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How Do You Deal w/ User Induced Stress?
Anonymous asks: "I've worked as a Network/System Administrator at a small company for two years now. It's my nature to remain calm and collected while trying to accommodate everyone, even when having a particularly stressful day. After two years though, I've recently found myself being stressed all the time and my calm, cool exterior is starting to show some cracks. How do Slashdot readers cope with the stress induced by a highly demanding job and being stalked by users asking for the same thing over and over (i.e. password resets, login problems, how do you...)?"
Stupidity Induced Beatings.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
In today's economy everyone is working to the point where they don't even know what stress is anymore. There is no "normal days" to remind us what work was supposed to be like.
...Insanity Later.
I'd love to know.
I am the very model of a modern major general!
...Lots of it. Won't make the problem go away but it'll make you feel better for a while. Job security isn't guaranteed though.
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
I've recently installed a Wiki for our staff, and if I get a question more than once, I add a little How-To for that subject to the Wiki. Now the first question I ask people is if they've checked the Wiki... it's amazing how people have sort of embraced it and are populating it themselves.
The worst thing to do with stress/emotion is to hide it and keep it away. Sure, there are definitely occasions when you need to keep your cool, but if you fid yourself having to do it constantly every day, get out fast. You will find yourself doing something rash and stupid which you will most definitely regret later on if you let it all build up.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Amen. Several years ago on a very stressful project we setup a Nintendo 64 on the big video conference televisions and had four way death matches every day at 18h00 --- it was the perfect way to relieve the tension.
At a previous job one of the engineers created a Doom map of the corporate head quarters, with appropriate facial skins... he got in a hell of a lot of trouble but it was fun while it lasted.
However, an idea might be to ask your boss about the possibility of hiring a minimum-wage intern. When I was in college, I would have cheerfully killed to get a job working in IT that provided real-world experience, rather than cleaning greasetraps or restocking warehouses. You'd have to be careful about trustworthiness, but a minion to answer phones, deal with users who habitually leave caps lock on, and make coffee could significantly decrease your workload while not costing your company too much money.
Your boss might well go for it, especially if you explain that there's just too much work for one person, and that you can either get an intern or hire another full-time IT worker. This way, your plan actually saves money (at least compared to the alternatives you present). Even if the boss doesn't go for it, there's very little to lose by trying it. Good luck!
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
Reset passwords, create login problems...
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
next time you have to go through an explanation, record it. Make a label for the entry. Accumulate different topics until you have a nice fat cd full of subjects.. Use labels like "AAAk! no password" and "browser is slow/doesn't work" "where's my email?" "how do I..." whatever. Along those lines, with the appropriate response. Burn a lot of CDs with the info, then just smile, hand one over to the latest customer, say "it's on there, first cd is free,you lose it, after that it's ten bucks". Or alternate, run it on the network internally with a pointer to it.
The CD version may not relieve the stress, but at least it will cover beer and aspirin money.....
This completely depends on whether or not it's your job to handle these things immediately. If it is, then you're kind of out of luck as not doing them means you're not doing your job.
I'm also guessing that you don't mind helping the "nice users" who only ask the "how do I" type questions once and maybe come back again asking for some clarifications on the "why" part of the particular question; I love these users, as they want to learn and help me do my job.
For the users who fit into the "I'll use the admin as my manual" type, quit being nice. Explain something once and, when they ask the same question again, hand them a note pad and remind them that they asked you that same question sometime previously. Suggest that notes be taken. On the third offense, hand them a 3.5 card with "http://www.google.com" written on it and tell them that you are an administrator and that you are more than happy to help them learn a particular concept, but you just don't have the time to be their personal man page.
Do note that to "quit being nice" does not mean to treat them like crap, yell, scream or otherwise throw a fit. I'm trying to get these users to quit using my brain and start using theirs. I'm more than happy to help them with some bit of wisdom once they've demonstrated to me that they're not just lazy.
Passwords I handle in a similar manner. I have the "Monday password club" on my whiteboard with the name of everybody who asks me to reset their password Monday morning because they just can't remember it after a two day weekend. It takes two consecutive Mondays to make the list. Next to the names are the number of "successful" and "failed" Mondays. Passwords are reset to "IForgotMyPasswordXXWeeksStr8" where XX is the number of weeks on the whiteboard. The smarter of the users will come down when they've forgotten their passwords and see my tally. After four weeks on the board, the users are sufficiently trained and I remove their names.
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
"being stalked by users asking for the same thing over and over (i.e. password resets, login problems, how do you...)"
:D
If you have a large number of people asking the same things over and over again, you ought to have (as the name suggests) a FAQ. Keep it up to date and relevant to the problems people have, and it will save you (and them) time.
If a bunch of people are confused about the same issue, maybe the process they have to follow should be made more user friendly? Usually when a lot of people have the same problem, it is a genuine problem, and not them being idiots. If they *are* idiots there's not much you can do to fix that, so try increasing user-friendliness first.
Keep in mind there is a good kind of lazy. Any tools you can create to save work for yourself and others in the future, is the good kind of lazy. So spend a couple hours writing a shell script, so that you can save 20 minutes each time a problem comes up again and again. Eliminate mindless repetitive tasks as much as possible, and you'll save yourself time, and the time you do work will be more enjoyable.
I find that cutting back my responsibilities in all areas of life helps. For example, if I'm having money problems, I move to a cheaper place, drive a cheaper car, etc... When my home life and personal life feel comfortable and easily manageable, with enough free time for fun stuff, I can handle work stress way more easily. If work is the only source of stress in my life, and I can't handle it, I cut back my work hours. If management expects, for example, sixty hours a week for my salary, then I give them two weeks notice of my change in availablility to fewer hours with a proportional reduction in salary. If I can't handle the salary reduction, then I've got to cut my expenses. It's simple. If I'm stressed out, that means I'm asking myself to do too much. Sometimes a humble life is the best life.
Seriously, exercise, to me at least, is one of the best stress relievers.
I'm an amateur bodybuilder working his way up so I would normally be training in the gym everyday anyway, but its great to go in the gym after a day of dealing with users/customers and slamming some iron around. The weights don't care how you treat them, its great. Plus, when you've got 400lbs on your back, the last thing you're worried about is why Susie Q. can't duplicate an event on her calendar.
Finally, exercising, even a little amount just 3 days a week (think 20 minutes 3 days a week, 1 friggin hour!) will change your life drastically. You'll sleep better, find you naturally eat better, and are much less stress free.
Sorry to sound so preachy, but I used to be a fat computer nerd, and I started training, got hooked, and totally changed my life around. Look into it.
-Vic
In a job like that, it would make things a lot less stressful and more fun if you smoked the occasional j-stick before work. I suggest doing right before your shower so that you don't smell. You'll have a nice grin on your face, and people's problems won't seem to bad.
I also agree with the person who posted about exercise. I started working out three times a week over a year ago, and now I go anywhere from three to five times a week. It definitely helps with stress, and has the added benefit of making you feel a lot better about yourself, too.
That way, you get to express yourself, and keep the advantage of indirection: "Not YOU, of course. Or maybe YOU, especially". Let the reader decide, and have a laugh, too.
When my stress level maxed out, I posted a price list for questions, akin to the mechanics' price list that starts out "If you fixed it first...", and "If you watch...". The highest price on my list was for "Why..." questions. These days, it might be on your web form users fill in to alert you to their particular brand of misery. Then, it was posted in my cubicle.
curiouser and
Get thee to The Register, and read the BOFH stuff. ALL of it.
That'll give you a few ideas to get started.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Wield the LARG, clue bat, maulinator, whatever.
Seriously, at a very very stressful contract job I once had, I inherited a baseball bat (fine wood Louisville Slugger) from my predecessor (covering whose escape from there was the agreed-upon purpose of my presence there.) I named it "Molly", from the Neuromancer character Molly Millions.
The thing had come into existence years previously, during a horrible project that was totally overbudget and schedule, where a psycho manager had apparently walked around wielding the bat and a sword and screaming things like "I'm gonna break some fuckin' heads!" When he was called into a meeting, someone stole the bat and sword--nobody knows where the blade is now, but generations of network security guys husbanded the bat until I got it.
I brought it to meetings and to server rooms in emergencies, as kind of a safety blanket. We got really good at training our clientele (major international bank) to understand that we were there for them, we'd fix all their problems, but (a) they had to ask nicely, (b) they had to come to us with the issue, and (c) they'd have to trust us.
We always came through, which translated into a lot of credibility, but also meant that we had the best-stocked "thank you" bar in the whole company, but sitting in your office, listening to some flustered manager blubbering about a dead trading system while patting Molly (but always smiling!) was pretty funny.
It got to the point where it became an icon around the bank--people on the internal IRC channels picked up on it, so whenever someone made some horribly stupid security-related remark, there'd be a loaded pause before somebody would make a comment along the lines of "uh, xxx, I think Molly would like to speak with you"...
So as you see, it's all a question of user re-education, tovarich.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Here is my outlook, let me know your thoughts...
If you're at work for X hours, does it really matter how you're spending your time? Just kill your ego a bit and don't worry about it. You are being paid for your time, so if people want to waste it, then complain to management the same as you would if they sit there reading a magazine all day instead of working.
If the problem is keeping track of your TODO list, then you just need to get organized. What would you do if you were a software developer and someone kept giving you new bug reports? You'd log them in a list sorted by priority. Can you do the same here?
If this "stress" is caused be being forced to work more than the original alloted hours, then that should be a different Ask Slashdot question: "What should I do when I get asked to work overtime when i'm not getting paid?"
First of all, accept that stress may be an inevitable and expected part of your job. Most jobs, from graduate-entry level up to and including Chairman of the Board are inherantly stressful. If you don't want this or can't deal with it at all... go flip burgers.
Work-related stress is not unique to the IT field. Nor is the problem of having to deal with users you think of as stupid (although in other fields, they may be called customers, clients, stakeholders or some other term, rather than users). I've noticed a lot of IT workers exacerbate their own feelings of stress and anger by telling themselves (and everybody else who will listen) that they and their field are unique and have pressures that nobody else can understand. Not true.
Trying to have a little more respect for your co-workers is one of the first steps to managing stress. You may think your users are stupid. In the vast majority of office environments, this won't be the case. Your co-workers may not be IT experts. They may not even be able to use Microsoft Office without screwing up. This is probably not because they are stupid, it's more likely to be because they have no particular interest in computers and no real desire to learn beyond the basic level they think they need to do their job (which may be very different to what you believe is the basic level they need). They almost certainly have a lot of skills that you don't. You may think the people in HR are stupid because they forget their passwords and can't even use Excel for 5 minutes without wiping their hard-disks. If you let them see you feel like this, they will think that YOU are stupid, because you don't know how to develop your career effectively and work well in a corporate environment. If you respect your co-workers, this will show in your behaviour. If it shows in your behaviour, they will pick it up. If they pick it up, their own opinion of you will improve. You don't have to get along with everybody all the time - this isn't achievable other than through being a doormat, which isn't helpful - but if you can establish a degree of mutual professional respect, it will make your office life a thousand times easier. If you need money to hire an assistant, it's easier to get this if the HR and Finance people (who probably have accredited professional qualifications, just like you) you have to deal with see you as a professional rather than as an immature computer geek. If nothing else, it's less frustrating to have to back down in the face of a colleague's arguments than it is to be over-ridden by a pencil-pushing luser idiot.
Therefore, don't adopt a BOFH attitude. Simon Travaglia is a funny guy. Reading his stuff usually makes me chuckle and, yes, this can also relieve stress. But in real life, BOFHs get, at worst, sacked or arrested and, at best, frustrated, stuck in a career rut and stressed beyond belief.
Other than that, all I can offer is the usual stuff. Try to prevent work from encroaching on your recreational time. Don't see "working from home" as a solution. It isn't... it's an invitation for work to take over your home life, without any of the "fun" sides of working in an office. If you can't do something, don't promise it... management respects people who are open about what can and cannot be achieved more often than you might expect.
Above all, be splendid to each other.
sounds like you need a better hobby outside of work. something completely and totally non-IT related. you gotta be able to leave work at work. it sounds like you are not de-stressing enough when you leave. has something changed recently? loss of sig other perhaps?
</dr phil>
go out and have some fun dude!
And some people will get the hint - when someone comes over to ask a dumb question, they'll notice that the perfectly polite sysadmin is crushing the living fuck out of that stress ball.
PS - Buy 2 or three at a time, they wear out fairly quickly.
The human body and psyche is not equipped to deal with constant and chronic stress. Get at the source of the stress and don't try to manage the symptoms all the time. The simplest answer is that you need additional workers in your department to help you. With this solution comes lots of other problems: management, fear of losing one's job, etc. Don't be selfish and hoard your jobs for fear that you'll lose it -- I'm not saying you're doing it specifically, but I see some people in IT have this mentality. Don't be surprised that you have to do some MORE work to get help -- collecting data on the hours spent (or wasted) doing menial tasks and conveying it to upper management. Good luck and always remember to get at the source of the problem -- plugging holes here and there is not the solution, and this pertains not just to your health but the entire configuration of your work's network and computer system.
Linux at home
You should have a procedure in place to deal with requests.
Even the smallest company can benefit from some procedures.
A form, a website, emails (visible to everybody).
What you want to achieve:
- Organize the work in order to prioritize it.
- Quantify the work that you are doing. If 9 to 5 is not enough time to do all the work you should be able to prove it, And by no means work a single minute more than what you are paid for, otherwise resourcing problems will never become evident.
- If you are overwhelmed you can shift the decision about what gets priority to your boss. That is why bosses exist, they deal with the unpleaseant part. hey get well paid for that, let them earn their money.
- Is somebody comes to chase you point to your input tray (whatever form it takes). If Somebody is too insistent then inform other people that you are giving him priority. If your boss is not sorting out things, then let the users "help you" with the prioritization.
Bureaucracy is your ally if you know how to use it in your advantage.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you're stressed, there are two hormones you need to watch: adrenaline and cortisone. Adrenaline gives you that rush when you're busy, but it subsides slower than it builds up, so extended crunch time will give you too much adrenaline. Then, cortisone kicks in. Sadly, cortisone is just like that acid in your muscles (I forget the name) -- it's short-term relief that only adds to your hormonal imbalance.
So, what you need to do is mentally relieve yourself once in a while. I realize that's not the best thing to say on Slashdot, but I am in fact quite earnest.
How you do it (playing a computer game, reading a book on your lunchbreak(!), going bowling or walking the dog) is up to you, as long as you get your mind on something else entirely.
What really works well is sleeping (obviously), or just a nap if you cna manage one mid-day, and also laughing og yawning. Honestly.
If you feel your stress is beginning to become a problem, talk to your manager and see if you can get a couple of wednesdays off -- then your work week will be only two days long, with short and long "weekends" in between. I know from personal experience that this is a great way to recover from work burn-out.
Hope it helps, and good luck to you!
"Good news, everyone!"
And yet, obesity is a "national epidemic", and its incidence is higher among the poor. Funny, that.
Not funny at all when you go to a grocery store and look at what the cheapest foods on the shelf are- deep fried noodles and white bread.
Plus, it's a scientifically proven fact that if you eat every other day you WILL gain weight- you'll be throwing your body into a feast/famine cycle which will be stored as fat.
Thus, your example of obesity as a national epidemic among the poor is actually PROOF THAT THE POOR CANNOT AFORD GOOD NUTRITION.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I go to the range and run about 200 rounds through my Glocks every week. I don't even think about work when I do it. The repetitive action, noise, and effort at hitting the target has a very calming effect. My cousin compares it to other martial arts for stress relief. (She just earned her black belt in Karate.)
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.