Learning to Say No in the Workplace?

Ummagumma asks: "I'm trying to find out how those of you who work in the IT service industry, tell customers 'no', when the requests are unreasonable for whatever reason. There is a culture here of 'piling-on' work with regards to IT - and, unfortunately, I've never learned the proper way to tell people 'no'. It may sound simple, but in this economy, where jobs are tough to come by, I don't want to be seen as the impediment to getting things done Any suggestions on telling people that their work request can wait? Especially in a way that won't jeopardize my future here? I've searched the web, but most of the sites that supposedly have information of this type just want you to sign up for their seminars. I'm looking for actual, real-world experiences, and how the people of Slashdot deal with this issue on a day-to-day basis."

"Here is my dilemma: I'm a relatively new employee (~2 months) at a software engineering shop. I am the sole IT person for a 100+ person company, with 50+ remote VPN users, 40+ developers, 30+ servers, firewalls, etc. I do it all, from desktop and application support, to security, to servers. In the past, the IT department has been seriously under-funded, and there is an absolute ton of catch-up work that needs to get done. At this point, I could work 70+ hour work weeks for a year, and still not be caught up, between project work, upgrade, documentation and day-to-day stuff.

I've inquired about more IT budgeting (staff, equipment, etc.), and that just is not going to happen for quite a while."

Comments

ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

this is what I can't believe about slashdot. the 50000th beowulf cluster, "but does it run linux", "in soviet russia" joke will get modded +4 or +5 funny, and this gets modded -1 redundant. there is far more redundant stuff on slashdot with far higher scores. yes, i am bitter

Re:Get fucked you baby raping faggot american

[GenSolo]

Actually, the sticking point was that we said "unconditional surrender" and they said "Nooooo! Negotiate with us!". Then we said, "unconditional surrender or we're going to vaporize a city." They repeated their refusal. We blew Hiroshima up. We repeated, "unconditional surrender or we're going to vaporize another city." They repeated their refusal. We blew Nagasaki up. Then, we said, "unconditional surrender or the next city we vaporize will be Tokyo." They said, "Ahh shit! Unconditional surrender sounds ok now!" We wrote them a consitution, and Douglas MacArthur got to pretend he was God over there for a while. Truman had already told Stalin all about the bomb as far as its power and such based on the test in the desert.

Re:Get fucked you baby raping faggot american

[JimFromJersey]

I would rather have killed everyone in Japan then lose a single American soldier.

Here is a lesson for you. If you might not like the outcome, don't start a war.