(no subject)

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~Where I work, the call management is done via an application based on Oracle. (Everyone groan!)

~Today, I got in, checked my e-mails, and noticed there was a little back-and-forth on the support group's list.

Oracle Guys: We need to take down Oracle.
My Boss's Boss: You know, the middle of the day isn't a great time to do this.
Oracle Guys: We...didn't plan it. It's an NFS issue!
My Boss's Boss: :-(

~Then, Oracle goes down. Everyone in the IRC channel starts complaining about not being able to help the PAYING customers who keep calling. Oh, did I mention that they're at less than half-capacity because most of the group is in training, including my boss? My boss was actually out today sick. So, the team leader for the group was down doing the training. Yeeeeah. It's ugly upstairs!

~So, a few more apps go down for no reason whatsoever, and someone notices the error message returned when they try an Oracle app. Their app told any user having issues to call US.

~Let me say that agian. The Oracle group listed the global tech support helpdesk as the contact info for their downed app.

~I have NEVER been more glad to be in training. 'Course, I feel bad for the five or six guys up their feilding 175-200 calls a day...

~And while I'm in a chatty mood, let me tell you a little story about the previous helpdesk of doom I worked at.

~So, I'd been there a little less than a year and had made it to Senior Helpdesk Consultant. Which basically meant that I had to ACTUALLY work while all the coworkers goofed off. Stupid student positions.

~Anyway, we had a few admin users that were just real pains in the butt. One was a guy named--and I kid you not--Dick, and the other was a woman whose named was close enough to Hermine (sp?) that it was terribly easy to mix up. You ended up either calling her 'ma'am' or saying her name very very quickly to keep from screwing it up.

~Being a senior consultant, I usually got the icky problems and the icky people. You could tell when SHE would get on the line because the person answering the call would go pale. It was that bad. You NEVER wanted to go to her desk to help her because she was that horrible. (We finally found out the secret to getting her to like you: ask her about her dogs.)

~So, here I am at a helpdesk slogging away at a decently backed up queue and the phone rings. It's Hermine.

Me: "ITECS Helpdesk, this is Kitty. How may I help you?"
Her: "Let me speak to your manager."
Me: *eyes roll* "Yes ma'am. He's busy right now, but if you can tell me your issue, prehaps I can help."
Her: "I'm sure you can't."
Me: "E...excuse me, ma'am?"
Her: "WELL. You're ONLY a RECPTIONIST, after all."
Me: "..."
Her: "I want to speak with your manager."
Me: "Ma'am, he's in a meeting. I will have him call you later. Have a nice day." *hang up* "SHE CALLED ME A RECIPTIONIST. :-(!!"

~And that was AFTER I'd fixed her computer, e-mail, account, etc several many times. :-( Damnit, my boobs do NOT detract from my intellegence or my ability to solve simple computer issues! GRAH.

~You know, more than once, I actually had people call in a demand to speak to "someone who knows what they're doing. YEs, I'm sure you're capable, but I'd like to speak with a...you know, a guy."

~*sighs* I'd be a little more up in arms, but it is kind of fun to explain to someone how you built your own computer and installed Linux all over it...and watch em try and decide if they can take you seriously or not. :-D ~

Comments

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Sexism is really stupid. And tha tech's see it more than users because most of the time we're . . you know . . . smarter.

Also, we use the net a lot and comunicate via email a lot and so we often have a clear understanding of how little gener means in regards to a brain.

Though, and I'm ust playing to the simple minded here, I suspect you'd get less receptionist asumptions if you used another name. As much as I logically know otherwise, Kitty really does scream receptionist to a lot of people.

Man I'm an elitist. Ahh wel.

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~Hahaa, I actually used my real name (which happens to be 'Jenny'). I'm just out of habit of giving it on Teh Scary Intarwebs.

~I agree with you there! Any one is capable of having a negitive IQ, not just us blondes. ;-) ~

[kedemel.livejournal.com]

I've had that when I was a Samsung Data Tech.

Dick: "I was supposed to speak with a data tech."
Me: "You are, sir. Let me pull up your ticket. Oh, so you are having such-and-such problem?"
Dick: "*sigh* As I told the previous idiot, yes. I already did such-and-such and then [this] happened."
Me: "*glee* Oh, I'm sorry sir, but it appears that by doing that, you have locked up your device, and the only way around that is a hard reset."
Dick: "Hard reset?"
Me: "We'll have to erase all the data on your phone."
Dick: "OMGWTFBBQ. I can't have that. I am an important businessman, and I have countless of contacts and appointments on my phone. I demand someone else who will help me!"
Me: "Sir, if you had called up when the issue first started happening, we could have resolved it with minimal data loss - but it's been three months. All my fellow techs will tell you the exact same thing - a hard reset is needed. Next time, please call us and we can resolve your issue without data loss."
Dick: "*grumble*"

And Mr. Important Businessman would need assistance navigating to his C:\Program Files\Palm folder, or uninstalling ActiveSync, or hell, even GETTING ON THE BLOODY INTERNET.

Damned bastards.

Then I worked the internal helpdesk for OfficeMax. Oh that was a trip.

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~Because, as we all know, 'important' means 'I know more than you do'. *rolls her eyes*

~Have you ever want to answer "Oh, gee, I'm sorry sir, you seem to have been transferred into the Barefoot and Pregnant in the Kitchen Department! Hee! Heee! I'll transfer you to the Obscenely Large Manhood Department right away!"

~Casue I sure have. I mean...there was only one place that I was ever hired because I was cute. And outpreformed all the guys there ANYWAY. ;-) ~

[shadowkat01.livejournal.com]

We have one notable user that simply cannot deal with women at all. We just stopped trying, it wasn't worth the headache. Now he gets routed to voicemail until one of the male techs feels like dealing with him.

Notable is this being the same idiot it took our department director 2 full hours to teach how to log in to the PC. (IE: press ctrl-alt-del, enter username + password, hit enter)

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~That's a fantastic way of dealing with them. Wish I coulda done that. :-(

~And your icon makes me all happy inside. :-D ~

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Ugh, the amount of time I'd answer "hello, [ISP] support, how can I help?" and get "yeah can I have support please?" became a joke after a while. Most times, it was just people making the conditioned assumption that female=reception and they'd usually chuckle and apologise when I said they did have Support. I never got someone who refused to deal with me but I did get a lot of patronising guys - always consultants, interestingly - who would sigh and sound irritated and seem to assume I didnt know what I was doing.

Glad I do provisioning now, I can tell you.

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~Yeah...I was working at NC State...which has a pretty big engineering college, so I got all the condecending guys and professors. It's great when you fix their issue and they STILL think you know nothing.~

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

I get a lot of the "didn't realise" type callers too, rather than the won't speak to women ones.

It always puts me in a bad mood for the start of the call, though.

[kelly-bean.livejournal.com]

That happens to me ALL the time, even when I answer the phone, "Tech Support, This is Kelly."

SO ANNOYING.

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

I've gotten a few calls where the customer said that they'd talked a tech previously, but they didnt think that the tech knew what they were doing, because "well, she was a girl."

On the other hand, one of the girls on my team was told that the cu wanted to speak to women every time because it was "like tech support but sexier."

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~HAHAHAAAAAA. I find that hilarious, cause the guys used to tell me to stop answering the phones 'all sexy like.'

~It's even better when they say something like 'Well, previous tech was a girl, so she didn't know what she was doing. SHe told me to do such-and-such' which is something they obviously made up.

~Silly users. Computers are for grown-ups!~

[axessdenyd.livejournal.com]

Where I work, the call management is done via an application based on Oracle.

Where I work, the enrte database runs on a program written in COBOL.

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~Woooow. That's...um, classy.~

[kalium.livejournal.com]

*sighs* I'd be a little more up in arms, but it is kind of fun to explain to someone how you built your own computer and installed Linux all over it...and watch em try and decide if they can take you seriously or not. :-D ~

I know guys who would think of that as a good cheap date.

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~*grins* My ex-bf and I actaully went on a date to Greenvile to go to the Best Buy and Red Lobster. :-) ~

[duality.livejournal.com]

i've had great fun telling some who ask to speak with someone "with the most experience with X" (which of course to them means "male") that they're talking to 'em.

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~Yes, yes it is. :-) ~

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Let me say that again. The Oracle group listed the global tech support helpdesk as the contact info for their downed app.

All our lazy-ass project teams and in-house programmers put us down as support for their crappy programs. Often, the first we hear about the program's existence is when someone calls to shout at us because it broke.

I'm campaigning to have all in-house error messages be rewriteable by the Helpdesk without consulting the original coders first. That way they can say "Error 192. Z is broken. You will need to do X / contact $fred" instead of just "HAHA RANDOM ERROR LINE NOISE BOOGA BOOGA".

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~*giggles* That sounds like a typical error message. I wish they could all be rewritten to be useful :-( ~

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

'Course, I feel bad for the five or six guys up their feilding 175-200 calls a day...

Man, I'd kill for that! We average 250-300 calls a day, and from next tuesday will have 6 in our team (3 quit, 1 new starter is taking 3-4 weeks personal leave) - and that includes our delivery lead taking calls for us.

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~Holy crap. That is a metric fuckton of calls.

~Good luck and I hope you do not die.~

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

yes...i get the "i need to talk to someone in second level" or "are you a tech" or "but you're just the first level, right?" all the time...sadly, the people who actually ask these questions know far less than i do.

as far as the not wanting to talk to women, i actually had a guy the other day who, when i told him i would transfer him to second level, asked if he could get a chick there, too, because he likes talking to women. although it seemed more of a creepy thing than a "yay women" thing.

ew.

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

I had one guy get offfended when I said i'd put the call through to second level - because he thought that meant second best!

[jjjiii]

"I want to talk with someone who knows what they're doing."

"Ma'am, if anyone here knew what they were doing, they'd leave."