Helpdesk hate
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Beginning to REALLY start to hate some of the techs on the helpdesk I supervise.
Some recent things that make me want to pull my hair out and run screaming.
A few weeks ago
Ended up having to go on a client meeting in Philly (oh JOY). Relearned how much I hate Philly and cities like it. I swear I was approached by more homeless people there than I've ever been in the entire rest of my life.Also, I ended up getting written up for not having my shirt tucked in during the meeting, because fuck someone who decided to complain about petty bullshit like that. So now I can't try and get my ass promoted out of this position for at least 3 months.
2 Weeks Ago, Saturday (6/4)
New manager that we just got a month ago decides to have us all come in on Saturday when the Helpdesk is closed for a refresher training, which I have to lead. I end up ranting for 4 hours about things like proper followup procedure, proper documentation, actually using our knowledgebase, etc. Finished up by reiterating our current call QA guidelines so they understand why they need to actually do all the crap we're talking about.This causes the expected amount of pushback from the technicians, because some of them seem to think that documenting two sentences somehow covers all the crap they did on a 45 minute support call.
This has persisted in a bunch of the techs being whiny about how they have to document more and it's more work, etc, etc. Not helped by said new manager being really strict on calling people out for having long after-call work times (company standard is 2 minutes, current desk average is about 5)
Last Week
Client company begins a deployment of an updated VPN client. This causes the field force we support to collectively lose their shit, because when the initial deployment went out it was unpinning the icon from their Win7 taskbar and they all panicked and called us. Had a few instances where the old client uninstalled but the new one didn't install, which was fun, because we don't have a remote tool available that lets us remote in without VPN access to manual install. Thankfully the client company stopped the deployment the same day after they heard about the icon pinning thing, and updated the package to pin the new icon automatically. Still ended up having us create over 250 tickets so far since last Tuesday.Wednesday, PM
I had to have a QA meeting with our night-crew Level 2 tech because he completely broke a procedure we have to follow regarding identity verification for a password reset for a specific subset of our supported users. Completely just failed to do it entirely.Said procedure is really very basic. It's thus:
- Inform the user that for security purposes we'll need to call them back on a registered number.
- Search through the tool provided by that subset's base to find the listed contact numbers for that person that we can call them on
- Call the user back on said listed number, verify it's the same person we were just talking to
- Reset their password
Last night
Same Level 2 calls me after I leave the office, while I'm busy trying to heal people in Overwatch. Asks me how to do that very same procedure we told him yesterday that he had missed. I tell him "There's a KB article for that, go do it". He says he will.Today
I find the ticket that went along with last night's call...and it makes me want to punch him in the soul. Horribly documented, missing key activities, his usual horrendous spelling mistakes (doubly egregious when he misspells the name of the system that's listed in the KB article I told him to go look at!), missing other key information.Later Today
I will go home and refuse to think about work, and possibly contemplate homicide.
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@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
Also, I ended up getting written up for not having my shirt tucked in during the meeting
They don't let you wear t-shirts where you work?
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@masonwheeler He's apparently on the East Coast, where everybody has a dress code and is stodgy as fuck.
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@masonwheeler the shirt thing is TRWTF
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@blakeyrat said in Helpdesk hate:
@masonwheeler He's apparently on the East Coast, where everybody has a dress code and is stodgy as fuck.
I'm on the East Coast (about an hour from Philadelphia) and everyone here wears t-shirts, or the occasional polo shirt. There are two managers of the dev division, and both of them wear humorous geek t-shirts pretty much every day.
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@masonwheeler If I'm in the normal office, dress code is T-shirts and the like unless a client is visiting, and business casual at those times.
If we're out at a client meeting like I was, it's "business casual plus" which apparently extends to things like tucked in shirts and the like, which is entirely dependent on what the client feels is "professional enough" and not clearly defined.
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@masonwheeler said in Helpdesk hate:
I'm on the East Coast (about an hour from Philadelphia) and everyone here wears t-shirts.
I didn't realize you worked in a gas station. Ziing!
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@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
If we're out at a client meeting like I was, it's "business casual plus" which apparently extends to things like tucked in shirts and the like, which is entirely dependent on what the client feels is "professional enough" and not clearly defined.
Ugh. Ambiguous specifications.
At a previous job, one time (only once out of 5 years that I worked there) a bunch of developers went on a "field trip" of sorts to a TV station in Seattle that was using our software. We went around, talked with the people in the office, got to see what they were doing with our program and discuss features and issues with them directly.
It went pretty well, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. We all wore our normal developer-business-casual clothes and no one at the station cared. It's kinda weird to see clients being all hung up on details like that.
The only time I've ever been asked by management to wear or not wear any specific thing was a few months ago when we were taking company photos. No shirts with writing or imagery on them, they said. So I wore a plain gray tee, and that was fine with everyone.
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@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
Later Today
I will go home and refuse to think about work, and possibly contemplate homicide of my brain cells with alcool.FTFY
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@TimeBandit said in Helpdesk hate:
@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
Later Today
I will go home and refuse to think about work, and possibly contemplate homicide of my brain cells withalcoolOverwatch and Spoony One videos.FTFY
FTFTFYFM. I sadly only have the last half-shot or so worth of Crown Royal as alcohol in the house. I do, however, have cookies and games, so I will endeavor to kill as many brain cells with those.
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@masonwheeler Pretty sure that the complaints were probably just brought up to the meeting organizer people by some sales rep who thought we didn't give them the answer they wanted to their computer problem and decided to make petty complaints in response.
I sat there the entire time with our main interface person to the client company, who's a really chill dude, and he never said anything was wrong the entire time.
Hate being a 3rd party helpdesk company sometimes.
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@masonwheeler said in Helpdesk hate:
@blakeyrat said in Helpdesk hate:
@masonwheeler He's apparently on the East Coast, where everybody has a dress code and is stodgy as fuck.
I'm on the East Coast (about an hour from Philadelphia) and everyone here wears t-shirts, or the occasional polo shirt. There are two managers of the dev division, and both of them wear humorous geek t-shirts pretty much every day.
It depends. I worked for a small software company on the East Coast where collars were required (i.e. not t-shirts), no jeans, no shorts and no sneakers. The 70-year old owner claimed that, prior to 2013, he had never been to any fast-food place or eaten food from one.
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@tharpa said in Helpdesk hate:
The 70-year old owner claimed that, prior to 2013, he had never been to any fast-food place or eaten food from one.
From a strictly health-based standpoint, that's a pretty impressive track record. Why'd he finally change it in 2013?
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@masonwheeler said in Helpdesk hate:
@tharpa said in Helpdesk hate:
The 70-year old owner claimed that, prior to 2013, he had never been to any fast-food place or eaten food from one.
From a strictly health-based standpoint, that's a pretty impressive track record. Why'd he finally change it in 2013?
He took us all out to lunch at this place in solidarity with its owner who was the subject of a straw-man attack by a tyrannical faction.
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@e4tmyl33t
At least your overnight level 2 tech actually takes calls. One of my previous employers had a guy move from 2nd shift to overnight (the overnight position being remote), and he took another job 1st shift and slept through his evening shift. And management never bothered to wonder why projects like "upgrade firmware on this set of client devices" literally took 10x longer overnight than it did when we were allowed to cause mid day interruptions.Gawd, and don't get me started on times when I had to call him for remote assistance with maintenance window work I was doing (e.g. "Hey, did I just break the hell out of the network?")
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@izzion I would actually prefer if he DIDN'T.
Level 2s are supposed to be (at least ideally) first-line support for the Level 1s if they have questions (since our Level 1s aren't script-monkeys, we actually expect them to be able to troubleshoot). It's kinda hard for the L2s to do that if they're on just as many calls as the L1s at the same time. Being backup "oh-shit" support if the queue blows up, yeah, but having them as primary call-takers is just stupid.
But we do it anyway, because it saves on headcount >_<
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@Yamikuronue It was a scheduled 4-hour "refresher training", so I came up with a list of topics to cover and then stood in front of a room doing a training rant on those topics.
I usually call them rants because I get myself worked up (sort of intentionally) when it comes to topics like the following:
- Proper spelling and grammar in tickets. Especially because the client company can, at any time, ask for a record of a particular ticket, and we give them a whole dump and that's all they can go on. If they can't read it, it looks bad on us.
- Doing follow-ups on time. It makes tickets stay open longer if they don't get done on time. I hate open tickets. Don't make me hate.
- Actually logging every step you do on a call. See point one and add extra froth at the mouth.
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@e4tmyl33t People tend not to respond well to froth and vitriol.
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@Yamikuronue No vitriol, just lots of forced energy and attempts at "interaction" to get them involved to help them learn/relearn. Before I took the "technical account supervisor" position I was this helpdesk's QA/Trainer for about 9 months, so I basically just channel that time into doing these refreshers now to try and impress upon everyone WHY we're making them do what we do.
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@masonwheeler said in Helpdesk hate:
The only time I've ever been asked by management to wear or not wear any specific thing
Ever since the manager in my office quit, there's been effectively no dress code. It's fun to wear my Kalashnikitty t-shirt in.
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@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
Actually logging every step you do on a call. See
Yeah, the lack of real documentation of what happened in a call essentially caused my company to invent a Workflow Engine that did it for them (assuming they actually followed the wizard style interface correctly).
It kinda worked but good grief...
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@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
Ended up having to go on a client meeting in Philly (oh JOY). Relearned how much I hate Philly and cities like it. I swear I was approached by more homeless people there than I've ever been in the entire rest of my life.
As a Philly resident for the past two years, let me be the first to offer my condolences, and advise that in any future visits you avoid Walnut through Market streets because the homeless tend to congregate along there. Do your east/west travel a couple streets further south.
Bonus: they've discovered that having a pet scores them more sympathy, so now many of them have some poor bedraggled-looking animal alongside.
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@kdev said in Helpdesk hate:
@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
Ended up having to go on a client meeting in Philly (oh JOY). Relearned how much I hate Philly and cities like it. I swear I was approached by more homeless people there than I've ever been in the entire rest of my life.
As a Philly resident for the past two years, let me be the first to offer my condolences, and advise that in any future visits you avoid Walnut through Market streets because the homeless tend to congregate along there. Do your east/west travel a couple streets further south.
Bonus: they've discovered that having a pet scores them more sympathy, so now many of them have some poor bedraggled-looking animal alongside.Oh, we were right in the thick of it. I was put up in the Loews, and the majority of the sales meeting went on across 3 nearby hotels and the Philly Convention Center.
On a side note, I learned how much a subway system sets off my paranoia and people-hatred instincts when the other two techs and I went out to Dave and Buster's one evening.
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@kdev in Portland, they stepped it up a notch: Homeless with dog worked fine, but homeless with baby? Yeah. That's a thing here.
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@masonwheeler said in Helpdesk hate:
I'm on the East Coast (about an hour from Philadelphia) and everyone here wears t-shirts, or the occasional polo shirt.
And I'm on the East Coast and wear a suit every day. Maybe we really can't generalize across different companies, corporate cultures, and industries based on the irrelevant factor of geographical location. :P
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@tharpa said in Helpdesk hate:
@masonwheeler said in Helpdesk hate:
@tharpa said in Helpdesk hate:
The 70-year old owner claimed that, prior to 2013, he had never been to any fast-food place or eaten food from one.
From a strictly health-based standpoint, that's a pretty impressive track record. Why'd he finally change it in 2013?
He took us all out to lunch at this place in solidarity with its owner who was the subject of a straw-man attack by a tyrannical faction.
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@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
Wednesday, PM
I had to have a QA meeting with our night-crew Level 2 tech because he completely broke a procedure we have to follow regarding identity verification for a password reset for a specific subset of our supported users. Completely just failed to do it entirely.
Said procedure is really very basic. It's thus:Inform the user that for security purposes we'll need to call them back on a registered number.
Search through the tool provided by that subset's base to find the listed contact numbers for that person that we can call them on
Call the user back on said listed number, verify it's the same person we were just talking to
Reset their passwordIt's understandable someone would overlook a minor, inconsequential thing like security procedures to prevent social engineering.
What about the really important things, though. Was his shirt tucked in?
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@blakeyrat said in Helpdesk hate:
@masonwheeler said in Helpdesk hate:
I'm on the East Coast (about an hour from Philadelphia) and everyone here wears t-shirts.
I didn't realize you worked in a gas station. Ziing!
ITYM "Bazinga"
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@Lorne-Kates said in Helpdesk hate:
@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
Wednesday, PM
I had to have a QA meeting with our night-crew Level 2 tech because he completely broke a procedure we have to follow regarding identity verification for a password reset for a specific subset of our supported users. Completely just failed to do it entirely.
Said procedure is really very basic. It's thus:Inform the user that for security purposes we'll need to call them back on a registered number.
Search through the tool provided by that subset's base to find the listed contact numbers for that person that we can call them on
Call the user back on said listed number, verify it's the same person we were just talking to
Reset their passwordIt's understandable someone would overlook a minor, inconsequential thing like security procedures to prevent social engineering.
What about the really important things, though. Was his shirt tucked in?
Absolutely not, so I obviously had to bring the hammer down. I mean, if we start going all untucked, we might start thinking we have things like individuality and shit, which negatively impact call statistics.
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@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
which negatively impact call statistics.
Exactly! Remember: the goal isn't to provide service, it's to get them off the phone! ;)
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@e4tmyl33t said in Helpdesk hate:
On a side note, I learned how much a subway system sets off my paranoia and people-hatred instincts when the other two techs and I went out to Dave and Buster's one evening.
Most folks' people-hatred instincts get set off when they go to Dave & Busters.
Filed under: Fuck off and let me skee-ball in peace
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@Lorne-Kates The extra i is for extra zing.
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@Dreikin Good detective work.
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