Top 10 things ICT Support would like you to know.

[stratisphere]

Posted number 10 in another thread but wasnt sure if this had been posted here before. So here it is in all of it's glory!

 

1. If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because I am positive that I am correct, otherwise I’d just say “I don’t know” or give you some tips on where to look it up, I don’t have the time to just argue for the sake of it.
   
2. Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you; all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me; you don’t want to start a call that way.
   
3. I am ok with you making mistakes, fixing them is my job. I am not ok with you lying to me about a mistake you made. It makes it much harder to resolve and thus makes my job more difficult. Be honest and we can get the problem resolved and continue on with our business.
   
4. There is no magic “Fix it” button. Everything takes some amount of work to fix, and not everything is worth fixing or even possible to fix. If I say that you just need to re-do a document that you accidentally deleted 2 months ago, please don’t get mad at me. I’m not ignoring your problem, and it’s not that I don’t like you; I just can’t always fix everything.
   
5. Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.
   
6. You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.
   
7. Emailing me several times about the same issue in the same day is not only unnecessary, it’s highly annoying. Emails will stay until I delete them, I won’t delete them until I’m done with them. I will typically respond as soon as I have a useful update. If it is an urgent issue, let me know (see number 5).
   
8. Yes, I prefer email over telephone calls. It has nothing to do with being friendly, it’s about efficiency. It is much faster and easier for me to list out a set of questions that I need you to answer than it is for me to call and ask you them one by one. You can find the answers at your leisure and while I’m waiting I can work on other problems.
   
9. Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again.
   
10. And finally, yes, I can read your email, I can see what web pages you look at while you are at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and I can tell if you are chatting with people on an instant messenger or chat room (and can also read what you are typing). But no, I don’t do it. It’s unethical, I’m busy, and in all reality you aren’t all that interesting. So unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don’t. There really are much more interesting things on the internet than you.
    

 

I've got this printed out on a nice A4 laminated sheet, we dont show staff this as they would rebel... but still provides good feelings during stressful days

[busby]

Im sat in a school reading this, and find it to be the best thing ive read all week wouldn't you just love to print that off and laminate it and put it on the ict suite door.

 

Fantastic.

[dalsoth]

I've got this printed out on a nice A4 laminated sheet, we dont show staff this as they would rebel... but still provides good feelings during stressful days

 

Made me laugh with the "provides good feelings" bit. I can imagine you sitting there with a creased forehead after some teacher has stressed you out and then your desk draw starts to rattle a little and you slide it open to see the secret laminate that has been outlawed in schools. Reading it quietly a smile forms on your face and the good feelings are provided!! lol

[featured_spectre]

I sent a copy to my boss asking if I can send it around, and I am being deadly serious

[techie08]

Brilliant!!! Love it!!

[ZeroHour]

Awesome post, rep++ and thanked

[stratisphere]

I've had this ages, dont know why i didnt post it sooner! I'm afraid I cant claim credit for it, nor can I recall where I got it from

 

But yes, giving it a read I find tends to help calm things down and put them in to prospective I so wish I could send it out to all staff, but i'm well aware aside from a slight giggle from a few, a load of complaints from others, all in all it wouldnt make a difference. So i'm happy keeping it to our little office!

[fafster]

I think that we can all relate to the OP.

 

There needs to be another one about how on hearing the words "It'll only take five minutes" results in the same kind of reaction as if you said "Hi, I have ebola-syphilis hybrid virus".

[rad]

Good one, will copy for our office!

[srochford]

It's good but it's not all true :-)

 

No 1, for example - if you look at almost any of the longer threads here, you'll find plenty of examples of things where people really ought to say "I don't know" but they are just arguing for the sake of it (and that definitely includes me...)

 

Nos 2 and 3 just contradict each other; 3 says "be honest if you've made a mistake" but 2 says "don't start off by telling me you've made a mistake"

 

No 5, however, is absolutely spot on. I treat people who send me email with "important" flags attached as queue jumpers and quietly ignore them!

[Edu-IT]

Thank you! I like it.

[Andrew_C]

I can think of IT depts where practically none of those apply...

[synaesthesia]

One of my primaries suffers from staff who all label things as "URGENT" in their best red childrens-homework marking pens - and 95% of the time they are rather less urgent than the single daily toilet-break I attend. Most of them are a "nicety", many are just questions and some are absolutely ludicrous.

 

*URGENT* HUGE problem! There's no sound and I can't teach the curriculum!*URGENT*

 

Which actually translated to (yes, this is real)

"I can't appear to listen to my favoured melodies via Last.FM since xyz software was installed"

 

So, a bit of a heads-down with the ICT Coordinator/bursar/administrator/dogsbody/does_everything_noone_else_will person and we had to come up with an "urgency" scale, 1-5 where 5 is impacting on daily curriculum teaching and 1 is a question or non-urgent query. As this is clearly headed "Impact on Curriculum" rather than "How urgent is your need to listen to Coldplay?" it appears to get through to people much easier. And so far it's actually working. For now :|

[joe90bass]

No 10 gave me a chuckle, this will be going on our office board

[fafster]

but 2 says "don't start off by telling me you've made a mistake"

 

No it doesn't.

[stratisphere]

While sitting here with a beer induced brain... I seem to remember this came from the System Administrator Appreciation Day site somewhere. (This site by the way, I fully endorse!)

[Guest theeldergeek]

I sent a copy to my boss asking if I can send it around, and I am being deadly serious

 

I am going to print it, laminate it, and leave it somewhere where it can 'accidentally' be read by anyone coming into the office.

 

It's about time ICT technicians bit back!

[mrtechsystems]

Could not agree more lol

[Stuart_C]

Now if I put this into Publisher I could technically print this at any size, give or take some sticking together....

So the real question is, "how much A3 I need to totally cover my Office wall?"

 

:D

 

I particulalry like 8 and 10.

[SteveMC]

One of my primaries suffers from staff who all label things as "URGENT" in their best red childrens-homework marking pens - and 95% of the time they are rather less urgent than the single daily toilet-break I attend. Most of them are a "nicety", many are just questions and some are absolutely ludicrous.

 

*URGENT* HUGE problem! There's no sound and I can't teach the curriculum!*URGENT*

 

Which actually translated to (yes, this is real)

"I can't appear to listen to my favoured melodies via Last.FM since xyz software was installed"

 

Ah, but you see they weren't actually linking the no-sound with their inability to teach

 

Stephen

[sonofsanta]

• Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.
  
• You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.

 

One of the Senior Leadership at my old school had a problem with this... he'd often call us on radio (which we mostly carried to call in skiving students) and ask for our location, to which we'd reply "we're busy at the moment sir, can we get back to you..." which was always answered with "well whatever you're doing now, this is priority, I need you now". This without knowing what we were doing - I could've been stood with fire extinguisher in the server room and he'd still expect me to drop everything and come running to help him.

 

More annoyingly, the "problem" was usually that this senior-leadership-pay-scaled, maths-teaching Data Analyst couldn't work Excel - he genuinely asked me to explain the average function to him once. How can you teach GCSE Maths and not work =AVERAGE() in a spreadsheet? Surely he could do it the full way, sum()/x?

 

Everyone thought the same of him though - he was always one to do everything last minute and expect everyone else to drop everything to help him. Glad to be rid of him! Just worried that there's another one like him at my new school...