To the tech with bad news

[mouser.livejournal.com]

You have three numbers to contact me:

1) Main line - all they are supposed to do is transfer you to me. No, they're not supposed to take messages even though they do. They're idiots which is why you have two OTHER numbers.

2) My office number - Not there as often as needs be, but whatever. If it's routine stuff you can leave a voice mail for me. If it's CRITICAL that's why I gave you the third number.

3) Cell phone - that's on 24/7. Even if it's on vibe, it SCREAMS at me if you leave a message.


Now, if you don't want to talk to me, I understand. Heck, some days I don't want to talk to me! But don't hide it. Seriously, waiting until after hours to leave a voice mail at the office only works if I haven't forwarded it to the cell - and INSISTING that they leave a message at the front desk doesn't work either. They're more scared of ME then they are of YOU! And I like it like that.



Oh, and the trick of after hours emails? Yea - been doing that since before email existed. If I want to know about it, I can have the server notify my cell phone about it. Really, don't fuck with me on this.

Comments

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

Is this to a fellow tech or to a customer?

[mouser.livejournal.com]

A tech trying NOT to tell me that it will be an additional 24 hours on an emergency fix.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Those seem to me mutually contradictory.

I have this issue myself.. We have priorities:

Low - whenever, likely will never get done
Medium - when you get to it
High - Actually gets put on the schedule to go out next release.
Urgent - Drop everything and do it NOW. You do NOT go home, you do NOT leave to get food, you can pull in any resources you need, because something is REALLY BROKEN.

Now, see, we didn't like the gulf between High and Urgent, so we added:

Wicked Important - Cleared for an unplanned release/patch, but you don't have to drop everything, and you can go home.

Thing is, people still like to set things to be Urgent. I find myself downgrading priorities a lot...

[awarrenfells.livejournal.com]

It's almost as bad as people assuming that our IT department.... the IT department of an ISP.... doesn't know when they try to do things on the... *GASP* the INTERNET... of all things.... and subsequently get caught for it.

I think people forget, technologically... if we really wanted to see and know everything, we have a way of doing so :P

[jecook]

*laughs*

unless the department has chosen to be on the non-corp side of the network, right? *snicker*

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me - you can do full interface tunneling over ssh now, creating a de-facto VPN which looks like standard ssh traffic..

So, aside from the fact that your user is pumping massive volumes of traffic destined for port 22 on his home machine because he is looking for Japanese creampie pron at work, you wouldn't even know. :-)