Making the Most of IT support?

wetfeetl33t asks: "On Slashdot, we've seen quite a few stories about employees who are unhappy with their company's IT department, or are seeking advice on how they can whip their company's IT department into shape. So, enough of the complaints about the supposed stupidity of technicians, the incompetence of sysadmins, or the excessive network down time. A better question is: how can users work peacefully and effectively with their IT department and make the interaction between the IT people and other employees as productive as possible?"

Great question

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I find that bombarding IT with little requests like help with my desktop background, system volume, printers, plugging peripherals like my iPod into the desktop, and a bunch of other things that I could presumably do myself really helps keep those IT monkeys busy running up and down the stairs from their dungeon to my ivory tower.

The networks seem to be okay, and I have all my files, so it's not like they have anything better to do. Maybe they'd rather be surfing Slashdot. I don't know. But I'd rather they lost some weight and became more pleasing to look at. All the running around is helping their looks.

Maybe we should also install a shower...

Heh.

[BadAnalogyGuy]

They only give you 15 minutes to implement the design in 30 minutes?

I guess they're looking for over-clocked engineers.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[Propaganda13]

Manager: Do you expect them to treat you with respect?
IT Guy: No, I expect them to DIE!

Tell them to THINK

[dascandy]

A few days ago I received a laptop from the IT department for a business trip the day after. I told them to install some software on it. Net result was that I received a laptop with the software I requested - but without a login, and the software wasn't activated.

If the IT department thinks along with you those things shouldn't happen.

Re:Great question

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found that people put up with an amazing amount of computer trouble if you simply ignore their support requests.

Re:Follow two principles

[Anonymous Coward]

Stemming from this: you need to fire worthless people. The inability or unwillingness to fire worthless employees is one of the biggest problems for employers that I see. If a sysadmin is always causing more work just by his attitude and ineptitude, then they need to get the boot. If you don't do that, all of his co-workers who aren't fuckups are going to see that you don't care about the quality of their work. Another demotivator.

(I normally don't post as AC, but after reading this, you'll understand)

We have one of these at work. To add insult to injury, the man has a higher job title than the rest of us and makes $1000.00 more per month, all because he has a fucking BA and a NT4 MCSE (he was never able to obtain his Win2k MCSE). Due to his obvious deficiencies, he has been relegated to maintaining a list of static IP addresses in an excel sheet, cloning new computers (he fucks this up all the time) and setting up new network printers (another thing he routinely fucks up). He really has it made. If a server's RAID array blows up at 3AM, he's never the one who has to come in to fix it, because he wouldn't know what the fuck to do anyway.

I routinely have to clean up this clowns messes. I would estimate I end up fixing at least one thing per month that he screws up. They are usually not big things, but still, they are time wasters and they reflect badly on our department, because they it usually involved setting up someones new PC incorrectly.

So, you might ask "How dumb could he be?" Let me tell you.

One time, five years ago when I was new, he decided that the network neighborhood was "messy", so he decided to do some "housecleaning". He deleted every computer account in our NT4 domain, except for of course *his* computer and thankfully, the servers. The idiot had an MCSE in NT4 and didn't understand the consequences of his actions. I, the new guy, who only had a high school diploma, has to explain to this ass hat what him deleting all of those accounts meant, and then of course I, the new guy, had to go around and re-add all of the computers to the domain.

The last server he was in charge of was around 4 years ago. It was a SQL7 box. We got an email from NASA's IT dept (seriously) complaining that the box was infected and was hitting their network. I went to check it out, and it turned out it was running SQL7, with no updates applied and a blank SA password.

Another system he was in charge of before that was a web server. He was asked to install FTP on it so the site could be updated. He set it up so that anonymous user had full read/write access to the web root. Talk about "making it easy for the users"!

Oh, and in case you are wondering - no, I am not making any of this up. I'm not even embellishing.