When I woke up this morning..
Feb. 28th, 2007 02:03 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
grayhawkfh.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
techrecovery...I didn't want to be a Bastard. Really, I didn't.
Woke up in a reasonably good mood (after all, today is Hump Day, and tomorrow is Friday eve), showered, shaved, even remembered to grab breakfast (asiago cheese bagels) and lunch (salmon burgers) on the way out the door.
Got here to {US Gov't Agency} and started about my day. This included installing a PC for use by the moronic masses known as the public. As such, it is heavily locked down and requires installation by someone who has made their way further up the evolutionary ladder than a howler monkey. This, of course, eliminates all but two of the HellDesk staff from contention - and those two are usually busy 60 hrs a week cleaning up after the rest of their cow-irkers.
So off I go. As I load the baseline image from DVD, One of the drooling, inbred, oxygen wasting flesh lumps (referred to by management as "Research Room Assistants") sees me working and shambles over, asking if I can answer come technical questions.
My first instinct is to ask if he doesn't have some traffic to go play in. However, since the huggy-feely management types have been going on lately about "Customer Service", and saying that we have to refer to the pre-Piltdown Man throwbacks around here as "customers" (as opposed to "user", "cretin", "Damnable idiot in need of a good beatdown" and so on), I crack a semblance of a smile and say "I'll see what I can do!"
As the observant will have already sussed, this was the first step towards the slippery slope toward Bastard-dom.
My finely tuned instincts looked at him and just knew that this wasn't going to be work related. I wasn't wrong.
There I sat, a captive audience who could only watch the Ghost progress bar slowly inch its way to the right while dodging the Gallagher-like levels of debris that flew at me while he spoke. While I couldn't make out all of his mumblings, I did manage to piece together that he was asking about whether he needed a WiFi card for his PC to get his PlayStation 3 connected to his WiFi home network.
Now, I am competent enough with wireless networking to fix and troubleshoot when the pieces are in front of me. But I have not even seen a PS3 in person, let alone examined the specs, and I certainly wasn't going to spend any of my valuable brain cells trying to pry (inaccurate) information out of this starfish. Keeping in mind the aforementioned Huggy-feely management types, I decided to politely fall back on the saving grace of contractors everywhere: "Sir, I'm really not permitted to offer advice on home computer systems, as that falls outside of the scope of our contract."
Apaprently, in the language of the starfish, this translates to "You are a brainless twat, and I am going to withhold information from you out of spite just so I can laugh at you while I watch you cry piteously tonight when you can't join your buddies for an online shoot-em-up".
So now he starts going on about how useless I am, and how the IT staff thinks they're so much better than everyone else (well, we are, for the most part), and how he was going to complain about my rudeness and unwillingness to help...neepneepnopneepnop...
Right, that tears it. He pushed the Bastard Button.
I turned to look at this doomed jackoff, and reminded him that I have been exceedingly polite to him, and requested that when he file this complaint, he remembers to mention that he was asking about things that were not work related.
I then looked at his badge for his name. "Oh, *YOU'RE* John Doe. OK..." I shook my head and sighed. Then looked back up at him and chuckled.
His natural paranoia clicked in, and off he ran to a workstation.
Wonder how he's going to like having his browsing history sent to his boss (always empty the recycle bin!). And all those music files deleted from the network (along with the accompanying email why, cc'd to his boss). Ah, it's good sometimes to be a Bastard.
(x-posted to my personal LJ & TSC.)
Woke up in a reasonably good mood (after all, today is Hump Day, and tomorrow is Friday eve), showered, shaved, even remembered to grab breakfast (asiago cheese bagels) and lunch (salmon burgers) on the way out the door.
Got here to {US Gov't Agency} and started about my day. This included installing a PC for use by the moronic masses known as the public. As such, it is heavily locked down and requires installation by someone who has made their way further up the evolutionary ladder than a howler monkey. This, of course, eliminates all but two of the HellDesk staff from contention - and those two are usually busy 60 hrs a week cleaning up after the rest of their cow-irkers.
So off I go. As I load the baseline image from DVD, One of the drooling, inbred, oxygen wasting flesh lumps (referred to by management as "Research Room Assistants") sees me working and shambles over, asking if I can answer come technical questions.
My first instinct is to ask if he doesn't have some traffic to go play in. However, since the huggy-feely management types have been going on lately about "Customer Service", and saying that we have to refer to the pre-Piltdown Man throwbacks around here as "customers" (as opposed to "user", "cretin", "Damnable idiot in need of a good beatdown" and so on), I crack a semblance of a smile and say "I'll see what I can do!"
As the observant will have already sussed, this was the first step towards the slippery slope toward Bastard-dom.
My finely tuned instincts looked at him and just knew that this wasn't going to be work related. I wasn't wrong.
There I sat, a captive audience who could only watch the Ghost progress bar slowly inch its way to the right while dodging the Gallagher-like levels of debris that flew at me while he spoke. While I couldn't make out all of his mumblings, I did manage to piece together that he was asking about whether he needed a WiFi card for his PC to get his PlayStation 3 connected to his WiFi home network.
Now, I am competent enough with wireless networking to fix and troubleshoot when the pieces are in front of me. But I have not even seen a PS3 in person, let alone examined the specs, and I certainly wasn't going to spend any of my valuable brain cells trying to pry (inaccurate) information out of this starfish. Keeping in mind the aforementioned Huggy-feely management types, I decided to politely fall back on the saving grace of contractors everywhere: "Sir, I'm really not permitted to offer advice on home computer systems, as that falls outside of the scope of our contract."
Apaprently, in the language of the starfish, this translates to "You are a brainless twat, and I am going to withhold information from you out of spite just so I can laugh at you while I watch you cry piteously tonight when you can't join your buddies for an online shoot-em-up".
So now he starts going on about how useless I am, and how the IT staff thinks they're so much better than everyone else (well, we are, for the most part), and how he was going to complain about my rudeness and unwillingness to help...neepneepnopneepnop...
Right, that tears it. He pushed the Bastard Button.
I turned to look at this doomed jackoff, and reminded him that I have been exceedingly polite to him, and requested that when he file this complaint, he remembers to mention that he was asking about things that were not work related.
I then looked at his badge for his name. "Oh, *YOU'RE* John Doe. OK..." I shook my head and sighed. Then looked back up at him and chuckled.
His natural paranoia clicked in, and off he ran to a workstation.
Wonder how he's going to like having his browsing history sent to his boss (always empty the recycle bin!). And all those music files deleted from the network (along with the accompanying email why, cc'd to his boss). Ah, it's good sometimes to be a Bastard.
(x-posted to my personal LJ & TSC.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 08:23 pm (UTC)Bravo.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 08:27 pm (UTC)Meted out.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 10:43 pm (UTC)Smite Them Mightly (upon their pates -- with, A Herring!)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-01 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-01 02:40 am (UTC)Cool!
no subject
Date: 2007-03-01 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-01 09:37 pm (UTC)It's hard enough keeping up with the things you DO get paid to do without someone throwing a tantrum because you won't ADD to that work to do something for free for them personally. It's as inappropriate as the boss going ballistic because you won't take time off from the major network install you're supervising to go wash his BMW. And equally deserving of wrath. (One of the few benefits of being a techie is that it's possible to vent that wrath without too many dire consequences upon the deserving, because most if not all of us here are more or less irreplaceable .. and the people who matter know it.)
I'll make exceptions for people who are reasonable about it, and understand that it's going to be relatively low priority, mainly because most of the time I can give an answer off the top of my head that will at least point people in the right direction. But if someone expects me to do a quality job of anything that (like the PS3 issue mentioned above) requires any research at all to make sure it's *done right*, they better expect to have me do it off the clock and pay me for it. And my time ain't cheap ..
no subject
Date: 2007-03-03 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-06 06:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 12:22 pm (UTC)