Things that bug you at work...

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1a) Everyone and his brother having the Administrator domain password. That's even worse... and quite typical in most companies.

 

very much so. Our UK domain locks down admin rights to all but IT. If you want something installed, you talk to IT and get it approved and done. In the US domain, everyone and his dog has admin rights on the local machine. Since we're merging the domains now, guess who wins? yep, you guessed it, the US lot!

I give it 5 minutes before its locked down so tight, even Steve McQueen couldnt find a way through.

My personal hates are many. First off my list, is getting ridiculous calls through from frontline with little to no description of the issue "Dave is having problems with X application". Very nice, but WHAT PROBLEMS!!!!!

Course, they can sometimes go the other way, and make me wade through a huge diatribe just to discover that the guys login needs reset.

 

Yep, admin passwords again, I have recently learnt some dropkick at another branch has shared his admin password with four other members of staff.. "just in case they need it" the same branch recently have had very strange problems with permissions on network drives because some idiot decided to remove inheritable permissions from certain child folders....grrrr


Oh, yeah. Bypassing the help desk "it's quicker to just call you"

When I'm grabbing a coffee in the canteen tell me about your IT problem, I love it!!!

/whinge /moan

 

Not I.T. related but my colleague constantly vibrates his legs up and down all day long. Its in the field of my vision and I don't no why but its really irratating.

Also no one likes fresh air here. So its stuffy and smelly all day long.

Staff who ask for tech support and they haven't pressed a switch to turn it on. That is the most common thing, jees ever heard of common sense!

 

Or when I'm at lunch.

The bigger winner for me though is people coming to me when I'm obviously up to my neck in actual work and asking about their home computer. Even better when they very occasionally do some work from home so think any problem should be resolved without cost to them.

I've spoken about the state of our IT room cooling and power outage procedures elsewhere on here so I won't go over that again.

Theres a whole huge list of other things which wind me up at the moment, some IT related, most people related . But this rant could end up getting far too personal and specific if I launch into all that.

 

Things that bug me? hmmm

Having to actually go to work.....

 

o.k here goes.... lol !

1. IT projects that haven't been thought through, then the helpdesk has to pick up the pieces because the project managers are on to their next ***brilliant*** idea that will save millions of pounds and make us even more efficient.
2. Printers - I love 'em, I hate 'em
2a. Printers part 2. People not being able to walk 2m's to a printer without moaning to IT they they need yet another printer in the office (preferably within arms reach)
3. People being aggressive/Rude people - "you! IT person there, you are at the bottom of the food chain..."

Apart from that I really like my job

 

Sounds simmilar to my place and the other two places i worked at!

 

really Ferg? That's interesting - in my experience of Anglo-US companies, it's usually the yanks who are far better at security than the Brits. I've worked for four of them, and with the exception of the current one I work for - where security is equally tight at both, on each occasion the British end of the operation was far more lax. I worked for one place where the damn copy room people had the domain admin password!

 

Just do what I do when this little beaut pops up.

Listen to their problem, give them advice, then send them an invoice. Be deadly serious about it too. Pro-rata your time spent on analysis of the problem and consultation over a solution (I rate my time at £120 an hour to keep minute-by-minute calculations simple). Doesn't have to be much - just a few quid will do if you've only spent a couple of minutes on it.

 

• The fact that management come up with stupid ideas, ask for your expert advice and then decide their uneducated idea is better, and that you should do it anyway despite your advice.
  
• The fact one moment I can be doing an intense bit of infrastructure project work, and the next minute I have the chief execs PA calling me for her urgent IT DISASTER of an e-mail being bounced back. I then advise her it helps to send it to the correct address.
  
• Users telling me that a website 'isnt workin' then looking at be blankly as I advise them, I dont really have the powers to fix another companies website....
  
• The fact the company will spend a shed load on 'entertainment' and half baked ideas management come up with, only to neglect spending £300 on software which would make things a whole lot better.

Oh and things that bug me in terms of IT, well hmmmm people trying to fix things themselves because obviously we all know a network cable just plugs in and works...

 

Yeah, get plenty of those beauties to.

Peoples definitions of business critical problems always surprise me as well, what more important, the fact you can't print a single page document outlining your fantastic new (total ****e) plan for a half baked product idea we'll never be able to sell or the fact that we can't succesfully send an email to anyone?


Oh and Zeb, great idea, I'm going to spend an industrious 15-20 minutes knocking up an invoice shortly.

 

Users who think that his/her problems are (deliberately) caused by you.

"I can't log in! Did you change my password AGAIN?"
Uhh, yeah... like I don't have anything better to do than to change your password just so you can't log in.

"I can't get onto my MySpace page. Did you take down the Internet again?"
No... your supervisor asked me to block it because of all the time you spend on MySpace.

"People tell me they can't send me e-mails. What did you do to it?"
Might be because you have a mailbox size limit.

"My e-mail keeps crashing. What did you do to it?"
Might be because you've got 2+ gigs worth of e-mail stored in your box... which happened because your supervisor told me to remove your mailbox size limit.

 

We get that alot at my workplace. On one occasion when I was on my way into the toilets, and another time, I was standing outside during a break, making a personal call re: my bank account, on my mobile. Both times, the same person.

Love it! I'm gonna knock up a template invoice this evening, for this very purpose. I don't mind when the occasional person has a problem which I can quickly advise on. It's the persistant offenders, who are trying to eek another year out of their spyware-ridden P3 laptop, and just won't listen when you tell them it ain't gonna run photoshop at the same time as three office apps, whilst watching their iffy torrented movies on it.

Agreed. Especially today. It's cold and raining, and my foots killing. Just didn't feel like it today.

Yep. My personal pet hate is when people call me 'Technician', as if it was my given name. Its my title (sort of), I have an actual name, and if I can manage to learn theirs, they can use mine, or at least ask me what it is!

Other things that annoy me:

The lack of space in the converted cupboard we call our server room/ office/ repair room. Still, we move to a new building next year, so that will hopefully be rectified.

The new users with their 'In my old place the IT staff let us....' So tempting to call their bluff on it sometimes, and give their old place a call.

Other than that, I love my job. They actually pay me to play with computers

 

1. Directors who think they can chalk up some quick and easy achievements (for them) by ballsing around with the IT department.

'The board all need laptops with a VPN (which they won't use) and a blackberry (which they can't use). We need to change our broadband provider which will save 2p per month (you don't mind working the weekend to configure everything, do you?) and I want to completely review all of our supplier contracts (even though I don't deal with any of our suppliers or have any interest in our long term relationships). £2k is far too much to pay for disaster recovery precautions. If everything goes completely pear-shaped, you can fix it for free with some cellotape and post-it notes.'

2. Users.
I could expand here, but don't really need to.

3. People who don't listen to your suggestions when you raise them, then blame you for not implementing them when it's too late.

4. Other employees.
(see 2)

5. Customers.
(see 4)

6. People who deliberately don't understand IT.
A bloke would never admit to not understanding the offside rule (except me) or how to drive a car, but will happily declare very loudly 'Yes, got this new PC (that I asked for and badgered the IT department to sort out every day for a month) and I haven't even worked out how to turn it on yet!' or 'You'll have to come down and do it for me. I really can't be bothered to try to follow your instructions. Right-click? What's all that about?'

7. People who think that resetting their tab stops in Word is more important that dealing with the fact that the entire sales department is unable to log in.

8. Things that only go wrong when you're not there.

 

Too true mate.

"What have you done to my PC? I can't print to the colour printer. It was working fine this morning!"

The printer's put of paper.
Would you like me to put some in for you?

 

hmm, got a couple...

1. Users who seem perfectly able of doing other things which are actually quite complicated and demanding (e.g. driving a car) but seem to become dribbling idiots when faced with a computer and need you to just do it for them. People just won't read a basic set of instructions...

2. Users who want new features in software/systems and send their "requirements" in a two sentence email. Then, when you manage to tease their requirements out of them, you write up the spec, they don't even bother to read it but just sign it off anyway. You spend ages working on it for them, you get "well, they wasn't quite what I was after".... every damn time...

3. Most of all.... the 30 mile journey to work that takes twice as long as it should do... bloody a12....

Dave

 

My boss, he's a c*ck.

 

Craig! Craig!!! It's time for my walk!!!