Waste of time.

[graafen]

Hi folks,

Seeing as this is my first post here I suppose I'd better explain my situation. I work for a company which provides IT solutions and support to various other... groups (not specifically companies). I can't provide specifics of certain things but I'm sure that won't detach from the sheer ineptitude of end users.
Thankfully I do not work on the helpdesk but work as 3rd line support for my particular contract (we'll call them "HM"), supporting a very specialised and locked down domain (which we'll call "C-SUP") within the HM infrastructure and we have no access to any other part of the HM infrastructure (We'll call that "HMI").

About five minutes ago I checked our incident management system and noticed a new incident had been placed on our stack ("C-SUP Support"). The body text of the incident was as follows:

"User has lost access to his the following network drives: H, S.
Both of these network drives exists on server $HMI-85. When the server was pinged the response was as follows:

$HMI-85 is 85.HMI.HM.INTERNAL [$ipaddress]

Request timed out.

Please can 2nd line support investigate."

So I'm a little taken aback. The first line team have performed admirably and identified the problem, and that the problem is on HMI and not C-SUP. Why has this incident been sent to C-SUP Support? I read on...

"UPDATED BY: $2ndlineagent @ 2nd Line.

Passing to C-SUP Support to investigate."

Of course; 2nd Line passed the buck as usual. Queue diplomatic yet obvious "F*ck off and do your own work" update and send it back to 2nd Line where it belongs.

So my question is; anyone else get a buck-pass for something totally outside your power often?

Comments

[kuang.livejournal.com]

Constantly, and usually because of petty politics. I generally play the Socratic irony card, ask enough seemingly dumb questions to let them talk themselves into a corner via the log and then pass it on to their superiors for further comment ;)

An interesting turn has happened recently with the introduction of a new helpdesk for our premises team, based on our system but coloured differently, accessable from a different part of the company intranet, and with the words PREMISES HELPDESK emblazoned across the top. It's amazing how often we're now getting asked to change lightbulbs and move boxes of paperwork..

[snarl817.livejournal.com]

Used to get that ALL the time.

LVM Team: "Customer can't access a volume group on his SP node"
Me: "Uhhh...that's a volume group issue."
LVM Team: "But it's on an SP node!"
Me: "We don't handle LVM issues, YOU do."
LVM Team: "But it's on an SP node!"
Me: "I don't care if it's on a goddamn nuclear submarine, YOU guys handle volume group problems, not us." *click*


Haven't seen it so far at the new job, though.
Coworker: "Hey, $JOB is getting a database error."
Me: "Send the ticket to the DBAs, then."
Coworker: "I did. I just wanted to let you know, in case you get any questions about why the job hasn't finished."
Me: "Oh. Um...thanks?"

[fuego.livejournal.com]

Me: "Oh. Um...thanks?"

just not quite sure how to act, eh?

[jerith.livejournal.com]

A little background: I work on a dev team based in Africa. All our machines live in datacentres in the US.

Us: The box with this IP address on that rack needs drive 3 replaced.

Them: What's the serial number of the box?

Us: No idea. You didn't tell us when the machines were installed.

Them: Could you find out and let us know?

Us: We're on another continent. You're in the same room...

We're still waiting for the next response on the ticket.

[tecie.livejournal.com]

constantly.
The worst part is when management has no backbone and actually has you take the work on. I've become a defacto WAS Admin, DBA, network analyst, etc because management never understands where the boundaries are and won't ask for fear of revealing their truly staggering incompetence.
The thing that's ultimately killing the US economy -- why jobs are seeping out to other places is we've made the MBA worth something. Having a piece of paper saying "I CANZ MANAGERS!" is worse then useless -- it's counterproductive. People who are inexperienced or just plain bad in their field end up in positions of power and then try to justifiy their salaries by making sweeping changes that are at best pointless and with absolutely no net effect on anything, but more often then not are the subject of some petty political vendetta that they've built up trying to outwit another MBA who, like his counterpart, lacks two braincells to use together.
Sorry... this is veering off into a long rant about responsibility, restructuring education, society, and having reasonable prices at the airport snack bar.

In short: Yes, I've been in exactly that situation.

[fnordx.livejournal.com]

I work for a web hosting department of a large company that, until recently, only serviced the southeast US, but now has grown much much larger... Anyway, about half of the phone calls I get a night are from someone in 1st tier DSL support having a caller tell them something like "I'm having a problem getting to this web site" and they IMMEDIATELY transfer them to web hosting support without even TRYING to understand their problem. And, the worst thing is, it's always a cold drop, so we get "Someone transfered me to you, I don't know why I'm here, I'm having a problem with my internet connection."

And since 1st tier DSL support is all in India, there's no way to find out who transfered them. Even if the customer remembers that they talked to "Chad", there's no way to track that back to a real person...

[mouser.livejournal.com]

I'm the I.T. manager for servers, with a little tech support thrown in.

Now I have responsibility for all the cable televisions in the place....

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Sure, the last place I did tech support, we had a helpdesk where I live and one two time zones away, both of which did the exact same thing. We all had the same tools, the same responsibilities, and got the same calls--the switch divided the calls "evenly" between the two centers. With me so far?

Well, I would CONSTANTLY (as a level 1) get calls transferred to me by the people in the other center. Because they didn't feel like taking them or else they didn't know how to. The city their desk is in is a byword amongst everyone who's ever worked tech support for that company. Idiots.

"Oh, I thought you guys had more access/documentation/rights than we did."

No, no, you did not think that. MORONS.