For the fourth time, no, we dont work on personal devices.
Posted by AnDanDan@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 42 comments
I could regale you with longer stories and anecdotes about this particular user, how they didn't learn after 4 years the very basics of remote work through COVID. I know the button says 'Connect' but that does not mean 'Connected'. Before I get more off track,
During COVID, many users did not have a way to work from home. Mostly older folks. This user was given a desktop, monitor, the necessary gear to remote in. We had to claw it back, and were only able to because it was only Win10 capable. Doesn't matter how much you pout, user, it doesnt mean you can hang onto it.
So, user needs a new way to connect in. They end up getting a laptop from a friend, and I help them get setup with the VPN, Remote Desktop, and Teams. This is the extent of work we do on home machines. Otherwise, we refuse as its not work related and we dont need to be responsible.
All seems fine until user asks me 'my friends name still shows, can you remove her so I can use it?' I ask if there is a problem, nope just wants the name changed. Cool, as per policy, not doing that, recommend the required steps, what to google, or go find a shop.
Few weeks later, same story, same answers. Personal device, no I cant just do it for you, yes Im sure I can't, go find a computer shop.
However, user got tired after the third time asking, and so instead decides to ask my boss. He aggress to help user, as a personal favor since hes just like that. After he agrees, I hear user lean in closer and lower their voice, saying they asked me three times and I wouldn't do it. The nerve of me, right? Thank god, boss backed me up, stating it was policy.
Today, user comes in with their laptop, and is surprised when boss works from home on the bosses work from home day. And yet again 'I brought it all the way here, Boss said he would do it, can't you just do it?'
Nope, cant just do it. In fact, all Im just doing is keeping myself from telling you to fuck off in the nicest ways I can think of. I remain polite, remind them of all the things I already have, and that Boss is doing this as a personal favor. 'Why cant you just do it for me as a favor? You worked on it before' Because I dont want to be potentially responsible for some fuckery you do on that laptop and try to blame me for.
I'm sure this user will be back with yet another routine issue. I wouldnt be surprised if they ask me about this issue or something directly related in the future. It did take them 4 years to learn our VPN procedures after all...
PureOrangeJuche@reddit
I’m shocked that you allow people to remote into your system with unsecured, uncontrolled personal devices.
AnDanDan@reddit (OP)
Im just a helpdesk jockey for the most part, but we use Cisco AnyConnect. Installing it installs Cisco Umbrella for DNS monitoring, and its configured to only allow RDP traffic.
Its not the best solution but it works
blind_ninja_guy@reddit
That doesn't mean a key logger, and remote access Trojan on the user's personal device can't spy on everything they are doing on company property. It is still fundamentally a bad idea to let personal property onto the company Network.
Scrapple_Joe@reddit
Yeah that's a truly insane approach from the higher ups IMO.
I've a work machine and a home Machine and never the 2 shall interact. Shit I only have work apps on my phone because they haven't gotten me a work phone yet. Even that I don't like.
AnDanDan@reddit (OP)
I agree, however this is how we have it setup. The device is restricted in the traffic we let touch our stuff, and we have enforced MFA. I am not a policy maker however.
moosemom64@reddit
Some years back, the VPN we used to allow remote connections to our Citrix desktops required a web plugin (I think it was Adobe Flash player). The CD we gave them with detailed instructions told them that if they got the VPN installed and had a specific error, then go to the Adobe’s website to download the plugin and install it. Lots of people did the full setup on their own or with minimal help except one person.
This lady worked in a small office with no on-site IT person. She demanded one of us be available after hours to personally walk her through the installation.
The plugin isn’t installed, so our guy walks her through getting that, but the VPN software still says it isn’t installed. Our team is trying to figure out why she’s having this issue. After a week or so of troubleshooting and nighttime calls, she ends up having a salesman in her office drive her computer to our Atlanta office, so our IT guy there can fix it. Only he can’t. Turns out, there is a setting in the registry blocking it, and we cannot change it. She had an HP, so we finally decided she would have to call HP to figure out what they had done to lock this down.
Of course, the pc is a couple of years old and has no warranty on it. She has to pay HP to help her.
She demanded the company pay her back for the HP support, because 1) we “didn’t put all the needed software on the CD” despite it being a commonly used plugin that the majority of people already had installed for some other reason, 2) our VPN software “broke” her computer, which oddly enough, had not broken any other computer, or our Atlanta server admin “must have screwed it up,” which was not true.
The company paid, and the CIO told us to refuse to assist her with her home computer ever again. And yes, she did call again. It gave us great joy to ask her if she was calling about a company owned computer. No? If we knew the VPN was up and working, she was on her own to figure out why she couldn’t connect. Or she could call the CIO and ask him.
LemurianLemurLad@reddit
I've had similar conversations with folks in the past. Here's my rough reply:
"I would love to help, but if I did, both the company and I would be legally responsible for any damage I might cause. I like my job too much to get risk getting fired for doing this."
Awlson@reddit
I was right there with you, until you said something of liking your job. I tolerate it because they pay me, they don't pay me enough to like going there, and i highly doubt they ever will.
LemurianLemurLad@reddit
"I like my job" translates as "I don't hate this job more than any other job I've ever had, and I don't really feel like looking for a new one at this time" but in a client-friendly way of saying it.
While I don't love my job, I do like fixing people's broken computers. If I wasn't doing it at my current company, I would probably find a different company to do more or less the same thing.
AngryCod@reddit
Funny how you only come to me when you need something. You never come to me to return the favor.
StandingBehindMyNose@reddit
Boss isn’t helping the situation.
AnDanDan@reddit (OP)
Yep. We've got no remediation here really, nothing to get repeat problem people to have some form of training.
Then again why would have half the C Suite would need retraining.
NotYetReadyToRetire@reddit
You can't retrain the C suite because they haven't been trained yet - their time is much more valuable and important for that.
JEFFinSoCal@reddit
You’re lucky it’s only half.
Familiar-Lemon-674@reddit
In college I worked at Walmart and city ordinance said we couldn't sell ammo after 10pm. People would get mad at me, and after a while they started finding the overnight manager, who would always cave and sell it to them acting like he was doing them a favor "just this once." They'd always shoot me dirty looks (no pun intended) like they won and I was just being lazy or something. It eventually became so common that the store manager had to issue a new policy that NOBODY is allowed to sell ammo except Sporting Goods people and remind people about the city ordinance. Felt very vindicating. He was a really nice guy but dude, c'mon. Stop making me look stupid just cause you have no spine. It's a law. Why would I lie about that? It's 5 feet from the ammo case to the register. I'd sell it if I could, I don't care.
dhaos42@reddit
A boss that caves is no boss at all. Back up your workers. If they are following policy and they say no. The answer should be no all the way up the chain. Otherwise its just a policy for workers and that breeds contempt from your staff.
realgone2@reddit
I hate that shit. Always being asked if I do side work.
NO! I don't even like doing my actual job.
blind_ninja_guy@reddit
I once had someone tell me that I should build them an app, it would be really easy to build. They wanted a service that would intercept every call you make and have a live person figure out whether it was spammed before forwarding the call to you. I was like ma'am, not only would that be really hard technically and I can't just do it in my free time, but it would require a decent amount of capital to hire employees to actually do the monitoring. Cuz she wanted an actual person to do it not an AI.
Familiar-Lemon-674@reddit
I feel like that might also potentially be illegal cause of wiretap laws, depending on how it was designed.
Not like that stops the NSA, but, ya know...
blind_ninja_guy@reddit
Oh, that would have been funny if I told her to reach out to the NSA to figure out who was calling. Not like she could do that in real time but that would actually be a great April fool's joke the NSA has all your data and we're going to release an app that does this for you.
Familiar-Lemon-674@reddit
There was a tech YouTuber who once said for April Fools that he was releasing a new subscription app that just mainlined all your data right onto dark web sites and cut out the middleman so that you could stop worrying about data breaches. The link to download it redirected to a rickroll.
FuzzySAM@reddit
We have that. It's called "hire a personal secretary."
Hobbit_Hardcase@reddit
Why, yes, I do freelance. My rate is twice what a lawyer nearly you charges.
They soon get the hint.
Familiar-Lemon-674@reddit
One time I worked as a stage manager for a concert promoter (aka "organizer"). He told me "bands have 30 minutes. When the current band starts, let the next band know to start rounding up their guys. When the current band has 15 mins left, go find the next band and tell them to get ready and start setting up. Tune your guitars, set up your drums, etc. When there's 5 mins, tell the current band one more song." There were tons of bands so if anyone fell behind, we'd be there til 4 am (I think it was already scheduled til 1 or 2 or something). I did as told. At one point I told one band about their 15 min warning. They did nothing. (Maybe it was just the guitarist, can't remember if it was just him or all of them.) I did everything I was told. Sure enough, current band ends, rushes off stage, next band gets on stage, takes forever to tune, set up, chit chat, etc. They didn't start playing til about 10-15 mins into their set. When I told them "last song" they looked so shocked. "We only played 3 songs!" Well that effing sucks. Guess you should've set up early like we told you to. They did get off stage when told though, I'll give them that. (And nobody else had that issue the rest of the night. Not sure if everyone else was simply more professional or if they realized I wasn't gonna put up with their crap.)
However, guitarist went and cried to the promoter, then they both came and found me. Promoter TOTALLY threw me under the bus and acted like "yeah man that was super messed up he did that, I'm so sorry, blah blah blah." He didn't actually do anything, for the record, but absolutely refused to have my back at all. Completely took the guitarist's said, telling him how much that sucks he didn't get to play his whole set and what a hardass I was. I just stood there and glared at him and said nothing. Later the guitar player did eventually come back to me (drunk af) and say he wasn't mad cause I was just doing my job. The promoter tried to act like it was no biggie, tried to butter me up later (I was professional but cold), like he was just trying to avoid an incident (which is probably true but still, that's crappy to throw me under the bus like that). When the night was over I politely but coldly got my money and bounced. Never worked for that guy again. I hope he's homeless. Prick.
I__Know__Stuff@reddit
I don't understand why you "clawed back" the earlier system without providing a replacement. If the user needs to connect from home to work, the employer should be providing the equipment to do that.
Awlson@reddit
I guess you didn't read the part where it was stated as being only a privilege after covid shutdowns ended. Part of that privilege being that you have your own device to remote in with.
AnDanDan@reddit (OP)
The user isnt expected to work from home, it is a privilege. They are simply remoting into the desktop we provide at the office which is powerful enough to run Revit. In this way we arent expecting people to provide their own machine thats that strong. Otherwise, we would be purchasing two machines per employee which balloons costs.
We had to claw it back because every time we brought it up user would complain and whine and pull the 'poor old me' card so the can would get kicked down the road.
Z_tinman@reddit
Why doesn't the company provide a laptop that can run Revit?
georgiomoorlord@reddit
Ours state in big letters we have no right to privacy on this device.
sowellfan@reddit
When I first went completely remote at my engineering firm (also using Acad/Revit) our in-house "mostly handles tech stuff" guy indicated that I'd need my home computer to have the same type of "Revit-certified" video card as was used on the work computer when I was remoting into. I suspected he was wrong then (bc all my home machine is doing is displaying the screen data from the work machine) but I went ahead and dropped the extra $300-$400 on the fancy card.
It's always been part of the implied deal (when I moved away) that I purchase and take care of the computer equipment at my end - including doing what it takes to get emergency fixes done so I can work.
Regarding the special video card, I've learned better since then, so on the next computer I won't drop the extra cash. But I'm gonna need some kind of video card to run the 3 monitors I use.
ladysdevil@reddit
Part of the way a lot of employers are getting rid of work from home is telling employees they will not provide equipment, training, or support for it. If you want to work from hine, it is a privilege and you must provide your own setup. This effectively forces most lower level employees to work from the office where the equipment is.
NotTheOnlyGamer@reddit
Sorry, but if you have a BYOD policy, unless it's explicitly written in there, then I expect that you'll fix any device I bring and my leadership says is work-critical.
whyliepornaccount@reddit
Always love it when users accidentally stumble into this subreddit
ManWhoIsDrunk@reddit
OP stated that they don't have a BYOD policy.
They have a "remote work from your own device if you're privileged enough and have a device at home" policy.
AJourneyer@reddit
It's an option? It states that in the post - WFH means you provide your own machine to remote into your work desktop which can then be (somewhat) secured. It's an option. A luxury. Not required. Not critical.
So I'd take that as the policy, and if a task is work critical and your own device can't handle it or is down, you go into the office and deal with it on the work device.
eggman1995@reddit
Except the device isnt work critical.
WFH isnt a demand, hence why they need to supply their own equipment if they want to do so.
Cant get your own equipment to work? Then you need to work from the office where the work critical equipment is. Which is supported by IT.
MindlessPhilosoper@reddit
At least the boss backed them up. I've had to tell end users we can't work on their personal devices. Cue the whining, but it's for work? Cool, but it's still using your personal device.
AnDanDan@reddit (OP)
That's why we have specific things were ok with helping, as it is for work. It's 'unofficial policy' for us. Of course, we could always get users to RTFM full of pictures, full descriptions, highlighted things to click, but why would they have to do all that when we can just do it for them?
Traveling-Techie@reddit
Ask your dentist for a pedicure as a favor.
jerermy534@reddit
I hate that people insinuate we aren't nice just because we won't do them favors.
I eventually get to a point where I tell them my joke, "Its a weird thing I know, but I like being able to pay my bills on time and getting a paycheck every week".
Sometimes they get it, but usually they go to the boss and pout.
realgone2@reddit
I get this a lot. I'm told "I'm not personable". Which actually means someone complained because I followed procedure and my spineless bosses won't back me up.
One-Afternoon1424@reddit
I just had something similar to this yesterday but in a different industry.
I'm a trainer and had an issue with a group being non compliant (not the right equipment). Called my manager, raised it, told them I would not teach this group as it is non compliant, goes against the guidelines and the companies own policies and procedures. She was huffy, asked me to make reasonable adjustments and I stood my ground and said no.
My manager got another trainer to come in, they broke the rules and taught the group to sign them off.
Now the group are probably thinking "that first trainer was an arseholes and she was mean and wouldn't sign us off to get our qualification. Why wouldn't she be flexible to us and just do it".
When in reality, that first trainer (me) was the one that stuck to the rules and policies. And now the students think I'm an idiot.