Giving An Invoice to Users

Today I received a ticket from a user saying he spilled salad dressing on his laptop and some of the keys stopped functioning. While I applaud his honesty, it makes me mad that users here are very willy nilly with company provided equipment. I read an article recently where it was reported that Facebook was giving their users "invoices" for equipment the company paid for. It basically amounted to cell phone bills and things like a new keyboard. The user did not pay the invoice, but it was to show that things like this are not free and have a cost. My idea was to show the price of the keyboard, price to ship, and the hourly rate to replace it. Anyone tried this before? If so what were the results?

I'm not attempting to pick on the user or anything like that, but it's not difficult to stop away from your laptop while eating. This occurred over the three day weekend and we're all adults who should know better.

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Comments

kanecain

Users in my company would not like this. They feel that workstations come from Fairyland and are paid for with golden glitter dust.

coffeeluvr

kanecain wrote: »

Users in my company would not like this. They feel that workstations come from Fairyland and are paid for with golden glitter dust.

I also spit my coffee out when I read this...it is so true!! LMAO!!

the_Grinch

Haha, yup same here. I ordered the replacement keyboard and told the user to try to refrain from eating/drinking around the computer as Dell hassles us with part replacements of this nature (that's not 100% true, but I'd rather then believe it). His reply? He was doing some work down the shore and the wind kicked up knocking the dressing onto his computer. Where do they come up with these things?

blargoe

Some companies will expect for users to pay for damages to their equipment resulting from lack of common sense and/or negligent behavior, but in my experience it almost never happens. I wish people would be better stewards of the assets of which they are entrusted.

My favorite call in was when a remote salesperson called in and needed a new iPhone shipped to him in a rush, because he dropped his phone in his beer that morning.

the_Grinch

Haha dropped it into his beer huh? Yeah I don't expect them to pay for it, but I would like them to be conscious of the fact that there is a cost associated with all the equipment we provide them.

boobobobobob

In California i think this is illegal, you have to prove that the emplpoyee damage the equipement through gross negligence or willfully damaged it. I think this is the case in most states, it's mostly used for service employees. Like waiters and waitresses dropping dishing and stuff.

NetworkVeteran

the_Grinch wrote: »

Haha dropped it into his beer huh? Yeah I don't expect them to pay for it, but I would like them to be conscious of the fact that there is a cost associated with all the equipment we provide them.

I worked for a company that shared the invoices with the employee and their manager. I don't see any harm in it, as long as you're clear they don't need to pay it (vagueness here results in lost productivity). To me, increases repairs are a cost of doing business if you want employees to work from home. When I had toddlers, an annual laptop repair was needed.

Think of it this way. He was working even while enjoying a beer! That likely didn't happen in the workplace.

DevilWAH

I think its a bit unfair, most user I quite good with company equipment. There are a few cases of idiots, but if the company allow food and drink at the desk then accidents will happen (like when my boss spilt his Coffe on my desk top).

For most users having to call up IT and admit her mistake is embrassment enough. However I hav seen a few cases where it was clear the user needed a reminder that th equipment cost money, and in one case was told that damaging it equipment was no different to kicking hold in the wall, and if it continued he would face desipline.

In our company each department has to pay for any it equipment above a set refresh amount. So IT wil pay for a new PC for a new user, and replace them every 3 years or as per the manufactures warranty. Damage beyond that and the department pay it out of there budget.

ptilsen

I don't know about you, but I'm not now and have never been paid to be the equipment police. If users damage equipment and it's a problem, that's between them and some level of management. Frankly, it's the organization's responsibility to make sure it's taking the right steps to mitigate any kind of risks and to accept those it hasn't mitigated (which is why employees paying for negligent use of equipment is illegal in most states). I'm not saying it's cool to trash company equipment, but I can honestly say this wouldn't bother me. It shouldn't be a significant cost the organization or make anyone's job particular difficult, so I just can't see getting upset over something like this.

About7Narwhal

I think ptilsen hit it on the head: Our job is to ensure the computer works, not to lecture the user about how much he/she is costing the department. When the bill hits the budget, the manager of the department should be looking over those types of charges. "Bill over there destroyed 4 cell phones last month... perhaps we should have a chat about this."

I think you should certainly suggest sending invoices to the manager of the group but never the employee who caused the issue as it could lead to arguments, misunderstandings, "lost" equipment, etc. Plus, no one wants a call from HR because Bill thinks you are picking on him. If you send the invoice to the manager, he / she will eventually ask how to prevent these costs. That is when you suggest training or other alternatives.

HP_Guy

coffeeluvr wrote: »

I also spit my coffee out when I read this...it is so true!! LMAO!!

Not over your keyboard I hope!

deth1k

So how about you being charged for causing an outage by mistake i.e reloading a server or core switch/router. Does this sound fair? You shouldn't care about end users causing any damage to companies property as once again it doesn't come out of your own pocket. There are rules that apply here and company policies which will determine whether damage was caused by accident or on purpose and any disciplinary action taken to resolve this.

Ahriakin

At the end of the day the user only has that resource to facilitate their work. I'd go with willful negligence or deliberate harm being the only time censure should be considered, otherwise it's simply a cost of doing business (the guy might be clumsy but maybe he's also responsible for a major part of the bread-and-butter of the business).

blargoe

deth1k wrote: »

So how about you being charged for causing an outage by mistake i.e reloading a server or core switch/router. Does this sound fair?

You do this more than once every couple blue moons, you lose your job or get a reprimand (or should).

DevilWAH

I agree with blargoe, cause outages and you don't deserve to keep your job if you do it more than once. But this is a very different thing. if you have the power to cause outages then the chances are your job is working on the devices and you are expected to keep them up and running. No one accidentally reboots a device, or misconfigures it with out planing. You should know better than this, its your job to keep it running.

This kind of mistake is cause be negligent of your duties. A user spilling a coffee on there PC on the other hand is just a simple accident, and unless they do it constently then I would not worry about it.

the_Grinch

I'll just point out that nowhere in my statement did I ever mention actually charging the user for the damage, merely show them the cost when they don't take care of company provided equipment. Going with that line of thinking yeah I'd agree that any outage caused by me should have an invoice attached saying "you cost the company x dollars today".

Aldur

I'm on the side of the fence at this being a bad idea too. Might be ok coming from a manager or something, but it would do nothing but cause hard feelings between an IT staff and the users.

I don't think it's IT's place to do this, if the user is charged or not. Let management handle managing the users' behavior.

deth1k

DevilWAH wrote: »

I agree with blargoe, cause outages and you don't deserve to keep your job if you do it more than once. But this is a very different thing. if you have the power to cause outages then the chances are your job is working on the devices and you are expected to keep them up and running. No one accidentally reboots a device, or misconfigures it with out planing. You should know better than this, its your job to keep it running.

This kind of mistake is cause be negligent of your duties. A user spilling a coffee on there PC on the other hand is just a simple accident, and unless they do it constently then I would not worry about it.

Really? So you've never made a mistake more than once? This happens in ISP world fore often than you think. Having multiple CRT sessions open to PE and CPE and accidentally typing "reload" on PE, or pasting config onto PE instead of CPE.

jibbajabba

I had a user once who smashed the mouse constantly on her desk telling me the damn thing stopped working.

After I plugged the cable back in we noticed that the ball enclosure was screwed (remember those). I said that this was caused by her smashing the "damn thing" onto the table and the response ? If I would have done my job correctly, It wouldn't have happened.

I told her that I will make sure to chop her leg off so she cannot kick the cable out of the PC any more.

Somehow it didn't go down well ... I am SO not a people person lol ...

jibbajabba

blargoe wrote: »

You do this more than once every couple blue moons, you lose your job or get a reprimand (or should).

What a lot of people forget is that a lot of people pull silly hours.

I had that discussion with a manager once. Explained that if they expect people to work 10hrs / day + overtime + weekend, sometimes 60-80hrs per week, that mistake do happen. More than usual anyway ..

DevilWAH

deth1k wrote: »

Really? So you've never made a mistake more than once? This happens in ISP world fore often than you think. Having multiple CRT sessions open to PE and CPE and accidentally typing "reload" on PE, or pasting config onto PE instead of CPE.

No I have not made such silly mistakes. I saw a guy do the same and managed to reboot two core device with out putting there config back and brought down a data center. Cost a company £100,000s. I am sorry but copying to the wrong console or rebooting the wrong device and you are proving you don't take the role seriously. In the years I have been in networking, and the thousands of devices I have worked on across many companies, I have twice made an "foolish" error once patched a lead in to the wrong port in a server room crashing the exchange system, and once shut down the wrong port on a switch and taken a firewall off line.

rebooting the wrong device or installing the wrong config on a device is not a mistake it is straight forward negligence. If you can't handle multiple CRT tabs, either take the time to label and organizes them in a way to make it completely clear what is what. or take the long route and only have one or two open at a time. Reboot a device more than once when I am managing you and you better have a much better explication than "I got confused between my tab", that might save you the first time, but after that it will really start to affect your career progression.

I treat the networks I work on as belonging to other people and with the same care I like people to show my personal stuff. If I lent you my car and you put it in a ditch I would be less than impressed, why should how you treat their company be any different?

deth1k

DevilWAH wrote: »

No I have not made such silly mistakes. I saw a guy do the same and managed to reboot two core device with out putting there config back and brought down a data center. Cost a company £100,000s. I am sorry but copying to the wrong console or rebooting the wrong device and you are proving you don't take the role seriously. In the years I have been in networking, and the thousands of devices I have worked on across many companies, I have twice made an "foolish" error once patched a lead in to the wrong port in a server room crashing the exchange system, and once shut down the wrong port on a switch and taken a firewall off line.

rebooting the wrong device or installing the wrong config on a device is not a mistake it is straight forward negligence. If you can't handle multiple CRT tabs, either take the time to label and organizes them in a way to make it completely clear what is what. or take the long route and only have one or two open at a time. Reboot a device more than once when I am managing you and you better have a much better explication than "I got confused between my tab", that might save you the first time, but after that it will really start to affect your career progression.

I treat the networks I work on as belonging to other people and with the same care I like people to show my personal stuff. If I lent you my car and you put it in a ditch I would be less than impressed, why should how you treat their company be any different?

Well there you go, you've made two "foolish" mistakes and yet kept your job and not been given P45, sounds fair to me. People make mistakes that's our nature, we learn this way, some people learn from others and some do it the hard way. This happens more often in larger companies due to the fact that there are changes happening on hourly basis, some of which are during working hours "non service effecting". In the enterprise world where everything has to be approved by just about everyone including CEO's dog everything is done out of a template hence less prone to mistakes. Next time ask yourself when you read an article out of The Register (or whichever) about major ISP outage - "was it really a fiber break?"

the_Grinch

I have a perfect example. When I first started at my last job they assigned an email server issue to me. It required a patch and a reboot. The tech before me had been working on it for sometime so I assumed we had the go ahead to reboot the device after midnight. I installed the patch and told the overnight tech to reboot at 1 am. He reboots it, it doesn't come back up so he reaches out to the smart hands at the data center and contacts the customer to say all came back up after the smart hands hit the switch. The customer flip big time (rightfully so) because they hadn't been told (my mistake). I was brought into the CTO's office and told it might cost them the customer. Then I was shown what that customer paid a month, how long they had been with us, and the procedure for rebooting anything.

So yeah I know people make mistakes. But you continue to make mistakes when you don't realize all the behind the scenes work that goes into fixing those mistakes. I can promise you that the next 18 months I was there I never once didn't tell a customer what I was doing nor not informed our various managers/supervisors of my plans.

NetworkVeteran

DevilWAH wrote: »

If you can't handle multiple CRT tabs, either take the time to label and organizes them in a way to make it completely clear what is what.

Yup. My PuTTY tabs are labelled and also color-coded. Do whatever you need to, to ensure you know precisely which device you are troubleshooting or making changes to. I'm not error-proof, but I'm highly error-resistant.

DevilWAH

deth1k wrote: »

Well there you go, you've made two "foolish" mistakes and yet kept your job and not been given P45, sounds fair to me. People make mistakes that's our nature, we learn this way, some people learn from others and some do it the hard way. This happens more often in larger companies due to the fact that there are changes happening on hourly basis, some of which are during working hours "non service effecting". In the enterprise world where everything has to be approved by just about everyone including CEO's dog everything is done out of a template hence less prone to mistakes. Next time ask yourself when you read an article out of The Register (or whichever) about major ISP outage - "was it really a fiber break?"

You stated "So you've never made a mistake more than once?" and this is the difference, reboot a router accidentally once then fine, but expect to explain why it happened and what steps are in place to insure its not repeated. Do the same mistake again and if you show that you ignore the lessons of the first time them expect a P45. Working for a service management company you deal with companies who will lose £100K a minute for any down time caused. and have at there disposal the ability to impose very large fines on the service company if they cause an outage (£10k's a minute). I have had the pleasure of signing these contacts and you make dam sure every member of your team knows that mistakes are not tolerated.

Companies have change management for a reason, with very detailed processed written in to them, stray from the process and you out on a limb. The process is there to insure that no outages happen. If it says on the change process to reboot router X but you accidentally do Y then that's you deviating from the process. I say all this with my change management hat on from few years back when I had the pleasure of when member of the my team did make a mistake (even minor ones), have to write reports and meeting with senior management of very large global corporations to assume them it would not happen again.

every one of course is allowed mistakes, when something you have tested in production thoroughly for an unknown reason causes and outage in a live environment that is not a mistake. but to reboot the wrong device is and many would see it as negligent.

A lot is also how you respond to your mistake. When I took the firewall of line, I called the noc team to explain what had happen as I was bringing it back up. and once I was happy it was running fine I completed the change management ticket with all the details. and sent a note to the banks and my own company management explained the issue and apologizing for what happen. At the next weekly meeting before I was asked I present a report on what had happen, and introduced so more steps in to the specific change process to insure it could not happen again. Result no cross words no threats and happy customer and happy company.

In the case of the guy who wiped the config of the devices and rebooted them taking out a chunk of a date center. he walked in first of all stating he had got confused, then trying to point a finger at the banks own staff and the mistakes they had made, and lastly saying he had just followed the process and it did not have steps to insure it could not happen. I was in the meetings and the result was the banks manager simple told us that he did not want the particular member of staff working on his network and unless we removed him from the team then we should seriously consider if we wanted to keep the contract...

Simple you balls up, say sorry and make dam sure it doesn't happen again. or at least not until no one remembers the first time!

DevilWAH

NetworkVeteran wrote: »

I'm not error-proof, but I'm highly error-resistant.

I like it

no I'm off to re patch some users

deth1k

In the world where customers are being provisioned on daily basis which requires changes to be made on both PE and CPE devices, errors are prone to happen. Ever had router timeout on you whilst you were connected to it via another one and hitting reload at wrong time and realising what just happened? I'm not speaking from myself here, those are just cases from work that i see quite regularly. You can't stop this with Change Management, it's not a change it's business as usual.
I've had Cisco TAC engineers killing our PE's whilst on WebEX, running debugs.

Was it service effecting? Yes, 20+ business customers.
Did I complain and escalate? No, we all are people and make mistakes.