(no subject)

[grayhawkfh.livejournal.com]

It has now been ~1 month since I left the hell desk ($deity be praised), and it seems that the majority of the people left behind went to Costco that day, purchased a 55-gal. drum of "Stoopid" and consumed the whole thing at once.

Today's 1st gem: Helldesk turdling calls because he can't find drivers for a M$ keyboard. As I sit here staring at my phone wondering why his parents didn't have him put down at a young age for terminal idiocy, he whines about how he can't find anything on the M$ website and what should he do now.

Fighting the urge to slam down the phone and rip it from the walls, I suggest that perhaps he try and locate the installation CD, or perhaps do Google search for drivers. I hear a pause, then, in a voice like Pete Puma, he says "Oh. Ok, I'll try that."

Gem #2: Different helldesk turdling. Adobe Acrobat Pro/MS-Word issue. .pdf creator icons are not showing up on the toolbar.

Quiz her for basic troubleshooting steps: DOes the problem appear in other logins or only the users? In admin and non-admin accounts? Run repair on Acrobat installation? No, none of that - that would be too much like work! She just looked and saw it wasn't on the toolbar menu, and being thwarted in this most exhaustive effort, called He Who Knows All (and who happens to be fighting with settings to GP in MMC). While pondering the myriad ways I could alter her food at tomorrows holiday party to induce severe gastric distress, I told her to finish troubleshooting before calling me.

On second thought, belay that second part. Just troubleshoot. Do your damn job. And if you're really having that much of a problem and can't figure it out, Google the damn thing.

Comments

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

We love our level 2's as well. Am glad that the two calls this month, I've sent their way, have involved them tracking down the relevant admins and getting procedures changed.

[indigo-max.livejournal.com]

Helldesk turdling calls because he can't find drivers for a M$ keyboard. As I sit here staring at my phone wondering why his parents didn't have him put down at a young age for terminal idiocy, he whines about how he can't find anything on the M$ website and what should he do now.

Reminds me of a story related to me just yesterday from a co-worker. Co-worker teaches a continuing ed class on putting together your own PC. He had a student write him and ask about what case he should by. Apparently he was planning on buying a case that my co-worker had mentioned in class and has been happy with in the past. Said student buys the case and then send an email to co-worker asking why he didn't get any manual on how to put it together and that there were a lot of loose screws in a bag and he didn't know where to put them. Course we all had plenty of ideas :)

Max...

[darkblade1.livejournal.com]

Put all the screws under your pillow and the Magic Computer fairy will build your computer.

Wow, that's...frightening.

[klytus.livejournal.com]

And then there are the Level 2 admins where *I* work. One in particular will, every time he gets a case, pitch a fit about being asked to actually do some work, and then send the case back to us with a long list of questions: Did you do this? Did you do that? Are you a fucking idiot? Did you suck my cock? Did you notice I'm too lazy to do any real work?

In the amount of time it must take him to do all of that, he could have fixed the fucking problem.

How do I know he's lazy? Simple. As a former co-worker of mine, grayhawkfh can verify that 1) I do good troubnleshooting and 2) I write copious and exquisitely detailed work logs. In other words, if he'd bothered to read what I'd sent him, instead of just assuming I didn't do my job, none of this aggrivation would be necessary.

[duality.livejournal.com]

In other words, if he'd bothered to read what I'd sent him, instead of just assuming I didn't do my job, none of this aggravation would be necessary.

QFT.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Actually, as a L2 tech I had templates for that stuff :)

Of course, if the L2s are failing to read the logs, it's good policy to either return them with a "that information is already in the log", or send a printed copy with the appropriate areas highlighted. In extreme cases, a meeting with accompanying managers may be necessary to drive the point home.

Having worked both sides of the fence, I'd say that the L2s are justified in railing against the hordes of L1s who all want them to "just do this" and "just do that", because there isn't the time to do that for everyone. On the flip side, however, requiring that the L1s write summaries or any other form of work duplication just so the L2 doesn't have to scroll down down is pure spite. Get more pixels and a ticketing app that displays more than three lines at once.

"Don't make the other guy do your work for you" cuts both ways.

[klytus.livejournal.com]

"Don't make the other guy do your work for you" cuts both ways.

Agred. I feel justifiably foolish if I get a ticket sent back to me and there *were* things I missed. Still, there are good ways and bad ways of doing it. I know of 2 different level 2 techs that used to work as Level 1. One dude has a varsity letter in surly; he regards every ticket you escalate to him as a personal insult, and he'll waste more time looking for ways to get out of doing the work than he will spend actually doing the work. Another guy will grumble if he gets tickets when torubleshooting is not complete, but even though he is already overworked, he will do it anyway, and then he will send all of us a copy of the ticket with his case notes AND tips on the things Level 1 could have done to resolve the issue ourselves.

Guess which guy we go out of our way to be more helpful to?

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Mmm, good point. I'll admit I never thought of cc:ing the final ticket as a teaching aid - although in the place I was in I'd probably have had a couple of managers breathing down my neck for stepping on their toes.

Still, the idea's sound. Maybe I should start dropping some hints at the new place...

[fragbert.livejournal.com]

I will verify that your work logs were better than my own.

[grayhawkfh.livejournal.com]

Indeed, as one of the people who graded worklogs at that job, I can verify that his worklogs were almost as detailed as mine. There was usually a 3 way scrum between klytus, fragbert and myself as to who got the highest scores in any marking period.

And many is the time when I had engineer-types come up to me in a huff asking...no, demanding answers to questions, to which I would start my replies: "As I said in my work log...". The best was when one person came up to me and rattled off four or five questions that could be answered like that, and when she finally finished, I said "So, do you have any other questions that could have been answered by reading my worklog?"

[klytus.livejournal.com]

Few things give me more pleasure than taking a ticket kicked-back to me asking for infomration, me going to my supervisior, and him looking at the ticket and saying, "Did't you already address that in your staff notes?" He then gives the *other* guy's supervisor a call. Oh, how I wish I could be there for those conversations :D

[madjacktech.livejournal.com]

Word and AcrobatPro? I feel your pain. SF should not be let near a POS freeware .pdf converter with a .doc, let alone let loose upon AcrobatPro!