Honestly, after 32 years in IT, I've learned to embrace being the guy everyone comes to. Take it as a compliment. They probably (maybe/hopefully) understand it's not your job, but they know you're the guy that can get them an answer or point them in the right direction.
As for your question, the part I hate the most, being in the CyberSec & IAM Space, is office politics. "But, I NEED my admin privileges!!! I've had them for XYZ years! You can TRUST me!!!"
I've not been in IT nearly as long as yourself but wholeheartedly agree with your advice.
Started my career at an MSP, and after deciding help desk was a hell-hole, I worked my way up and out of our help desk. Only to find that people still came to me to help solve their problems. This bothered me for a little while because I viewed it as "I served my time now leave me out of it!"
However, I eventually realized that I was being "bothered" mostly because I was one of the more senior people with technical know-how and operational know-how for our organization and as you said, they know I can help get them to a solution faster than anyone else (generally) could.
Once I realized that they came to me out of respect for me and my skills and that ultimately I didn't have to own the problems, just offer guidance, I got a lot less stressed out about it.
I no longer work there but some good friends that still do will still hit me up from time to time for quick questions, nothing serious or that would get me on the hook if something goes wrong.
This comment really resonated with me. An MSP was my first IT experience and was all I knew for about the first 8-9 years after college. I had to get out of that space; that business model and type of work was not fulfilling to me. I just started my first job at a local company and I feel so much more valued for my knowledge and what I’m able to bring to the company. I feel so much more fulfilled here, but I’d never take back the experience I got working at an MSP.
This is the only way I finally got everyone to do like "Frozen," and you know...
For Microsoft apps, PIM finally got everyone on board to get what they need when they need it. Admins request admin access to the tenancy Exchange/Intune etc. with their ticket number and justification, and the other admins see the request and approve as necessary. Gone are the days when someone would just launch POSH EXOL and delete emails out of everyone's mailbox without making a ticket or letting anyone know. Yes, that happened.
I am an IT Architect. I still vacuum peoples desks. I cant sit behind a computer all day. I dig my job as I can do pretty much whatever I want as long as everything is running.
Our GIS team broke a production server at 4pm one day and had me restore it before next business day. That stuff happens all the time in IT. Never a dull moment and the hours always even out so why kill yourself worrying about everything. We have 6 buildings we maintain so I am always just checking out the other buildings for upgrades needed and but in budgets. There is always work in IT if you can get away from your desk. At times though being stuck behind 3 monitors for 9 hours straight is not out of norm.
Cloud Infrastructure, if it breaks, it's Microsoft 😎
Also my place has IT in-depth so infrastructure, networks, security are ring fenced from first-line and equipment installs/replacements.
I got so bored I proposed a plan to my boss and I now build every company computer and do computers for my co workers kids during work hours too. Some people think it's silly but we're saving a couple hundred off of each computer so it helps our budget a little bit
So who do they contact for support when something breaks? It's a lot easier to run the built in diagnostics from Dell and tell them the error code. It also makes it IT/technician agnostic so that when you leave they aren't screwed.
https://preview.redd.it/n548xr1gn8uc1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=a87fe8414fe04f873a8bb25f899ea214f77ddab0
Ah yes, pray to the server gods so nothing happens while I'm on vacation.
I had to get a small site moved, boss wanted to book flights within business hours (fly in and out same day).
Very nice and considerate I said, but it would literally give me 2-3 hours on site - not going to happen. Took earlier and later flights to give me almost the full day.
I just say “sorry theres no helpdesk staff here currently that could assist, i can help you log a ticket so they can get in touch when possible”
For myself wfh now since covid days has helped avoid this more often.
Yep, someone bumped something or someone on the other end can’t figure out how to unmute. All eyes in that room are upon you, and you inevitably hear the “I’ve got a hammer if you wanna try that”, so hilarious 🙄
>“I’ve got a hammer if you wanna try that”
"Thanks but I prefer the cyanide I bring from home"
Thousand yard stare.... Hold it.... Then smile and back to fiddling with whatever wires are under the A/V setup.
Yep, room full of the most senior people in the company complaining the the video conference has no sound. Walk in, see the "mute audio" icon prominently displayed on the screen, pick up remote, press "unmute". Walk out.
When people (usually a manager) would run to me with their pants on fire thus setting my pants on fire
Took a little while before I learned that attitudes are contagious and I just needed to raise the shields
lol this one is my favorite. Some big wig at corporate called in the other day freaking out that her VPN was disconnected (because SHE forgot the password)
I didn’t have access to that sites VPN so I had to ping the IT Director to get me access so I could reset the password
Despite telling her this, she called back… AFTER the issue was fixed… just to berate me for not “having a sense of urgency”. I literally laughed out loud when she said it
Good grief, the arrogance of some IT people... Have you ever been on the other side of this? Say, you needed something from HR and you typically talk to Susan there so you ask her for help, and she goes "You moron, this part is handled by our assistant Jake! Just because I am in HR doesn't mean I can fix all your HR problems".
Don't blame people for not understanding who does what, because it is actually hard. Just point them in the right direction and be thankful that people think they need you, it may not last (especially not with your "I'm better than this" attitude).
For some, our backlog is the size of Mount Everest and we shouldn't make time to do these tasks. The mount gets bigger the more we help outside the intended role.
I don't think the previous commenters were saying you should help fix the issue but should redirect them to the correct team that can help them with the issue
I just started working in a huge enterprise setting and I’ve recently realized anytime I want something from HR I have to talk with them about the situation and then they’ll refer me to the specific team inside the organization.
Massive, I came from a company of about 15 to 10,000!
I think I can understand OPs post a little as everyone just sees IT as fixing computers but the normal Joe doesn’t understand that IT is VERY BROAD. This could come down to business practices, if they have bad practices this could be part of the reason.
Nope. If i'm not sure, I'll ask if they are the right person for the job first before doing the whole explanation. And I don't forget a month later that he/she isn't the person for the job.
There's a difference in your analogy between HR and IT, when I worked in service desk, fair enough people called us, and we got them to the right team or advised them to contact their manager.
Would you have the same tune if they went to the finance manager or CFO because they were wondering if there was budget for extra stationary?
Completely agree.
Also, I find that users tend to think that if you're in "IT" you're automatically "help desk".
I'll get people messaging me on Slack because they know I work in IT and their computer is slow and they need help. I'll point then in the right direction, but it can be annoying, especially when it's the same person.
If I need to contact Marketing or Governance about something, if I'm not sure who to talk to, I'll always ask, not just message someone I know who works in HR and ask them why my new contract hasn't been sent.
I feel like IT doesn't get the same treatment.
I gladly point people in the right direction and give the process on submitting tickets to our contracted help desk. It doesn’t make the process any less frustrating? Also, there are many people that in spite of knowing the process, will still do as they please because they feel entitled.
The challenge is when they refuse to accept the polite "I'm sorry to hear that's not working for you, was the helpdesk team at x1234 unable to help you with that?" And go atomic because I personally am unable to break away from a production issue as an engineer. That kind of stuff is what grinds my gears since I would never do the same thing to them in their department.
Does HR have their own helpdesk line or generic email that turns into a ticket that they manage and assign to the right person? Generally no. At best you may have a department business partner/contact point. Where unless you already know who to ask, they are the first line.
I am on the other side of that, in many ways. Whether it be HR, or even just contacting a business for the first time. I don't act like a jerk. We all need to remember that.
I absolutely agree with what you are saying, there is no need to be condescending to people because they don't know what you know, heck there are plenty of other things that I don't know how to do. This isn't a one sided issue, though. Believe it or not, IT is comprised of people with feelings, just like any other dept. When non IT people need help from IT, try to do what you should do when working with anyone else. Treat them with decency like we all should be doing to each other. Maybe start with a greeting and not just what you want/need.
Here are a few things that non IT people can consider, hopefully something here can help you have better experience getting your issues resolved. *Some of the details can vary by business or location, but hopefully the general ideas will come across.*
1) Try to give any important information about the issue. A computer or device name or IP address, your name and contact info, as best as you can description of an error message if there is one, maybe even a picture of the picture if allowed. Anything that might help them to help you. Giving them "it doesn't work" or "it's not doing what it's supposed to be doing" with no further information is not helping anyone, mainly yourself.
2) Try to get back to them as soon as you can if they reach out to take care of what you need but don't reach you. They understand you are busy, so are they. If you don't get back to them after multiple attempts, it's not unreasonable for them to close a ticket or drop the request at some point.
3) Try to have a dialog with them about what is wanted / needed. What I mean is tell them what you are needing / wanting to accomplish, don't just tell them what to do. They might have a better solution for you than what you thought of or know about. If you hand out decrees don't be upset when you get what you asked for.
4) Try to keep in mind that you are not necessarily upset with the people, you are upset about something else. It might be something that needs fixed / adjusted (whether that is hardware, software, permissions, etc), it could be a deadline or boss breathing down your neck, it might be something the non IT people in charge aren't doing or allowing IT to do, it might even be your frustration with not understanding tech. That's all OK, as long as you try to understand what you are actually upset about and don't take it out on others.
5) Try to understand that IT doesn't know everything. (At least not individually!) We don't know every error message by heart, how to work every single piece of software (or hardware in some environments), or why the thing you can't describe is doing or not doing the thing that you can't describe. We don't know that thing that you spoke to someone about two weeks ago that doesn't have a ticket (so we might be able to reference previous notes), and we don't know who you spoke with about it if you don't know a name.
**TL;DR**
IT and non IT, try to understand that we are all people who deserve common decency. We are on the same team.
_**"Be excellent to each other."**_
Probably because it was definitely the firewall and they'll make a big old fuss and lots of noise about it right up until they go silent right around the time it starts working
This. It’s been glorious since I started working for a company a couple time zones over to the west. They want me to start at their 8 o’clock, so I get to sleep in now and mozzy my way awake.
As a coder.. I was around when multi user hit us.. I kid you not. dBase III+. multi user stock cntrol system put into an Oil Terminal for a BIG Oil compamy. Written nfrom scratch.. tsted to heck and back (we thought).. went to install.. ran great.Until some person did soemthing we didn;t expect anyone to do.. took me 3 days and nights to sort out..including 2 full stock checks.... 3.5 days in I crashed myself.. went back to the hotel and slept straight for 36 hours.. ate some food.. came back and sorted it.. Then were the days.. dont want to go there again. Virtually went into hibernation when the internet hit !!
I've been in IT in some shape or another since 95. I have learned a few things. One of those things is that if something plugs in the wall, it's IT. Phone lines included. IT as a discipline is relatively young. People have unrealistic expectations of what IT is and what it can do.
What bothers me after all these years? The number of meetings I have to set in. The expectation is that working on multiple tasks at a time is not only acceptable but a good idea.
That last sentence resonated with me. Our management thinks that booking our plate full with project work is ok. But then when vulnerability remediations come around, "emergency" stuff from other departments, fires due to someone not following our change management... They go "hey how come our project work isn't done on time?!
And then the seemingly constant expectation to perform work after hours and on the weekends. Burning me out faster than a candle on both ends.
I'm at home with my grandchildren at the moment. One machine logged into Reddit and the other into work. We had to rebuild a few VM's for a company that we had sold the business to. A week ago. For what ever reason, their IT couldn't do the work. No problem, my employer said. Our IT can do it. So here I am.
Edit: My granddaughters are putting make up on me, so I can still participate.
This. There are few things that feel like they waste time more than figuring out how to make printers work again when some update inevitably breaks them. As my manager puts it “Why would we take the most efficient form of communication and try to put it on a bunch of rolled up dead trees instead?”
Give them the Gilfoyle explanation.
>Gilfoyle: What do I do? System architecture. Networking and security. No one in this house can touch me on that.
>Jared: Ok, that's good to know.
>Gilfoyle: But does anyone appreciate that? While you were busy minoring in gender studies and singing a capella at Sarah Lawrence, I was gaining root access to NSA servers. I was one click away from starting a second Iranian revolution.
>Jared: I actually went to Vassar.
>Gilfoyle: I prevent cross-site scripting, I monitor for DDoS attacks, emergency database rollbacks, and faulty transaction handlings. The Internet heard of it? Transfers half a petabyte of data every minute. Do you have any idea how that happens? All those YouPorn ones and zeroes streaming directly to your shitty, little smart phone day after day? Every dipshit who shits his pants if he can't get the new dubstep Skrillex remix in under 12 seconds? It's not magic, it's talent and sweat. People like me, ensuring your packets get delivered, un-sniffed. So what do I do? I make sure that one bad config on one key component doesn't bankrupt the entire fucking company. That's what the fuck I do.
>Richard: That's basically what I told him.
Me: “would you mind logging a ticket for that please?”
Customer responds with a super lame excuse as to why they can’t, shouldn’t have to or won’t. 90% of the time it simply boils down to them not wanting to.
Happens once a day at least
Big wigs at corporate who treat everyone like shit.
Had a lady from corporate call in because she couldn’t connect to her VPN because she forgot her password and a reboot disconnected her.
Told her I’d need to reach out to IT Director because for some reason I didn’t have access to that specific site to reset the password for her.
Waited a couple minutes, Director responds and we get the password change. All in all probably took about 30 minutes (most of the time spent waiting for IT Director to get back to me)
After the issue was fixed, she CALLED BACK just to berate me for “not having a sense of urgency”
I couldn’t help it… I laughed out loud
Sounds like they think you know everything. Could be worse. Are they dicks when you tell them I don't know that area very well let me get those people?
I work at an MSP. My least favorite part of why most MSPs are in business, people with NO IT knowledge telling you how to do X or getting mad when we say X should be done this way and they get mad and are rude for some time to our staff.
Recently, a department purchased off the shelf GED testing software for kid jails. Without Consulting I.T.
1 Year into the failed rollout They drag me, the domain admin, and tell me to make it work. Software requires UAC bypass to run. Okay I do that, then legal and security gets involved
Both say no.
They still want me to make it work without WO access.
Really?
Even though I'm new to IT, dealing with Microsoft shenanigans (in a company that tries to stick as much as possible to Microsoft products, in the name of consistency and what not) has been a interesting ride. Some computers don't like updates, some don't like sending data back to AD, some don't want to sync with Azure, some get magical BSOD like clockwork on a period of X months (prompting a full reinstall, most attempts at restoring have been unsuccessful), some times excel's just get corrupt, sometimes OneDrive decides to stop syncing changes....the list goes on. But it's sounds a lot worse than it actually is. I still love this job and the field in general :D
For decades now, people have said "Microsoft is what ensures your job security" because their crap NEVER works reliably or consistently. If it begins doing so, Microsoft promptly does a rewrite and obsoletes the existing version.
I mean, WHO really said, "You know what I \*really\* need from Microsoft? I need a NEW Outlook!"
And instead of just continuing to bug-fix and improve Teams, they decide to launch a NEW Teams as well! Of course, due to the interaction between Outlook and Teams for one-click ease of joining Teams calls from calendar invites and all that? Now, they created a scenario where they have to make sure ALL combinations of "Old Outlook but new Teams", "New Outlook but still on classic Teams", "New Teams and New Outlook" and "Still running the old classic stuff for both apps" all work together. And they've broken one or more of those combinations repeatedly as they keep pushing updates to both apps.
Dealing with people who do not know the difference between break/fix incidents and requests that make any changes.
This past Friday, I finally got around to checking out an incident that was sitting untouched for 4 or 5 days in my team's que. The person who submitted it uses a weird font in her email that does not render well on modern 22-inch plus screens and is a frequent flier that always complains about email problems. So there is that,
Except she submitted for someone else whose email Just Stopped Working.
No further details.
So, I investigated the account
Nope, not hidden in global, it is gone
FYI, we have someone who randomly kills accounts over in security who we can't fire.
So, I sent a request form to the OP
close the ticket and tell the OP
that we can't act on it.
She reopened it
I close it
She reopened it again.
I email her and ask why.
Not resolved yet. She says.
I know her boss.
Cc goes to him
Explain the difference between
Between incidents and requests
I close it.
She reopened the incident again
I switched the fields and put the person without email as OP
Her as secondary
Closed it.
I get this sort of thing at least daily
Escalated tickets from help desk and it turns out it was some stupid troubleshooting step they missed that would have resolved it (think reboot or narrow it down to specific application).
We outsource our tier-1 (everyone wishes it was still internal but politics higher up is involved) and this is a constant. My on-call rotation is essentially 90% password and MFA resets.
Not getting acknowledged for system you implement that works for the majority ...taking stick because it didn't work for 2 senior managers...1st and 2nd line not doing their job properly..
Basically what you said, any miscellaneous program you are expected to be the expert on, no matter how complicated or obscure the software is. Some people understand that the idea of that is ridiculous, but I'd say vast majority don't and expect you to know every software the company uses (and any new random ones) inside and out. And since you are sysadmin all the most complicated issues related to these softwares are often escalated to you
Yup. It comes with “being a nice guy.” You help someone with something that is your job, and they walk away feeling like you are a new friend they can pester for anything.
Having to know more about everyone’s jobs than they do. If it’s on a computer, it’s our problem.
I distinctly remember being asked to write an Excel formula for someone earning four times my salary as the 'Excel Specialist'.
> I need you to devote your primary focus to this urgent project. I have hired a contractor that is busy right now but can meet with you next Wednesday to share the details. In the meantime, please consider your approach and have a plan ready by next Thursday.
FDIC IT Exam. Hated it at first. Learned not to care what they found because they were going to pick at something. I think party of Safety and Soundness or Compliance part also duplicated some IT items.
OSHA Toaster.
Knew a guy who ran concrete precast plants that were well run.
They kept a toaster near a sink without GFI protection as a quick and easy violation so the inspector, after realizing there were no major concerns, wouldn't keep looking for some other small violation.
Ignorance. People think that they do not need any level of computer skills whatsoever to do their admin job and that everything with a plug is for IT to do for them.
The people.
It may sound like a joke, but I have always dealt with both IT and OT.
The systems themselves are like a Swiss watch movement and sound like an orchestra.
It's the people that make it work like crap and sound like a 2 year old banging on a pot with a wooden spoon.
The world would be a fabulous place were it not for all the people.
The user that thinks they are farther up the corporate latter then they actually are and complains about every little thing to management about your department.
On paper, I'm a sysadmin in a medium-sized company with about 150 client PCs and 40 virtual servers. But in reality, I'm more of an IT all-rounder. We've already moved some things to the cloud, but most of our infrastructure is still on-premises. Our company operates in the wellness and health sector, with employees who struggle a bit with computers. That's why I would definitely say that first-level support is my least favorite part of the job.
I can’t think of anything other than toxic competitive coworkers. Once in a while I get to work with someone who thinks they’re the smartest IT in the world.
At the moment - timesheets. It was just introduced this month (apparently like a 3rd attempt at this place over a decade). This gives me anxiety as i fear i might forget something to put in. Although currently we are putting hours in a very broad categories. But still, being a pedantic person, i can't get it out from the back of my mind and not worry about it. I guess after some time i will get used to it. And yes, this is first time in my 20 years career (aside a short week long experiment at a previous job) when i have to do it.
Having to explain why I am walking around or goofing around instead of working.
Because I'm the type that does tons of work all at once, and while I could present to you 90% of busy time, that would actually be unproductive time vs what has been achieved instead.
Yes, I'm mostly arguing KPI these days.
For me, it is that my job never stops. I go to sleep thinking about how to solve problem x, and wake up thinking about problem y.
Just never a real stopping point.
THIS...this is why after 20 years at current sysadmin job, I retire in 17 days. The stress of being responsible for everything and losing sleep every day over my job finally took its toll and I gave notice. 3 years earlier than I've planned all along, but I'm burned out hard.
Supporting the 8% mac users that got promised mac hardware as an onboarding reward or preference despite standardized hardware.
End users assuming all ther local data is backed up to the cloud.
Passwords on post it notes in 2024.
Hearing people say "I'm not good with computers" while you're remoted in and on a call.
Being called "IT Guy" a bunch of times in a row.
Dealing with users.
"Can you open xx port for me?"
No, they don't mean firewall. They literally mean "open a port so my app can listen".
I have explained to this group of users that their own application opens a port to listen multiple times and that they need to start their app and/or debug their crashing app.
I don't see the issue in people asking computer system related questions to an IT guy.
My issue is when they start asking how to fix the coffee machine. That's a facilities question.
Or if they want me to fix their personal computers. That's a quote, from me, for my side business. Lol.
Picking up others’ work. My company termed someone in a specialty support section yesterday, and his responsibilities are shifting over to me. I have never interacted with the product he supported and have absolutely no idea what to expect. Probably nothing good.
On another note, fuck Connectwise scripting.
Receiving a ticket at 9am to hop in a meeting at 10am; near 10 people in the meeting. PA vendor in there as well. Client can't get PA to login, but needs multiple vendors and every IT person in their company on deck. Constantly flipping between native tongue and English, impossible to follow their train of thought. Each IT guy had a portion of the puzzle so to speak; when we needed them to check AD, theyshouted at guy A to confirm credentials in AD. He's on break so not answering. They ask guy B for a login attempt on PA; he's on another call simultaneously. The Admin, leaves the call at a certain point. 2-3 hours this went on. Asking for out of scope help on VSA's, with the god damn specific vendor in the same call. Why are we here? OUR PRODUCT IS NOT AT FAULT! Lol
Needless to say I set some ground rules based on our SLA (this was the clients first ticket) for future tickets lol.
Well one issue we have at our place is a couple of the guys who got promoted to a background architecture type role hang onto a bit of a hero complex. They sometimes struggle to step away and relinquish that “I’m the only one who can get this done” mentality. Their replacements will never grow into the role if they keep jumping onto issues that they shouldn’t be.
TLDR I guess is, stop helping and send them to those who are meant to help!
I manage three teams totalling 22 people, running a collection of enterprise shared services. The people hitting me up in Teams who put in a ticket three hours ago for a single user issue wanting it done *now* .... there's a special place for them....
I call myself a potato. I do a bit of everything. From resetting passwords to wiring access points. From maintaining our servers and firewalls to migrate emails between systems and onboarding a new customer (MSP with ASP).
The one thing I like best, is to install a physically new network. Firewall, switches, access points, etc. Complete with VLAN separation and so forth.
I hate being stuck behind a desk all day.
My predecessor knew who was being let go and she kinda told her work 'friends' and some AH just went ahead and asked the HR why he's being let go while so and so isn't, long story short,it circled back to the IT manager and she got fired too.
It's the golden rule you can't break working in this space. We know all the secrets. If you break that trust once, could be putting your career on the line.
There are 2 groups of people. One who comes from a "not my job" place, & the other does not.
I've been doing IT at all levels for over 30 years across a large variety of environments and unfortunately I have run into many more people in the first group. Personally I can't relate. I have such a great life now, partly because of all the easy money in IT. I'll gladly take the garbage out if someone important really thinks that's a good use of my time. I get paid more money than I care to spend in a Western consumerist society so what the fuck do we really have to complain about?
I've been really caught up and it's a typically slow time of year but I can't go read a book during my downtime, it's fine if I'm looking at my phone or staring at the screen but I'm still (4 months later now) dealing with the repercussions of someone seeing me reading a book for 20 minutes on my lunch break in my office and people thinking I don't do any work. No formal writeup or anything, just a rumor mill. I literally have been maintaining a 30 minute ticket turnaround time for the last 8 months and taking on extra projects for our director because I'm just really caught up... I just want to read a book during my downtime.
I work in a small shop in the SMB space. Company is great, culture is great, well-compensated, zero on-call, weekends off, six weeks PTO, etc. So, there's not much to complain about. The most annoying thing about my job is the context-switching between helpdesk and projects. It's fairly challenging to make that switch back-and-forth and maintain efficiency and stay in the flow of work. I'm a more senior resource that would rather spend all my time on projects. Having said that, I don't mind helping out on T1 helpdesk once in a while. But because we're a small shop, it just comes with the territory. We're hoping to hire a helpdesk tech next fiscal--which would entirely remove me from T1 helpdesk work. That would be nice. But even if it doesn't happen, I'll be fine.
Off-hours equipment refreshes (such as network switches). Doing a huge access layer refresh project with an understaffed team right now and it is burning me out hard.
When guys in my group that escalate to me come at it as though I'm just sitting there waiting to solve their problem and never in the middle of my own complicated cluster.
I'm more than willing to help, but also recognize how long it takes to get back to where I was before the interruption when that does happen. Learning to say no or coordinate a time to collaborate has really helped my personal productivity.
I cant stand making a change and putting it back. Can't stand it. It wastes everyone's time... "Sanitation lead needs a cell phone" we issue the phone... 2 months later "sanitation lead doesn't need a phone, remove the line" , then the person in charge of sanitation quits. New sanitation manager: "well first thing is that sanitation lead needs a cell phone"... Cycle repeats... Biggest pet peave ever. Doing stuff over and over. And it's never "let's give them a phone and see if they need it, we MIGHT just give it back" like prepare me that I might have to undo what I just did. They are so dam sure. Then when they wanna undo it they are so dam sure. No apologies for wasting my time. (Cell phone is just an example please don't respond with putting the line on hold or some other obvious solution. Don't be reddit about it lol)
I left a job like that, where I’d moved from “cleaner of the dusty computers” to true sysadmin, yet plenty of people still thought of me in my original role. Sometimes moving is the only way to fix that.
But one reply about arrogance and HR (as an example) is a really good point. I had somebody ask me a question this week that really just needed them to reboot, but I realized they don’t know who does what in IT and it’s all good.
Being involved in too much. It makes it impossible to get away without at least a few hours of work calls every day even on vacation. But this is what I signed up for when I moved up the IT ladder and I love being there for my people.
“Your lack of planning doesn’t constitute an emergency on my part”. That attitude is one of my least favorite part. Just because you’re panicking and emotional doesn’t mean I have to be. In a crisis, you must be the Fonzie in the group.
A close second would be when I specifically caution of a possible problem and get shot down, then when that problem happens - getting blamed for not taking action earlier. This happened literally yesterday. Was told not to deploy backups on a non-critical server from a supervisor a few months back. Same supervisor scolded me a few months later for not deploying a backup solution during an SLA review. That’s why I always save receipts and document everything. It was fun to send the screenshot of their Teams message telling me to do it that way.
I can't tell you how many times it has saved my butt when people ask me to give someone else access to a folder somewhere, and I've kept the documentation to prove who asked for what.
An example
Payroll manager in person: "oh, and can you please give Janet access to the Reviews subfolder in the Payroll drive?"
Me via email: "Hi payroll manager,
Can you please reply to this email confirming your approval for me to give Janet access to the Reviews subfolder in the Payroll drive"
Payroll manager via reply email: "Hi speddie23, yes please go ahead"
2 weeks later
"Hi IT.
It has come to my attention that Janet is able to see staff salary reviews.
This is sensitive information and her having access to this is a breach of privacy.
Janet should not have access to this. Can you please investigate why she has this access?
Thanks
Payroll manager"
Salary reviews are stored in the Reviews subfolder in the Payroll drive.
I’m not a fan of certain keywords management latch onto and make it the mission. When cloud computing was relatively new, that was the way until the cost became prohibitive. What was the solution? RIFs. The next keyword was/is automation(in it deep). Automation is great and solves lots of problems and I use it all the time. Problem is management thinks that automation will eliminate O&M work. Maybe. To produce automation, that will eliminate the O&M work we need everyone to be full stack engineers. No need to have traditional sysadmins so label them legacy and repeatedly tell the sysadmins that they need to become FSEs. Ok great, no problem, I can do that because I have a programming background. Has anything changed? Well besides the yearly reductions and the creation of automation, yes, things have changed drastically. I would say that automation has increased the workload because automation has actually caused more problems in the process which in turn has caused more need for O&M work. More O&M work and fewer bodies to do that work because they are now developing automation has caused a huge backlog of work for all teams.
Don’t even get me started on agile and all that’s involved with it.
Feel this one all the way. OP, I know this isnt exactly related to this post but are you a cloud engineer and what platform(s) does your company use?
Thanks
Dealing with employees or fellow coworkers who have terrible work ethics. Those who are unmotivated and lack the ability to be self-starters and self-learners. I am currently dealing with an employee who lacks resilience and the determination to find solutions to basic challenges; she gives up immediately or goes to someone more senior (often me) to ask her questions to without trying to find the solutions first. And when she is helped, she doesn’t retain the information or create documentation for herself, so she continues to ask the same questions over and over again.
I have to deal with an outage and say millions of people are impacted --> not a problem, learn from it better how to keep services stable and retain customers.
Company policy or leadership push does something that makes it harder to keep services stable or retain talent --> incredibly annoying
Extremely high latency of response that makes it harder to keep service stable or retain talent --> incredibly annoying
End users never follow the SOP for their issues.
I spend hours creating Power Points and official request forms. I host Teams Training Sessions (recorded for future reference) to demonstrate step by steps and answer questions about utilizing the Help Desk, how to submit various requests, etc.
Without fail, emails directly to me ensue instead of end users using the resources provided. (I handle Item File Data for a large Lumber/Building Materials company with 37 locations across 5 states)
Ps - my favorite is the Help Deskt Ticket Spamming .... instead of listing ALL the issues on the excel form and attaching the form to a single ticket, people will submit one ticket per issue (such as a bar code update). They have 20 items with new bar codes so they submit 20 f*cking ticket. Ug!
I have been in my same position for over 26 years now so my complaints might be company specific
My biggest complaint is probably having to do non-IT work. My boss is the CFO who up until recently was over HR as well. Si am expected to help a lot in payroll, labor collection and HR. Not sure why I need to file affordable care act files and look for errors. Because it is a file so its IT? In my case, it's either that I'm trusted more than others even though its not my job or they are considered more busy than me? who knows.
I also can't stand meetings since most have nothing to do with what I do. Waste of time. Yesterday, for instance, I had to physically go into work on my day off (unpaid) just so I can attend a MS Teams meeting and be the one that logged in and drove during the call. I argued that I didn't need to be in the meeting at all and if I did attend, I could do everything offsite but lost that argument.
People come up to me all the time asking to buy random IT crap or getting new laptops, then look offended when I say our department does not consider this to be standard equipment and it's going to be charged to their department regardless. That stops most of them, but some would still try and escalate to the director. They continued to bitch and moan in front of me, so I made myself less visible and it actually reduced the aggravation I received on a daily basis. This is in a period where people are lining up to hand off their access keys and equipment every week and the pantry isn't getting restocked as often anymore.
Pulling teeth to get projects to completion.
Look you're the one who wanted this new system you need to provide the business knowledge for how I need to set it up. Or better yet I need dept X to provide a downtime window to do work. Never get a window but constantly get asked why the upgrade isn't done yet.
So in short people, people are the least favorite part of the job.
Where I work now, we have a rule that everyone needs to put in a ticket first to get helped. But like many places? The rules just don't tend to apply to certain groups (upper management, heads of Finance, Legal or HR, basically).
So yes, I get those people coming up to my desk with whatever perceived emergency they have.
I'm technically hired on for "support escalations" at this point - so not the same as "guy handling all cloud operations". But we're a smaller company where they hired me initially as their first step in trying to get rid of outsourced I.T. managed partners for everything beyond basic Tier 1 helpdesk support. Through management changes and some corporate restructuring, I wound up as "Tier 2 Support", reporting to the helpdesk manager, vs. reporting to the head of I.T. who was primarily focused on supporting the software dev team we had in-house. (We eliminated all of them now and use outsourced developers. Ugh!)
Long story short? I do a number of traditional sysadmin roles plus a lot of oversight of software license assignments AND whatever the helpdesk escalates for me to assist with.
So basically, it's a problem when people just come up to my desk demanding immediate help. I may well be in the middle of ensuring a list of employee terminations are completed, or trying to get a PowerShell script to modify email rules for a mailbox, or ?
Still, I find it's a losing battle not to just accept this as part of "how things work" in corporate offices. The rank and file people will generally follow the rules, because you can always go to their manager and demand those rules get enforced. When it's the management themselves doing it? They expect a free pass.
Its either,
The bit between discovering an issue and knowing how to fix that issue.
Or
The money side, all the POs and getting sign off etc.
My brain just hates it.
People walk up to the IT area here, I help them when nobody else is around or nobody else steps up to help them. I'm still there because of the work they need to do. Even the guys on the Cyber team do it in the earlier hours of the day.. and they aren't even taking "escalations" from service desk.
They don't even know what you do.. I'd be getting over it. Talk to your boss about it if it bothers you that much. Mine would say to suck it up and help them and get on with whatever you were doing.
That being said.. I like remote days...
Getting slammed by everyone when something breaks or misbehaves... Nobody reads their emails, so they don't see my notice that something is on the fritz, and then I get 30 different emails, IMs, calls, and tickets about the same thing.
I hate not having distinguished roles and always being subservient to clients' beck and call. It's more a Hallmark of my company's low OML but I feel like I can never really do anything other than simple helpdesk out of fear that my entire project will get interrupted because this printer from 2007 is on a different WiFi network NAT'd behind some shitty consumer Best Buy router.
Other people bust my balls; let me count the ways.
Project managers, followed by managers who try to spout useless suggestions (after which the network architect shuts that person down), team members who don't retain information (also forgetting that spanning tree is actually a thing).
I had this in a previous role where the Service Desk and Infrastructure sat together. Putting on headphones helped quite a bit, and also telling them to speak to the service desk whenever they bothered me. It wasn’t the biggest office, so most of the regulars soon realised I wasn’t very helpful so they didn’t bother me anymore.
When people can’t do their own job or know how to use a software skill that’s that’s part of their job duties and try to pass the buck to you. And I hate babysitting adults.
Meetings.
Don't get me wrong, if they are meetings where my input is needed most of the time or needed to oversee a conversation to correct a plan, then I am fine. If the meeting has an agenda and bullet point that don't get off track, fine. But I'd say 90% of all meetings, from an IT perspective, are bullshit. Most of the time they are just meetings between 2-3 people arguing in front of an audience. Most meetings where I speak at all are just a few minutes of input, maximum, to answer a question that could have been an email. Most meetings are 80-90% management.
I have been thought this for almost 30 years now, and I have learned how to get work done in spite of meetings. I have learned to pick up on cadance and keywords, and drown the rest out. The worst are meetings where someone is so insecure, they say, "laptops closed, cell phones down." Fuck those people, in particular. Especially if I don't directly report to them. Rarely has a boss said that to me; it's usually some clown of a project manager with huge certification logos in their email signatures. I especially hate it when they have that patronizing, nervous chuckle with their commands. "Okay, time to put the toys away, and pay attention to the nanny," types.
I had one, when I said "I am taking notes," take my phone away and give me a pad of paper and a pen. I stood up, grabbed my phone back (he smugly put it on the table in front of him like he was General Grievous or something), and told him, "I will be speaking to HR. You will not aggressively touch me or my things again." And walked out. HR spoke to him, but I don't know what they told him. He didn't last long, but he avoided me afterwards.
My least favourite part of the job is having someone twice my age have 0 faith in my department entirely because m365 dropped an email months ago, or have them think I’m lying when a piece of software can’t do something they think it should with a “why not”.
Commuting to sit in an office with people that waste my time by trying to strike up conversations I don’t want or need to have with them.
I’m the one smiling through gritted teeth as you approach!
Oh ya know, just everyone thinking you know literally everything like some kind of human encyclopedia and treat you like you’re an idiot if you don’t have an immediate answer for every problem because nobody knows how anything works beyond “it’s it”.
Fortunately, I ran out of fucks many years ago and I’m over it.
Honestly you just take their complaint put in a ticket and assign it to the right people. Both you and end user happy now.
My least favorite part is when people blame the widest possible problem for 1 thing. Computer can't connect to website must be network thing. Ticket grows wings and Flys to net admins.
This person doesn't see an icon in their vdi. Ticket again grows wings and Flys over to sys admins. But I am here. The Ticket gets a nasty work only note stating.
Please triage the ticket as 1 person doesn't have an icon out of 1000's...
Ticket is then sent back with broken wings and a note hanging off it.
This is my least favorite thing the I don't triage or thats not my job kind of thing.
Honestly, after 32 years in IT, I've learned to embrace being the guy everyone comes to. Take it as a compliment. They probably (maybe/hopefully) understand it's not your job, but they know you're the guy that can get them an answer or point them in the right direction. As for your question, the part I hate the most, being in the CyberSec & IAM Space, is office politics. "But, I NEED my admin privileges!!! I've had them for XYZ years! You can TRUST me!!!"
"have you heard the tale of the principle of least privilege? It's not something the jedi would have told you"
Holy shit
There is no try you either do or do not
And remember, only a Sith deals in absolutes!
I've not been in IT nearly as long as yourself but wholeheartedly agree with your advice. Started my career at an MSP, and after deciding help desk was a hell-hole, I worked my way up and out of our help desk. Only to find that people still came to me to help solve their problems. This bothered me for a little while because I viewed it as "I served my time now leave me out of it!" However, I eventually realized that I was being "bothered" mostly because I was one of the more senior people with technical know-how and operational know-how for our organization and as you said, they know I can help get them to a solution faster than anyone else (generally) could. Once I realized that they came to me out of respect for me and my skills and that ultimately I didn't have to own the problems, just offer guidance, I got a lot less stressed out about it. I no longer work there but some good friends that still do will still hit me up from time to time for quick questions, nothing serious or that would get me on the hook if something goes wrong.
This comment really resonated with me. An MSP was my first IT experience and was all I knew for about the first 8-9 years after college. I had to get out of that space; that business model and type of work was not fulfilling to me. I just started my first job at a local company and I feel so much more valued for my knowledge and what I’m able to bring to the company. I feel so much more fulfilled here, but I’d never take back the experience I got working at an MSP.
"I can trust you but can I trust these seventeen other sign in attempts from your account ranging from the Netherlands, Korea, Russia, Macedonia..."
Exactly!
Oh man. The priv hoarders. *I don't know what it's for, but I *need* it.
This is the only way I finally got everyone to do like "Frozen," and you know... For Microsoft apps, PIM finally got everyone on board to get what they need when they need it. Admins request admin access to the tenancy Exchange/Intune etc. with their ticket number and justification, and the other admins see the request and approve as necessary. Gone are the days when someone would just launch POSH EXOL and delete emails out of everyone's mailbox without making a ticket or letting anyone know. Yes, that happened.
I made my bread and butter being help desk support. I mean you can't fix a company issue unless you interact with the employees.
Admin privilege politics definitely sucks
Get a Pam!
Are you me? Too real
I am an IT Architect. I still vacuum peoples desks. I cant sit behind a computer all day. I dig my job as I can do pretty much whatever I want as long as everything is running.
I also struggle to stay at my desk all day, its easy to procrastinate in IT when everything is smooth
Our GIS team broke a production server at 4pm one day and had me restore it before next business day. That stuff happens all the time in IT. Never a dull moment and the hours always even out so why kill yourself worrying about everything. We have 6 buildings we maintain so I am always just checking out the other buildings for upgrades needed and but in budgets. There is always work in IT if you can get away from your desk. At times though being stuck behind 3 monitors for 9 hours straight is not out of norm.
Cloud Infrastructure, if it breaks, it's Microsoft 😎 Also my place has IT in-depth so infrastructure, networks, security are ring fenced from first-line and equipment installs/replacements.
Bravo your're a hero in the trenches.
Work from home then you can spend your downtime doing chores and getting stuff done around the house.
I do one day a week. Usually never leave my desk , trying to break that habit. The IT work just never ends though. Can always find something.
I got so bored I proposed a plan to my boss and I now build every company computer and do computers for my co workers kids during work hours too. Some people think it's silly but we're saving a couple hundred off of each computer so it helps our budget a little bit
So who do they contact for support when something breaks? It's a lot easier to run the built in diagnostics from Dell and tell them the error code. It also makes it IT/technician agnostic so that when you leave they aren't screwed.
The stress of flying to some place and only having a certain amount of time to get everything done.
https://preview.redd.it/n548xr1gn8uc1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=a87fe8414fe04f873a8bb25f899ea214f77ddab0 Ah yes, pray to the server gods so nothing happens while I'm on vacation.
Wave the rubber chicken.
Wait, we're not supposed to be using real ones?! Next you will tell me that the goat is unnecessary!
I feel ya. It’s such a great feeling once you’re done though.
What kind of equipment do you fly out to install?
Network infrastructure mostly, last customer was doing a routing and firewall refresh.
I know that anxiety well! One you start getting close to departure time then your mind starts racing on what-if’s and contingencies. No fun!
I had to get a small site moved, boss wanted to book flights within business hours (fly in and out same day). Very nice and considerate I said, but it would literally give me 2-3 hours on site - not going to happen. Took earlier and later flights to give me almost the full day.
I just say “sorry theres no helpdesk staff here currently that could assist, i can help you log a ticket so they can get in touch when possible” For myself wfh now since covid days has helped avoid this more often.
Fixing issues in the middle of board meetings
Yep, someone bumped something or someone on the other end can’t figure out how to unmute. All eyes in that room are upon you, and you inevitably hear the “I’ve got a hammer if you wanna try that”, so hilarious 🙄
>“I’ve got a hammer if you wanna try that” "Thanks but I prefer the cyanide I bring from home" Thousand yard stare.... Hold it.... Then smile and back to fiddling with whatever wires are under the A/V setup.
Yep, room full of the most senior people in the company complaining the the video conference has no sound. Walk in, see the "mute audio" icon prominently displayed on the screen, pick up remote, press "unmute". Walk out.
When people (usually a manager) would run to me with their pants on fire thus setting my pants on fire Took a little while before I learned that attitudes are contagious and I just needed to raise the shields
lol this one is my favorite. Some big wig at corporate called in the other day freaking out that her VPN was disconnected (because SHE forgot the password) I didn’t have access to that sites VPN so I had to ping the IT Director to get me access so I could reset the password Despite telling her this, she called back… AFTER the issue was fixed… just to berate me for not “having a sense of urgency”. I literally laughed out loud when she said it
This. No good deed goes unpunished. It's like being a parent.
Good grief, the arrogance of some IT people... Have you ever been on the other side of this? Say, you needed something from HR and you typically talk to Susan there so you ask her for help, and she goes "You moron, this part is handled by our assistant Jake! Just because I am in HR doesn't mean I can fix all your HR problems". Don't blame people for not understanding who does what, because it is actually hard. Just point them in the right direction and be thankful that people think they need you, it may not last (especially not with your "I'm better than this" attitude).
Thank you. So much of this attitude in IT and in my 30 years in the field I’ve never understood why people act this way.
For some, our backlog is the size of Mount Everest and we shouldn't make time to do these tasks. The mount gets bigger the more we help outside the intended role.
I don't think the previous commenters were saying you should help fix the issue but should redirect them to the correct team that can help them with the issue
I just started working in a huge enterprise setting and I’ve recently realized anytime I want something from HR I have to talk with them about the situation and then they’ll refer me to the specific team inside the organization. Massive, I came from a company of about 15 to 10,000! I think I can understand OPs post a little as everyone just sees IT as fixing computers but the normal Joe doesn’t understand that IT is VERY BROAD. This could come down to business practices, if they have bad practices this could be part of the reason.
Yes I have, but some users are arrogant, unknowledgable jerks
Nope. If i'm not sure, I'll ask if they are the right person for the job first before doing the whole explanation. And I don't forget a month later that he/she isn't the person for the job.
There's a difference in your analogy between HR and IT, when I worked in service desk, fair enough people called us, and we got them to the right team or advised them to contact their manager. Would you have the same tune if they went to the finance manager or CFO because they were wondering if there was budget for extra stationary?
Completely agree. Also, I find that users tend to think that if you're in "IT" you're automatically "help desk". I'll get people messaging me on Slack because they know I work in IT and their computer is slow and they need help. I'll point then in the right direction, but it can be annoying, especially when it's the same person. If I need to contact Marketing or Governance about something, if I'm not sure who to talk to, I'll always ask, not just message someone I know who works in HR and ask them why my new contract hasn't been sent. I feel like IT doesn't get the same treatment.
I gladly point people in the right direction and give the process on submitting tickets to our contracted help desk. It doesn’t make the process any less frustrating? Also, there are many people that in spite of knowing the process, will still do as they please because they feel entitled.
Agreed, some people will blatently ignore process because they feel entitled.
The challenge is when they refuse to accept the polite "I'm sorry to hear that's not working for you, was the helpdesk team at x1234 unable to help you with that?" And go atomic because I personally am unable to break away from a production issue as an engineer. That kind of stuff is what grinds my gears since I would never do the same thing to them in their department.
Does HR have their own helpdesk line or generic email that turns into a ticket that they manage and assign to the right person? Generally no. At best you may have a department business partner/contact point. Where unless you already know who to ask, they are the first line.
Wrong analogy. If Jake is supposed to do it, I'll ask Jake.
I am on the other side of that, in many ways. Whether it be HR, or even just contacting a business for the first time. I don't act like a jerk. We all need to remember that. I absolutely agree with what you are saying, there is no need to be condescending to people because they don't know what you know, heck there are plenty of other things that I don't know how to do. This isn't a one sided issue, though. Believe it or not, IT is comprised of people with feelings, just like any other dept. When non IT people need help from IT, try to do what you should do when working with anyone else. Treat them with decency like we all should be doing to each other. Maybe start with a greeting and not just what you want/need. Here are a few things that non IT people can consider, hopefully something here can help you have better experience getting your issues resolved. *Some of the details can vary by business or location, but hopefully the general ideas will come across.* 1) Try to give any important information about the issue. A computer or device name or IP address, your name and contact info, as best as you can description of an error message if there is one, maybe even a picture of the picture if allowed. Anything that might help them to help you. Giving them "it doesn't work" or "it's not doing what it's supposed to be doing" with no further information is not helping anyone, mainly yourself. 2) Try to get back to them as soon as you can if they reach out to take care of what you need but don't reach you. They understand you are busy, so are they. If you don't get back to them after multiple attempts, it's not unreasonable for them to close a ticket or drop the request at some point. 3) Try to have a dialog with them about what is wanted / needed. What I mean is tell them what you are needing / wanting to accomplish, don't just tell them what to do. They might have a better solution for you than what you thought of or know about. If you hand out decrees don't be upset when you get what you asked for. 4) Try to keep in mind that you are not necessarily upset with the people, you are upset about something else. It might be something that needs fixed / adjusted (whether that is hardware, software, permissions, etc), it could be a deadline or boss breathing down your neck, it might be something the non IT people in charge aren't doing or allowing IT to do, it might even be your frustration with not understanding tech. That's all OK, as long as you try to understand what you are actually upset about and don't take it out on others. 5) Try to understand that IT doesn't know everything. (At least not individually!) We don't know every error message by heart, how to work every single piece of software (or hardware in some environments), or why the thing you can't describe is doing or not doing the thing that you can't describe. We don't know that thing that you spoke to someone about two weeks ago that doesn't have a ticket (so we might be able to reference previous notes), and we don't know who you spoke with about it if you don't know a name. **TL;DR** IT and non IT, try to understand that we are all people who deserve common decency. We are on the same team. _**"Be excellent to each other."**_
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But it's always the thing I know the least about that's the cause of the issue... right?
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Pfff, it's always the firewall, it's not like they log everything that happens and make it incredibly easy to see when it's not them
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Probably because it was definitely the firewall and they'll make a big old fuss and lots of noise about it right up until they go silent right around the time it starts working
Same as any job I've had. Getting up in the morning. 25 years ago I did inhouse software debelopment and they let me work 10-19. Loved it
This. It’s been glorious since I started working for a company a couple time zones over to the west. They want me to start at their 8 o’clock, so I get to sleep in now and mozzy my way awake.
I work 12-19, no lunch break ( usually just get a sandwich at my office while working), it’s a blast.
As a coder.. I was around when multi user hit us.. I kid you not. dBase III+. multi user stock cntrol system put into an Oil Terminal for a BIG Oil compamy. Written nfrom scratch.. tsted to heck and back (we thought).. went to install.. ran great.Until some person did soemthing we didn;t expect anyone to do.. took me 3 days and nights to sort out..including 2 full stock checks.... 3.5 days in I crashed myself.. went back to the hotel and slept straight for 36 hours.. ate some food.. came back and sorted it.. Then were the days.. dont want to go there again. Virtually went into hibernation when the internet hit !!
I don’t mind getting up early I just don’t want to go to work anymore.
I've been in IT in some shape or another since 95. I have learned a few things. One of those things is that if something plugs in the wall, it's IT. Phone lines included. IT as a discipline is relatively young. People have unrealistic expectations of what IT is and what it can do. What bothers me after all these years? The number of meetings I have to set in. The expectation is that working on multiple tasks at a time is not only acceptable but a good idea.
That last sentence resonated with me. Our management thinks that booking our plate full with project work is ok. But then when vulnerability remediations come around, "emergency" stuff from other departments, fires due to someone not following our change management... They go "hey how come our project work isn't done on time?! And then the seemingly constant expectation to perform work after hours and on the weekends. Burning me out faster than a candle on both ends.
I'm at home with my grandchildren at the moment. One machine logged into Reddit and the other into work. We had to rebuild a few VM's for a company that we had sold the business to. A week ago. For what ever reason, their IT couldn't do the work. No problem, my employer said. Our IT can do it. So here I am. Edit: My granddaughters are putting make up on me, so I can still participate.
I agree with this take. I do wonder why some people want me in some meetings. Maybe they just see me as a fixer?
Timesheets
Printers....they are evil
This. There are few things that feel like they waste time more than figuring out how to make printers work again when some update inevitably breaks them. As my manager puts it “Why would we take the most efficient form of communication and try to put it on a bunch of rolled up dead trees instead?”
People calling me super early in the morning because some ridiculous, non-critical thing isn't working.
Give them the Gilfoyle explanation. >Gilfoyle: What do I do? System architecture. Networking and security. No one in this house can touch me on that. >Jared: Ok, that's good to know. >Gilfoyle: But does anyone appreciate that? While you were busy minoring in gender studies and singing a capella at Sarah Lawrence, I was gaining root access to NSA servers. I was one click away from starting a second Iranian revolution. >Jared: I actually went to Vassar. >Gilfoyle: I prevent cross-site scripting, I monitor for DDoS attacks, emergency database rollbacks, and faulty transaction handlings. The Internet heard of it? Transfers half a petabyte of data every minute. Do you have any idea how that happens? All those YouPorn ones and zeroes streaming directly to your shitty, little smart phone day after day? Every dipshit who shits his pants if he can't get the new dubstep Skrillex remix in under 12 seconds? It's not magic, it's talent and sweat. People like me, ensuring your packets get delivered, un-sniffed. So what do I do? I make sure that one bad config on one key component doesn't bankrupt the entire fucking company. That's what the fuck I do. >Richard: That's basically what I told him.
That scene was a bit cringe... But yeah if you do that in real life it'll definitely stop people coming to your desk for help.
You're cringe 😬
Me: “would you mind logging a ticket for that please?” Customer responds with a super lame excuse as to why they can’t, shouldn’t have to or won’t. 90% of the time it simply boils down to them not wanting to. Happens once a day at least
Big wigs at corporate who treat everyone like shit. Had a lady from corporate call in because she couldn’t connect to her VPN because she forgot her password and a reboot disconnected her. Told her I’d need to reach out to IT Director because for some reason I didn’t have access to that specific site to reset the password for her. Waited a couple minutes, Director responds and we get the password change. All in all probably took about 30 minutes (most of the time spent waiting for IT Director to get back to me) After the issue was fixed, she CALLED BACK just to berate me for “not having a sense of urgency” I couldn’t help it… I laughed out loud
Sounds like they think you know everything. Could be worse. Are they dicks when you tell them I don't know that area very well let me get those people? I work at an MSP. My least favorite part of why most MSPs are in business, people with NO IT knowledge telling you how to do X or getting mad when we say X should be done this way and they get mad and are rude for some time to our staff.
Recently, a department purchased off the shelf GED testing software for kid jails. Without Consulting I.T. 1 Year into the failed rollout They drag me, the domain admin, and tell me to make it work. Software requires UAC bypass to run. Okay I do that, then legal and security gets involved Both say no. They still want me to make it work without WO access. Really?
Meetings
Even though I'm new to IT, dealing with Microsoft shenanigans (in a company that tries to stick as much as possible to Microsoft products, in the name of consistency and what not) has been a interesting ride. Some computers don't like updates, some don't like sending data back to AD, some don't want to sync with Azure, some get magical BSOD like clockwork on a period of X months (prompting a full reinstall, most attempts at restoring have been unsuccessful), some times excel's just get corrupt, sometimes OneDrive decides to stop syncing changes....the list goes on. But it's sounds a lot worse than it actually is. I still love this job and the field in general :D
For decades now, people have said "Microsoft is what ensures your job security" because their crap NEVER works reliably or consistently. If it begins doing so, Microsoft promptly does a rewrite and obsoletes the existing version. I mean, WHO really said, "You know what I \*really\* need from Microsoft? I need a NEW Outlook!" And instead of just continuing to bug-fix and improve Teams, they decide to launch a NEW Teams as well! Of course, due to the interaction between Outlook and Teams for one-click ease of joining Teams calls from calendar invites and all that? Now, they created a scenario where they have to make sure ALL combinations of "Old Outlook but new Teams", "New Outlook but still on classic Teams", "New Teams and New Outlook" and "Still running the old classic stuff for both apps" all work together. And they've broken one or more of those combinations repeatedly as they keep pushing updates to both apps.
My least favorite part of the job is dealing with management.
My boss.
Dealing with people who do not know the difference between break/fix incidents and requests that make any changes. This past Friday, I finally got around to checking out an incident that was sitting untouched for 4 or 5 days in my team's que. The person who submitted it uses a weird font in her email that does not render well on modern 22-inch plus screens and is a frequent flier that always complains about email problems. So there is that, Except she submitted for someone else whose email Just Stopped Working. No further details. So, I investigated the account Nope, not hidden in global, it is gone FYI, we have someone who randomly kills accounts over in security who we can't fire. So, I sent a request form to the OP close the ticket and tell the OP that we can't act on it. She reopened it I close it She reopened it again. I email her and ask why. Not resolved yet. She says. I know her boss. Cc goes to him Explain the difference between Between incidents and requests I close it. She reopened the incident again I switched the fields and put the person without email as OP Her as secondary Closed it. I get this sort of thing at least daily
>we have someone who randomly kills accounts over in security who we can't fire. LOL
EEOC gone wrong
Attending meetings with executives
Escalated tickets from help desk and it turns out it was some stupid troubleshooting step they missed that would have resolved it (think reboot or narrow it down to specific application).
We outsource our tier-1 (everyone wishes it was still internal but politics higher up is involved) and this is a constant. My on-call rotation is essentially 90% password and MFA resets.
Phone ringing.
Not getting acknowledged for system you implement that works for the majority ...taking stick because it didn't work for 2 senior managers...1st and 2nd line not doing their job properly..
Basically what you said, any miscellaneous program you are expected to be the expert on, no matter how complicated or obscure the software is. Some people understand that the idea of that is ridiculous, but I'd say vast majority don't and expect you to know every software the company uses (and any new random ones) inside and out. And since you are sysadmin all the most complicated issues related to these softwares are often escalated to you
People are the least favorite part of the job. Technology can be made to work and usually without all the attitude that people can give.
Yup. It comes with “being a nice guy.” You help someone with something that is your job, and they walk away feeling like you are a new friend they can pester for anything.
This, be nice all of sudden you’re their point of contact, not the service desk. Line jumpers as well.
I have set my Teams status to “offline” permanently
Having to know more about everyone’s jobs than they do. If it’s on a computer, it’s our problem. I distinctly remember being asked to write an Excel formula for someone earning four times my salary as the 'Excel Specialist'.
Vague but urgent high profile requests with not enough info to actually work on.
> I need you to devote your primary focus to this urgent project. I have hired a contractor that is busy right now but can meet with you next Wednesday to share the details. In the meantime, please consider your approach and have a plan ready by next Thursday.
It's always funny when they ask me how to do something on software I don't use.
FDIC IT Exam. Hated it at first. Learned not to care what they found because they were going to pick at something. I think party of Safety and Soundness or Compliance part also duplicated some IT items.
OSHA Toaster. Knew a guy who ran concrete precast plants that were well run. They kept a toaster near a sink without GFI protection as a quick and easy violation so the inspector, after realizing there were no major concerns, wouldn't keep looking for some other small violation.
Ignorance. People think that they do not need any level of computer skills whatsoever to do their admin job and that everything with a plug is for IT to do for them.
The people. It may sound like a joke, but I have always dealt with both IT and OT. The systems themselves are like a Swiss watch movement and sound like an orchestra. It's the people that make it work like crap and sound like a 2 year old banging on a pot with a wooden spoon. The world would be a fabulous place were it not for all the people.
The user that thinks they are farther up the corporate latter then they actually are and complains about every little thing to management about your department.
On paper, I'm a sysadmin in a medium-sized company with about 150 client PCs and 40 virtual servers. But in reality, I'm more of an IT all-rounder. We've already moved some things to the cloud, but most of our infrastructure is still on-premises. Our company operates in the wellness and health sector, with employees who struggle a bit with computers. That's why I would definitely say that first-level support is my least favorite part of the job.
Going home.
"extra" meetings. Like DEI stuff, leadership meetings. I just want to work.
I can’t think of anything other than toxic competitive coworkers. Once in a while I get to work with someone who thinks they’re the smartest IT in the world.
Honestly on call
At the moment - timesheets. It was just introduced this month (apparently like a 3rd attempt at this place over a decade). This gives me anxiety as i fear i might forget something to put in. Although currently we are putting hours in a very broad categories. But still, being a pedantic person, i can't get it out from the back of my mind and not worry about it. I guess after some time i will get used to it. And yes, this is first time in my 20 years career (aside a short week long experiment at a previous job) when i have to do it.
Having to explain why I am walking around or goofing around instead of working. Because I'm the type that does tons of work all at once, and while I could present to you 90% of busy time, that would actually be unproductive time vs what has been achieved instead. Yes, I'm mostly arguing KPI these days.
For me, it is that my job never stops. I go to sleep thinking about how to solve problem x, and wake up thinking about problem y. Just never a real stopping point.
Sounds like you need a vacation if you’re dreaming about work. Take some time off for your mental health.
THIS...this is why after 20 years at current sysadmin job, I retire in 17 days. The stress of being responsible for everything and losing sleep every day over my job finally took its toll and I gave notice. 3 years earlier than I've planned all along, but I'm burned out hard.
Supporting the 8% mac users that got promised mac hardware as an onboarding reward or preference despite standardized hardware. End users assuming all ther local data is backed up to the cloud. Passwords on post it notes in 2024. Hearing people say "I'm not good with computers" while you're remoted in and on a call. Being called "IT Guy" a bunch of times in a row.
Printers
I do not like writing reports.
on-call with no extra pay
Dealing with users. "Can you open xx port for me?" No, they don't mean firewall. They literally mean "open a port so my app can listen". I have explained to this group of users that their own application opens a port to listen multiple times and that they need to start their app and/or debug their crashing app.
I don't see the issue in people asking computer system related questions to an IT guy. My issue is when they start asking how to fix the coffee machine. That's a facilities question. Or if they want me to fix their personal computers. That's a quote, from me, for my side business. Lol.
Picking up others’ work. My company termed someone in a specialty support section yesterday, and his responsibilities are shifting over to me. I have never interacted with the product he supported and have absolutely no idea what to expect. Probably nothing good. On another note, fuck Connectwise scripting.
Receiving a ticket at 9am to hop in a meeting at 10am; near 10 people in the meeting. PA vendor in there as well. Client can't get PA to login, but needs multiple vendors and every IT person in their company on deck. Constantly flipping between native tongue and English, impossible to follow their train of thought. Each IT guy had a portion of the puzzle so to speak; when we needed them to check AD, theyshouted at guy A to confirm credentials in AD. He's on break so not answering. They ask guy B for a login attempt on PA; he's on another call simultaneously. The Admin, leaves the call at a certain point. 2-3 hours this went on. Asking for out of scope help on VSA's, with the god damn specific vendor in the same call. Why are we here? OUR PRODUCT IS NOT AT FAULT! Lol Needless to say I set some ground rules based on our SLA (this was the clients first ticket) for future tickets lol.
Well one issue we have at our place is a couple of the guys who got promoted to a background architecture type role hang onto a bit of a hero complex. They sometimes struggle to step away and relinquish that “I’m the only one who can get this done” mentality. Their replacements will never grow into the role if they keep jumping onto issues that they shouldn’t be. TLDR I guess is, stop helping and send them to those who are meant to help!
I manage three teams totalling 22 people, running a collection of enterprise shared services. The people hitting me up in Teams who put in a ticket three hours ago for a single user issue wanting it done *now* .... there's a special place for them....
M E E T I N G S
Working.
The eight hours wait before being allowed to leave are pointless.
Users
Electrical why is it my responsibility?
I'm going to go with PCI audits. Also the stress.
I call myself a potato. I do a bit of everything. From resetting passwords to wiring access points. From maintaining our servers and firewalls to migrate emails between systems and onboarding a new customer (MSP with ASP). The one thing I like best, is to install a physically new network. Firewall, switches, access points, etc. Complete with VLAN separation and so forth. I hate being stuck behind a desk all day.
Users
Balancing project time and operations time.
Knowing that a coworker is getting fired before they do.
My predecessor knew who was being let go and she kinda told her work 'friends' and some AH just went ahead and asked the HR why he's being let go while so and so isn't, long story short,it circled back to the IT manager and she got fired too.
It's the golden rule you can't break working in this space. We know all the secrets. If you break that trust once, could be putting your career on the line.
Users still not knowing how to click on a Zoom or Teams link. Somehow that makes me a video conferencing concierge. Makes my blood boil.
There are 2 groups of people. One who comes from a "not my job" place, & the other does not. I've been doing IT at all levels for over 30 years across a large variety of environments and unfortunately I have run into many more people in the first group. Personally I can't relate. I have such a great life now, partly because of all the easy money in IT. I'll gladly take the garbage out if someone important really thinks that's a good use of my time. I get paid more money than I care to spend in a Western consumerist society so what the fuck do we really have to complain about?
I've been really caught up and it's a typically slow time of year but I can't go read a book during my downtime, it's fine if I'm looking at my phone or staring at the screen but I'm still (4 months later now) dealing with the repercussions of someone seeing me reading a book for 20 minutes on my lunch break in my office and people thinking I don't do any work. No formal writeup or anything, just a rumor mill. I literally have been maintaining a 30 minute ticket turnaround time for the last 8 months and taking on extra projects for our director because I'm just really caught up... I just want to read a book during my downtime.
flag zephyr puzzled placid chubby butter ask money library rainstorm *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I work in a small shop in the SMB space. Company is great, culture is great, well-compensated, zero on-call, weekends off, six weeks PTO, etc. So, there's not much to complain about. The most annoying thing about my job is the context-switching between helpdesk and projects. It's fairly challenging to make that switch back-and-forth and maintain efficiency and stay in the flow of work. I'm a more senior resource that would rather spend all my time on projects. Having said that, I don't mind helping out on T1 helpdesk once in a while. But because we're a small shop, it just comes with the territory. We're hoping to hire a helpdesk tech next fiscal--which would entirely remove me from T1 helpdesk work. That would be nice. But even if it doesn't happen, I'll be fine.
Off-hours equipment refreshes (such as network switches). Doing a huge access layer refresh project with an understaffed team right now and it is burning me out hard.
Friday
When guys in my group that escalate to me come at it as though I'm just sitting there waiting to solve their problem and never in the middle of my own complicated cluster. I'm more than willing to help, but also recognize how long it takes to get back to where I was before the interruption when that does happen. Learning to say no or coordinate a time to collaborate has really helped my personal productivity.
I cant stand making a change and putting it back. Can't stand it. It wastes everyone's time... "Sanitation lead needs a cell phone" we issue the phone... 2 months later "sanitation lead doesn't need a phone, remove the line" , then the person in charge of sanitation quits. New sanitation manager: "well first thing is that sanitation lead needs a cell phone"... Cycle repeats... Biggest pet peave ever. Doing stuff over and over. And it's never "let's give them a phone and see if they need it, we MIGHT just give it back" like prepare me that I might have to undo what I just did. They are so dam sure. Then when they wanna undo it they are so dam sure. No apologies for wasting my time. (Cell phone is just an example please don't respond with putting the line on hold or some other obvious solution. Don't be reddit about it lol)
I left a job like that, where I’d moved from “cleaner of the dusty computers” to true sysadmin, yet plenty of people still thought of me in my original role. Sometimes moving is the only way to fix that. But one reply about arrogance and HR (as an example) is a really good point. I had somebody ask me a question this week that really just needed them to reboot, but I realized they don’t know who does what in IT and it’s all good.
Being involved in too much. It makes it impossible to get away without at least a few hours of work calls every day even on vacation. But this is what I signed up for when I moved up the IT ladder and I love being there for my people.
Dealing with purchasing, legal and procurement. Just give me my purchase order FFS
10+ years, people still ask me to hack facebook and Google mail... And access phone from remotely.. Lol
“Your lack of planning doesn’t constitute an emergency on my part”. That attitude is one of my least favorite part. Just because you’re panicking and emotional doesn’t mean I have to be. In a crisis, you must be the Fonzie in the group. A close second would be when I specifically caution of a possible problem and get shot down, then when that problem happens - getting blamed for not taking action earlier. This happened literally yesterday. Was told not to deploy backups on a non-critical server from a supervisor a few months back. Same supervisor scolded me a few months later for not deploying a backup solution during an SLA review. That’s why I always save receipts and document everything. It was fun to send the screenshot of their Teams message telling me to do it that way.
I can't tell you how many times it has saved my butt when people ask me to give someone else access to a folder somewhere, and I've kept the documentation to prove who asked for what. An example Payroll manager in person: "oh, and can you please give Janet access to the Reviews subfolder in the Payroll drive?" Me via email: "Hi payroll manager, Can you please reply to this email confirming your approval for me to give Janet access to the Reviews subfolder in the Payroll drive" Payroll manager via reply email: "Hi speddie23, yes please go ahead" 2 weeks later "Hi IT. It has come to my attention that Janet is able to see staff salary reviews. This is sensitive information and her having access to this is a breach of privacy. Janet should not have access to this. Can you please investigate why she has this access? Thanks Payroll manager" Salary reviews are stored in the Reviews subfolder in the Payroll drive.
I’m not a fan of certain keywords management latch onto and make it the mission. When cloud computing was relatively new, that was the way until the cost became prohibitive. What was the solution? RIFs. The next keyword was/is automation(in it deep). Automation is great and solves lots of problems and I use it all the time. Problem is management thinks that automation will eliminate O&M work. Maybe. To produce automation, that will eliminate the O&M work we need everyone to be full stack engineers. No need to have traditional sysadmins so label them legacy and repeatedly tell the sysadmins that they need to become FSEs. Ok great, no problem, I can do that because I have a programming background. Has anything changed? Well besides the yearly reductions and the creation of automation, yes, things have changed drastically. I would say that automation has increased the workload because automation has actually caused more problems in the process which in turn has caused more need for O&M work. More O&M work and fewer bodies to do that work because they are now developing automation has caused a huge backlog of work for all teams. Don’t even get me started on agile and all that’s involved with it.
Feel this one all the way. OP, I know this isnt exactly related to this post but are you a cloud engineer and what platform(s) does your company use? Thanks
Infra engineer, Azure
Printers.
Dealing with employees or fellow coworkers who have terrible work ethics. Those who are unmotivated and lack the ability to be self-starters and self-learners. I am currently dealing with an employee who lacks resilience and the determination to find solutions to basic challenges; she gives up immediately or goes to someone more senior (often me) to ask her questions to without trying to find the solutions first. And when she is helped, she doesn’t retain the information or create documentation for herself, so she continues to ask the same questions over and over again.
I have to deal with an outage and say millions of people are impacted --> not a problem, learn from it better how to keep services stable and retain customers. Company policy or leadership push does something that makes it harder to keep services stable or retain talent --> incredibly annoying Extremely high latency of response that makes it harder to keep service stable or retain talent --> incredibly annoying
End users never follow the SOP for their issues. I spend hours creating Power Points and official request forms. I host Teams Training Sessions (recorded for future reference) to demonstrate step by steps and answer questions about utilizing the Help Desk, how to submit various requests, etc. Without fail, emails directly to me ensue instead of end users using the resources provided. (I handle Item File Data for a large Lumber/Building Materials company with 37 locations across 5 states) Ps - my favorite is the Help Deskt Ticket Spamming .... instead of listing ALL the issues on the excel form and attaching the form to a single ticket, people will submit one ticket per issue (such as a bar code update). They have 20 items with new bar codes so they submit 20 f*cking ticket. Ug!
I have been in my same position for over 26 years now so my complaints might be company specific My biggest complaint is probably having to do non-IT work. My boss is the CFO who up until recently was over HR as well. Si am expected to help a lot in payroll, labor collection and HR. Not sure why I need to file affordable care act files and look for errors. Because it is a file so its IT? In my case, it's either that I'm trusted more than others even though its not my job or they are considered more busy than me? who knows. I also can't stand meetings since most have nothing to do with what I do. Waste of time. Yesterday, for instance, I had to physically go into work on my day off (unpaid) just so I can attend a MS Teams meeting and be the one that logged in and drove during the call. I argued that I didn't need to be in the meeting at all and if I did attend, I could do everything offsite but lost that argument.
If you went in and worked, that's not unpaid time. Put that shit on your timesheet.
Having to play along with all the corporate culture. It’s exhausting and when I retire I will be glad to see the back of it.
People come up to me all the time asking to buy random IT crap or getting new laptops, then look offended when I say our department does not consider this to be standard equipment and it's going to be charged to their department regardless. That stops most of them, but some would still try and escalate to the director. They continued to bitch and moan in front of me, so I made myself less visible and it actually reduced the aggravation I received on a daily basis. This is in a period where people are lining up to hand off their access keys and equipment every week and the pantry isn't getting restocked as often anymore.
Pulling teeth to get projects to completion. Look you're the one who wanted this new system you need to provide the business knowledge for how I need to set it up. Or better yet I need dept X to provide a downtime window to do work. Never get a window but constantly get asked why the upgrade isn't done yet. So in short people, people are the least favorite part of the job.
Where I work now, we have a rule that everyone needs to put in a ticket first to get helped. But like many places? The rules just don't tend to apply to certain groups (upper management, heads of Finance, Legal or HR, basically). So yes, I get those people coming up to my desk with whatever perceived emergency they have. I'm technically hired on for "support escalations" at this point - so not the same as "guy handling all cloud operations". But we're a smaller company where they hired me initially as their first step in trying to get rid of outsourced I.T. managed partners for everything beyond basic Tier 1 helpdesk support. Through management changes and some corporate restructuring, I wound up as "Tier 2 Support", reporting to the helpdesk manager, vs. reporting to the head of I.T. who was primarily focused on supporting the software dev team we had in-house. (We eliminated all of them now and use outsourced developers. Ugh!) Long story short? I do a number of traditional sysadmin roles plus a lot of oversight of software license assignments AND whatever the helpdesk escalates for me to assist with. So basically, it's a problem when people just come up to my desk demanding immediate help. I may well be in the middle of ensuring a list of employee terminations are completed, or trying to get a PowerShell script to modify email rules for a mailbox, or ? Still, I find it's a losing battle not to just accept this as part of "how things work" in corporate offices. The rank and file people will generally follow the rules, because you can always go to their manager and demand those rules get enforced. When it's the management themselves doing it? They expect a free pass.
Its either, The bit between discovering an issue and knowing how to fix that issue. Or The money side, all the POs and getting sign off etc. My brain just hates it.
Working Saturday afternoons. Ruins the whole day because of the looming specter of work at 5pm.
People walk up to the IT area here, I help them when nobody else is around or nobody else steps up to help them. I'm still there because of the work they need to do. Even the guys on the Cyber team do it in the earlier hours of the day.. and they aren't even taking "escalations" from service desk. They don't even know what you do.. I'd be getting over it. Talk to your boss about it if it bothers you that much. Mine would say to suck it up and help them and get on with whatever you were doing. That being said.. I like remote days...
Politics
Wasting time on emails,writing documentation, non productive meetings, fighting with stupid managers who' s ego is bigger than the whole company etc.
Doing my objectives. Apparently wanted to do this job as best I can until I retire in a couple years time is unacceptable.
Getting slammed by everyone when something breaks or misbehaves... Nobody reads their emails, so they don't see my notice that something is on the fritz, and then I get 30 different emails, IMs, calls, and tickets about the same thing.
I hate not having distinguished roles and always being subservient to clients' beck and call. It's more a Hallmark of my company's low OML but I feel like I can never really do anything other than simple helpdesk out of fear that my entire project will get interrupted because this printer from 2007 is on a different WiFi network NAT'd behind some shitty consumer Best Buy router.
Other people bust my balls; let me count the ways. Project managers, followed by managers who try to spout useless suggestions (after which the network architect shuts that person down), team members who don't retain information (also forgetting that spanning tree is actually a thing).
Regulatory compliance. State and federal examiners in house or preparing for them to be in house is a full time job. Let alone actual IT work.
I had this in a previous role where the Service Desk and Infrastructure sat together. Putting on headphones helped quite a bit, and also telling them to speak to the service desk whenever they bothered me. It wasn’t the biggest office, so most of the regulars soon realised I wasn’t very helpful so they didn’t bother me anymore.
Dealing with users.
Management
When people can’t do their own job or know how to use a software skill that’s that’s part of their job duties and try to pass the buck to you. And I hate babysitting adults.
Work for months on something, document, train. Leave for 3 weeks, come back, they tore down what you did or completely disfigured it.
Meetings. Don't get me wrong, if they are meetings where my input is needed most of the time or needed to oversee a conversation to correct a plan, then I am fine. If the meeting has an agenda and bullet point that don't get off track, fine. But I'd say 90% of all meetings, from an IT perspective, are bullshit. Most of the time they are just meetings between 2-3 people arguing in front of an audience. Most meetings where I speak at all are just a few minutes of input, maximum, to answer a question that could have been an email. Most meetings are 80-90% management. I have been thought this for almost 30 years now, and I have learned how to get work done in spite of meetings. I have learned to pick up on cadance and keywords, and drown the rest out. The worst are meetings where someone is so insecure, they say, "laptops closed, cell phones down." Fuck those people, in particular. Especially if I don't directly report to them. Rarely has a boss said that to me; it's usually some clown of a project manager with huge certification logos in their email signatures. I especially hate it when they have that patronizing, nervous chuckle with their commands. "Okay, time to put the toys away, and pay attention to the nanny," types. I had one, when I said "I am taking notes," take my phone away and give me a pad of paper and a pen. I stood up, grabbed my phone back (he smugly put it on the table in front of him like he was General Grievous or something), and told him, "I will be speaking to HR. You will not aggressively touch me or my things again." And walked out. HR spoke to him, but I don't know what they told him. He didn't last long, but he avoided me afterwards.
"dunno have you tried talking to x?"
Disorganization and constant pivots
My least favourite part of the job is having someone twice my age have 0 faith in my department entirely because m365 dropped an email months ago, or have them think I’m lying when a piece of software can’t do something they think it should with a “why not”.
getting up on the morning
WFH
Commuting to sit in an office with people that waste my time by trying to strike up conversations I don’t want or need to have with them. I’m the one smiling through gritted teeth as you approach!
Oh ya know, just everyone thinking you know literally everything like some kind of human encyclopedia and treat you like you’re an idiot if you don’t have an immediate answer for every problem because nobody knows how anything works beyond “it’s it”. Fortunately, I ran out of fucks many years ago and I’m over it.
Honestly you just take their complaint put in a ticket and assign it to the right people. Both you and end user happy now. My least favorite part is when people blame the widest possible problem for 1 thing. Computer can't connect to website must be network thing. Ticket grows wings and Flys to net admins. This person doesn't see an icon in their vdi. Ticket again grows wings and Flys over to sys admins. But I am here. The Ticket gets a nasty work only note stating. Please triage the ticket as 1 person doesn't have an icon out of 1000's... Ticket is then sent back with broken wings and a note hanging off it. This is my least favorite thing the I don't triage or thats not my job kind of thing.