Join IT Support For Abuse and Despair

tomhudson writes "The Register is reporting that IT support people feel abused and frustrated, with 2/3 swearing, almost half being depressed for the rest of the day, and 15% throwing things. Personally, I thinks their stats are off: I've thrown a monitor, a laser printer, keyboards, books, CDs, drives, kicked a few chairs, etc. Who hasn't? What have you thrown lately?"

Comments

Q: What have you thrown lately?

[thecampbeln]

A: My IT support person.

Course, maybe that's why they "feel abused and frustrated"?!

Only throwing?

[Mr2cents]

Are you only interested in thrown stuff or does "tuning it with a very large hammer" count also?

Re:Office Olympics

[Pig Hogger]

I've thrown CDs around, but that's just for the Cubicle Full Contact Football. It's truly the only way to relieve stress after being on a 40 minute call trying to explain where the backslash key is.

... on a french keyboard...

Using VNC & Linux to dramatically reduce downt

[NZheretic]

From my blog "The open eleven steps to telecommuting"

4) Install a DHCP demon on the local server to allocate local IP addresses, DNS and gateway settings. If the desktops are network boot capable then install TFTP to remotely boot and use Knoppix via PXE and the network. If the desktop OS is constantly crashing, or is infected by malware, the user can select PXE/network boot via the BIOS, and boot into Knoppix. The user can then be instructed over the phone to enable the ssh server to allow remote scan,repair and reimaging of the desktop partitions. The user can use the Knoppix desktop to continue working with full access to files while the the remote administrator fixes/reimages the drive in the background.( Consider hiring someone who knows how to customise Knoppix or another live Linux system for your setup )
5) Partition the desktops with as small as required C: partition ( or in the case of Linux the root partition ) for software. When software is install, use dd and netcat via live Knoppix to copy/clone a snapshot of the partition to the server. You can allocate the remaining free space as a persistent partition where documents are stored.
6) Install and enable remote VNC service on all the platforms, but only allow incoming connections from the local server ( which is redirected over a SSH tunnel ).

Lower end desktop PCs can be setup boot as thin-clients, as we used to do, and use LTSP with local ssh login and HD access to do the same job as the thick-client Knoppix.

Serously, someone whould consider hacking a copy of Knoppix or Ubuntu live to work with WINE as a bootable CD for a remote repair service business.

Nothing

[mswope]

Or my job. Same thing - after I realized two things:
1)the job really wasn't worth the hassle - we weren't an "IT company" so there was never going to be a basis for treating IT people as more than throw-away staff and,
2) it wasn't my dad yelling at me.

Actually, the second realization led to the first. It really didn't matter that someone decided that his bad day/attitude was an excuse to be disappointed *in me* (when I'd done my best to overcome the weather, the carriers, the infrastructure, the users, etc.), I'd done my best and my father would've been okay with that. I'm still in the industry, doing a good job (if I do say so myself) and things are good.

Throwing things is childish..

[Improv]

Having done tech support, programming, and a number of similar jobs, I have to say that neither I nor anyone I have worked with have thrown or otherwise abused computer equipment. If they had, I suspect they would have been canned immediately, and for good reason -- people who can't control themselves are a bit .. 'off'. The only person I know who actually has destroyed computer hardware was a layperson musician/artist who was having problems with some sound editing software.. he was very embarassed for the whole trip to MicroCenter to replace the keyboard, mouse, and CDROM drive. The point is that destroying things when angry is childish, and is something that hopefully most people outgrow by the time they're 14 or so.

Re:Throwing things is childish..

[mnmn]

Throwing things is childish..

Just tighten their QoS pipe in the switch. Also remember to exec antivirus on their machines while theyre working. Nothing is more frustrating than a SLOW computer.

Of course switch it back to fast as soon as you get a call on that. Having the problem disappear when the IT guy is around is even more frustrating!

Of course I'm assuming youre talking about getting frustrated at the person, not the problem.

A difficult problem is not frustrating, its challenging. When I run into a problem that must be solved, that hasnt been solved before and whose solution will fill you with pride.... well.. I live for those days.

Re:Throwing things is childish..

[vicgolgo13]

If you are in IT and have people yelling at you, you need to deal with the situation. Walk away, hang up, etc. Even if it's your boss. You don't have to put up with abusive behavior. If it's your boss, you may have some legal options as well. Again, yelling at an employee or co-worker is not acceptable in the business world - ever.

We recently had a "communications" seminar at work and I asked the question, what do we do if someone is being vulgar and abusive to you while on a call (saying this knowing full well that my boss was sitting 3 chairs down from me). The speaker (who himself was a highly regarded, but outside consultant) informed us that we should never, ever have to take any kind of abuse from anyone and that we should give the person a corteous warning ("Can you please refrain from using that language or taking that tone with me...") and if they continued, we should just ghang up on them. My boss was pretty upset with this and couldn't get over the fact that someone would defiantly tell employees to hang up on the customer if they were being abusive.

That being said, I think we need to educate management to understand that customers can be pretty abusive and that no person should have to tolerate that abuse. What a lot of managers don't see is that phone support personnel take abuse on a daily basis from both customers and management and that's why turnovers in low-level support is so high. Maybe if those managers sat on the phones for a day, they'd see what we deal with and work with us rather than fight us on this issue.

To most managers, they only see what on paper in reports and logs, so until the day they do take the calls themselves, IT Support will continue to be the way it is.

In other news

[miu]

People are rude to service people. Work fast food, work as a janitor, work as... whatever - if you are a service person then people are rude to you.

I personally used to get off on people yelling at me over the phone, whoever said "kill em with kindness" had it exactly right. Be competent and honest and unless the person on the other end is a pschopath they cannot help but respond to that and people who were losing it will often apologize.

All that said - I'm glad I don't have to work service or support any more.

The last thing I threw

[ballpoint]

was an exception.