I wanna be a B(ITMAN)FH (504 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 0.5 on 8 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <uberweiss.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2006-07-19 09:22:56 EDT
So I'm busy putting together his monthly board report when the boss wanders in and poses the million dollar question;
"What's wrong with the systems?"
Now, considering we have about 1500 users, over a hundred servers and offer about 100 applications TO these users FROM these servers, that's a pretty broad brush he's just painted the word 'systems' with.
Also, he OBVIOUSLY has just received a call from someone complaining about the problem, someone who knows the helpdesk will just log their call in the Narnia cupboard of the helpdesk logging system and make some vague reference to the possibility of someone perhaps helping them in 48 hours. Sorry, 48 business hours - so not 2x24/day, but 4x8/day.
Such is our el-cheapo SLA, which I've described to my boss on a number of occassions as being inappropriate, insufficient, ineffective, and bordering on extortion from our outsource partner. Now it seems, I get the opportunity to prove it.
So, in an attempt to bypass business process (of calling said helpdesk) some Luser has obviously called my boss, the CIO, to complain. And he, knowing my attitude towards those Lusers who disrespect governing IT law as I have written it, tries to work around it by being vague and perhaps show his usefulness by getting back to said Luser with at least a feasible explanation, or at most an action plan of sorts. I hate execs.
But I play the game to see where it goes because, let's face it, it's potentially worth more laughs than telling the board how useless he is in profoundly more literary terms than he is capable of comprehending. Although I have to admit, the fact that I write the report for him, which he then gets his PA to copytype and put his name on and then submits to the board himself, is worth quite a few laughs in itself, so this better be good.
"Which systems?" I ask innocently. Immediately we hit a snag. He knows, and I know that he doesn't have a cooking clue what's happening outside of the board room, and not much inside either. Plus he knows if he lets it slip that he's been speaking directly to users (there's a 10 page IT policy on chains of communciation which I specifically put together to make sure this never happens, and for which he suffers penalties if it does), he's lost.
"Um...the one's that payroll use."
"Oh, you mean MSOffice....well there's not a lot right with that, what did you want to know specifically?"
"er...no, I meant the one that they use to run payrolls"
"Ooohhh, you mean the PAYROLL application," I say, mentally adding 'the one that against all common sense is called "Payroll" and referred to by everyone as 'the payroll application'...tit'
"Yes that one. What's wrong with it?"
"We-ll," I say, quickly reviewing a few lines from the board report in progress, "I would say the governing entity responsible for the development of applications has difficulty locating its derriere with reflective technologies."
"er."
"Of course, it may be just a guess though - why," I ask, sliding my chair slightly closer to the edge of my desk and lowering my voice, "what have you heard?"
"Oh, er, well, I heard someone up there is having problems printing cheques..and it's er, quite urgent".
"gent?"
"what?"
"It's quite gent?"
"No,it's er, quite urgent, er..."
"Oh, I see. Well I would have to saying printing cheques *should* be a problem unless we're a bank, which we're not, so it must be."
After working his way through the last bit he perks up, obviously having something useful to input - "No, you see, they print the names and value's of the cheques on the cheques and then take them to get signed - they're blank cheques to start with"
Ah.
"And, what seems to be the problem"
"They, er, can't anymore"
"Well there you go then", I say, turning back to the board report and trying to think of a nice-sounding synonym for IDIOT. You should probably know at this point that the payroll department actually went through the helpdesk process four days prior to this and logged a general printer fault. Our helpful outsource partner, within SLA by minutes, took it off site for repairs this morning and, again thanks to the super efficient executive decisions made all round regarding our SLA, did not provide a spare to replace it. I received a call about an hour prior to the bosses current intrusion on my space from a frantic Luser saying they couldn't print cheques (fancy that), so I told her to log a call. Guess what she did instead?
Meanwhile, completely unaware of my internal monologue to you, the reader, the boss is standing there looking a little confused.
<typey-typey>
"er"
"Yes?" I ask innocently, putting the 'L' on the italicised heading "Management Tool", hitting 'print' and making sure I select the dot matrix with the suspect 'T' that prints italicised like an 'F' with the font this size which I know his PA will dutifully copytype without letting it pass through her brain. I email him the original "for his info" which I know he'll ignore but will nevertheless prove my innocence when the memo's start flying.
"The problem with the cheques..." he prompts helpfully.
"Ye-es?" I say, giving him the raised eyebrow of quiet curiosity.
"Well?"
"I'm sorry, I thought we already answered that question - you said, 'What's wrong with the systems?' and through highly intuitive troubleshooting and guidance we've reached the conclusion that you already knew what the problem was, and that it was something to do with printing cheques."
"er, yes, so can we fix it?"
"Oh I'm sure we already have, or at least, are in the process of doing so" I say, smiling efficiently (which means with less muscles than it normally takes to smile).
"Oh," he gushes, "that's excellent. Great. Er, any idea what the status actually is? Just for feedback purposes, you know?"
"Feedback?" I say, watching him squirm like the worm on a hook he is.
"Yes, er, that is, I told someone I would let them know, it's quite a big problem you see, when someone would attend to it...er."
"Oh, nooo problem -"
Small sigh of relief
"- if you can just give me the call reference number allocated by the helpdesk I'll ask our service manager to dig up the status for you"
Needless to say, it's now 47 hours and counting on the cheque thing, hopefully by which time the printer will have been returned and, if murphy's timing is what it normally is, should be up and running roughly two hours (just enough time for people to slip back into 'comfortably happy things are back to normal' mode) before the outsource partner arrives on site and takes it away again for the cheque printing call.
Nothing drives a point home like unpaid staff. Me, I made sure I get paid by bank transfer.
it's 3pm....way past my hometime.
User Reviews
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-07-19 16:27:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
You can take comfort in the fact that your job will be going to India soon, very soon.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2006-07-19 15:18:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
This reads like a bowl of AlphaBits.
Submitted by UberWeiss (user info) at 2006-07-19 12:32:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
sorry to drag you through such a long post - started out as a rant and just kept going :/
ah well :) I'm breathing easier now.
just one question - think I missed something and now I'm feeling like a Luser....filename???
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-07-19 11:48:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
filename sucks
Submitted by precision (user info) at 2006-07-19 10:20:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Being an IT guy, I feel your pain. I like to wait until everybody is nice and busy using the network, and when the bandwidth gets really, really high, then unplug the router...shows them just how low on the food chain they really are.
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2006-07-19 09:59:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I stopped reading because I lost interest. If this was half as long it probably could have been a 1 or a 2.
Submitted by BobLobla (user info) at 2006-07-19 09:48:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
If you had been even a tiny bit creative with the filename this would be a +2
Submitted by hour_man (user info) at 2006-07-19 09:27:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
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