Some people really will....
Posted by showyerbewbs@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 57 comments
They will really do anything and every thing except put in a support request. We have a portal they can self submit. There is an email listener that will create the ticket in their name.
All they have to do is utilize them. Telling them "I'm on another call". Or "Hey, please do this so the team can be aware of it".
Then they try to call me directly on Teams, but I'm on a Teams call. Or they think they have the magic beans and call my mobile number directly, which has a voice mail to please submit a ticket because I'm not available.
But they'll still give a running play by play on Teams about how this wasn't the way it used to be.
I apologize if this is ranty but 90 minutes later, they still haven't put in a ticket. I enjoy helping the people in my company but for the love of FSM, please...pretty please....submit a ticket.
For those that will comment, put one in for them. I agree, to a point. The entire point of my responses to put in a ticket are framed SPECIFICALLY about me not being available.
Embarrassed-Dot-1794@reddit
I have in the past emailed the support directly on their own company email about something, not really thinking it's a support thing and they put a ticket in for it... I'm not saying that your case is the same just thought I'd put my two cents in.
Also I try to do as many fixes myself as possible before involving them
Thin_Pomegranate9206@reddit
Same thing happens with us. I've started being extra aggressive about telling them to submit a ticket. It's been working for the most part.
Email me directly? Please submit a ticket to our system so we can document this process for future reference.
Teams me? Same thing.
Call me? I'm not answering unless it's a VIP.
Geminii27@reddit
I actually really liked what one place I worked at did: they spun off a smaller national helpdesk team which only handed VIP calls (in practical terms, mostly EAs of executives) so they could bypass any helpdesk queues that the regular plebs had to wade through.
It was mostly great because every time the brass made noises about cutting the IT support budget, the upper IT manager immediate above both teams in the org chart would say "Brilliant idea, sir, masterful, we can start with cutting the most inefficient incident-per-month-resolved team, which would be the VIP helpdesk. We're all proud that you're committing to having to call the same phone queue as the other 25,000 employees whenever you have an issue. Solidarity!"
Mysteriously, the budget would remain uncut...
Zach_luc_Picard@reddit
Brilliant bit of office politics, I love it
SeanBZA@reddit
Second time would reply with their manager as CC saying that, as explained before, support requires a ticket to be opened, and then the methods usable for this.
Third time same response, just include not only their direct manager but the manager for that dept.
WildMartin429@reddit
Our management was super strict with us about following policy and procedure and making sure that tickets were created properly but that all went out the window when we had a svip which I think the S stood for special and then we pretty much been over backwards to do whatever they need it. Even regular VIPs though in the system they just got a little extra care but they still had to follow procedure. I think the regular VIPs were people who thought that they should be important and wanted a special designation and their tickets did get priority but they weren't svips.
KelemvorSparkyfox@reddit
I used to get calls. There were some frequent ~~f~~liars who called as soon as something was wrong. My first question to them was, "Okay, what's the ticket number?"
Only took a few repeats before they actually had a ticket number when I asked them.
dasirishviking@reddit
Was the designated unit IT guy when i was in the corps. Had a butter bar come in and rant and rave about the status of his ticket. He yelled and stomped his feet and made a scene. my captain came out, interrupted him, and asked what the issue was. Instead yelling at poor LCpl me, he had a pleasant conversation with my captain. Even said he make sure we made sure to prioritize this guys issues, and he'd have a talk with me, because i didn't understand the gravity of the situation. Butter bar left, satisfied, and gave me a 'knowing' smirk on his way out.
The captain sure did give me a talking to. Gave me some cash to go to the geedunk locker and get some snacks., and said meet him in the smoke pit. We got out there and he told me i did everything right, and to put that guys ticket at the top of the whiteboard for everyone to see, and then to ignore everything that came accross our desk with that guys name on it. 6 months later, and his issue still wasn't resolved, but the captain kept running interference. Was really funny when the butter bar went above him to our colonel, and the old man shut him the fuck down.
Good times.
pockypimp@reddit
I work in a facility where there are belts running around the place. Near the belts at different spots are Linux touch panels that pair to bluetooth hand scanners. Often we'll find one turned off or broken, smashed screens used to happen pretty often. No ticket opened.
We have one manager that refuses to open tickets. The section of belt she manages has had one fail and rather than open a ticket by calling the Help Desk or submitting one through the portal she had one of her employees put an "Out of Order" sign up. We of course ignored it since there was no work ticket.
Later on we noticed someone had added "Days broken" to the sign and had added tick marks. So I added "Tickets open: 0" and left. I think it was another week until a different manager opened a ticket for it.
TheBariSax@reddit
At a previous job we had an exec admin who would put in a ticket with "call me"
We called her PITA (you can figure that out).
davidsinnergeek@reddit
When I was still in IT, I would put in the ticket for the end user, but I would note clearly that I was transcribing from their voice mail, and I would bill them 15 minutes for the ticket creation. I had to stop what I was focusing on to submit for them, so the billing was justified.
sharonna7@reddit
Oooh, I like that idea!
Geminii27@reddit
I mean, sure. If you can bill it, then absolutely go for it.
Tyr0pe@reddit
What happened to the old "No shoes, no shirt, no service"? "No ticket, no service". It's really not that hard.
HerfDog58@reddit
I did user support for a company during COVID that had been acquired by a larger company a few months prior to my joining. It got so bad with people pinging me on Teams or email without submitting a ticket that I eventually did a few things:
There were always middle managers in other departments who thought they were more important than they were, and would try to browbeat me. I'd explain things to them, and if they continued to complain, I'd just get my manager on a Teams call. He would tell them "HerfDog is working on something important for the that is urgent and takes precedence over everything. If you submit a ticket, I'll assign it to another one of the team." If they complained more, he would say "OK, I'll have my VP call your VP and explain it. Good bye."
I was there about 18 months. In my current role, I have almost no direct interaction with end users, thank the old gods and the new!
WildMartin429@reddit
Why is it always the middle managers who think they're more important than they are?
Geminii27@reddit
One thing I loved about working a federal government helpdesk was that our pay scale and official government-peon level (due to being located in the national capital) was equal to or greater than nearly all personnel in at least the non-capital offices, including all supervisors and all lowest-level managers.
If the very, very few managers above that level tried to push, our supervisors were technically at the upper-management level, and the helpdesk manager counted as an executive. There were also multiple levels of IT management above that who we could call on nearly trivially.
So the old "Do you know how important I am" bit tended to run aground very rapidly when we could say "Yes, matching your userID to Active Directory and that job title to the national org chart, you are... two levels below my supervisor, Ms Barely-A-Manager. Would you like to talk to them about why you consider yourself too important for the processes that even the lower executive have to undertake - and they can conference in your own office most-senior manager for the explanation - or would you like your IT issue addressed?"
Faded_Ginger@reddit
I was IT support on a military installation. "Well, I work for The General" was not the flex some users thought. "Really? Wow! So do I! And everyone else on this installation."
joshg678@reddit
Sounds like you had a good manager.
HerfDog58@reddit
He was good, always had his team's backs.
Brother_Professor@reddit
I basically ignored all calls and emails until after standard business hours (I worked many project at odd hours for the OT). Only then, would I reply that I'll get to them after my "ticketed" calls.
BTW... there were always more tickets
It came to a head when a mightier-than-thou user called me demanding support after I hadnt reurned his call in a timely fashion (like 2 hours, not that i was going to call him back sooner anyways) while I was at the CFO'S office. Keep in mind the CFO was a Governance by-the-book guy and hears the conversation. After I hang up, he asks me who was on the phone and I told him.
The next day during the morning Ops meeting, our Director tells us we only work off of tickets and to let him know if anyone tries to skirt the process and he'lltake care of it.
Later that afternoon, a co-worker got an actual ticket for Mr Holier-than-thou.
SeanBZA@reddit
Hopefully a termination of support ticket......
DeciduousEmu@reddit
Over 20 years ago I worked for a mid size company that was bought out by a BIG corporation. The way that a "no ticket, no help" attitude was engrained was by leadership at the highest level telling everyone that that was just how it was going to be.
The biggest shock was that business level VPs had to go through a corporate IT project approval process to get changes made. They used to be able to just tell IT to "make it so" without ponying up the needed resources and without taking into account the amount of support needed for whatever shiny new thing they wanted IT to do.
amyehawthorne@reddit
It is wild that they'll do 5x the work to avoid something that's pretty easy
oolaroux@reddit
Same type of impulse as people who will innovate ways to be criminals rather than use that energy to do something legitimate.
amyehawthorne@reddit
There are so many stories about fraud, identity theft and even murder where I think that! Bruv, if you have the wherewithal to create multiple fake personas to carry out this scheme, a legit job would be a piece of cake!
ConceitedBuddha@reddit
I know a person like this (though he hasn't done anything illegal as far as I know, just chasing some get rich quick schemes)
And I think the problem these people have is that they're unable to do stuff that bores them or follow a normal routine.
Because this guy had dropped out of school several times, while doing a lot of work wheeling and dealing.
It always felt like unless he could get that fast dopamine hit from an activity nothing would get done.
kayloulee@reddit
Oh. Hm. I have ADHD from my mother's side of the family. My grandfather, her dad, was an only mostly competent career fraudster and con artist. I've always wondered why he just kept doing crime even when he kept getting caught. Partially WWII trauma of course, partially I think he only wanted jobs he was unqualified for, so he did self-employed crime instead, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if ADHD and the inability to do boring routine work was a contributing factor.
Geminii27@reddit
They want to have a 'special' way which is only for them, to make themselves feel more important than everyone else. And to feel like they can order other people around (including making them go against their actual job requirements/instructions), giving them a feeling of personal power.
Wheeljack7799@reddit
Those that won't give you the wall of text of why they shouldn't have to put in a ticket will instead send you a "Hi" and nothing else at variable intervals.
WildMartin429@reddit
I always despised communicating over teams for Skype for this reason. Don't send a hi and wait for me to respond and then 5 minutes later send a can you help me? Send me a summary of what your issue is with any details that you have. By the time we get through all of the back and forth 5 minutes between text messages I'm already on a call or have pulled another ticket.
Geminii27@reddit
I'd never want to do support over a direct-messaging system. Much less one that allows end-users to directly start conversations with me.
WildMartin429@reddit
Yeah we only used phone, email, and website for them to submit tickets but when we were reaching out trying to contact them we were supposed to call and leave a voicemail if they didn't answer if you were able to leave a voicemail. Then if they were online we were supposed to reach out on teams and of course even if they were green showing available they wouldn't reply to your message until you were busy with something else, and then if we didn't get a reply we were supposed to send them an email letting him know that we tried to contact them with the help desk phone number telling them to call us so that we can help them because for some reason users always think we could just press a button and fix things but 99% of the time it was an issue on their system where we needed to either walk them through fixing something or just remote in and fix it.
But the reason I found it so frustrating is because when they would finally reply to a message I would already be on a call with somebody else and so I'll have to be talking to someone and then typing to someone else asking them to wait for me to finish this call.
More over the really annoying thing was when you help someone and they liked the way you helped them then instead of following the ticketing procedure they want to just reach out to you directly to fix future issues. Which was a big no-go for us. I'm like I'd be happy to help you with that what's your ticket number? Oh you haven't submitted a ticket? Go ahead and submit a ticket through the website and then reach back out to me with your ticket number and I'll take a look. But I would get messages from someone after I left for the day cuz I had a early shift where I would come in and work like 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. because we were a 24/7 service desk so we came in staggered the handle volume and time zones and so they message me like four in the afternoon after I've already left for the day and then it would be my day off the next day and so I wouldn't see the message for a day and a half and they'd be all upset because I didn't respond and I would be like did you submit a ticket through the proper process? Well this is why you submit a ticket because I was not in the office therefore no one saw your issue because I didn't see it and I was the only person you contacted
Geminii27@reddit
I'd never want to do support over a direct-messaging system. Much less one that allows end-users to directly start conversations with me.
HaElfParagon@reddit
Oh I get those!
User submits a 7 paragraph email about a problem when they were working from home, but it's only an issue before noon on wednesdays, and from 1:00 to 1:30 every other thursday.
You tell them they need to submit a ticket
They submit a ticket that is:
Subject: Problem
Body:
Please fix!!!!!!!
MikeSchwab63@reddit
Put in a ticket for training user to submit a ticket.
Geminii27@reddit
So many calls to IT should have tickets being generated for HR, Training, or the caller's own managers to (re)train them on some aspect of their job which has nothing to do with whether the IT infrastructure is working properly.
"How do I do X in app-that-only-one-team-uses?"
"No idea; we don't have references for business processes and this is the first time we've even heard that the app existed - it's not covered in our scope of support, there's no specialist team to route a ticket to, and we're not budgeted for it. Talk to your manager."
"But it's on a computerrrrrrr!"
Geminii27@reddit
So many calls to IT should have tickets being generated for HR, Training, or the caller's own managers to (re)train them on some aspect of their job which has nothing to do with whether the IT infrastructure is working properly.
"How do I do X in app-that-only-one-team-uses?"
"No idea; we don't have references for business processes and this is the first time we've even heard that the app existed - it's not covered in our scope of support, there's no specialist team to route a ticket to, and we're not budgeted for it. Talk to your manager."
"But it's on a computerrrrrrr!"
Krispy89@reddit
If it’s not in a Ticket, then it doesn’t exist. Period.
Had to learn that the Hard way a number of times in the past myself when people skirted around the process and didn’t learn how it worked.
WildMartin429@reddit
And a corollary to this that my old boss always used to say was that if it's not documented in the ticket then it didn't happen. So take good notes on what you did and why you did it.
Geminii27@reddit
If nothing else, it'll cut back on the number of times you pull up a related instance ticket from six months ago, say "What clown wrote this mess?", and then realize that... oh. It was me. I was the clown.
WildMartin429@reddit
I think we've all experienced that. 😁
Geminii27@reddit
Yep. One of the things I learned over and over again - and which was actually a mantra or flat-out policy at some places I worked - was exactly that.
If it's not in a ticket (or I'm not putting it in a ticket), it's not my job. If you're someone who thinks it should be my job, feel free to argue that with my manager, who is the person saying whether I continue to get paid.
(Who knows - if it's something that genuinely should be my job, my manager can make a note of it, request funding from the penny-pinchers for adding that type of work to the team's area of coverage, and add the formal scope to the team's processes.
But it ain't happening in the next five minutes.)
jcvfd12@reddit
Worked at a manufacturing facility that utilized half sheets called “AVO” sheets Avoid verbal orders. If you didn’t have a sheet, the order or request didn’t exist. Saved he said , she said problems every single day. You didn’t hand me a sheet, didn’t get done . Bosses backed us 100 percent of the time
Geminii27@reddit
Smart. Also much safer. Also doesn't let people get away with demanding things they can then try and sack the hapless victim over because the paperwork doesn't exist.
Automatic_Mulberry@reddit
"It's unavoidable these days - metrics and numbers are how we all justify our jobs. In my case, that number is the number of tickets. Please put in a ticket so I can fix this for you, and also be here to fix the next thing for you."
Geminii27@reddit
"Also I am logging a ticket to cover the loss of IT employee time spent explaining this to you, so the IT management can yell at regular management about not training their staff on proper procedure, and ask for more budget to cover continually having to explain business processes/policy to untrained staff."
Geminii27@reddit
Yeah. If there are specific channels for them to use, as a business requirement, definitely don't put in a ticket for them if they try to bypass them. That just makes them think they're clever and important and have 'a way to skip the line' or a 'personal in' (no, no they do not), which they will then try to use in perpetuity and/or brag about to anyone they're trying to impress.
The other factor is that if there are official channels for logging a ticket and you 'just put one in for them' - that is literally not your job to do. It's not what you were hired for; it's wasting the time of both the user and yourself as an IT employee, and it's probably buggering up the ticket stats which are (hopefully) used to determine what level of budgeting the Helpdesk will get next quarter, and what areas should be prioritized.
I know you want to help users. We all do (more or less). But helping them bypass the processes everyone else has to use is not helping the bigger picture in the long run. I mentally classify it under the category of "I was employed to help userS, not user." It's the same category as keeping phone calls on track and of minimal length to get the job done - anything longer and it's the time of every other caller in the queue which is being burned in parallel.
Dustquake@reddit
You put in a ticket. Period.
I've found a good way to translate to non techs is to tell them it's a metric. It gives the tech credit for the work they are doing. Then I give an example related to their department. If sales I'd ask, "when you make a sale your name is attached so you get credit right? Your ticket is my sale." Sometimes they retort that I should be happy to make a ticket and I tell them "Not when I have people with a ticket knocking down my door to buy from me already."
The other line I use is "a ticket is your request for a reservation for IT's time. Our time has to be accounted for and let's management know if we need more staff so you don't have to wait as long."
Basically I kindly explain they are trying to rip me off and/or are shooting themselves in the foot when they don't make one.
anna-the-bunny@reddit
"The company won't allow us to spend time on things that aren't in the system. You have to submit a ticket or I'm not allowed to help you. It's out of my control."
RexCanisFL@reddit
R’amen!
Sirbo311@reddit
Had a user, back in the day, who kept trying to get around my "put in a ticket"by calling me to listen to her problem and then tell her if her problem needs a ticket. Spoiler, it always needed a ticket
Hi Gayle, I still remember you.
Beginning_Method_442@reddit
My standard response is…. To prevent your request from getting lost/misplaced/forgotten please send in a ticket that way I can see easily see what needs to be done and complete them in a timely manner.
Constant-Return-1739@reddit
Sounds like people in my organization which we are at a point that we can’t tell people to submit a ticket since people will literally crash out if someone tells them to submit a crash. We can encourage people or submit a ticket on their behalf but we can’t tell people to submit a ticket since the higher ups tell us that it is not being nice to tell the customers that.
MountainMark@reddit
"I'm sorry but my activity is audited. I want to help you but it's important to enter an actual ticket so that I don't mess up the audit trail."
No_Negotiation_6017@reddit
2 options - put in a ticket or twiddle your thumbs. Nothing else is relevant.
NotYourNanny@reddit
Your users aren't really the problem. The real problem is your boss, and theirs, not punishing them for not reporting problems (in the way specified by written policy), leading to them not being able to do their jobs.
Write a couple of people up, or cancel their bonus, and they'll start putting in tickets.