More on call bullshit

[superbus.livejournal.com]

Another weekend on call has reminded me of the last time I was on call, which happened to fall on the second anniversary of my relationship.

Being on call during the week at my company isn't too bad. That's not because of less tickets or whatever - if anything, it's worse because I'll get home, and some idiot from the west coast will call in - but the crew is much better; I know that if they're calling me, they don't know how to do it, or they've done what they can, but it's generally not for a lack of effort.

On the weekend, the typical hell desk takes over, and they're more or less a combination of being incredibly lazy, and pants-on-head retarded. A few of them are good, but most of the people that call me only do so with the intention of getting whatever it is off their plate so they can go back to not doing their jobs.

I'm fairly sure I've talked in the past about one hell desk person who has a nasty habit of not researching one bit of information before calling me, and then prematurely turning them over to me ("OK, don't turn them over yet, I'm still loggi--" "Thank you for calling, I have $ME on the line for you! *CLICK*"). This morning, she got me good, by waking me up... because someone wanted their email quota increased.

"Bus, why the hell are they calling on call about something that stupid?" Good question; I always was under the impression that on-call was for emergencies. Customer isn't getting email? VPN server is down? Yes! You can definitely call me for something like that! But they say "increase my quota!"? No, that's something that can wait... or better yet, if they need more space, troubleshoot. "Are you running low on space? OK, has your end user deleted items in their sent folder and trash? Are they receiving email now? Great! I'll go ahead and put this in for our team to complete on Monday when they're in, and please remember that there are additional charges applied for extra space!" Nope. The troubleshooting went as far as to say "OK, this goes to that department, call him", and click. Now I've got to call the customer, ask for a call back to confirm how much space they want and to confirm charges, and wait for a call back. It's bad enough that I'm essentially tethered to my home, or the area around my office, because I need to be within 15 minutes of an active internet connection and they don't give me a laptop.

While I'm doing this, the same person calls my MANAGER over a VPN issue. Good job! Panic her, because "he's working the mail quota issue!". It couldn't wait fifteen minutes? Oh, wait, if you'd have done your job, you'd have done for her what she eventually figured out before I called her back (disable Norton Internet Security, look for a way to make exceptions)!

But the worst was two weeks ago. As stated, my girlfriend was over for our anniversary, which I spent handling tickets at home. Not important stuff, but stuff like quota changes, and routine tickets that were being sent in. VERY routine, and nothing that couldn't (and eventually didn't; one customer was like "you're calling me back now?") wait. I finally asked the tech that was calling me constantly, over jabber, if they were mandated to call us for every ticket. He explained it, saying that even if it's something stupid and they let it wait, the customer could call back and go "why hasn't this been done!? You're 24 hour support!" (which technically is true; we don't sell "6-6 support with on-call help", we sell "24 hour support", so to hell with Sales, and I've seen this, while working a major issue, we had someone call in at midnight wanting to know why we didn't respond to a ticket he put in at 8PM, and it was nothing more than a simple question about something that happened at 2), so then, they're calling on-call, AND they have a pissed customer. I said OK, understandable, then I made a casual remark that all these calls were effectively destroying my anniversary.

The next day, I got blistered by my manager, saying that the technician reported me. He reported being "intimidated", and that he "cringed" calling me from that point on (to which I said "they don't want to call me? Mission accomplished!". That didn't go over well), and of course, the 20 lecture on professionalism and communication skills that come with it, because my managers love to hear themselves talk. He completely misread what I said, and for that, I got hammered... with them forgetting to mention the fact that I'm 24 hour on call with no laptop and no extra pay. What the fuck? And how much of a pussy is that other tech!? I have never reported someone to management in my entire time as a working adult for perception, or even a personal disagreement; I bring it to the person in question, and we hash it out like adults. I didn't know I went back to Year 1 of primary school all of a sudden!

I decided to go on-call to help my supervisor, who was doing it every day after a co-worker left the company. I said I didn't mind helping out. That's turned into a weekly rotation with absolutely no perks (save an extra checkmark on my evaluation), and weekend calls about every stupid issue known to man. The moral of this story: no good deed goes unpunished, and I can guarantee that when I move departments (something else that should have happened a month ago), I'll be a lot more demanding of adequate compensation should they try to talk me into going on-call.

EDIT: It should be noted that the tech that called me this morning is getting promoted into another, more technical department within the company, one that I wasn't allowed to move to because - and I'm not making this up - I made too much money. I'd say something about that, but the first three things that come to my mind are VERY chauvinistic, and for the sake of the females who post here, and whom I respect immensely, I'll bite my tongue.

Comments

[random-c.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't worry about it, really. I find women are the worst offenders at refusing to know anything, and unless they put themselves in a position where they're indispensible because of some unusual skill, they get promoted to their level of incompetence faster, such as the poor woman who used to be in charge of my Dev department. Excellent project manager, hopeless Dev manager because she didn't understand a word we said. I felt sorry for her, really, because she looked constantly terrified. She's in a much more suitable role now, though, and seems pretty happy.
I think it's because their people skills are better. They interview better, and know how to say the right things, and then they have to actually *do* the job and it all falls apart. Not that we don't have a few men who're just as bad, of course, and the sample of women is too small to make a proper judgement, really, but going on what we do have, about 80% are absolutely infuriating to deal with, as opposed to about 20% of the men.
On the other hand I *was* really pissed off when the CEO of the company was doing the new joiners thing at the company meeting earlier this week and mentioned some new girl - can't remember her name, but I remember I made her cry in her first week and she's been keeping out of my way ever since - was our 'first female developer'. Thing is, he was *looking at me* just before he said it, and I can think of at least two others who've since left.

[superbus.livejournal.com]

See, to me it's not a woman thing, because most of the women in my company are a joy to work with; as far as women in technical positions, it's actually very refreshing. Even our VP - my high-up boss - is not only female, but very technically proficient. Even the non-technical females in sales and accounting aren't bad for the most part. My problem with this particular hell desk person isn't the fact that she's a female, it's the fact that she's more or less useless. Doesn't stop me from thinking "who'd SHE fuck!?" when I hear she's getting into a position ahead of other better techs, though, even though I know it's wrong.

[azurelunatic]

Yep! There are some people who really can't have advanced in any legitimate way.

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one of the ones who regularly annoys me is married to the CTO. I've also heard suggestions that the only reason one young manager of another dept at my company is only a manager rather than an assistant because we're dating. Like I have that sort of power, I didn't even get to meet my assistant until lunch time on his first day...

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Yeah generally the women I know outside work are fine, but the women actually *in* the office are another matter. I'm always aware that for a lot of people when a woman cocks something up, that cockup is shared by *all* women. I want to tell them off for not being up to my standards. Be good, or get out. I don't like covering for other women when they screw up but I often feel that I have to, when certain people are involved, because otherwise *I* get implicated as well.
Crying woman *really* annoyed me. She plugged a 2.5" hard drive in not just upside down but offset in two directions so an entire row was missed and the connector covered the four 'extra' pins. Oh and she removed the previous drive and did that *while the power was on*. She *also* shouldn't have been touching the machine at all, because it had one of my 'Touch this and the kitten gets it - Master Disk Build in progress' signs on it.
Doing that took a particular sort of talent, I thought, but to be fair I thought, OK, she's new, she's a software person, and mostly, I don't want anyone else to notice she's cocked up by yelling at her, so I took her aside and said was that if she didn't know how to do something that she should have ASKED someone, and that she *could*, by getting it wrong, have potentially destroyed not just the drive but the machine, which we only had one of. I could have accepted 'I'm sorry, would you please show me how to do it, and next time I'll ask' or 'OK, sorry, wasn't thinking' but TEARS? Trying to make *me* feel bad when *she* had made a mistake? Oh no, I don't *think* so. This led to me telling her that if she destroyed another half-day's work for me (I couldn't trust the drive to have the right contents after that even if it scandisked OK) because she couldn't ask when she didn't know, it wouldn't be the kitten that 'got it'.
Stopped her crying, anyway.

Document, document, document!

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Document EVERYTHING remotely connected to the on-call madness, including your manager's time dwelling on same. Start recording calls at home (make sure to let people know "calls may be monitored to ensure blah blah blah") and log your own time spent resolving.

Then go tell you supervisor you can't keep volunteering to help them out any more. When they give you static, you can show them how much extra work it actually is. If necessary, you can show *their* supervisor, grandsupervisor, HR person, or labor board how much extra work you are being asked to do for free, and how much of it could/should be done by the hell desk.

Or, if you'd rather not confront people, pick up a laptop on your own dime to streamline things. You could easily pick up an old Dell or Toshiba for $150 or $200 and tether it to your cell phone's internet for little or nothing.

Re: Document, document, document!

[jecook]

Hells yes.

Most HR people will certainly pay attention when you say "My supervisor is making my perform On call duties at refusing to pay overtime, and the remainder of the department is abusing it heavily. Now, do I get my extra pay, or do I have to talk to the labor board/OSHA/ retain a lawyer?"

That generally gets someone's attention fast...

[trayce.livejournal.com]

If you volunteered to help out on call and have been shafted into doing it all the time for no more pay, AND yr managers are now reaming you out for being annoyed at petty shit being passed to you, I would say GET THE HELL OUT, because it won't get better. It is exactly what happened to me in my last job. They didn't want to cough up the dime for new staff as people left, so the remaining staff took on more and more duties and hours, with no pay rise, no reviews, nothing. I was forced into it and it isn't even what I interviewed for (fuck, I interviewed for a tech admin position!)

Having just started at a new, way more professional ISP, I am now seeing just how badly I was treated and they ran things at Job Previous. Ugh. My sympathies are with you.

[phirefly.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons we end up with so many women in our department is because they regard our job as customer service intensive. It is, I'll grant that, but if there's no technical know-how backing it up, the customers aren't that much happier with a pleasant voice. That said, I find the incompetence of my co-workers afflicts both genders indiscriminately.