The past week has been a frustrating series of events from vendors and end users.

Here’s a collection of some of them, and my responses (that may or may not have been said to the perpetrators).

Ticket:

The desktop in <Room> and the <Other Rooms> need the <Program 1> and <Program 2> installed – these were on my profile last year.

Additionally, my students access <Program 1> from the desktops <Room> and laptops <Cart>, and will need access during the first week of school.

If you have any questions, please ask <Old Tech>. She assisted me in ensuring both programs have worked properly.
Thanks so much.

Response:

<Program 1> is already installed in <Room> and <Cart>.  Our notes show that it was not installed in <Other Rooms> last year.  We have completed the install in <Other Rooms>.  <Program 2> is a website interface and does not need installation, it runs in the browser.

Thoughts:

Don’t ask for software to be installed if you haven’t checked if it’s been installed yet.  Certainly don’t lie to us about where it was installed last year.  We keep notes.  We have job history for all the computers.  We know what was where and who put it there.  CERTAINLY don’t ask for a website to be installed, because we will laugh about it to your face.  Give us the whole story, let me know what you are attempting to accomplish, what you feel the steps to get there are, and let us come up with a workable solution.

Situation:

We ordered brand new virtualization infrastructure hardware this summer.  Yay! Shiny toys! 😀

We ordered brand new hardware that comes default with 1400W 240V power supplies.  We run 120V power.  This is America.  D:

We ordered replacement power supplies for said hardware (4 hosts, 2 power supplies each: 8 total power supplies).  They arrived today.

4 of the 8 are the 1200W 120V power supplies we expected.  The remaining 4 of the 8 are 1400W 240V power supplies inside 1200W 120V boxes.

We attempt to return the erroneous devices.  Vendor hassles.  They are not the same hardware for the box, so they won’t accept them.  They are what you shipped us!

Thoughts:

We’re already 2 weeks behind here.  Stop yanking our chains.  Seriously.  We just want the hardware we need to get this stuff up and running.  Don’t lie about the hardware requirements, and don’t send us the wrong boxes of equipment.  It’s 3 days from go time and we don’t have anything working because you keep yanking us around. Most certainly don’t make it seem like we’re trying to scam you: you sent us the wrong stuff.

Situation:

New ticketing system setup requires all people to select their location in their profile settings otherwise you won’t see the queues to enter a ticket into.  User emails saying they do not see the queues and cannot create a ticket.  I reply notifying them that if they cannot see the queues then they should read the messages that pop up every time they login to the ticketing system.  User replies that they did read them and do them.  I check: no, you did not.  You either didn’t set it, or you didn’t log out and log back in.  I can tell.  There’s the log.  You haven’t even been to the profile page.

Thoughts:

Don’t like to us.  Specifically, don’t lie to people at all.  You make it impossible to properly troubleshoot the issue.  If you tell me you did something, and the system disagrees with you, I’m going to believe the system. The system is incapable of lying to me.  Funny, once you make the change the system says you make the change and the queues show up.  Funny, could have sworn you said you did that already.

Situation:

New printers arrive.  Yay!  More shiny new toys.  They are brand new.  Like, the manufacturer does not even list them on their website kind of new.  Cool beans.  We dig through their website and install their latest version of the drivers for them.  Cool, everything looks swell.  “Trainer” arrives the following day to show the staff how to work the printers.  Trainer has problems demonstrating the setup.  Claims we do not have the driver installed.

Thoughts:

The driver is very much installed.  We installed both versions, the CD-ROM you provided and the latest we could find on the website.  It’s there.  It works.  We tested it.  You’re having trouble with it.  Somehow it is our fault.  Yes, this makes a lot of sense.  Just admit you weren’t aware of the changes with the driver and the new model of printer.  No one will fault you for it.  Don’t try and make your problem into my problem: I will call you out on it EVERY time.

Situation:

Email we received:

Hey guys,

<Script Tool> at <Building> does not appear to be running correctly at <Building>.  This is likely because the permissions are not set correctly on the <Script Tool> log folder and files.  On every desktop I’ve checked, the <Log 1> file and the <Log 2> file are blank.

The <Previous Year> Software Installs on the <Building> image server has a job that will create and set proper permissions for these files, and it contains logic to set the necessary permissions if the folders already exist.  I would like to run this job on all desktops in that building, but I want to check with you guys first since you’ve been handling imaging and package deployment in that building.  Is there anything I should be aware of?

FWIW, this does not appear to be an issue with the desktops at <Other Building>.

Did you guys reimage the administrator desktops at <Building> today by chance?  If so, that would be one heck of a coincidence and account for my confusion.  I was thrown off by the entirely blank files on the three workstations that I checked (which all happened to be admin machines since they were already powered on).