Life of a sysadmin...
Jan. 12th, 2005 10:57 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
snoopyh42.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
techrecovery**AMENDMENT: This is NOT me. This is posted from a story I found elsewhere. I have a great IT job that I enjoy very much and doesn't suck like the one described herein.**
The life of a sysadmin goes approximately as follows.
8am: Your pager goes off and wakes you up. The message says it's the
office, and it's a crisis. You roll out of bed moaning.
8:15am: You are now sufficiently awake to phone the office. Your pager
has gone off three times already. You get through to the office and the
receptionist is frantic. She says nobody in the entire office can print
and they have a major proposal that has to be faxed out before 9am and
if it isn't the company could lose a million dollars in new business.
You try to get her to explain what's wrong, but she's incoherent.
8:30am: You're dressed in yesterday's dirty clothes (they were all you
could find in time) and running out the door, sipping a Jolt cola and
hailing a cab to the office.
8:45am: You arrive at the office.
8:46am: You determine that the problem is that the printer is turned
off, and you turn it back on. 10,000 pages spew out from the hundreds of
multiple failed attempts by all of your coworkers to print.
8:47am: Your boss reams you out for "not having fixed that printer
problem last time when you said it was all taken care of." You spend the
next hour explaining that there's nothing you can do to stop people from
turning off the printer if they *really* want to. You don't bother to
mention that you happen to know that the person who did it is your
boss's spouse.
9:45ish: You finally convince your boss to release you and make your way
to your office, assaulted all along the way by people demanding that you
must help them fix things right now that you know are going to take
weeks and really aren't priority.
10am: You finally arrive at your office and shut and lock the door to
keep out the users. You start to read the 40 or so email messages you
find waiting every morning, which include about 5 new requests, 34 or so
messages demanding to know why such and such hasn't gotten done yet, and
one message from your boss denying your request to have an assistant and
demanding that you justify how you spend your time yet again.
10:30am: You realize that you're never going to finish getting through
your email if you keep getting interrupted by these damned telephone
calls from the same people who sent you the email asking the same
questions, so you put your phone on do-not-disturb and go back to your
email.
11am: You've just finished responding to all of your email, including
the umpteen millionth justification of your existance for your boss.
Unfortunately, the secretary has figured out how to order the phone
system to override your do-not-disturb on your phone, and is now routing
all the angry phone calls from your coworkers to you.
11:30am: You finish talking to everyone on the phone and calming them
down.
11:30am-4:30pm: You work your ass off on whatever projects have the most
urgency to the company. Usually this involves a lot of work with
software, crawling around on the floor several times, tearing a hole in
your clothing, and banging your head (hard) on the bottom of a desk.
3pm: You have your lunch delivered to your office.
4:30pm: You finally get to touch your lunch, and realize that Burger
King french fries do not taste good cold. You're on about your 15th coke
since arriving in the office.
4:35pm: Your lunch is over. You're not finished eating, but your boss
has just phoned you (he knows how to override the DND on the phone too)
and demanded that you drop everything and go fix some assinine problem
which you know is caused by the user and which you fix every week and
which you have warned the user about but about which they just don't
listen.
6:30pm: You finish the project your boss set you to and decide to try to
sneak out of the office and go home. (Not that you have a social life or
anything, but you haven't had 8 hours sleep in a month and a half.) In
the elevator on the way out of the office you encounter a coworker, who
grabs you by the ear and drags you back to the office to fix something
that's bugging them.
6:30pm-8pm: Somehow, despite repeated attempts to leave, the moemnt you
try to actually do so, someone else appears to force you to work.
8pm: You're about to depart when you're suddenly informed that there's
some vitally urgent data processing that has to be done and that only
you know how to do and which can't be performed until all of the data
entry people have left for the night at 10pm.
8pm-10pm: You try to nap in your office but the phone keeps ringing so
you finally give up and put in several more hours of working.
10pm: You try to do your data processing but can't because there are
still people logged into the data acquisition system. You spend the next
fifteen minutes running around begging them to log out, and they reply
that "yeah, I'll be out in a minute..."
10:20pm: You get sick of waiting, walk over to the server console, issue
commands to kick off all the users, and disable logins.
10:30pm-2:30am: You perform that data processing which nobody else could
do because they won't let you teach them because they know what kind of
hours you have to put in doing it.
Midnight: Your blood turns to coca-cola.
2:30am: You realize that the data processing isn't QUITE done but you're
about to pass out so you re-enable logins so you won't get paged about
THAT in the morning, scrounge a taxi voucher out of your desk (they've
given you your own pad because you use them so often), call a taxi, and
leave the building.
2:45am-3:15am: You freeze your ass off waiting for a taxi.
3:15am-3:30am: The taxi takes you home. The driver seems to have decided
to take the scenic route for the hell of it.
3:31am: You collapse in a heap on your bed and fall asleep face down
with your shoes on the pillows and your clothes still on because you're
too tired to remove your clothes or even orient yourself properly on the
bed.
8:00am: Your pager goes off.
Repeat ad nauseum until your boss doesn't like your response to one of
his "justify your existance" demands and fires you or you die of caffine
poisioning. Oh, and don't bother factoring in any weekends or holidays:
You'll be expected to work those too.
The life of a sysadmin goes approximately as follows.
8am: Your pager goes off and wakes you up. The message says it's the
office, and it's a crisis. You roll out of bed moaning.
8:15am: You are now sufficiently awake to phone the office. Your pager
has gone off three times already. You get through to the office and the
receptionist is frantic. She says nobody in the entire office can print
and they have a major proposal that has to be faxed out before 9am and
if it isn't the company could lose a million dollars in new business.
You try to get her to explain what's wrong, but she's incoherent.
8:30am: You're dressed in yesterday's dirty clothes (they were all you
could find in time) and running out the door, sipping a Jolt cola and
hailing a cab to the office.
8:45am: You arrive at the office.
8:46am: You determine that the problem is that the printer is turned
off, and you turn it back on. 10,000 pages spew out from the hundreds of
multiple failed attempts by all of your coworkers to print.
8:47am: Your boss reams you out for "not having fixed that printer
problem last time when you said it was all taken care of." You spend the
next hour explaining that there's nothing you can do to stop people from
turning off the printer if they *really* want to. You don't bother to
mention that you happen to know that the person who did it is your
boss's spouse.
9:45ish: You finally convince your boss to release you and make your way
to your office, assaulted all along the way by people demanding that you
must help them fix things right now that you know are going to take
weeks and really aren't priority.
10am: You finally arrive at your office and shut and lock the door to
keep out the users. You start to read the 40 or so email messages you
find waiting every morning, which include about 5 new requests, 34 or so
messages demanding to know why such and such hasn't gotten done yet, and
one message from your boss denying your request to have an assistant and
demanding that you justify how you spend your time yet again.
10:30am: You realize that you're never going to finish getting through
your email if you keep getting interrupted by these damned telephone
calls from the same people who sent you the email asking the same
questions, so you put your phone on do-not-disturb and go back to your
email.
11am: You've just finished responding to all of your email, including
the umpteen millionth justification of your existance for your boss.
Unfortunately, the secretary has figured out how to order the phone
system to override your do-not-disturb on your phone, and is now routing
all the angry phone calls from your coworkers to you.
11:30am: You finish talking to everyone on the phone and calming them
down.
11:30am-4:30pm: You work your ass off on whatever projects have the most
urgency to the company. Usually this involves a lot of work with
software, crawling around on the floor several times, tearing a hole in
your clothing, and banging your head (hard) on the bottom of a desk.
3pm: You have your lunch delivered to your office.
4:30pm: You finally get to touch your lunch, and realize that Burger
King french fries do not taste good cold. You're on about your 15th coke
since arriving in the office.
4:35pm: Your lunch is over. You're not finished eating, but your boss
has just phoned you (he knows how to override the DND on the phone too)
and demanded that you drop everything and go fix some assinine problem
which you know is caused by the user and which you fix every week and
which you have warned the user about but about which they just don't
listen.
6:30pm: You finish the project your boss set you to and decide to try to
sneak out of the office and go home. (Not that you have a social life or
anything, but you haven't had 8 hours sleep in a month and a half.) In
the elevator on the way out of the office you encounter a coworker, who
grabs you by the ear and drags you back to the office to fix something
that's bugging them.
6:30pm-8pm: Somehow, despite repeated attempts to leave, the moemnt you
try to actually do so, someone else appears to force you to work.
8pm: You're about to depart when you're suddenly informed that there's
some vitally urgent data processing that has to be done and that only
you know how to do and which can't be performed until all of the data
entry people have left for the night at 10pm.
8pm-10pm: You try to nap in your office but the phone keeps ringing so
you finally give up and put in several more hours of working.
10pm: You try to do your data processing but can't because there are
still people logged into the data acquisition system. You spend the next
fifteen minutes running around begging them to log out, and they reply
that "yeah, I'll be out in a minute..."
10:20pm: You get sick of waiting, walk over to the server console, issue
commands to kick off all the users, and disable logins.
10:30pm-2:30am: You perform that data processing which nobody else could
do because they won't let you teach them because they know what kind of
hours you have to put in doing it.
Midnight: Your blood turns to coca-cola.
2:30am: You realize that the data processing isn't QUITE done but you're
about to pass out so you re-enable logins so you won't get paged about
THAT in the morning, scrounge a taxi voucher out of your desk (they've
given you your own pad because you use them so often), call a taxi, and
leave the building.
2:45am-3:15am: You freeze your ass off waiting for a taxi.
3:15am-3:30am: The taxi takes you home. The driver seems to have decided
to take the scenic route for the hell of it.
3:31am: You collapse in a heap on your bed and fall asleep face down
with your shoes on the pillows and your clothes still on because you're
too tired to remove your clothes or even orient yourself properly on the
bed.
8:00am: Your pager goes off.
Repeat ad nauseum until your boss doesn't like your response to one of
his "justify your existance" demands and fires you or you die of caffine
poisioning. Oh, and don't bother factoring in any weekends or holidays:
You'll be expected to work those too.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:06 am (UTC)::sigh::
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:17 am (UTC)In this line of work, the longest one has lasted has been three months. From what I gather, that's akin to a 25 year marriage.
I've all but given up on them as long as I'm a sysadmin :P
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 07:49 pm (UTC)He's a saint, I'm a martyr. Or maybe the other way around...
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:53 am (UTC)I think I saw the back of his head illumnated by the monitor more than I actually saw his face while he was actually home. As rare as him being home actually was.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 12:54 pm (UTC)I do all the administration at my company - new accounts, etc - and I mostly get out of here on time.
My husband of four years, however, goes through *this* garbage *all the time*.
I figure I've got no right to complain - he got the job after we got together, and I married him anyway *knowing* it wouldn't change.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:19 am (UTC)office, and it's a crisis. You roll out of bed moaning.
You get to wait until 8am? Shit, I usually get paged/called at either 6am when the first salesperson/workaholic gets in, or at 7am by the warehouse manager.
Today I slept through my alarm for two hours because I've been so exhausted from a lack of sleep. Slept through both my alarm, and 8 phone calls until a glorious 8:47am.
I walked in the door to the office at 8:58am, with my cellphone attached to my ear :P
Am I the only one who walks around the halls on the cell?
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:55 am (UTC)Funny how any calls to me were legitimate emergencies, and almost no one argued if I wanted to go home after only putting in an extra hour or two ...
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 05:29 pm (UTC)It was cross-coverage. The people asked me if it was real and I owned it, I countered by pointing out that OTHER co-workers had run into me on the range and seen me with it ... :: smirks :: Thereby giving them the added benefit of being 'people who we do not want to piss off too much, as they know how to use guns ...'
I really wish I had my UZI still. I lost the photo, and sold my ever-so-lovely airsoft replica that was in it a while back ...
no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 09:07 pm (UTC)"That looks nasty. What are you gonna use it for?"
"Gonna mow the lawn."
"Wouldn't it be easier to..."
"I hate my lawn."
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 12:22 pm (UTC)My users learned quickly, and the hard way, not to call me during my off hours for work stuff, although they are starting to slide. I've been getting calls before 8am lately... Guess it's time to break out the cattle prod again.
Lord Simon
Date: 2005-01-12 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 02:47 pm (UTC)I leave the office to go home and get intercepted by a co-worker.
They say: "Can you come and look at this for me?"
I say: "Well i stopped work at 6pm, so this would have to be classed as freelance work, so $250 per hour and im yours."
They say: "But this will just take a minute.".
I say: " Minimum call out is 2 hours and i only take cash and payment in advance."
They say: "Isnt it your job to help people?"
I say: "Between the hours of 8am and 6pm yes. But its 6:05pm so now i work for me. :D"
They say: "Well the boss will hear about this!"
I say: "Sure no problem. Write up a letter or memo to him and ill sign it"
Users are dumb dude, your boss is retarded. Do yourself a favour and write down EVERY interuption that happens during your day. Just take a notepad around with you for the day. Log everything you do. Log everything that interupts you and who the person was that interupted you. Then when the boss asks you what you have been doing. Tell the prick that you have been getting interupted every 30 seconds with stupid problems that users should know how to fix because you have shown them 100 times. I feel your pain dude, but u gotta stop at the given hour that your paid until. If that piss's people off, thats tough. If your not getting paid for it walk out. If they fire you it means they didnt want you anyway.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 03:12 pm (UTC)If I'm super bored, I'll occasionally sneak in a side job while I'm on the clock. Double dipping is fun, especially when the boxx is 200 miles away...