10 Things I Hate about End Users
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@ardeyn said:
When end users lie about what they did or didn't do.
End user: I seem to be having connection issues
Me: Have you touched the network settings?
End user: NoDo they realize I will check the settings, once i remote in?
I actually love the fact that users lie. It turns me in to Colombo ("just one more thing...."). One of my favourite things in life is checking log files for evidence to incriminate users I don't like (I'm sad, I know).
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My frustration is with people who lack critical thinking skills. They can't reason, or put 2 and 2 together. They have to be shown everything in excruciating detail, often more than once.
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Thread of my dreams.
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I have no IT budget which puts me at the mercy of our executive director who is extremely frugal.
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I have to set up every building regardless of the size completely alone. This translated recently to a 10,000 sq ft building. All of the cabling. Configuring over 50 computers with no space to work (I have a small desk in finance). They asked me to give them an estimated cost and I told them we needed a physical firewall with content filtering, two switches and a replicated domain server. They said we'll buy the switches but nothing else. I then told them that a tiny little business router can't handle the traffic and it's not going to work. No one will be able to maintain their RDP sessions. They said we don't care. All users are annoyed with me even though I explained the situation. Two months later my executive director asks me what we have to do to fix it.
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I am constantly asked my opinion and it has never been taken into account a single time. As an example, we have demanding medical billing documentation (basically every 15 minute interval has to be documented and billed for). I was asked if we should purchase laptops or ipads and I said laptops. iPads aren't designed with the kind of data entry we need to do in mind. I was told "I competely agree". Two weeks later I received 35 iPads.
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When I was hired they were using a per diem server admin from another company in the same field that they previously worked for. I asked what this guy was going to do since we were keeping him on. I was told to talk with him and decide among ourselves. Fine by me. We basically said he was the server admin and I was the network admin/desktop support. Well fast forward to the future and he told me he had to delete and re-create the assistant executive directors e-mail account and it was unrecoverable. I asked him if he was going to tell her and he said "You're the IT tech there. You have to tell her." This woman is known to kill the messenger and is extremely nasty. I go and explain everything I know of the situation, which is very little. She freaks out and blames me for it even though I explained that it has nothing to do with me. I am not the server admin. She then said she can see the e-mails and contacts on her iPhone and that she wants me to recover them. I ask her if she actually manually entered them into her phone and she says "yes I did" to which I reply with great. If that's the case I can recover it. This was not the case and I was held responsible for not being able to recover her information even though she lied to me. I spent 3 hours on the phone with apple to prove what I was saying was true to receive nothing but attitude. 3 months later the assistant executive director approached me at an open house for the 10k sq ft building I just built alone and said "hopefully nothing happens like my e-mail again. You really screwed that up." To which I replied with "I've explained to you at length that this situation has nothing to do with me that was <insert name>'s responsibility." She said "Yeah but we've known him awhile and you're new so you take the blame".
I could write a novel in this thread.
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@wirestyle22 said:
and said "hopefully nothing happens like my e-mail again. You really screwed that up." To which I replied with "I've explained to you at length that this situation has nothing to do with me that was <insert name>'s responsibility." She said "Yeah but we've known him awhile and you're new so you take the blame".
Why are you still there?!? That's terrible behavior.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@wirestyle22 said:
and said "hopefully nothing happens like my e-mail again. You really screwed that up." To which I replied with "I've explained to you at length that this situation has nothing to do with me that was <insert name>'s responsibility." She said "Yeah but we've known him awhile and you're new so you take the blame".
Why are you still there?!? That's terrible behavior.
To be honest I need to educate myself more. Once I feel more secure in my knowledge I'll start applying. I came very close to working for ABC which is owned by Disney but they wanted a Unix guru and my Unix knowledge is basically non-existent. I was honest in my interview. The guy they ended up hiring lied in his interview and they found out pretty quick. Unfortunate because I know I can learn anything.
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@Nic said:
My frustration is with people who lack critical thinking skills. They can't reason, or put 2 and 2 together. They have to be shown everything in excruciating detail, often more than once.
The vapid vacant expression is my sign to de-arse the area.
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@wirestyle22 said:
To be honest I need to educate myself more. Once I feel more secure in my knowledge I'll start applying. I came very close to working for ABC which is owned by Disney but they wanted a Unix guru and my Unix knowledge is basically non-existent. I was honest in my interview. The guy they ended up hiring lied in his interview and they found out pretty quick. Unfortunate because I know I can learn anything.
Disney is famous for being low on the tech totem pole. Likely their idea of guru is very, very different than from most of the industry. They are normally decades behind everyone else.
That they hired people lying in an interview indicates that they don't know how to interview - which indicates that they are not hiring good people as good people will turn them down and bad ones will lie and... well there you go.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
To be honest I need to educate myself more. Once I feel more secure in my knowledge I'll start applying. I came very close to working for ABC which is owned by Disney but they wanted a Unix guru and my Unix knowledge is basically non-existent. I was honest in my interview. The guy they ended up hiring lied in his interview and they found out pretty quick. Unfortunate because I know I can learn anything.
Disney is famous for being low on the tech totem pole. Likely their idea of guru is very, very different than from most of the industry. They are normally decades behind everyone else.
That they hired people lying in an interview indicates that they don't know how to interview - which indicates that they are not hiring good people as good people will turn them down and bad ones will lie and... well there you go.
My friend does master control for Kelly and Michael (he won an Emmy actually) so I know the social landscape. It would be leaps and bounds better than here and I would be paid double what I make right now. The only real downside is the commute.
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@wirestyle22 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
My friend does master control for Kelly and Michael (he won an Emmy actually)
I take it that is a television show?
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@wirestyle22 said:
The only real downside is the commute.
And the weird cult / slave culture. But beyond that
They are definitely bad enough that their reputation makes a lot of people unwilling to even have a conversation with them. They've built a culture of keeping a large portion of the market from being willing to consider them.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
The only real downside is the commute.
And the weird cult / slave culture. But beyond that
They are definitely bad enough that their reputation makes a lot of people unwilling to even have a conversation with them. They've built a culture of keeping a large portion of the market from being willing to consider them.
Interesting. I guess I dodged a bullet. My friend did lose his hair at this job lol.
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@wirestyle22 said:
Interesting. I guess I dodged a bullet. My friend did lose his hair at this job lol.
Well it sounds like where you ended up was pretty crappy, too. So hard to say
But Disney has rather a strong reputation and I've known people who have worked there in more low end roles and Disney certainly doesn't get a chance to interview anyone that I know. So Disney may not even know what a good hiring process looks like as they tend to get overwhelmed with literal fan boys and girls and industry heavyweights keep their distance. So they feel like they have tons of potential hires, but they lack the ability to attract the ones that they should want. -
@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
Interesting. I guess I dodged a bullet. My friend did lose his hair at this job lol.
Well it sounds like where you ended up was pretty crappy, too. So hard to say
But Disney has rather a strong reputation and I've known people who have worked there in more low end roles and Disney certainly doesn't get a chance to interview anyone that I know. So Disney may not even know what a good hiring process looks like as they tend to get overwhelmed with literal fan boys and girls and industry heavyweights keep their distance. So they feel like they have tons of potential hires, but they lack the ability to attract the ones that they should want.My sister works for Disney... I would say this is completely accurate judging from her experience. Granted she is on low-end customer service but the fanboy-ism/cult of the mouse thing is strong in everyone you talk to.
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@coliver said:
My sister works for Disney... I would say this is completely accurate judging from her experience. Granted she is on low-end customer service but the fanboy-ism/cult of the mouse thing is strong in everyone you talk to.
I had many friends who took jobs with them (direct, not a division like ABC) and their description of it was pure hell, and yet they all loved it and would work nowhere else. Which is fine, to each their own.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
My sister works for Disney... I would say this is completely accurate judging from her experience. Granted she is on low-end customer service but the fanboy-ism/cult of the mouse thing is strong in everyone you talk to.
I had many friends who took jobs with them (direct, not a division like ABC) and their description of it was pure hell, and yet they all loved it and would work nowhere else. Which is fine, to each their own.
The conditions seem to have improved. She works in Disney World, she doesn't work 90 hours a week (like one of her friends said they did five years ago) and she has overtime limits. She also gets paid a decent wage and has options for health benefits.
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@coliver said:
The conditions seem to have improved. She works in Disney World, she doesn't work 90 hours a week (like one of her friends said they did five years ago) and she has overtime limits. She also gets paid a decent wage and has options for health benefits.
That's definitely better than I heard that it was there. I believe "opium den slash brothel" was the description of the working conditions there before.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
The conditions seem to have improved. She works in Disney World, she doesn't work 90 hours a week (like one of her friends said they did five years ago) and she has overtime limits. She also gets paid a decent wage and has options for health benefits.
That's definitely better than I heard that it was there. I believe "opium den slash brothel" was the description of the working conditions there before.
Haha. That doesn't surprise me. Some of the stories she is told (and then relays to us) seems to indicate something along those lines.
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I'm probably going to go for state jobs. I'm paid in bread and water currently so it's a big step up for me and a pretty secure job from what I'm told. I also miss working on a team.
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@wirestyle22 said:
I'm probably going to go for state jobs. I'm paid in bread and water currently so it's a big step up for me and a pretty secure job from what I'm told. I also miss working on a team.
I speak from current experience on this. If you enjoy working in several areas of IT, you may want to avoid state jobs. I have a decent bit of experience across a several IT disciplines, and at my current job, I am starting to feel like I am stagnating because I only deal with server stuff. I know the networking stuff, but only the networking team gets to do the networking stuff.
I don't mind it too much, in some regards though, because I am not in a position that requires me to be available after hours too often.
