Had my first clash with a bunch of users today - Very new to sysadmin

Sooo as some of you know, I've only been a Systems Admin for about two weeks now and already I have had a clash with a bunch of users in one of our departments. I get a call from someone complaining that printing is taking an extremely long time and is slow. Long story short, I walk down to this department to get specifics and to find out the scope of this problem (Is it in a particular program? Is it just a particular file? Etc...) When I go down there, to find out, there's like 6 - 9 people down there whining about the printing issue. Saying things like "IT needs to fix that" and shouting things to each other like "the printers are slow", and telling me "you can't leave until this is fixed". I already understood all of this before I went down there and they made it extremely difficult for me to troubleshoot this problem with all of the gum flap... Couldn't think clearly through all the yelling and talking about how the printing sucks so I went back to my desk and worked with ONE user over the phone. I eventually fixed the problem about 45 minutes later but man... How many of you have had encounters like that where the users are just counter-productive? I already had acknowledged that there was a problem when I got the first call. How should one handle these situations?

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Comments

lunchbox67

LOL
It happens especially when you are new. Just keep your cool and fix the issue. As time goes on and you do your job well these types of situation should happen less or go away.

You may be going into a situation like I did at my current job ... the guy before me was worthless. He did his job about as poorly as he could. It took about 6 months for me to earn the trust of the users from the lowest levels to the President of the company. Now they trust me to prioritize what needs to be done first and what can be put off until later.

Remember, most of them think what we do is magic and it scares them. ALWAYS teach them how to fix things themselves in situations they can. Like to reboot, to check cables, to make sure its powered on … those type of things.

m3zilla

Eventually, you learn to zone them out, and focus on your troubleshooting efforts. As you progress, you're going to run into this problem, not with users, but with other IT folks, or Project Managers/Executives. For example, anytime I'm working an issue that impact the production environment, I have to get on a call with anywhere from 5-15 people, including change management, project managers, and executives. Once you get harassed by "C" level folks, handling users will be a breeze!

martaw

Yeah, I would agree that many times complainers come with the job. Staying cool and keeping an air of confidence really helps things from becoming even hotter. You also did the right thing by getting away and troubleshooting with ONE person. Great job.

eansdad

You will get used to it. Users have always and will always complain even when everything is working smoothly they'll find something.

missy2687

The girls at my old job were like that. It was dreadful. I felt SO sorry for our IT guy. Hang in there and I think you handled it well!

Zartanasaurus

CodeBlox wrote: »

I went back to my desk and worked with ONE user over the phone.

This is what you should've done to start with.

Where I work, the field techs are the ones who go onsite to look at this first and give us the proper information we need to get the job done. I rarely talk to anyone who isn't in my department.

UnixGuy

Just keep in mind that this is Part of the job.

I used to face more of that when I was in field support (very frustrated customers calling us when they fail to fix the problem - go figure). Just have the mindset that this is part of your job, and being tolerant with people is a skill that you will pick up.

However, I understand where the users are coming from:
Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable - The Oatmeal

CodeBlox

There are no "field techs" here. I work at a bank and this particular department works on the second floor and I work on the third. Lesson learned from this: Try to involve as little people as possible... I mean, it was like a pack of wolves! Then when I had tried to a few things and asked how the printing was going they would start going on about the problem some more...

Excellent1

Keep in mind when starting a new position in IT, you're often dealing with user backlash from sometimes years of neglect from the individual you replaced. If that person was lazy or unhelpful to the users, your job will be miserable for the first few weeks. The best advice I can give you is to be polite, do not respond in any way to all the emotion you encounter, and be patient. There's no need to say too much. Actions speak louder than words, and after a few weeks of having their issues dealt with professionally, they will be eating out of the palm of your hands.

The trick is to not indulge the fantasy where you run through the office punching all of their ungrateful faces in.

Patience and time are your allies here.

Good luck.

Webmaster

Comes with being the new (IT) guy. Just keep smiling, remain professional and courteous and do your thing. After you fixed their problems a couple of times they will gain more trust in your capabilities and leave you to it. Though if you stay amongst the users a bit longer they will start going on about other problems they've been having for a while too. That's what users do, they won't let you know their appreciation of the system being up and running but they will be eager to complain when it's not working. Part of the challenge, and imo the satisfaction of the job is keeping those users (the ones that complain the most) happy.

Codeblox wrote:

There are no "field techs" here.

How about desktop support or call desk that can filter out problems and gather info before they send you?

lunchbox67 wrote:

ALWAYS teach them how to fix things themselves in situations they can. Like to reboot, to check cables, to make sure its powered on … those type of things.

I agree, writing some for-dummies step-by-step procedures can save a lot of time and annoyance for both admins and users.

it_consultant

Somehow; you develop some armor. It is important to never escalate your users emotions, a lot of ignoring is often involved with IT, you already know there is a problem, no need to keep yammering on about it. Never allow anyone to be disrespectful to you, but be mindful that often times people yell and complain as a way of covering up their own inadequacies. They suspect they might have done something to create the problem, or they have such poor understanding of what is going on that the only emotion that shines through is anger.

I have had my fair share of "slow printing" issues. Sometimes the problem is legitimate, like the PCL driver is known to be slow and you have to change them to the PS driver. Sometimes though, my interaction starts with "Ok, who needs the 1200 page document printed?". Especially when you are new, and you are seeing these problems for the first time, users can smell your confusion and pounce on you. Enlist assistance from someone more experienced when necessary.

MAC_Addy

I've been in the same situation as you with people saying "You can't leave until it's fixed" - whenever someone says that now, I just leave. If they're yelling at you, I'd turn around and tell them that you'll report them to HR for acting unprofessional.

What ended up being the problem with it?

Also, many people wonder why we usually end up hating mostly everyone that calls.

elTorito

I remember being very happy with being promoted from desktop support to jr. systems administrator, thinking I'd finally be rid of the endless phone calls and awkward end user interactions. Was I ever wrong! It took being further promoted to a senior admin role (ie. 4th line support, behind the service desk, desktop support, and jr. admins) that I finally got time to actually do anything besides fixing daily incidents.

Webmaster already said it, but I'm going to ask again: doesn't your organisation have a help desk or service disk, or a desktop support team? In my experience, 1st line and 2nd line support can sometimes be too quick in shoving a problem into the sysadmin's lap, without putting enough effort into investigating a problem. IMO, when a sysadmin receives a ticket from 1st or 2nd line, they should in 80% of the cases be able to fix an issue without having to go through the entire cycle of problem analysis with the end user, saving everyone a lot of time.

Don't be too quick in accepting ticket escalations into which no effort was put!

CodeBlox

Webmaster wrote: »

How about desktop support or call desk that can filter out problems and gather info before they send you?

Well, thing is since I was recently promoted, they are trying to find a replacement for me as a helpdesk guy (Our helpdesk consists of like 6 people) and I had to double down yesterday as helpdesk and system admin and for some reason just had to answer that phone call lol. Starting Monday though, I will be strictly system admin and off the phones for good (even though they haven't found a replacement). That only happened because the VP of technology walked by and saw that I was still doing helpdesk while everyone else had gone home for the day. It made him furious and he got it straight for me

I'm not new to the organization, just switching roles.

As for what I did to fix this problem: There were two other people prodding around the print server that day. One was a helpdesk guy and the other was a senior engineer. The other helpdesk guy setup a new printer on that same floor and gave it the wrong port (This wasn't the fix for my problem but I ended up fixing his problem by pointing it out to him). I saw the senior guy had a RDC session to the server and was active so I emailed him asking if he was doing anything on the server... Got no response (And I STILL haven't!!!!). So, even though I didn't want to, I restarted the print spooler service and it cleared it up. We have VPs using printers on this server and a bunch of other people too. I took that into consideration as these jobs would be lost and lots of users print 100+ page documents. Thats why I didn't want to do it. But that fixed the problem.

BigMevy

Excellent1 wrote: »

Keep in mind when starting a new position in IT, you're often dealing with user backlash from sometimes years of neglect from the individual you replaced. If that person was lazy or unhelpful to the users, your job will be miserable for the first few weeks. The best advice I can give you is to be polite, do not respond in any way to all the emotion you encounter, and be patient. There's no need to say too much. Actions speak louder than words, and after a few weeks of having their issues dealt with professionally, they will be eating out of the palm of your hands.

The trick is to not indulge the fantasy where you run through the office punching all of their ungrateful faces in. Patience and time are your allies here.

Good luck.

This is spot on.

kurosaki00

just remain courteous and after a while you will have a gameplan.
Later on you will know each other and will have more trust and can joke around
like omg again with that? everyone laughs
and its "easier" on you.

If something Ive learned after dealing with internal costumers is
TeamViewer
if you can, do it remotely using a remote desktop tool
saves a lot of time
better to do it yourself than walk the person through
or if it one of those persons who've had the same issue 10 times

slinuxuzer

Yep, your being tested, its very common, their testing their limits, I find it hilarious they tell you you can't leave till its fixed, thats usually exactly when I go to my office and tell them I have to check something back there, that usually follows at least an hour penalty, yes I know this is dreadfully unprofessional and I dont do this everytime, but if what I call "the zoo" is in full swing I leave the area and let that die down, granted I've been working as a systems admin for 8 years and have no kids to feed.

This is just one of my pet peeves, we live in the "me" culture these days and people very seldom try to put themselves in someone else's shoes, they wouldn't like it if you tried to distract from their work, but unfortunatley thats just the way things are. I used to work at one small company about 100 total business users where this was really really bad, everyone thought IT was their B#@$, thank god I'm not there anymore, I literally got screamed at by the CFO one day because his computer was "slow" he was on a network drop that was way longer than spec and I explained this to them the week before and requested a PO for a new drop, guess who over rode that

Not to mention having used my own personal high end test equipment to determine the issue.

Oh a great one liner I've had to use a few times, if some wise ass ask's you if you know what your doing, just smile and say "would you know if I didn't?" Be warned though everyone may laugh at him and you may lose his friendship for life.

End Rant.

higherho

CodeBlox wrote: »

Sooo as some of you know, I've only been a Systems Admin for about two weeks now and already I have had a clash with a bunch of users in one of our departments. I get a call from someone complaining that printing is taking an extremely long time and is slow. Long story short, I walk down to this department to get specifics and to find out the scope of this problem (Is it in a particular program? Is it just a particular file? Etc...) When I go down there, to find out, there's like 6 - 9 people down there whining about the printing issue. Saying things like "IT needs to fix that" and shouting things to each other like "the printers are slow", and telling me "you can't leave until this is fixed". I already understood all of this before I went down there and they made it extremely difficult for me to troubleshoot this problem with all of the gum flap... Couldn't think clearly through all the yelling and talking about how the printing sucks so I went back to my desk and worked with ONE user over the phone. I eventually fixed the problem about 45 minutes later but man... How many of you have had encounters like that where the users are just counter-productive? I already had acknowledged that there was a problem when I got the first call. How should one handle these situations?

I try to educate them on the simple issues and since you're doing both roles I would state that and then state you will get this issue resolved as soon as possible. It's a pain but your going up the ladder, sooner or later you will not have to deal with these pesky little tasks and hopefully get out of operations and into a design role.

YFZblu

CodeBlox wrote: »

Sooo as some of you know, I've only been a Systems Admin for about two weeks now and already I have had a clash with a bunch of users in one of our departments. I get a call from someone complaining that printing is taking an extremely long time and is slow. Long story short, I walk down to this department to get specifics and to find out the scope of this problem (Is it in a particular program? Is it just a particular file? Etc...) When I go down there, to find out, there's like 6 - 9 people down there whining about the printing issue. Saying things like "IT needs to fix that" and shouting things to each other like "the printers are slow", and telling me "you can't leave until this is fixed". I already understood all of this before I went down there and they made it extremely difficult for me to troubleshoot this problem with all of the gum flap... Couldn't think clearly through all the yelling and talking about how the printing sucks so I went back to my desk and worked with ONE user over the phone. I eventually fixed the problem about 45 minutes later but man... How many of you have had encounters like that where the users are just counter-productive? I already had acknowledged that there was a problem when I got the first call. How should one handle these situations?

First of all, congrats on the new position

Secondly - As the only field tech for three sites spread across three cities, I will tell you this: If you let them, Users will eat you alive. Definitely have that 'happy place' ready in case you need to duck out for a few minutes.