The Wrong Way to Ask for Help

Posted by Ok_Pomelo_2685@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 14 comments

You gotta love when a help desk employee walks into your office looking for help and they don't have any notes and come with zero information. These conversations go right to their supervisor.

Help Desk Employee: I have a user on the phone who can't open a Citrix app.

SysAdmin: What's the username?

Help Desk Employee: That's a good question.

SysAdmin: What's the name of the Citrix app?

Help Desk Employee: I don't know.

SysAdmin: What's their hostname?

Help Desk Employee: I forgot.

SysAdmin: Have you asked anyone else in the help desk for assistance?

Help Desk Employee: I didn't. They were all on the phone.

SysAdmin: Have you done any troubleshooting at all?

Help Desk Employee: I have not. I just assumed you would take care of it.

SysAdmin: All the questions I just asked you, go back and ask them.

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ManWhoIsDrunk@reddit

He's not exactly PFY material... You should show him the dangers of the raised floors in the server room.

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asmcint@reddit

Pimply-Faced Youth. A phrase for a sidekick to a Systems Operator, especially one with a proclivity for the Bastard ways.

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ManWhoIsDrunk@reddit

It's the term for a SysOps sidekick. I have some reading material for you. I think you'll like it.

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JagadJyota@reddit

Thank you, but I'm trying to cut down.

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If OP isn't their direct manager etc., can't blame them. I had 2 well trained experienced service desk guys...in a 6mo period they both decided, any ticket or any call that had the word "phone" or anything even related to "phone" got blind asigned to me.

Outside of the primary Sysadmin role, I was also the Network Engineer, and data center admin globaly...which included a nation wide Cisco VoIP system (CUCM, Unity, UCCX) that only I knew.

I was "the phone guy"

The tickets getting blind assigned..."I got a new cell phone, need help with Outlook app". My work phone headset won't connect", "my phone won't connect to star bucks wifi"...

As you can imagine I was not amused. I wrote a few emails with documentation with tickets, Teams messages, and other communication about how they need to at least look at the ticket, ask at least 5 questions...they still couldn't do that enough times.

They were both fired over a few years, and that says A LOT for what my company would tolerate.

However, I stopped getting "phone tickets" blindly after my 2nd email with examples....but they did try a few other times between then and being gone.

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dannybau87@reddit

You've got to train people. We all like to think we were just awesome on day 1 but I'm sure we were all like that.

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Ok_Pomelo_2685@reddit (OP)

It's my fault for not originally stating this is a fully trained employee that's that been with us for a year and prior HD experience.

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ManWhoIsDrunk@reddit

While we weren't all superstars on day one, we knew that we had to get basic details like the username and a description of the issue.

I will lean towards this being OPs fault though, for not having a checklist for beginners to help them fill out tickets.

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