I broke in a newbie....

[gythiawulfie.livejournal.com]

I arrived to work this morning to find out we had no power.
No power, means no network, and in our case no phones.

ETA of power to come back on was 1:00 PM.
They actually had it up by 11:30.

It is my job to notify the network guys if the network is down and out for any reason.

So, since my PDA only transferred over the email addresses and NOT their direct phone lines, and since I could not email because of lack of power, I had to call the general Help Desk.

I got a new person.

Poor thing, I am sure I confused the hell out of her.
She had never heard of us, and she wasn't quite sure how to word the ticket.
(We are a tiny division of a college division of a univeristy with 4 main campuses and 4 remote sites. We are one of them)
I told her how to find us in the drop down.
I told her how to word the ticket and to make sure they knew it was a power outage causing the issue not something else.
I told her how to escalate it so someone else in the general helpdesk didn't try to call to resolve the issue. There was nothing to 'resolve'.

I walked her through everything, EVEN GAVE her the email addresses so she didn't have to look them up.
Took her 20 mintues.

I hope I wasn't too rough.
She sounded a tad flustered. However once email was up, I got my copy and she did everything beautifully.
I was able to close the tickets and thanked her.

Sure enough, when everything came back up, there were 2 messages from networking on the phone.
I thought they had my cell #. Gonna rectify the phone issue now I have my compuerized dialadex available.

Comments

[jecook]

This is why it's a good idea to have at least one emergency POTS line floating around somewhere... just in case. It may not be feasible, it may not be possible, but it's a good idea.

[jecook]

Prefereably on a red color phone, as well... ::snicker::

Hahahah

[gythiawulfie.livejournal.com]

I like the red colored phone idea. The bigger issue was power had been out since some time last night. One call was at 11PM and one was from 7AM this morning. Had I gotten the call, I could have come over (I live 3 miles from work) and gotten the power fixed sooner.

[emsporter.livejournal.com]

I took an emergency call about a week into my previous job. I would have LOVED someone like you on the other line. The person I actually *got* was ... well. I believe the words were "God, I can't believe the f*&king muppets they hire, doesn't anyone TRAIN you in this s*&t?"

Actually, I had been trained in taking emergency calls, I was just a bit slow because, oddly enough, I hadn't done it before. And last time I checked, wanting to double-check the details of the ticket I've just written down about a Big Problem ... isn't really worthy of an ass chewing.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Hey, Muppets are hard working people not deserving of racist remarks!

Idiots like the guy you had, on the other hand.

(Sorry, I'm a Journeyman Puppeteer, so I know how hard it is to work with the Felt People.).

[japester.livejournal.com]

and there was me thinking that 'muppet' was a wonderful insult. I might have to rethink that. There are many many felts out there who would take the reverse insult, of being compared to some people I know, who are genuinely *less* intelligent than something with its head full of stuffing and a hand up its ....

(done a lot of acting and a little marionette-ing)

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

As an old school geek, [I was online when the internet was called JANET], let me say unto you;

3x5 library index cards are your friend.

Remember this and backup essential URL's, Email addys & phone numbers to your dead-tree database regularly and often!
For when all the twinkly lights go out, it shall remain functional.