The Geek Forum

  • March 29, 2024, 02:14:35 AM
  • Welcome, Guest
Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Due to the prolific nature of these forums, poster aggression is advised.

*

Recent Forum Posts

Shout Box

Members
Stats
  • Total Posts: 129470
  • Total Topics: 7101
  • Online Today: 50
  • Online Ever: 1013
  • (January 12, 2023, 01:18:11 AM)
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 [6] 7 8 9 10 11 ... 36

Author Topic: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.  (Read 211656 times)

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #125 on: December 20, 2007, 05:25:24 PM »

Is it so hard to document the critical information about the core things we do for our clients?

Yesterday, one of our larger clients had their T1 -- which we manage -- drop for them.  We host terminal servers for them where they do 100% of their work, so while their T1 is down, they have pretty much all of their employees unable to do anything at all.

Our main telecom guy was out of the office, and didn't have his cell phone on him, so I was looking into it.

Couldn't find any information about it on our intranet site, where such things are supposed to be documented.

The T1 info and circuit IDs for it in the client's spreadsheet were for their OLD T1, which I found out when I called that provider and they told me "well those circuit IDs were cancelled by you guys 6 months ago".

I wasted an HOUR chasing my tail just trying to find the basic information on this critical service we provide this client, and was no further along after that time than when I had started.  When our telecom guy finally came back from lunch I unceremoniously turned this over to him -- something about which he actually expressed irritation -- and went to lunch myself almost an hour later than my normal lunchtime.



And today... I get a request from a different client to reinstall some application that we host for them on a terminal server.  It's hosed up and apparently this happens occasionally, and a reinstall of it is "normally enough to fix it".

That's all fine and good, but

A) I couldn't find any documentation that we even hosted this app for this client

B) There's no reference to it in our billing system, so they probably have never even been billed for it

C) There's no installer for it or any info whatsoever on the subject in their client folder


I send an email out to all of our data center staff asking if anyone has any idea what this is or how it got on their server and receive no response.




And with regards to YET ANOTHER client, we get reports that their SQL server is running really slow and it's causing problems.  This is a pretty new client, so I go to their page on our intranet so I can find out how to connect to their VLAN and find no information at all.  I look in their client folder on our main company share and try to find what VLAN it's even on, and nothing.  I open their spreadsheet and find it's completely empty.  I had to run downstairs to the server console and log in from there, only to find that nobody bothered creating anyone on my team any accounts in their domain.   :roll:

How the fuck is my team supposed to do its job if the team doing deployments isn't doing all of theirs?  This kind of shit is a major pet peeve of mine and it's just running rampant around here lately.   :x

« Last Edit: December 20, 2007, 05:30:34 PM by Demosthenes »
Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001

12AX7

  • Guest
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #126 on: December 21, 2007, 02:54:42 AM »

Y...y...you work for Vz too???
Logged

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #127 on: December 21, 2007, 10:10:54 AM »

Y...y...you work for Vz too???

Sometimes I wonder.   :roll:
Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001

pbsaurus

  • Hacker
  • ****
  • Coolio Points: +354/-31
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9981
  • Everyone Loves The King Of The Sea
    • View Profile
    • http://www.myspace.com/flipperpete
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #128 on: December 21, 2007, 07:10:49 PM »

I really like my new job and co-workers.  Thanks for making me appreciate it/them even more!

Novice

  • Forum Ninja
  • Hacker
  • ****
  • Coolio Points: +205/-10
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 1463
  • Thread Killer 3.0
    • View Profile
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #129 on: January 01, 2008, 11:54:16 AM »

VLANS. Who needs 'em?

More importantly, who needs theirs fixed?

More importantly, who needs theirs fixed on new years day?

More importantly, why the hell do they have to ask me to do it!?!?
Logged
Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #130 on: January 04, 2008, 04:47:26 PM »

I don't understand why we get about one of these a month or so, but we do.  Here's one that I dealt with today, just a little bit ago.



Client: I'm calling because I just noticed that we're getting billed for 5 accounts we shouldn't be.

Me: Oh?  Which accounts are they?

Client: Janet, Kay, Kathi, Linda, and Jill.  None of them work here anymore, so we don't need their accounts and shouldn't be getting billed for them.

Me: Okay, I can go ahead and terminate those accounts.

Client: (irritated) I don't understand why we've been paying for them all this time.  I mean, Janet and Linda haven't worked here since May.  And Jill... she left back in 2006!

Me: Yeah, I'm definitely seeing those accounts still enabled and in our billing system.  And you asked for them to be terminated back when those users left?

Client: :?

Client: What do you mean?

Me: When those users left.  You requested that we terminate their accounts.  So that you don't get billed for them.  Right?

Client: Well, no.  We didn't.

Me: Uh.  Okay.  Well, I'll go ahead and remove them now.

Client: What assurance do I have that this won't happen again?

Me: Excuse me?

Client: Well suppose one of our other users leaves?  Will we end up getting billed for their account for over a year in that case too?

Me: Uh.  No.  Not if you let us know that they're no longer with your company. 

Client: :?

Client: You mean we need to do that EVERY TIME someone leaves?

Me: Well... yeah.  Otherwise we have no way of knowing.

Client: Well that seems kind of ridiculous, don't you think?

Me: No?

Client: *sigh* Well, I guess that's just what we'll have to do, to make sure we don't end up paying for accounts WE HAVEN'T USED IN OVER A YEAR. *click*



Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001

pbsaurus

  • Hacker
  • ****
  • Coolio Points: +354/-31
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9981
  • Everyone Loves The King Of The Sea
    • View Profile
    • http://www.myspace.com/flipperpete
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #131 on: January 04, 2008, 04:49:12 PM »

Genius!

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #132 on: January 04, 2008, 04:49:58 PM »

One of my coworkers suggested "hey, we should just be proactive and disable ALL of their accounts, just in case they're no longer using any of them.  We wouldn't want to be billing them for accounts they don't use, after all."
Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001

pbsaurus

  • Hacker
  • ****
  • Coolio Points: +354/-31
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9981
  • Everyone Loves The King Of The Sea
    • View Profile
    • http://www.myspace.com/flipperpete
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #133 on: January 04, 2008, 04:56:02 PM »

Either that or you should bombard them with an email whenever an account hasn't been active in the last hour.  Saying something to the effect of--

We noticed this account hasn't been in use lately.  In the event that this user is no longer with the company, we have disabled the account so that you won't be unnecessarily billed.  In order to reactivate the account please call and choose options 1 followed by 3 followed by 2 followed by 7 followed by 2 followed by 1 followed by 3 followed by 2 followed by 8 followed by 1 followed by 4 followed by the users account number followed by 3 followed by 7 follwed by 4 followed by 2 to reactivate the account.

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #134 on: January 04, 2008, 04:59:13 PM »

That is a really, really good idea.
Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001

pbsaurus

  • Hacker
  • ****
  • Coolio Points: +354/-31
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9981
  • Everyone Loves The King Of The Sea
    • View Profile
    • http://www.myspace.com/flipperpete
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #135 on: January 04, 2008, 05:17:35 PM »

Yeah, automation would make it so they don't bother you at all.  Plus coming up with a telephone tree like that would be a blast.  The absurdity of the options could be endless.

ivan

  • Forum Moderator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +499/-50
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4929
  • Not a Mod, nor a Rocker. A Mocker.
    • View Profile
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #136 on: January 04, 2008, 06:04:10 PM »

There is a degree of uncertainty with automated services. There have been times when I've been asked to poll users to find out which services are no longer needed. That's always a bad idea, because no one will ever say, "Oh, yeah, I haven't looked at that in months, go ahead and turn it off."

So instead, periodically, I turn EVERYTHING off for EVERYONE.

The ones who need something turned back on eventually call.
Logged
"I TYPE 120 WORDS PER MINUTE, BUT IT'S IN MY OWN LANGUAGE!"  -Detta

xolik: WHERE IS OBAMA'S GIFT CERTIFICATE?
Demosthenes: Is that from the gifters movement?


Detta: Crappy old shorts and a tank top.  This is how I dress for work. Because my job is to get puked on.
Demosthenes: So is mine.  I work in IT.


bananaskittles: The world is 4chan and God is a troll.

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #137 on: January 04, 2008, 06:26:19 PM »

Yeah, automation would make it so they don't bother you at all.  Plus coming up with a telephone tree like that would be a blast.  The absurdity of the options could be endless.

I'm our phone system administrator.  I could easily route a DID/DNIS number to a mailbox with a 20-level deep numeric menu that I could have the client go through to reactivate each account, with the end result being emailed automatically to our ticketing system.

You have no idea how tempting that is.

There is a degree of uncertainty with automated services. There have been times when I've been asked to poll users to find out which services are no longer needed. That's always a bad idea, because no one will ever say, "Oh, yeah, I haven't looked at that in months, go ahead and turn it off."

So instead, periodically, I turn EVERYTHING off for EVERYONE.

The ones who need something turned back on eventually call.


That's pretty much our policy for things like that.  We've pruned huge chunks of our POP email server that way and it's surprising how few phone calls we've gotten when we go and clean house like that with old accounts.
Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001

pbsaurus

  • Hacker
  • ****
  • Coolio Points: +354/-31
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9981
  • Everyone Loves The King Of The Sea
    • View Profile
    • http://www.myspace.com/flipperpete
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #138 on: January 04, 2008, 06:30:52 PM »

I'm our phone system administrator.  I could easily route a DID/DNIS number to a mailbox with a 20-level deep numeric menu that I could have the client go through to reactivate each account, with the end result being emailed automatically to our ticketing system.

You have no idea how tempting that is...

Well if he calls back you could offer that up as a solution and see if he goes for it  :evil:

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #139 on: January 07, 2008, 02:50:20 PM »

I just overheard this discussion between a coworker of mine and an incompetent third party IT tech who was on-site with a client of ours.  My coworker had the tech on speaker, so I was listening to this discussion as I was going through my emails after getting back from lunch today.


Coworker: Okay, what's the IP address of the new printer?

Tech: 10.2.14

Coworker: Ten dot two dot fourteen.... dot what?

Tech: Ten dot two dot fourteen.

Coworker: Yeah, I got that part.  What's the last octet?

Tech: The last whatnow?

Coworker: The last octet.  Ten dot two dot fourteen... dot what?

Tech: Dot fourteen!

Coworker: Ten dot two dot fourteen... dot fourteen?

Tech: No, just ten dot two dot fourteen.

Coworker: ???

Me: (to my coworker) Try something out here... see if you can ping 10.2.1.4.

Coworker: Yep.  Pings just fine.  Think I should try setting up this printer to point at that?

Me: Yeah.  Try it.

Coworker: *sets up printer to print to 10.2.1.4*

Coworker: (to incompetent tech) Okay, I just sent a test page to that printer at that address.  Is anything coming out?

Tech: Yep!  Looks good!

Coworker: The IP address I set this up to print to was 10.2.1.4, not ten dot two dot fourteen.

Tech: That shouldn't matter.

Coworker:
Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001

pbsaurus

  • Hacker
  • ****
  • Coolio Points: +354/-31
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9981
  • Everyone Loves The King Of The Sea
    • View Profile
    • http://www.myspace.com/flipperpete
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #140 on: January 07, 2008, 04:00:05 PM »

Hectar!

Novice

  • Forum Ninja
  • Hacker
  • ****
  • Coolio Points: +205/-10
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 1463
  • Thread Killer 3.0
    • View Profile
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #141 on: January 07, 2008, 08:21:27 PM »

I guess I got into the right business if someone is paying that person.
Logged
Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

Vespertine

  • The VSUBjugator
  • Forum Moderator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +371/-38
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1255
    • View Profile
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #142 on: January 07, 2008, 08:56:32 PM »

I've got this guy who sits next to me at work.  He's a total know-it-all, and a prick to boot: completely arrogant, condescending and nasty to people.  I overheard him on a phone call today.  He was "authoritatively" telling someone how the Global Ultimate IDentifier was the key to the infallibility of some system.  He must've said Global Ultimate IDentifier about nine times.  I laughed every time.
Logged
I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass.  And, I'm all out of bubble gum.

Agent_Tachyon

  • Hacker
  • ****
  • Coolio Points: +195/-45
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 1933
  • Beyond 1337
    • View Profile
    • Screaming Brain
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #143 on: January 07, 2008, 11:38:14 PM »

No chance he was fucking with the customer? We used to tell the customers all sorts of ridiculous things (the usual in jokes, flux capacitors and the like mostly) just to liven things up, and we were all pretty big assholes a lot of the time too.
Logged
Singularity god is EVIL as
Creation reigns as Opposites.
Educators, and You - ought
to be killed for ignoring the
fact that "Earth is Cubed".
(ignored and suppressed by EVIL educators)

Vespertine

  • The VSUBjugator
  • Forum Moderator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +371/-38
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1255
    • View Profile
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #144 on: January 08, 2008, 12:24:39 AM »

No, we don't speak to our customers.  He was just in a regular old meeting, trying to get buy in on some idea he had.
Logged
I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass.  And, I'm all out of bubble gum.

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #145 on: January 24, 2008, 12:10:30 PM »

Client: Okay, this is very important.  It needs to be done as soon as possible!

Me: Not a problem, what do you need?

Client: We installed new firewalls in all our locations and had to change our IP addressing scheme the other day, and now in one of our offices one of the network printers doesn't work from the terminal server.

Me: Which printer?

Client: I'm not sure.

Me: Well, do you know which office it is in?

Client: No...

Me: Okay... well do you know what the new IP address of the printer should be?

Client: I don't have that information yet.

Me: So some printer, somewhere, needs to have its IP address updated to... something?

Client: Er... yeah.

Me: I'll get my best guy on it!

Client: Thanks! *click*


 :roll:
Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #146 on: January 28, 2008, 03:09:23 PM »

I just love troubleshooting a critical hosted application for a big, complicated new client and looking in the client spreadsheet for them for any information about them at all, and finding it COMPLETELY FUCKING EMPTY.   :x

Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #147 on: January 30, 2008, 05:29:51 PM »

I just had this discussion with a pain-in-the-ass client of mine.

Client: Mark has his Outlook configured to retrieve mail from his Hotmail account and put it in a separate mailbox in addition to his Exchange mailbox.

Me: Okay.

Client: He doesn't really use his Exchange mailbox, so everything should be going to his Hotmail account.  But sometimes things will end up in his Exchange mailbox instead.

Me: *shadow's Mark's session, looks at the handful of emails in his Exchange mailbox*

Me: These emails were sent to Mark's Exchange email address, not his Hotmail address.

Client: Well this is unacceptable.

Me:   If Mark needs people to email his Hotmail account, he should tell them to send emails to his Hotmail account instead of his Exchange address.

Client: He missed several important messages because of this.

Me:   Okay, tell you what.  I'll set up a forwarder on his Exchange account to forward everything to his Hotmail account if someone accidentally emails the wrong address.

Client: No, we don't want that.

Me: Mmkay... then let me know if there's anything we can do.  Thanks, bye.

*click*



And NOT 10 MINUTES LATER, I hear the coworker who sits in the cubicle next to me saying "... well, the reason those messages ended up in his Exchange mailbox was because that's the email address to which they were actually sent.  If you like I can set up a forwarder to Mark's Hotmail account...."

 :x

They do this all the goddamned time.  They call with something that's essentially a non-issue, waste a half-hour or so of someone's time with it, refuse any of the reasonable things we suggest as workarounds, and then call someone else on our end and act like it's a "new issue".

Fuckers.  I wonder if they'll keep doing this if they start getting billed for it?
« Last Edit: January 30, 2008, 05:31:29 PM by Demosthenes »
Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001

12AX7

  • Guest
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #148 on: January 30, 2008, 05:38:39 PM »

What's his hotmail account, now?  :evil:
Logged

Demosthenes

  • Evil Ex-HN Moderator
  • Administrator
  • Hacker
  • *
  • Coolio Points: +567/-72
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 9904
  • Just try me. See what happens.
    • View Profile
    • Zombo
Re: The 'Let's Bitch About Our Jobs' thread.
« Reply #149 on: January 30, 2008, 06:00:13 PM »

What's his hotmail account, now?  :evil:

Don't think I'm not tempted.   :w:
Logged

Coolio Points: 89,000,998,776,554,211,222
Detta Puzzle Points: 45

Banning forum idiots since 2001
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 [6] 7 8 9 10 11 ... 36