Trauma posted:P.S.: I showed the CIO how our web-based database runs great on the iPhone (and not on Blackberry browsers) and he got really interested. There have been requests to get iPads to some of our location inspectors so they can go paperless when they visit a property and now we have proof that it will work. More Apple products for Tony to support! Are we now going to take bets on which will drive Tony insane first - supporting Apple products, listening to DT's music, or not being able to disappear at will?
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Sep 16, 2010 00:44
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Not a ticket per se, but get a call this morning from a guy who wanted information about employee benefits. - Me - Caller "Umm, you do realize that this is the internal IT support line, right?" "Someone in HR transferred me over to you. What can you tell me about the benefits?" "Nothing. I'm not in HR; I work in IT. Plus I'm a contractor so I don't even have any benefits through the company." "So does that mean you can't help me?" "I hear the benefits are great. Have a nice day."
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Sep 21, 2010 23:09
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Well, I got let go this afternoon from my PC Technician gig - I was working month 17 of a 12 month contract and apparently the lawyers got all pissy that they were still paying me. Rule is that after 12 months you either get offered a permanent position or escorted out the door. Boss tried to get a position created, but the division had just acquired another company and he had 6 or so new employees added to his roster, effectively doubling his department, so out the door I went. At least my now-former boss will give me glowing references to whoever asks, and the first chance he gets to bring me back he will call - I gave him my cell and email address, but I'm not going to hold my breath. It's funny too, because I got my A+ cert 6 weeks ago and my Network+ cert on Wednesday, prompting all the other techs to cram for their exams so the contract employee didn't make them look bad. My former boss is pissed because, in his words, he never had to worry about the call center up north - I saw him maybe once every 3 or 4 months and spoke with him on the phone once every couple weeks. The call center had burned out all the other techs, and I was the first person to last more than 4 months. Not only that, I had finally tamed the savage beast and everyone was happy - service was prompt and resolutions quick, and my boss had constantly received very positive feedback about my performance, along with suggestions he get me hired on full-time. I also manned the Helpdesk phones, letting the other techs roam around the division working on projects and high priority issues. I kept things under control and allowed my former boss to concentrate on other issues, and he's convinced that his department just got royally screwed - I have to agree. Oh well, company's loss. Going to sit back for a couple weeks and enjoy the unemployment, maybe work on some more certifications. And drat me if this porterhouse I bought and dry-aged this week isn't incredibly good.
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Oct 30, 2010 01:19
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notwithoutmyanus posted:2 letter email address domain name. You got me beat by one letter - my personal email is the first letter of my first name and the first six letters of my last name followed by a three letter .com domain for a 15 character email address. In other news I'm still (half-assed) looking for employment. My UI hasn't received a determination yet, so funds are starting to get a little low, but I expect a decision sometime this week. Using my copious free time to study for Security+ and take my roommate's dog for a walk around the block. And game. And sleep in. And watch TV. And game some more. And nap. I feel like I'm living a cat's life.
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Nov 16, 2010 05:16
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Yay! Just had a phone interview for a permatemp Deskside Support position an hour ago and they want me to come in for a face-to-face meeting with the support team on Friday. Barring a seriously unfortunate accident or unexpected complication I should finally be joining the workforce again after 3 months on unemployment (the first couple days were ok, but the rest had me going stir-crazy). Wish me luck!
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Jan 26, 2011 23:16
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I got the word earlier this week that I was hired for a perma-temp contract position and that I start on Monday. Yay!! Finally a job, after 3 months searching. It even has benefits. The location is a large manufacturing, marketing, accounting and research facility for a major industrial inkjet manufacturer and is a mix of cubicles, factory and clean rooms. Promises to be lots of fun.
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Feb 5, 2011 05:26
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I finally have a story to share! I just started working at this facility 3 weeks ago and so far enjoy the work - nothing too strenuous or hectic. Anyways, I was tasked with replacing a 5 yr old laptop for a rather important engineer. His laptop had been scheduled for replacement last year, but was delayed for one reason or another. Anyways, we go through the process of moving all his data from the old laptop to the new one when his boss calls up and demands the user get the old one back. The boss was convinced that the IS department was trying to rob his departmental budget of $1500 and had no intention of letting that happen. Even after we explained that the division gives the IS department a huge chunk of change for yearly replacements of out-of-date and defunct equipment he was convinced we were going to take the money from his budget. It finally took the the US IS manager telling him to shut up and stop harassing his subordinate and our department about the laptop for him to give up. Seriously, if you have a million dollar budget and you want to force an engineer with multiple doctorates and patents to use a broken-down POS laptop rather than let the IS department provide him a fully-functioning unit that was already paid for and costs you nothing, then you need a swift kick in the rear end to dislodge your brain. Managers...
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Feb 23, 2011 23:52
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User sends in a ticket to complain about a really loud grinding noise when he rebooted his computer this morning. I go to his desk to check things out - the computer is at least 5, maybe 6 years old and he's scheduled for a replacement. When I ask him to describe the problem he claims it's the hard drive making the noise, but in my experience the noise he made sounded like one of the fans going bad. I reboot his computer, but no troublesome noise. I'm listening really closely to the hard drive, but not even a light clicking noise. Everything sounds perfectly fine with the drive, but I do hear a slight hum coming from the back case fan, so I tell him the likely culprit is the case fan and to not worry. Besides, he's top of the list for a replacement when corporate releases our hardware funds anytime now. Him: "No no no no no! It's the hard drive. I know it is because I'm an engineer and have a college degree!" Me: "And I have a college degree too, plus certifications, plus 18 years experience working on computers. Unfortunately, I can't replicate the problem, but I'm fairly certain the issue is with one of the case fans. But the good news is you are at the top of the list for a replacement, so when it comes in I'll be happy to copy all your data over to the new machine. Until then, keep an ear open for the noise and if it occurs just call me." Him: "If my hard drive crashes you will be responsible for millions of dollars worth of lost data." Me: "Fair enough - ask your boss if he wants the new computer to come out of his budget or IT's." Five minutes later he calls me back. Him: "Boss says I can wait for the replacement and in the meantime I should copy my files to the network share." Me: "Have a great weekend!" I'm really starting to enjoy this job, especially since I just got my first paycheck. Finally, some money in my pocket.
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Mar 5, 2011 05:30
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The two big companies I've worked for doing desktop support have used 4 different ticket systems - first application was an in-house programmer's ticketing system that was simple to use, easy to understand and awesome to behold since it was both simple but incredibly automated - it pulled the user's information from the computer and automatically filled in most of the form, leaving the user free to select the problem category and enter a description of the issue. Then the company decided to switch over to Altiris Helpdesk. Not quite as user friendly, not quite as good user interface, lot more difficult for user's to enter tickets - resulting in them just calling the Helpdesk rather than putting in a ticket, so I would have to put in the ticket instead. Much less efficient. Got a new contract position and the company I work for now uses an incredibly old ticketing system called Vantive - not even supported by the developer (hasn't been for several years). Buggy as hell, ugly, awkward, inefficient - and that's me being generous. Now the company is about to switch over to some ungodly monstrosity called Service-now.com that must have made some salesman his yearly sales bonus. I should not need 8-10 hours of training to use a ticketing system, but that's what has been planned (6 hours down, 4 to go). I know that some manager type was the one to make the decision to get this because only the executives get excited about it - the tech folks grimace and walk away. There are 154 different groups set up in our system, with different ticket interfaces for incidents, service requests, changes, and hardware. There is a filtering system that needs to be set up by each person so they can find the tickets assigned to them or the group they are in. Good god, where's the vodka - I need a drink after just writing about it. We go live in 2 weeks.
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Apr 25, 2011 14:05
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CommanderApaul posted:They're migrating to EPIC in the next 12 months, and if both the EPIC migrations I've heard about from friends that work at other hospitals are anything to go on, it's going to involve sweet, sweet overtime. EPIC is a beast to implement, but I only know about it from the end-user perspective as my mom was the training coordinator for it at her large regional hospital in Ohio. It took them something like 2-3 years and a couple hundred million dollars to get it up and running. I'll ask her about the technical side of things since I'm sure she dealt with that too as part of her job. She was so happy when her retirement papers went through.
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May 5, 2011 14:35
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CommanderApaul posted:My wife said the same thing. A couple of the nurses on her floor went to some sort of Epic trainer training and promptly left the hospital for double their RN salary doing Epic stuff. Mom was I guess you can call her the master trainer since she attended some classes up in Minnesota or Wisconsin or wherever EPIC is headquartered for several weeks a number of years ago. She then trained all the actual trainers after creating all the coursework and documentation. By the end she only taught the really high-level classes and a couple basic classes to keep her toes wet. Had she decided to get EPIC certified she could have hung out a shingle and pulled in $250k/year as a consultant working part time. She retired last year (basically went on furlough for 56 weeks) before her official retirement started mid-March this year. She's been getting calls non-stop for the last year from hospitals all over the country offering her $100k and up to come work for them, but after 45 years as an RN she was looking forward to some me-time. Of course, she's rethinking it now since my sister uses her as a live-in babysitter and it's getting old.
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May 6, 2011 01:58
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couldcareless posted:What's even worse is when they get their kid that "knows a few things about computers" to start "fixing" the problem. A few months ago I had a user who was working at a customer's site when his computer started "acting funny". He did some Googling and figured he found the problem. Rather than contact us he talked with the customer's IT guy and had him break the laptop drive encryption. After that other weird things started happening - gee, I wonder why. I ended up spending 6 hours on his laptop recovering a boat load of "business critical" files while he went on and on about crappy Dell laptops and how XP needed to be replaced by the company RIGHT NOW! Finally recovered his files and wiped the drive and reinstalled XP. Ended the day by telling him to call us before he has someone who is not authorized to work on our computers mess around with anything. The funny thing is he refused for over two weeks to let us do anything because we might "make it worse". He finally relented when we told him we were not going to try and troubleshoot a laptop that did not have a company-approved installation on it, and was last worked on by someone who was not employed by us. It would be so much better if IT was considered something less than a carpet to be walked on in this company, but as far as the business is concerned IT is a cost that must be kept minimized (which is why they cut out $4m from our computer replacement budget - the whole year's budgeted amount). And they wonder why we have over 500 computers that are over 6 years old...
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Nov 1, 2011 17:50
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Sounder posted:Oh god, how did they break hard drive encryption? What are you guys using? It was Pointsec Encryption, but they were bought out by McAfee and it was changed to Endpoint Encryption if I remember correctly. It works just well enough that when it screws up it renders the entire hard drive unrecoverable. In funny news I had a user come up to me yesterday in a lather about his computer not working correctly. Apparently Lotus Notes was telling him that it couldn't connect to the server and was throwing out some weird error message. I fire it up and before I can ask him anything he walks away. I had his user information so no biggy, but the first thing I see is that his password is expired. Change his password and it's all good again - call him back and he sheepishly says that he didn't want to tell me his password had expired and figured removing and reinstalling Lotus Notes "wouldn't be a big deal".
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Nov 1, 2011 21:18
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I think I'll set up a network along the Terminator movie franchise. File server will be Skynet, while the Firewall will be named T100 or T1000 (illegal penetrations will be TERMINATED!!). The AD server will be called Sarah Connor (cause everyone's looking for her), and the email server will be John Connor (the man who always delivered).
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Dec 2, 2011 14:17
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I'm with madmaan on this one - companies are not known for being gentle, but misunderstood, giants of the forest. If they have even the slightest ability to gently caress over a former employee and lay the blame for a whole host of issues then they will. Doesn't even matter if you didn't have anything remotely to do with what the issue was - these people have no clue about computers or technology (most consider it magic) and figure you could have done it anyways. They won't lose any sleep over you going to jail or getting sued into oblivion, and in fact might feel very positive about it if it generates a few sales leads or garners some free publicity.
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Dec 2, 2011 17:28
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CommanderApaul posted:YOTJ! Congratulations!
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Dec 8, 2011 20:25
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I've had a lot of success with TeamViewer on both personal and business machines. In fact, I have TeamViewer installed on my work computer expressly for the purpose of remoting into my Win 7 machine at home. I also have it set up on my mom's laptop (also running Win 7) and I can use either my home machine or my work machine to remote into it to do whatever tech work she needs done. No issues with UAC. Only complaint I have is that there's a three hour session limit, after which TeamViewer shuts down and requires you to double-click on the computer to start a new session. I would love to give the folks at TeamViewer my money for a license, but there is no way in hell I'm paying $750/license, or $1500 for an unlimited number of licenses, or $2,690 for a corporate license - that poo poo don't fly for a poor little guy like me, so I'll continue to use the free version instead.
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Dec 26, 2011 00:13
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Dick Trauma posted:My brother bought Deadpspace 2 for our father, as if he doesn't already spend enough time on his computer playing HL2 deathmatches. Unfortunately when he tried to install it the Windows Installer Service blows up during the C++ redist install. So now I get to work on his PC remotely to get this sorted out so he can waste more of his life playing video games. Beats doing nothing but playing games on Facebook like my mom (and she wonders why she keeps getting viruses on her laptop - gee, I don't know what could be causing that...)
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Dec 26, 2011 20:36
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Corvettefisher posted:
I got fired a few years back over a similar issue, only it was a phone call and not a ticket. User called in to say the thingy wasn't working and in my effort to try and figure out what the hell he was trying to use he felt I "sounded condescending". No verbal warning, no written warning, no coaching, no day off without pay - just a boot in the rear end and out the door. Fortunately the employment board sided with me in my UI case, since the company violated their own written employment policies. Oh well - it got me out of the helldesk and into computer janitorial work.
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Dec 29, 2011 20:53
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OH BOY I LOVE HOW DESCRIPTIVE THINGS ARE
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"Sir, you're an idiot - that'll be $6. If you'd like actual support don't be such a cheap loving pussy."
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Dec 31, 2011 04:37
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coyo7e posted:I think I saw that Slackware has a a GUI by default now, too. Maybe even for the install. Not a chance in hell - still uses the same interface it's always used, however it does seem a little more user-friendly (but that might be because I'm more familiar with what it's asking when I do an install).
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Jan 10, 2012 14:11
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COCKMOUTH.GIF posted:The first thought that came to mind was "are there really that many people out there still using pcAnywhere?" Our manufacturing support engineers and technicians use it on EVERYTHING. They are going to be so pissed when those machines get hacked. But at least it will guarantee continual contractual employment for me.
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Jan 26, 2012 21:49
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angrytech posted:Oh poo poo, my condolences dude, Overholt is $12 around here(Winona). What brings you to the (not so) Frigid North? I spent 27 months of my life in Winona working at the UBC headquarters on the Helpdesk there. So glad I moved back to Ohio - it may be the armpit of America, but at least 3 feet of snow is not standard.
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Jan 27, 2012 01:14
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angrytech posted:Oh man, this weather is so far from reasonable that it makes me nervous. Any more years like this and I'm going to have to move up to International Falls. Completely comfortable answering since I was fired from there in December of 2008 - the reason was because I made an assistant store manager feel like I was sounding condescending to him. He called in asking for help getting "the thingy" to work (not joking, that's what he called it). I spent 10 minutes trying to find out what the thingy was supposed to do, including going over basic computer terminology so that we were on the same page. When I asked him to describe the icon he went on a biblical rant that the people who named the pictures on the screens icons were going to burn in hell and then refused to describe it because he was not going to harm his immortal soul. I tried a different tack and asked him to describe what the application was saying or doing when he clicked on the picture on the screen and nothing he said made any sense. After trying to interpret what the hell he was saying I finally gave it up and told him I would be escalating the ticket over to the desktop folks, but that because it was after 5pm they had already gone home. I think nothing about it for the next day, but on Wednesday I get called into my supervisor's office and read the riot act and written up - turns out the guy's issue was his VPN connection wasn't working right and desktop fixed him right up (which only they would have been able to fix anyways). Despite this he called to complain to my boss, and because he complained I was automatically guilty. I explained everything I said and did, but it made not one whit of difference. Thursday was Thanksgiving, so I had that off, but around 10am on Friday my boss called me into her office again and told me I was fired for the offense (despite already having been written up for it - my first write-up with the company). I collect my stuff and leave and file for unemployment, then immediately move back to Ohio. During my time there I had a pretty decent experience - the Helpdesk was actually pretty stable. I was the seventh and last person hired for it for two years. One person left to move back to Michigan to be with his kids again (divorced), and he was only replaced after several months. Karma is a bitch however - I heard through the grapevine that everything was being folded over into the holding company and consolidated into Pro-Build and that the entire IT department was given the option of either moving to Denver or being separated from the company. Never heard if it actually happened or not, or what happened to everyone else. Didn't really care. I got my unemployment because I was fired for an offense I'd already received punishment for that was way beyond the company policy - it should have been verbal warning, written warning, counseling and a day off without pay, then termination. Can't say that it didn't suck at the time, but in retrospect everything turned out great and I'm doing exactly what I enjoy and advancing in the IT field. I probably should explain that I was something of the hardware and applications expert for the Helpdesk and even designed a class for increasing productivity through the use of automated tools and applications. I helped with the transition from Lotus Notes to Exchange by setting up accounts and modifying user accounts and resetting passwords. I also got to travel to a couple stores to do changeovers when a new store was purchased and brought into the UBC family - I did the POS configurations and set up a lot of the hardware for it as well as troubleshooting. I also traveled on company time to various locations to do training seminars on the new email systems and POS updates and stayed in some very nice hotels and resorts. I probably would have stayed with it for another year or two before transferring to the Pro-Build corporate HQ in Denver (I was trying to do that when I got fired, with my manager's blessing - I was actually interviewing with them for an opportunity). Oh well. I guess the Helpdesk has turned to poo poo in the last couple years since I left, because before it was rock-solid. Be interested to hear any gossip you've heard or come by about it over the last couple years.
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Jan 27, 2012 15:03
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Krobar posted:Anyone have any experience with "Service Now" as a ticketing system? That's what I just found out they're hoping to switch us over to sometime this year... Kodak is using it now because of its focus on ITIL - I honestly think there are much better ticketing applications out there (I've used Magic, Remedy, Altiris, plus a couple in-house custom applications) but none of them had as many modules - there's a knowledgebase, inventory tracking, user tracking, asset tracking, plus a couple others I don't have any need to know about (and couldn't care less about). A lot of how friendly it is depends on how your admins configure it (and how knowledgeable they are about how it works).
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Jan 29, 2012 22:14
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There was a meeting today for Kodak employees in which it was announced that 16% of the workforce is getting eliminated, including contractors. Not sure if that means my job is at risk because of how the contract is structured, but I'm not holding my breath. There are just three of us desktop support guys, plus one network admin and one system admin (desktop are contractors, the admins are Kodak employees) for 600+ employees and 1500+ systems so I'm not sure how much more things could be reduced. Anyways I was talking to the network admin and I joked that I was cleaning up my cubicle for my impending layoff (since the rule is usually last in/first out) and he snapped "Not if I have a vote!", which was pretty satisfying. The network admin is not a fan of one of the other desktop guys, who's been here over four years but comes across like a whiny twenty-something when told to do something he doesn't agree with. Seriously, I dislike having to do some things that don't seem to make sense, but I just shrug my shoulders and do them because they are, after all, legitimate orders from my supervisor. But this guy wants to act like he needs to be consulted on every decision and that anything he disagrees with is automatically stupid. Ahh, to be young, dumb and headstrong again and not worn down from fighting endless losing causes.
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Feb 6, 2012 21:36
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psydude posted:Oh man, the stories I could tell from my 6 months working in a grocery store as a senior in highschool. I spent a year and a half working as a stockman (the guys who brought in carts and loaded heavy items) at Walmart and there were a number of times that I had to literally put on slickers and a respirator and go clean out a bathroom with a high-pressure water hose because the poo poo was a couple feet up the walls. I have no idea why, but I think it was a bit of "sticking it to The Man" over some bullshit return or exchange that was denied. The fact that The Man didn't clean the shitstorm never seemed to have occurred to the human pieces of poo poo.
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Feb 7, 2012 19:28
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psydude posted:... send them a copy of your new business card next week asking them to forward all pertinent emails to your new address. Seconding this. Also, ask if they have anyone looking for some side work since you have some openings on your team with flexible hours and great pay.
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Feb 7, 2012 21:56
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Moey posted:I think if I bring it up to him, he can start forcing them to require a valid reason then I can start documenting everything. The problem is I am sure these assholes will come up with anything that sounds business related and it will fly. They seem to like to break up departments into tiny teams of 4-6 people, then literally flip coins weekly to see if people should switch teams. And god forbid you are more than 7 feet away from a team member. Sit down and figure out how long each move takes, then multiply that by your hourly rate. Go back a couple months and break it down by week then produce this number on a sheet to your boss. Tell him that simply ending the musical desks routine will save the company X number of dollars because it allows you to focus on things that any person with the capability of lifting 10 lbs and isn't too stupid to require instructions to breath can do. Hell, even put it down as one of your annual goals to save the company the money by ending musical desk moving.
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Feb 9, 2012 22:30
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So a couple days ago the on-site department supervisor for the IT department received a request from a user to be allowed to keep his (at least) 8-yr old Toshiba Tecra to take home and leave the brand new Dell E6420 he was just issued at work. Policy is that something like that isn't going to happen - one mobile computer system per person, no exceptions. User objects and states that he MUST have the backup to ensure no interruption in servicing customer components, especially when money is a huge issue at this time for Kodak. He wants to make sure he has all documents, files, blah blah blah - all complete bullshit since I copied the contents of his entire hard drive over to the new machine. User gets snippy and phones the on-site supervisor's boss and tells him off, at which point the hammer drops - turn in the ancient laptop he's been complaining about for over a year, or turn in the brand new Dell. On-site supervisor is going to be picking up the Dell tomorrow, and since Kodak is in bankruptcy there are no purchases for hardware being made - in fact, there haven't been any hardware purchases made in the last year (we've just been moving what surplus new hardware we still had around for the last year wherever it was needed most, and now that surplus stock is gone), and it doesn't look like there will be any hardware purchases made for at least another 6 months. We had told the user when we initially tried to issue the Dell that this was likely his last chance for a new system and that if he turned it down for the third time there wouldn't be another offer made. Ever. He agreed this time and we figured we'd won a small battle, but then he decided to go into prick mode over an incredibly minor point of pride. So now instead of having a new system with at least 4-5 years ahead of it, he's going to get to limp along on a broken-down POS, and if something happens to it he's screwed - we don't have any spare parts for the Toshiba (we haven't even used them for at least 4 years - he was the last holdout), and no way of fixing it. I've already suggested that if something happens that requires us to look at the laptop that we pull the hard drive and smash it as a giant 
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Feb 24, 2012 00:35
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 12:38 |
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Lum posted:I didn't know they did HD encryption. If I remember correctly McAfee bought PointSec and renamed it to Enpoint Encryption. I've found it to be annoying, and there's nothing quite like the sinking-stomach sensation you get when you have to tell the user that the encryption has become corrupted and rendered their drive unrecoverable. I'm sure there's a means of recovering the data, but: a) I'm not paid that much; b) higher-ups don't care; c) no one seems to know anything about the encryption software; and d) the only person who does know is 700 miles away and doesn't like to share his secrets. So when I get a laptop in with a error message about not being able to find an operating system I just tell the user they're out of luck and start reimaging the drive.
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Mar 4, 2012 20:24
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