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I need some advice. I’m a Sr.System Admin. Prior to this I was a System Admin/ Helpdesk rep. I was revealed of my helpdesk duties when they hired and entry level helpdesk tech last year. I dont know if its my age (36) but this guy (25) has no work ethic at all. He seems to be very careless and its driving me nuts. My boss is kind of out there and does not seem to care much about hard work and or effort because he hasnt given the guy a hard time yet for his slip ups. Today the helpdesk guy is out of the office and im covering for him as well as doing my job. I noticed that we had two new employee’s start in our remote office today and he did nothing about it. There was a ticket last week telling us this would happen and the guy still did nothing. I’ve spent the morning getting two PC’s ready in remote offices,email accounts etc. I’ve also noticed he never updated some PC’s in the remote offices to our latest builds when he was supposed to. So needless to say all my work got put on hold and ive spent my day doing his crap. My question is if my management doesn’t seem to care much should i just ignore his work? Should i take him aside and give him a beating lol? What would you do?

I’ve worked very hard to get where I am and this dude doesnt seem to care about hard work or doing things right just wants to shoot right to the top. He’s not a bad person he just hasnt seem to take advice to well and I dont want to run to my manager and complain but its getting kind of annoying.

End rant!!

33 Spice ups
2

I’d blow the dust off my resume and look for another opportunity.

3 Spice ups
3

All I can say is… if he is lazy and your boss thinks that that is okay, that lazy employee is being taught that what he is doing is the right thing - because he doesn’t get paid more to do more, I assume. So doing less for the same money is “getting more” in a way. I’ve definitely had jobs that said “we can’t pay you more, so to keep you from leaving, just do less.” That didn’t mean be sloppy, just work less. But you see my point.

Maybe he is working at the level the company expects and you are working too hard for what you are getting?

6 Spice ups
4

Wow…I am literally dealing with the same thing right now. I haven’t reported it to management because i figured the problem would work itself out but man is it frustrating. Especially when he takes credit for my work…Im sorry man but i am right there with you!

5

Why is the standard response on any US forum “time to start polishing that resume”?

I can’t work out if folks in the US are really that precious about working in the perfect environment or if there are that many jobs that it’s the norm to simply quit the moment something happens that isn’t quite to your liking.

What you should do depends IMO on your relationship with the people involved. I work with people where I don’t agree with everything they do and in some cases I say something, in other cases I talk to their boss, in other cases I keep my mouth shut - there’s seldom a one size fits all answer.

3 Spice ups
6

I’m young (21) and I am all about good work ethic. Thats the only way to get anywhere in life. Not to mention you should be proud of the end product of your work and know that it was done right. But sadly not everyone in my generation feels the same. Hence the downward spiral of good help.

2 Spice ups
7

If you can’t deal with it, that’s what you have to do. You can’t fix it.

I choose to deal with it. Like you said, no place is perfect. Choose your battles

1 Spice up
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You should keep on doing what you’re doing. When his job starts effecting your job, then it is time to say something. I would count this instance as minor. Get through the day. Yea it sucks, but you’re going to have those days everywhere. Its sad to say but people seem to not care about [their] work anymore. Hopefully management does care if it starts effecting you.

1 Spice up
9

We don’t have that issue in my department but in Customer Service we have one lady that does the work of three normal people and then we have two that literally stay on Facebook / game forums all day. In my opinion it’s grossly unfair but the department head is ok with it. He feels saying something to the one’s that don’t perform is creating “office politics”. I called him an idiot (that didn’t go over well) and told him he is creating the wrong atmosphere for his troops. Those that are lazy are rewarded for being lazy while the ones that do all the work get nothing. The guys that work for me know this won’t fly at all but luckily all my peeps are hard working people and I am very proud of them - and tell them often.

I guess bottom line - if you are happy with what you do and with your compensation then what other people do or don’t do isn’t worth your time. I’m the type that would pick up his slack when he is out but I would make sure it was documented that I did the work and why I had to do it due to the other guy not doing it on time.

Just my humble opinion…

10

See that’s the thing the rest of the guys on our team cant stand his work ethic. I think my boss doesnt really know because tickets are being closed and hes not being bothered or being told “hey this kid sucks” lol. I think maybe i need to back off a bit and let him fall on his face…

5 Spice ups
11

To whom does this person report?
Is there an IT Manager? … or are you the guy?
Write him up! Report this, in writing, to your manager.
If you report directly to a non-technology person (CEO, COO, etc.) then your report goes to HR.

Request that you take over the management of the IT Department.

12

It will be YOU that will fall on your face… think about it.

13

Talk to your boss. Just be sure to go in with a cool head, and not go in when you are angry or frustrated. I would definitely not badger the bad employee, that isn’t your place. I would just make sure you have a few good examples and just talk it out and see if your boss wants to do their job.

If the boss doesn’t want to do anything, then either you have to deal with it, or move on.

14

Well the way it works here is all level one type tickets go to him. If he doesnt do them and I and the rest of my team keeps doing then boss thinks everything is fine. But if I let them sit there because there his responsibility and they dont get done one would think he would fall on his face correct?

15

Reports to my boss VP of IT. There is no IT Manager.

16

No I agree as well I honestly I no problem covering for people or helping out. But if you leave work behind when your out because your caress and then dont tell the person that has to do the work thats just not cool. The sad thing is I’ve trained him and taught him tons of different ways on how to deal with ALL kinds of work and it seems he just is not listing and does not care.

17

Your answers hidden in your response. Since all the level one tickets go to him first before escalating up, run reports on the tickets flowing through the system.

Either you’ll be able to show that he’s not doing the job, or you’ll find that there was some real reason why the work’s not getting done that you didn’t know about. Based on your description this seems unlikely, but you don’t know yet, do you?

Other than that I do have some suggestions:

  1. Why isn’t the new PC / new user process automated? You spent all morning on it, when it could have been a few keystrokes of time to complete.

  2. Who’s reviewing the tickets in this technicians queue to see that they’re processed correctly / on time? If you’d seen these last week you wouldn’t have been in a rush this morning.

  3. Take a look at something called a Pareto chart. They’re used to isolate what’s causing all the issues. Start throwing ticket metrics at the concept (first just by looking at the tickets, then with math - probably excel). You’ll see what’s taking up all your time. Everything on the ‘takes up time’ list should be examined for automation.

  4. Any VP of IT without managers reporting to them isn’t a VP. That’s a manager with a VP title. Have you’re CEO give me a call, I’ll come over - we can get this straightened out in a jiffy. I don’t know if anyone will be fired, but they will all walk a little more upright/stiffly for a while.

18

  1. The system setup is automated. I had setup all our our images with acronis snap deploy. I showed him how everything is done and handed that process over to him. This goes for all of our locations. The problem is he did not have machines for this location imaged already like i used to. so I had to image the machines,patch them (102 updates because he has not updated the image for that office as of yet). The last time i talked to him about making sure all images are updated and all offices have machines ready to go he told me “he did not want to do busy work”. I’m not a manager so I cant demand he do these things. I did tell my boss this and my boss did nothing.

  2. I along with other team members review the tickets. These tickets were for new employee’s that were submitted on Friday morning to start for Monday. He is the one responsible for setting up new users and the last I checked its not my job to make sure he does his job.

  3. k

  4. LOL thanks but that wont happen. The real problem here is the VP (manager) doesn’t manage. He’s in charge of 5 people on an IT team and 15 programs/project managers. He spends most of his time in meetings and we very rarely see him. When we do see him he typically has unrealistic demands and we just try our best to meet his demands.

19

Some people just get by doing the minimum and being crappy employees, and sometimes the only solution for this to “fix” these people is to put them on their asses where they are flat broke, no job, and really have to think about how crappy they were. It’s a hard lesson to learn in life, but sometimes it needs to be taught.

20

I’ve been in that position a number of times. When I am covering for someone who doesn’t do their job, I just do the bare minimum like they do and still focus on my primary job. No reason to waste so much effort and let your own work slip to make them look good.