1

I’m quite a patient person, but this interchange has made my blood boil.

Me: Good morning. I’m following up with Ticket 2169. Do you still need access to <recently resigned user’s> E-mail?

User: Her emails or desktop?

Me: Her E-mails.

11 Spice ups
2

Monday morning cases of pebkac can be quite stressy…

3

Nothing like users who don’t read the entirety of anything…

They are the people who don’t read instructions because it’s not manly and end up dead because the barbecue they just built blew up. (Large Quantities of Exaggeration here)

But still; I agree…those last few seconds makes or breaks you looking like a jackass

4

So was it desktop or emails?

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5

: ) Sorry, couldn’t help it.

I think a lot of people switch off when they’re dealing with IT and engage the reptilian brain sigh

6

You know what I found helped most to get my users to read the entire email? I turned off the notification pop-up that Outlook used to display. Turns out, many only read that first 7 or 8 words that would display in that pop-up. I’d be working at someone’s desk to fix an issue and see tons of unread emails that all had a “replied” icon next to them.

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7

What they actually need is access to her physical desk. The top part of it.

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8

This is why I refuse to text and avoid email. A phone call cuts out so much of the back and forth. And, it leaves almost no evidence behind…

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9

So one of my users emails in with a request that is sitting at the end of a long long email chain

His request is something like

“Can you please give access to ****** access to the location below”

I do this for him and reply with

" I have provided access to the requested folder location.

Please ask the user to log out/in so permissions may be applied."

he replies with

“Please see request below”

I scan down this War and Peace 2nd draft email, and after about 2 mins of reading down the various email replies I can see 3 other IT requests not mentioned in the title of the original request.

It drives me nuts… It just seems lazy not to summarise what you want and expect IT to read through long email chains to find out exactly what they need.

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10

The irony? User, to this moment, hasn’t responded :stuck_out_tongue:

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11

And probably never will… and it will become one of those tickets that sits on the helpdesk for weeks, and then they’ll email you in 2 months asking where you are with Ticket 2169

12

Ha! Probably. I usually mitigate the stress of dumb pretty well. My tolerance level seems low this morning. Once I get some food in me (lunch), I’ll become more patient.

13

You think that’s bad…read this exchange I had with a user this morning. Some details have been removed since the conversation wasn’t this concise.

USER: “Can you help me setup my new phone with our email?”

“Sure…what happened to your old phone?”

USER: “I gave it to someone else. Hopefully her husband is trustworthy; he’s an IT guy but they’re divorcing and he stole her phone. It still dings when I get an email.”

head desk

NOTE: It turns out that he didn’t steal the phone, he was just the account manager for the carrier but the user did give her phone to someone she knew without removing the email account or checking in with me despite knowing that this recipient was in the throes of divorce. Obviously, I blocked that phone in Exchange.

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