What really grinds my gears... IT qualms

In IT we all have qualms. I didn't see another topic like this so I thought I would post one.

What in your job grinds your gears? What do you hate seeing or hearing the most?

I work help desk, so a gear grinder for me is:

Tech: "We can't dispatch a field tech for that. It is an issue with your equipment, not ours". If we send out a tech and the problem is not with our services or equipment, there will be a field service charge. (Example, wireless showing up.. Customer owned router)
Customer: "I pay my bill on time every month. I deserve to have someone come out to check my stuff. If you can't send someone out I will just cancel my service. Why should I have to pay just for someone to come look?"

What I want to say: "Paying on time is what you are suppose to do. You give us money, we give you internet. You don't earn anything extra because you have paid your bill. You are doing what you are suppose to do. We are providing you with a service and you are paying us for it. It costs us money to truck roll, we are not going to waste money for the tech to come out when there is nothing for him to check."

I am sure some of the guys who have been in IT a while will have some doozies.

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Comments

Shdwmage

Technician: "Have you tried restarting your machine?"
Customer: "Yes"
Technician: "Today?"
Customer: "Yes"
Tech: "I'll come out and take a look then."
Tech gets out to the desk brings up task manager and the computer has been on for > 30 minutes. Simple restart fixes.

ARGHHH

Robertf969

Them: "I cant connect to the network"

Me: "Did you log out or just pull out your CAC last night?"

Them: "I logged out like I always do"

Me: Checks AD Disabled for IAVA or Disabled for HIDS
"Well your computer missed the update last night because you didn't log out properly"

them: "HOW LONG TO FIX IT, OMG I HAVE SO MUCH WORK BLAH BLAH BLAH"

I then spend the next hour manually applying updates and fighting the NEC.

E Double U

Sys admin: Can you check into a firewall issue?
Me: Sure
Sys admin: I can't reach a server.
Me: What is the ip?
Sys admin: 10.0.x.x
Me: That doesn't go through the ASA. Who manages the server?
Sys admin: I do.

* This only bothers me because I continuously explain to the same admin that his source (which also begins with 10.0.x.x) does not go through our perimeter firewall to reach internal hosts.

Sys admin: Can you monitor traffic on the firewall?
Me: Sure. What is the ip address?
Sys admin: * blank stare and walks away *

* This is the same sys admin as above that I always request an ip address from when he asks me to monitor traffic.

thisdudehenry

Robertf969 wrote: »

Them: "I cant connect to the network"

Me: "Did you log out or just pull out your CAC last night?"

Them: "I logged out like I always do"

Me: Checks AD Disabled for IAVA or Disabled for HIDS
"Well your computer missed the update last night because you didn't log out properly"

them: "HOW LONG TO FIX IT, OMG I HAVE SO MUCH WORK BLAH BLAH BLAH"

I then spend the next hour manually applying updates and fighting the NEC.

Story of my life , another good one was the same situation but with 10+ laptops.

Customer- I did what you said I left the laptops on but they still got kicked off the domain!??!?
Me- Sir... you closed the lids and put them to sleep.. and made them missed the updates..

SteveLord

"It is only working now because you're standing here!"

beads

Help or service desk complaints that the tasks I assign them are "too hard".

- b/eads

olaHalo

I hate poor logging from other techs

Come in at night. See ticket for issue.
Work on it for hours.
Next day other tech tells me they already went through the steps that I did
-____-
Why didnt you put it in the log!?

Winzer

Random employee: I can't do X (send emails/print/connect to whatever), please help
Me: Ok let me check
Random employee: I don't have time for this right now we'll do this later
Me: ...

And then they get mad that the problem isn't fixed the next day. It's like they expect me to check up on them to see if they have time for me to help them every 30 minutes or something.

tecke

Those lovely inefficiencies commonly found in large organizations.

E Double U

SteveLord wrote: »

"It is only working now because you're standing here!"

This has happened to every tech!

LeBroke

E Double U wrote: »

This has happened to every tech!

This also happens when you are a tech and showing a problem you can't solve to your boss.

Shdwmage

olaHalo wrote: »

I hate poor logging from other techs

Come in at night. See ticket for issue.
Work on it for hours.
Next day other tech tells me they already went through the steps that I did
-____-
Why didnt you put it in the log!?

Because I thought you needed something to do! LOL j/k I keep meticulous notes.

Shdwmage

LeBroke wrote: »

This also happens when you are a tech and showing a problem you can't solve to your boss.

This is why PSR is your friend!

bugzy3188

Them: "The coffee machine is broke, can you fix it?"
Me: *Face palm*

SteveLord

Don't forget how an issue that originates as something minor, seems to grow and become more disastrous the more people it goes through before it gets to you.

"John's laptop isn't working in the meeting!" actually ends up being "John couldn't access a particular non-critical file that could have waited until a break for you to take a look at."

anoeljr

When I saw the title of this thread I immediately thought of Peter Griffin from Family Guy lol.

MarcIT

In IT you will always be working with people, and its not the customers job to understand everything. Without them paying your company, you wouldn't even have a job, so you need to be patient and not let it get to you. That's one way to look at it to help mitigate the frustration...

Speaking personally and honestly, letting anything 'grind your gears' at work will ruin a whole day with the stress from that one situation in my opinion, so its not worth it at all. I've had way too many bad days in my working career because of letting seemingly little things become huge because I lacked patience and let them get to me - blowing them out of proportion. Its all about perception.
But if I went back in time, in all honesty, I'd probably get flustered by the same things again.

My pet-peeve at work is working with unmotivated people who may not even lack competence, but are simply lazy when their employer is paying them good money. That drives me up a wall...
http://giphy.com/gifs/698GDzAWNtQs0/html5

E Double U

anoeljr wrote: »

When I saw the title of this thread I immediately thought of Peter Griffin from Family Guy lol.

hahaha I can't believe that didn't cross my mind.

NetworkNewb

LOL! ^^^ now I got the Peter Griffin saying that over and over in my head.

Mooseboost

anoeljr wrote: »

When I saw the title of this thread I immediately thought of Peter Griffin from Family Guy lol.

Thus the source of the title is revealed!

Another great example:

Customer: "I am having issues on X channel. You need to send out a tech to check my equipment"
Tech: "The provider for channel X is having issues with an encoder. They are working to repair it, we do not have an ETA."
Customer: "I don't think thats so. You need to send a tech".
Tech: "............."

markulous

Customer puts in a ticket for a vague request. E.g. "Why am I getting duplicate messages?" or "CRM is behaving oddly" Tech escalates it to me without doing anything.

Me: Why did you escalate this? I don't see any troubleshooting notes.
Tech: I didn't know what to do!
Me: I'm not a mind reader, I know just as much as you do about the problem.
Tech: I'd have no idea where to even start!
Me: How about you call them up and get a bit more info?
Tech: Oh, ok, I didn't know that.
Me: ....

GLaDOS11

I absolutely cannot stand all the "business jargon" that everyone seems to want to use nowadays. It ticks me off because it's intentionally vague and confusing. For example, I'm trying to get information on what exactly a new program or feature can be used for and the description will be something so ridiculously long and drawn out that it doesn't tell me anything about what the stupid thing even does.It's like they tried to cram a bunch of buzz words into the description to appease some corporate boss somewhere.

"Program XYZ allows you to leverage the existing correlation of data points accummulated over a set period of time and transition said data points into a new infrastructure whereby you can manage and maintain the datasets interdependently of one another."

wd40

SteveLord wrote: »

"It is only working now because you're standing here!"

Am I the only one that enjoys hearing this line ?

NetworkNewb

wd40 wrote: »

Am I the only one that enjoys hearing this line ?

Its crazy how often that is said... or "that's exactly what I did! Don't know why it works for you"

EngRob

E Double U wrote: »

Sys admin: Can you monitor traffic on the firewall?
Me: Sure. What is the ip address?
Sys admin: * blank stare and walks away *

If only I had a dollar for every time this has happened.

Anonymouse

Helpdesk (first level call center) opening vague tickets and then escalating to desktop support. Sometimes techs don't know how to ask questions to actually find the problem. If you can't figure out the problem then how will you figure out the answer? User ends up waiting for me and I end up wasting my time taking care of an issue that should have been taken care of at the first level.

networker050184

My biggest is people who can not follow standards. If you are going to do something more than once do it that same way every time. Don't go off doing your own thing if there is a standard set. If there isn't yet let's make one. Some people think small things like interface descriptions etc. are trivial and don't matter, but it does. You can't automate and audit if there are not standards followed. It's also much easier to jump in and troubleshoot an issue if everything is consistent. The problems start jumping out at you at that point.

bpenn

Want to know what really grinds my gears?

We have over 5 remote sites who each manage Active Directory on their end. There is no common naming convention for any device in any OU. It drives me ape ****.

Xavor

Using 6 tools to do one thing shitty, when one of them done well would do the job of the 6. #devopshiz

--chris--

Not a general "gear grinder" but a single instance that really stands out:

Client A (calls me): ....
Me: Hey, hows its going. What can I hel...
Client A: I forgot why I called...
Me: ?
Client A:..... I am sure it was nothing...herp derp

45 minutes later...

Owner of business that client A works at (calls me): Why didn't you fix _________ that client A called you about yesterday? This is keeping her from working and she said you didn't know how to help her when she called you.

Me: I am sorry to hear that, I must have misunderstood her question. How can I help?

Always gotta kiss butt, even when its total fubar.