Deal with staff who are demanding and don't value politeness

[oxide54]

How do you deal with people who send requests especially via email, that could be better worded? I just find the tone of an email people send me really effects how I deal with it and the priority of their item goes way down the list, especially the people that like to hide behind big long complaining emails that they like to copy to every senior person they think actually cares they had to wait 20 seconds to login, and can never be bothered to actually speak to you? especially when they start ranting about having to do something in their own time, that one really makes me laugh as I end staying up 4.00am quite often working on servers because I can reboot an ESX box while their trying to email me to complain

 

my idea of a request sent to IT department should be along the lines of

 

Hi,

 

My printer is working, I've tried printing and it seems stuck could you have a look at it please.

 

Regards

 

Mickey Mouse.

 

Instead of

 

I have been unable to print, this is unacceptable you need to sort this out, this has wasted my time the students time blah blah blah, I am going to have to spend my own time now printing out the students work, as a department we need to be able to print at all times. We should not be expected to unjam the paper we jammed in the printer because we fed it with creased paper, and we want to access to print to every printer in the school whenever we feel like it from anywhere in the school and etc etc.

 

Mickey Mouse

[elsiegee40]

Like you, I'm afraid these people slip to the bottom of my priority list. To be honest, these people are just as bad face-to-face... "demanding" is polite way of putting it.

 

We should be

- professional

- put the request in its approriate place in the help desk queue/maintenance list according to its priority (

- ignore the tone and deal with it like all the other requests...

 

... but contrary to popular opinion amongst non-IT staff at school, we're human and failing to notice the email in your inbox occasionally may be your only way of retaliating without getting sacked.

[glennda]

knowing what you are like i can image some responses people get! you are just quite lucky that you havn't got the head of it we have - every email he sends is aprox 3 pages!

 

(ok i may have exagerated they are normally about 10x longer then they need to be in fairness!)

 

luckily hes being replaced by my sister! Know i can tell her where to politly shove it!

[oxide54]

tbh honest I'm very lucky where I work, I would say 90% are now polite and know exactly how to get a speedy resolution to their problem, or maybe they've learned from my prioritization process.

 

I'm really tempted to setup an exchange account called "Random Person For Effect" and copy that person in on all replies!!

 

unfortunately we are in a job where people are normally stressed when they come to see you, but i don't think this is an excuse and unless you getting 100K+ a year you don't get paid enough to listen this?

 

and toby, I've said it before and I'll say it again, our head of our ICT is great and has defended us over this issue before. funnily enough her requests generally get done before we've even received the email, like some kind of psychic power or something

 

 

At least I'm not alone!!!