Dear $luser,

[manuka.livejournal.com]

Your inability to sync your PDA does NOT constitute a P1/Emergency ticket. Nor does the system/account request for the intern that starts in 2 weeks (besides, HR has to put that request in).

Please stop submitting all your tickets as P1s. It will only cause me to mock you and downgrade them and fix them when I bloody well feel like it.

Comments

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Man, I totally feel you there.

Our official policy is that tickets are not to be raised to Urgent (priority 0, the highest) unless a person is actively prevented from doing their day to day work by the issue.

But then, it's not as bad for us because we determine the user's case priority. They can of course request that we elevate it, but the final determination is left to us.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

Our formal definition of a P1 is that multiple users are affected by the issue.

"I insist that you escalate this!"
"OK, Sure (bite me, *downgrade*)!"

[manuka.livejournal.com]

granted, we're a small shop, so we're not hamstrung by formal SLAs and annoying crap like that - stuff gets fixed when I good and well get around to it. If something comes up that's urgent, your ticket's just gonna have to wait. If I'm feeling magnanimous, I might even commandeer the apps programmer to cover me on a few tickets.

[jecook]

Agreed.

At the current place we do have SLA's, only because we rigidly enforce the use of anything above a Priority 3 call. (our scale is 1 to 5 where 5 is scheduled, 3 is "normal", and 1 is "shit hitting fan OMFG we are all going to DIE" red alert emergency...)

I've been there for the better part of two months not. I've only witnessed one priority 2 ticket, and read about two others.

But then, the IT department is something of a rarity: the rest of the executive team apparently like us, and give us money to do our job without quibbling too much.

I love working for this place, I can only hope they take me on permanently.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

But, but...it's all about ME!

Me! Me! Me! Pay attention to Me!

And wipe my butt while you're at it.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

Whoa. You actually get FUNDING?

You must not be in the for-profit world :)

\Nonprofit here myself.

[jecook]

Oh yeah. Definately a for profit. ::snicker::

Unfortunately, I'm bound not only by the NDA with the recruiting company, but also the company that I work at. That, and it's a personal policy to use the vaguest terms possible when referring to my employer.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

How odd. usually the for-profit world sees IT as a black hole for funds that saps away at the bottom line. In the nonprofit world, IT is the lifeblood of the place.

[jecook]

This place is heavily computerized, and the IT department's charter is to take care of almost all of it, from the phones to the access control system. If any of our critical systems fail, the place loses a ton of revenue every hour.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

Indeed. A surprisingly large number of companies fail to account for the cost of downtime (or the revenue of avoided downtime) when considering IT budgets. They look at IT as a money pit that doesn't return any revenue, completely forgetting that without IT, there IS no revenue.

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

Semi-related: users that send in e-mails that are flagged as "Urgent", whether they are or not.

Listen, mate - e-mails are acted on in the order they are received. Using the cute little "!" in Outlook will not make me read your e-mail any sooner. But it's always nice to know that you think it's important.

I agree

[crankysysadmin0.livejournal.com]

Emails marked urgent are usually office spam and 99% of problems that someone says are urgent---aren't.

Re: I agree

[manuka.livejournal.com]

This as I just received a page sent to the emergency support address because someone can't print.