Ticket, please

Posted by OldGirlGeek@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 54 comments

Today I went into our executive suite area to help a user with a ticket that she had submitted a ticket on last week. When I arrived she was sitting in the reception area waiting for me and chatting with two other admin assistants. The other two saw me and said "oh we're so glad you're up here. We have a ton of things we need from you."

I asked "are there tickets for them?" (already knowing there weren't) and one of them kind 9f waved me off and said "oh who actually does that". I pointed at the original user and said "she does, thats why I'm up here helping her.

I finished my ticket, and left without even asking what they needed. These are users who have been here for a couple of years and know better. It felt amazing.

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Shander1521@reddit

I used to be a tech support specialist. I had a form and spreadsheet that I would track my tickets with for staff to use. When they tried to get me to do work without a ticket, I would direct them to the form. Some staff would do it but would be impatient. Those who pestered me about their ticket would get moved down the list every time they asked when I’d get to them. They never knew I did this. One lady was always at the bottom because she constantly bugged me about her ticket. It took months to get to her ticket because I was “so busy.”

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ThunderDwn@reddit

Did you throw one of them out the office window onto a conveniently located baggage cart, then point to the others and loudly say "No Ticket!"?

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NotYourFakeName@reddit

Only if the end users are all German.

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djshiva@reddit

I work in remote support and I constantly have situations where I am working on something for one person, and 3 or 4 other people around them start to chime in about issues they're having, as if they expect me to just help all of them on one call. I tell them: "Call the service desk, that way people can help all of you at the same time." And STILL they don't do it. They just expect me to stay on the line. Why are people?

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OldGirlGeek@reddit (OP)

Ugh. I walked many miles in those shoes at my last place which was an MSP.

My favorite was the time a client forwarded me the closing email from a ticket I had worked for him a year previously saying "call me". I wasn't even on the helpdesk team anymore. I forwarded that to the helpdesk manager for the correct team to look at.

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cyborg_127@reddit

Gotta be careful with those kinds of actions, else the user will still see it as a method to get in contact. A while back we had a major change at my work around contacting help desk, spent 3 months telling our userbase one available method (emailing X mailbox) would no longer be used from X date. The people who took over that mailbox were being 'helpful' and forwarding messages to us. We had to tell them to stop doing that, else the users would never learn. Now they reply telling them so.

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Z4-Driver@reddit

Where I work, I sometimes get this, too. So, I talk to one after the other while creating a ticket for each and everyone. So, I had one call, but created 5 tickets. And no rush, I take my time for each of these tickets.

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AngryCod@reddit

What I hear is that your boss sent you to work on a ticket and you spent 30 minutes doing someone else's clerical work.

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Jealous_Scale@reddit

If it takes 6minutes to log (and possibly close) a ticket, that's a poor ticketing system.

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AngryCod@reddit

You missed the part where he sat and talked with each one.

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NotYourFakeName@reddit

That's not clerical work.

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Eckx@reddit

I think this really depends on the size of the company and how many people you have to support. This is way to do when you only have maybe 50 users total, but a lot harder when you have 500 users.

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AngryCod@reddit

I disagree. Even at 50 users, you're effectively punishing the people who followed the policy by making them wait behind all the people who can't be bothered and want you to do it for them. Then everyone complains that it takes two weeks to get a ticket resolved. You don't get to skip the line just because you bumped into the tech in the hallway.

If you had a butcher shop and you served walk-up customers before the ones who took a number, there would be riots at the meat counter.

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Eckx@reddit

You are comparing different things. If nobody has been waiting 2 weeks for a ticket to be resolved, then there is nothing wrong with finishing other tasks at the same time.

Is you are at the butcher shop and they can help multiple people at the same time, why would you want to stand in line and wait your turn?

I saw in another comment that you work somewhere that handles thousands of tickets a month, and that obviously has to run differently than a place that might not even get 1000 tickets in a year.

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Z4-Driver@reddit

I work at an IT Servicedesk where people call with different problems, so when I talk to someone, it's a call on that helpdesk.

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jamesholden@reddit

while you did right on paper, its not really a good idea to do that to exec AA's

the best way to handle the situation is "hey will you please make a ticket NOW, my boss may bump my other tickets so I can have time to fix your issues before I leave"

if they push, relay that your job and income depends on the tickets being closed -- and that you can be punished for working without tickets.

I left IT a decade ago and did maintenance at a large hotel. honestly not much different than IT work. I would check in with every AA and most managers a couple times a week, it gained me a lot of goodwill and was praised in every yearly review.

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NatChArrant@reddit

Ticking off an AA never ends well

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jeffbell@reddit

"I'll be back as soon as I finish all my tickets."

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Rathmun@reddit

Nah. If you somehow manage to run out of tickets, that still doesn't mean you should go help them without tickets. So if you run out, either you've already been back because they submitted tickets, or they can sit and spin until they've submitted tickets.

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eamonnprunty101@reddit

youre right, but it gives them the motivation to make tickets bc they know theyre at the back of the line

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Rathmun@reddit

Ah, yeah, good point. Still don't actually do anything for them without a ticket.

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Muddledlizard@reddit

I used to travel all over the state I lived in.
Every. single. time. I stepped foot into a building I was hit with, "So glad you're here, this hasn't worked in (weeks/months)". I started to reply, I guess it's not important then and either remove it or leave it depending on my mood. Or I'd tell them I already had open tickets and work orders to do while I'm there. Very rarely did they clue in and put in tickets while I was there.
If they ever called to complain I removed something they needed, I'd ask why they never mentioned or called it in when it broke. I'd get all kinds of answers and eventually it'd come down to "I'll replace it next time I'm on site, which could be another few weeks or months."

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NewUserWhoDisAgain@reddit

So glad you're here, this hasn't worked in (weeks/months)"

love those

"Oh thank god IT is finally here. This has not worked in and its an emergency and needs to be fixed now!"

Neat. Well... I'm not here for that. Its going to take way more than 5 minutes to fix that so... No. Put in a ticket.

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Muddledlizard@reddit

I forgot to add, anytime I set foot into the building and something stopped working it was immediately my fault. Internet went out one time. I hadn't even sat my bag down on a desk before I was accused of causing the outage. "WHAT DID YOU TOUCH????".....the door handle. I touched the door handle. "WELL FIX IT!!!"....put in a ticket please. :)

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frostbird@reddit

It's like they think support are magical unicorns that just show up out of nowhere and are impossible to contact otherwise.

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OldGirlGeek@reddit (OP)

If only there was some way for them to contact IT. Oh, wait.....

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NewUserWhoDisAgain@reddit

To be charitable I've encountered users who are just... shocked that I support more than just their department.

Like yeah people you are not the only people who need IT support.

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NotYourNanny@reddit

I had a store manager who would move broken cash register stuff to the register they only use on really busy long weekends, and not mention it until the day before one of those weekends, when he'd complain to my boss.

I so wanted to name the ticket system I set up specifically because of him after him, but I refrained. After we circulated the new policy in writing, the next time he did that, my boss told him "I don't see a ticket on it so it can't be that important."

He never did that again.

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OffSeer@reddit

Executive Suite you say. So if the AA for the CEO was sitting there with the others and said to you can you fix this problem she’s having, you just walk away. If I was your manager and I heard this you’d be out of executive support and if you did this all the time maybe the door would be swinging.

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LunarRai@reddit

And if I were your manager, I'd be asking the hard hitting questions like: "Why are your subordinates expected to ignore the processes that the executives signed off on?", "What other processes are your subordinates not following on your instructions?", and "Why are you destroying the integrity of our metrics?"

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NotYourNanny@reddit

And saying it to the CEO, not the manager.

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nico282@reddit

While I understand your behavior, I learned that having the office assistants on your side can be really helpful in many situations. They were the few people I helped even when busy.

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agoia@reddit

It all depends. At one company I worked for there was a massive difference in the assistants' quality. One sprayed WD40 into her laser printer because it squeaked while printing. Another would give me the fancy catering leftovers from the board meetings that I could eat off for the entire weekend.

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nico282@reddit

Lol for the WD40... probably I was lucky, the assistants I worked with were all between "lawful good" and "chaotic good". And I confirm, the executive leftovers were a nice perk from time to time.

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agoia@reddit

That's still one of the oddest tickets I ever got in 18 years now. Boss walks into our office "Hey agoia, so and so just reported spraying wd40 into their printer because it squeaks, go collect the printer before it catches on fire. Grab the can of wd40, too while you're at it."

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NotYourNanny@reddit

We had an assistant manager try to blow out the paper dust (we buy cheap printer paper) from a hot laser printer, and instead of compressed air, she used electronics cleaner.

That was the most ear piercing scream I've ever heard. (Fortunately, nothing actually caught on fire.)

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OldGirlGeek@reddit (OP)

Not disagreeing to some extent, and if it was "one thing" instead of "a ton of things", it might be different. We have some....issues....in my organization with people only wanting to dealing with certain techs and not liking to deal with others. Being one of the "preferred" techs isn't always a blessing in this case, they'd rather save things up for when they see one of the ones they like, than put in a ticket and risk having to deal with one of the ones they don't.

We also have our permissions heavily segregated for reasons. So there's every chance that I don't have permissions to whatever they're looking for and they'd need to put in a ticket regardless.

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Profound_Subset@reddit

Factory maintenance here and the same thing happens “oh are you here to look at X?”, check job screen, there is no job in for X, “yes but we need it fixed”

And management say we have a bad attitude when we reply “no ticket, no job”

But job tickets are my primary metric. So goodbye, I’m off to fix machine Y.

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NotYourNanny@reddit

And management say we have a bad attitude when we reply “no ticket, no job”

That's not a user problem, that's a management problem.

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ZeroMoneyDown@reddit

“My departments funding depends on our metrics. The way we get our metrics is via tickets. If you don’t open tickets for your issues, we don’t get the metrics. If we don’t have the metrics, we can’t justify our jobs.”

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alf666@reddit

You need one final step to drive home the point: "And if we can't justify our jobs, it takes longer for your stuff to get fixed by a crappy outsourced IT department."

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NotYourNanny@reddit

Better if you have a firm (and enforced) policy that IT isn't allowed to do things there's no ticket for (except, of course, for emergencies, which have to be justified after the fact).

And maybe a second policy that requires IT to report such requests to HR for disciplinary action.

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nadrae@reddit

I know of IT people who get their budget because of how many tickets they finish. Of course they are not going to do work not of a ticket!

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AngryCod@reddit

We process thousands of tickets per month. The techs are all fully committed and don't have time to work on your "this will just take a minute" request. I don't want them working on that request. I want them working the tickets they were assigned. It's like stopping the Amazon driver and saying "Hey, as long as you're here, can you give me a ride to the convenience store?"

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SnooCapers9313@reddit

At an old job I was the only one allowed to deal with our electrician (we had 3 stores but he also had other customers), the boss new I would compile a list until it was worth calling him in vs getting him in for a small job then a week later a big job. Also the electrician got sick of coming in to fix one problem then someone would say while you're here can you do this. He had other customers he had come in to do one job not 5. Admittedly he came in one morning and I said at some point we'll get you in to replace this power point but in the mean time I've blocked it off and he's like nah I can do that it'll only take 5 minutes. I worked with him so much and got on so well with him, several years after I left my old boss called me to let me know he'd passed away.

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nadrae@reddit

You are preaching to the choir. I think you meant to reply to OP.

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joule_thief@reddit

I'm stealing this.

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PSPHAXXOR@reddit

Sometimes if the people are cool or are being cool I'll give them a freebie if it's an easy one. I'm not going through paperwork to fix a mouse issue.

If I walk in and they tore the cables out of the switch then that's a ~~paddlin'~~ ticket.

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Sirbo311@reddit

If it's someone I know that has scratched my back before, I'll take their walk-up (especially if I can tell they are stuck, and me doing it keeps them productive) ON THE CONDITION they get me that ticket. (I'll trust them to get the ticket in). If they do not, they have lost their walk-up privilege. Usually, they are very motivated. Very few times have I had to revoke that.

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udsd007@reddit

If it doesn’t have a problem number, it isn’t a problem.

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Sujynx@reddit

Just returne6to work after an operation and had to be assessed by the occupational health nurse. Before we started i had to show her (again) how to save her hearing reports to their network shsre instead of her desktop. Niw they don't have to be emailed to each other.

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