Earlier today we had an e-mail and Internet blackout for a few hours, which of course can cause almost panic-like uproar in an office environment. The "I like to wash my hands before I take a dump" IT guy was running around like crazy and even though he pretended to be stressed, I suspect that he basked in the attention he was getting since people were calling his name and wanted to know why it wasn't working and wanted him to fix it. Some people in my vicinity even chewed him out for not fixing it, even though the problem was on the site of our Asian IT overlords in Singapore and completely out of his control.At 16:34 the mail started working again and I found two mails of particular interest when I finally got it working again, the first one was sent out at 14:35 Japan time and stated "The Internet and E-mail seems to be down, but we are working on restoring the connection as soon as we can and will let you know as soon as things are working again".
The second mail of interest was sent out at 15:52 Japan time and stated "The Internet and E-mail function has now been restored, we apologize for the interruption". Those IT guys seem to think that they can get away with anything...
I also thought that I should elaborate a little on my view on the IT guys. Basically, I see them as the leprechauns or house gnomes of the office. Funny to look at and entertaining in small doses, but hardly something you want to spend any longer time with. If you treat them well, they can show you incredible wealth and benefits, but anger them and you have to suffer their mischief, just like the people of old used to think of these creatures.
I'm currently pretty friendly with them which results in me getting some nice benefits snuck to me before other people, and any computer problem I have is usually fixed quickly as long as I pretend to not notice the BO and the IT guy laughing at all the wrong places and at very non-funny jokes. But I have also seen the people who have angered them and how, all of a sudden, busy they can be with other stuff if it's convenient leaving you hanging for hours and then simply saying "I dunno what the problem is, you have to wait"...
Treat them well and they are harmless, but do not anger them...
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6 comments:
I'm missing something (surprise)
What is the point of sending an "Our E-mail is down" message if you can't see the E-mail?
I am slow. I do not understand. Please forgive me.
I have only done a bit of small business and relo troubleshooting, and it is rather frustrating. The number of things that can go wrong is nearly limitless!
Yeah, the real high level IT guys are a bit odd, a real breed apart. An entire strange subculture!
One of the downsides of IT work is that you can spend days and weeks working on something which no-one will ever notice you've done or the amount of energy and genius you've expended on it, but if you hadn't done it the whole system would have fallen over. (Personally I like to send regular bulletins to selected CC: targets to remind them of my good works :) ).
Anyway I think your BO gnomes are the genus of IT persons known as "system administrators", or worse "helpdesk support", who are a world apart from (and sometimes the arch enemy of) we development/management types. The janitors of IT, so to speak. The poor souls who have to deal with Windows PCs and whatever creative PEBKAC issues the users have managed to dream up. I do not envy them.
True story: the reason why I ended up in IT was due to the obstinancy / bloodymindedness / laziness of the IT department of the company where I was working at the time, where it proved faster to do something oneself rather than spend the time trying to wheedle them out of their little cave to do something that doesn't happen to spark their interest. (Mind you I've actually done pretty well since then marketing myself as a "non-IT person who can use IT to get things done"...)
This is a great travel blog you have here. I'm a first-time visitor, but I'm very impressed. I have a travel blog myself which I hope to be a top resource for those looking for information and experiences on popular vacation destinations.
I'd like to exchange links with you to help spread some traffic around. Please let me know if this is possible.
Jason
ThatVACATIONfeeling.com
Chris - Yeah, but I guess that IT people works in mysterious ways...
Aimless and Penguin - Yes, I believe that big P especially have a point here; the people I'm dealing with are really the janitors of the IT world, they do have an e-mail address called helpdesk@XYZ.com and if I mail there the guy will reply back to me and then walk the 10 meters over to my place. I stopped mailing and just walk over. We're not talking people who can develop worth shit here, these are the guys I ask for the small boring shit such as "why can't I connect to the Internet" and non-exciting things like that. Considering the nature of my work and business, I have basically zero exposure to the more developer IT people, but like Aimless says, my impression has been that that's a completely different story...
Jason - Wow, thanks and yeah, this is not a travel blog?
OMG Classic:
If you treat them well, they can show you incredible wealth and benefits, but anger them and you have to suffer their mischief, just like the people of old used to think of these creatures.
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