IT Departments

[BlueBot]

Right... I work for a fairly large company with an IT dept. of 6 people. And they are all bloody useless, honestly I could do better on my own! They have three answers to everything, a) reboot, b) we'll be down sometime next quarter, c) ok you need a new machine.

It's ridiculous, they took 3 weeks to sort out the printer authorisation levels on our office print, my manager couldn't print for 3 weeks ffs.

Example of IT being inept:

Me: Heya IT, got a prob.
IT: Hey Steve, go on.
Me: Well I can't save to my docs, I could yesterday, can't today. Has some one changed the read/write access for my computer???
IT: errr, not sure what you mean? Have you rebooted?
Me: OK, I'll reboot *10 mins later, takes that long to boot etc*. err IT *no surprise here* it still won't let me write, reading from the drive is fine, just can't write
IT: OK I'll be down soon
*3 hours later*
I finally decided to play with it myself as such. Guess the admin password "letmein" can you believe that??? and changed the user read/write settings myself. Why on earth they have changed them I hvae no idea. IT still haven't been down, and this was on monday!!!

Anyway a problem that no one has any idea about follows:
Our printer on running on a print server in the corner. A girl in my office works on a seperate computer, yet whenever someone prints, it locks her computer up for the duration of the print job. How on earth can this happen? Her computer isn't the print server and is set up exactly the same as the other 4 in the office, and they are all fine. Any ideas???

Steve

ps if anyone on this site does work in IT, I know that all IT depts. aren;t crap and you are probably TTTTTTHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSs much more competent at IT than me, so please no flamin

[Shorty]

ps if anyone on this site does work in IT, I know that all IT depts. aren;t crap and you are probably TTTTTTHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSs much more competent at IT than me, so please no flamin

Just as well you added that line...

I do understand what you mean though. Im in IT support now and before I was, I think I could have killed several useless IT support staff.. who barely knew a thing. Just because they have A qualification and B qualification doesn't mean they have a feckin clue what they are doing

[Moby-Dick]

whats the network layout for your mystical printer server problem ?

get them to remove *all* her printers - local or otherwise and see if it still happens.
try plugging her into a different port in the switch.

oh and If I found any of my (l)users logged in as admin , they'd get thrown out of the window

[Shorty]

oh and If I found any of my (l)users logged in as admin , they'd get thrown out of the window

The phrase I use is "Il cut your hands off"

[Nimrod]

oh and If I found any of my (l)users logged in as admin , they'd get thrown out of the window

I'd kick them in the swingers


As for you IT department it sounds to me like they have it spot on. Never panic, never rush an make sure everyone knows that without you they are truely screwed.

You see the point you have missed is that if your manager was that annoyed at not being able to print for 3 weeks, he could've done something about it.

In the same vein you've got it all wrong...
If you cannot save files back to your filestore, you cannot work ! Therefore until the problem is sorted you're unable to do your duties. This basically = a holiday.

You should be thanking your IT department not slagging them off.

[XTR]

Blooody moaners!!!!!!!!!!

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=13690

[Raz316]

We have a 3 man IT dept here (myself included). We generally get all jobs done as soon as possible (we even fixed a printer with some paper, a magnet and some selotape ).

I'm not sure how this applies to your IT lot, but here, we all cover all levels of support, so obviously sometimes there are much more important things to do. It is very Men in Black here at times, just because we aren't running around screaming, doesn't mean we aren't working extremely hard to solve problems

[nichomach]

We have a 3 man IT dept here (myself included). We generally get all jobs done as soon as possible (we even fixed a printer with some paper, a magnet and some selotape ).

I'm not sure how this applies to your IT lot, but here, we all cover all levels of support, so obviously sometimes there are much more important things to do. It is very Men in Black here at times, just because we aren't running around screaming, doesn't mean we aren't working extremely hard to solve problems

Agreed; I've got a marketing droid chasing me to do some hunting around for some CRM software - just on spec, mind, it's not an actual project, and when they see the price I can pretty much ****ing well guarantee it won't be - and he doesn't seem to get the idea that the machines I've got to get out of the door to people who are actually going to earn us some money might take precedence...and those only after I've got the new backup/antivirus server up and running...

[5lab]

we're outsourced to ibm here - theyre pretty good actually, even if the paperworks a little longwinded at times.

[Jiff Lemon]

Hehehehe - I'm working on a desk where the first line people seem to the following rules:

1) I don't understand the problem - ask user to reboot and call back if still a problem.
2) I don't know what the user is talking about - take some notes, give out random number and insist they need to speak to that department.
3) User ranting cos they've been messed around - Take details, log a call, give user a reference number, then CRUCIALLY, do not save the call so no records exist.

[Allen]

I'm not saying anything about our IT department until I get home!

[Steve]

Hehehehe - I'm working on a desk where the first line people seem to the following rules:

1) I don't understand the problem - ask user to reboot and call back if still a problem.
2) I don't know what the user is talking about - take some notes, give out random number and insist they need to speak to that department.
3) User ranting cos they've been messed around - Take details, log a call, give user a reference number, then CRUCIALLY, do not save the call so no records exist.

Heh, I'm writing some call centre software for my old school's IT department - perhaps I should add a "feature" allowing number 3 to be performed convincingly.

[BlueBot]

ok... Maybe I DID rang just a LITTLE bit. But you get my idea. Nice idea about no work and no holiday. Currently working on SAP under a Guest login (so if I do anything wrong they don't know whether it's me or the other dozen people on the guest login, haha) so that's not tooo bad I guess.

For everyone who would have killed me for logging on as admin etc I hope that you would've chosen a slighty more cpytic password than letmein...

Moby-Dick : I'll get them to do as you said and see what happens.

Steve

ps i do understand that the IT department is under pressure etc but even our IT director agrees with me, I've had several rants with him about the state of the IT dept at our particular company, he agrees totally. But they have done one thing right, purchased a rather lovely Itanium server to run SAP. Now they've just got to get it working... hehe

[Butuz]

Oh its totally true that 95% of IT departments / IT support staff are lazy inept monkies.

I - being someone who is proud of my technological geniousy, feel that these lazy rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishs that tell you to reboot your PC in order to fix the fact that one of them tripped over and unwittingly unplugged the power cable to the SAN, are dragging my value and worth to other companies down!

I work bloody hard, 4 servers, 250 PC's, 200+ printers, and no money to fix or buy anything with, yet it still all works 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and i enable 90 staff in my school to do theyre job, and 1000 kids to keep learning. Lets face facts - if the system went down, the 3million per year turnover school would cease to function. No teachers work, no timetableing system, no registration, no school.

I still end up fixing NHS computers for free in my own spare time coz im a friendly professional guy, when the multimillion pound IT department in the hospital washes their hands of simply reinstalling a coprrupted of win2k - coz theyre too busy surfing for pr0n.

I HATE LAZY IT PEOPLE - ID LIKE TO TWACK EM ALL OVER THE HEAD WITH A 42U network cabinet

Butuz

[BlueBot]

I completely agree. IT depts. like where I work bring people like you down mate. I'm not saying that I know enough about networks and servers to go straight into an IT job as I don't, but I like IT and am a quick learner.

But yeah, at the moment I am having to sort out basic problems for people. I have my own work to do (lots more than I can cope with atm) yet I take time out to either fix a problem or to help someone with a problem at work. Why do I do this? Because if I don't then IT will take ages and someone is without a computer for several hours. Like Butuz I hate lazy IT people.

Steve

[Steve]

Butuz - that description reminded of me - the IT wizz kid pupil, amongst the lazy, paid IT staff at my old school.

They weren't all stupid, but lazy - yes.

Still, at least I manage to stand out of the crowd.