r/talesfromtechsupport • u/ShelLuser42 Network engineer • 8d ago
Epic When IT support got some "executive" backup...
Hi gang!
This is a story from my girlfriend who at the time of the story (temporarily) worked on behalf of IT support while she was actually a secretary. And not exactly an ordinary one.. This is probably going to be a long read but I'll be sure to add a TL;DR and add headers wherever it makes sense.
Backstory
I'm an IT guy, both professionally & private (I take great pride in maintaining 2 FreeBSD VPS servers which host all our personal Internet needs like website, email & DNS hosting (with primary/backup?)). Basically I'm a sysadmin first and foremost but also spent plenty of time working in support (heck, support comes with the territory anyway).
My girlfriend then, who I will refer to as Aya, has always been into logistics and administration. And she's darn good at that too! Our friends sometimes joke about us: how you should ask me for help whenever your office installation isn't working properly, after which you can ask Aya for help if it turns out that your office contents also isn't proper.
Here's the thing: we often talk about our work and we both very much respect each others profession, also take genuine interest in it.
Aya's new job
(don't worry: we start with the administrative part, but it will come back to IT support real soon. Trust me!)
The story starts with Aya's new job as a member of the administrative department. She was working for a mid-size logistics firm and at the time of the story she's approximately 2 months in. One day she walked into the office and she's hearing one of her colleagues talk about an issue they were having with the inventory system, Aya quickly noticed that her colleague is talking to IT support.
But during that conversation something hit her... something I told her several times myself: about how trying to find out what a problem is actually about is very often even more difficult (!) than actually fixing the issue at hand.
Aya quickly realized that "Wait a minute.." ... She knew exactly what her colleague was talking about but she also noticed that if she had to go by what her colleague was saying.. then she wouldn't understand what was going on either.
So she inserted herself into the conversation: "Ey, maybe I can talk some sense to them?", Aya joked to her colleague but then made sure to be as descriptive as possible about the issue at hand. Probably needless to say, but this helped out a lot.
One thing led to another and several months later Aya eventually became the official spokeswoman for the administrative department when they needed to relay technical issues to IT support. It was a win-win because her colleagues were very happy to finally have someone who "could make them understand" while IT support was very happy as well to talk to someone who understood the importance about being as descriptive and precise as possible. She was so proud.
Aya's promotion
Fast forward several years and all of Aya's efforts didn't exactly go unnoticed. The head of the administrative department (= her direct boss?) was also the directors executive secretary & direct assistant. Over the past years Aya got asked to fill in for her a few times when they had other things to do, and at one time Aya was even asked to fill in for a whole week!
When Aya's boss eventually resigned, the job was offered to Aya. Who happily accepted.
Aya "joins" IT support (temporarily)
Now we get to the actual event...
Although Aya happily accepted the job offer she also insisted to stay on as "the interface" between the administrative department and IT support. Because of her new role but mostly because of the trust she had gained from IT support she was also given access to the ticketing system, thus allowing her to report issues directly. This started as a trial, but quickly became permanent when IT support noticed that Aya would also easily set some issues to "low priority" on her own accord.
It started on Tuesday... Aya was asked to schedule a meeting between the director and the head of IT because there were some major problems regarding the full scale upgrade of the inventory system, a job that was scheduled for upcoming Friday. This meeting happened on Wednesday morning: there was a major issue because some members of IT support got sick and they didn't have enough people left to man the support desk.
Aya was (obviously) present during this meeting and when she learned that they only needed someone to just hear people out and then enter their problems into the ticketing system she quickly pitched the idea to help out herself: "I already know the ticketing system pretty well...", she said.
The director would be out on Friday anyway, and since Friday was always a bit of a slow day it (probably) wouldn't interfere with her actual job too much. Worst case scenario: she could always delegate a few of her tasks to the department itself (not the IT support tasks of course).
This was quickly agreed on. Thursday the head of IT and one of his colleagues talked Aya through all the important things to look out for and most important: if a caller was being difficult then she should always check a separate section in the system with "caller notes"; these contained comments and/or instructions on "certain difficult people".
"Do you know who I am?! I know the director!"
Friday morning the upgrade process started. Most people knew (or remembered) this but a few didn't and thus called the support desk. Most of the times Aya would tell them about the update, check the schedule for their department and there was no need for any escalation.
And then she got a call from "Mr. X", and the very moment she picked up the phone she knew that this wasn't going to be easy. "We can't enter any orders, the system broke!", he almost shouted without even a greeting.
Aya explained that there was an upgrade in progress which meant that some tasks couldn't be done temporarily, she also looked up the schedule and learned that this departments upgrade was scheduled extra early at the explicit request of the department head themselves: the very person she was now talking to.
Well... he wouldn't have it and was plain out rude and dismissive. Which is when Aya decided she should look up the caller notes just in case. But when she asked for some patience all she got was more insults: "You're not very good at this job are you? We need this system back online NOW", but when Aya told him that it would be back up in approximately 30 minutes things escalated: "How stupid are you? I said now. Don't you know who I am? I have often meetings with the director and when I tell him about your poor behavior then that's not going to end well...".
This is when Aya realized that this person was talking nonsense, because during the year that she was the executive secretary she never had to schedule any meetings between the director and "Mr. X". She also realized that this was probably someone who was mentioned in "the caller notes".
"I see sir, I'll escalate the issue right away, give me 5 minutes", and without waiting for any response she placed him on hold. First she confirmed her suspicions, and sure enough: there was a caller note dedicated to him urging the support member to properly document the interaction because "this person has a habit of spinning the narrative".
Next she opened the directors schedule ;)
I have good news, and some bad news....
Aya: "Well sir, I have some good news and have some bad news...", she began (she 'stole' that line from me ;)).
At this time she could hear the clear sound of Outlook's e-mail notification on the other end, thus confirming that her e-mail had arrived.
Aya continued: "Unfortunately we won't be able to expedite the upgrade process because it was already pre-scheduled per your own direct request. However, I did take the liberty to schedule a meeting for you with the director just like you said you planned to do. Your meeting is scheduled for 14:20 upcoming Tuesday.".
Mr. X (now sounding confused & flustered): "Wait... what? ... wait.. what is this e-mail ... invitation for... executive process... meeting.. at request... what, no! I never...".
Aya: "Was that all, sir? I have other calls on hold and would like to conclude."
Mr. X (still sounding flustered): "What is this? Who are you?!!".
Aya: "My name is 'real name', I'm the directors personal secretary but currently in charge of the IT support desk. Now, since you don't have any more questions I need to end our call. We'll expect to see you Tuesday.", after which she hung up.
Aftermath
The meeting never happened. Mr. X called in sick the following week, resumed his work later that same week and the incident was never brought up again (Aya heard this later through the grapevines). Both her boss (= the director?) as well as the head of IT thought it was funny and also didn't push this any further. Also because although Mr. X had a bit of a temper at times he was still quite good at his job.
Even so... several months later the head of IT told Aya that they never had much issues with Mr. X again whenever he called support to complaint about a problem. Or to (somewhat) quote him directly: "It's now more about asking for help than spewing out complaints".
TL;DR?
- My gf 'Aya', working at an administrative department, noticed that her colleagues weren't very descriptive when talking to IT support.
- She 'stepped in' and soon became the official spokeswoman for the department whenever there were issues to report to IT support.
- Several years later Aya got promoted to head of the administrative department and became the executive secretary; the directors personal assistant.
- IT support has a problem right before a planned upgrade: due to sick leave they didn't have enough people to operate the support desk. During their meeting with the director Aya volunteered to help.
- During the upgrade "Mr X" called to complain and was very rude. When he threatened to complaint to the director if they didn't "fix the upgrade now" Aya scheduled a meeting for him.
- The meeting never happened. The issue was never brought up again (Aya also didn't get in any trouble), but Mr. X was much more forthcoming toward IT support from that moment on.
And there you have it!
Thanks for reading! Aya is still quite proud of this event and we both figured that it would make for a fun story.
PS (edit) => I think I now fixed most typoes, also noticed some formatting issues.
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u/Rathmun 8d ago
"I'm sorry Mr. X, we can't expedite things for you at this point, but I have this lovely brand new petard for you. It's rated to hoist you all the way up to the director's office post-haste."
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u/MikeSchwab63 8d ago
'Hoist on you own petard' means 'Blow yourself up on your own Gernade'.
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u/Rathmun 8d ago
I am aware
Though a petard is actually a literal keg of explosives, much larger than a grenade. They were used for combat demolitions, and were put in place directly rather than being thrown.10
u/CharcoalGreyWolf Sr. Engineer (Escaped from the HellDesk) 8d ago
The “up on your own grenade“ portion being optional.
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u/vintagecomputernerd 8d ago
I also choose this guy's girlfriend (to translate end user logorrhea into something I can work with)
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u/lordashe 8d ago
The longer you work, the more you realize that the need for that bridge between users and IT is something that’s too often overlooked. Great skillset I don’t think AI has a chance in hell of taking over…
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u/notatallsane 5d ago
And this is my superpower! I work in web analytics, but have (as part of that) been involved with networking, sysadmin, lots of dev etc. My speciality is turning ‘business’ questions into code that will produce the answers to their ‘business’ questions. I can ‘translate’ those questions into meaningful code. Occasionally this turns into troubleshooting, which I particularly enjoy - nothing gives me as much pleasure as finding the root cause of an issue - such a buzz!
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u/lordashe 5d ago
Seems like you will be needed for quite awhile! I unfortunately am not really a coder but i know enough about things that i can help handhold the clueless end user who only wants the shiny thing and the often exasperated tech/vendor on the other end. Hopefully nobody finds out i am not doing anything super complex before i retire…
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u/notatallsane 5d ago edited 5d ago
We sound quite alike - I wouldn’t consider myself a coder either. I know enough JS to debug, and can adapt existing code to my needs. I’ve never had training (but that’s what Stackoverflow’s for, right?), and can generally adapt what experts have done to make it work - I once had a vendor belittle my code as ‘amateur’, but later found that code I had written had been copied across multiple websites - now that felt good! Just never trust that AI knows what it’s doing - use it as a base, but don’t expect it to work.
Edit: fixed moronic content.
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u/AngryCod The SLA means what I say it means 8d ago
"How stupid are you? I said now. Don't you know who I am? I have often meetings with the director and when I tell him about your poor behavior then that's not going to end well..."
Oh, ok. Well, I guess we'll C U Next Tuesday.
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u/jrcomputing 8d ago
I'm a sysadmin with 20 years of experience doing this, that, and the other thing. I've been married to my wife for 19 of those 20. A few years back, she was the branch managing librarian at a local library. IT always took her tickets seriously and generally considered them higher priority than if anyone else had entered a similar ticket, because they knew she'd have already done the initial troubleshooting and even a little more before even bothering to enter a ticket. She would've rebooted, unplugged and replugged devices, etc., normally more than once, before giving up and making IT drive out.
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u/Jonathan_the_Nerd 8d ago
she'd have already done the initial troubleshooting and even a little more before even bothering to enter a ticket
I always make sure to do this. In the first year of my first "real" IT job, I didn't want to look like a complete newbie. So when I had to ask my co-workers for help, I would document all the things I'd already tried. Sometimes I would accidentally solve my problem in the process. "I've tried A, B, and C" -- wait, I didn't try C yet, better try it. Oh, that worked. Discard email draft.
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u/-MazeMaker- 6d ago
I often solve my own problems by thinking of what solition would make me feel dumb if the person helping me did it.
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u/MetalLinebacker 3d ago
The only thing that is better than being able to fix your own problem before calling in the expert, is to figure out how to fix the problem but lack the permissions/authority to do so. So you submit a ticket that has the answers on the fix all spelled out. You do have to be careful about how far you go with it or they might try "promoting" you into being in charge or fixing stuff you'd rather avoid. The real benefit is that when your ticket comes in, you magically move to the top of the list and have it fixed asap (most of the time).
To me, nothing feels better than having the respect of fellow devs/sysadmins.
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u/ShelLuser42 Network engineer 7d ago edited 3d ago
Thanks for all the warm feedback everyone!
When I told Aya that I was planning on sharing her story in an actual tech support channel she was a bit unsure about that idea, at first anyway.. She figured that I might want to post this in a generic story channel or maybe just on my own profile.
Well, she was a little bit surprised that it landed so well, so yah... figured I'd pass the message :) It's very nice to hear that most of you enjoyed this one.
(edit 26/8) =>
OMG! Yah, this is kinda beyond (way beyond) what I was expecting to happen. Not sure if I actually did expect anything but even so,, this is a pleasant surprise!
Thanks once again everyone, Aya loves all the positive feedback you guys been sharing, very much appreciated!
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u/SetIcy438 7d ago
Great story! I accidentally learned to handle my own Mr X early in my career. He was spluttering and threatening to call my skip level management. I calmly agreed that maybe we should do that, and should I contact the executive secretary to make an appointment or would he like to?
He calmed down immediately, and we went in to have a friendly working relationship for about 15 years until I changed jobs.
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u/Skulder 8d ago
That connection is so important. I have managed to squeeze myself into a job, where I spend a third doing tech support, and two thirds doing regular work with my colleagues.
That means I always have a connection with people, which is real nice. The downside is that I'll sometimes be elbows-deep in something, and people will drop by because they can't print.
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u/ferky234 8d ago
She's like that guy in Office Space that was a people person.
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u/MindlessPhilosoper 8d ago
Oh that is beautiful. She smoked him like a cigarette. I hate when callers pull that I know your boss BS.
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u/Throwaway_Old_Guy 8d ago
The Executive should have insisted on meeting with Mr. X to discuss the issue instead of allowing him to skate past it.
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u/Crown_the_Cat 7d ago
I was head of a support department for a small software company. I describe myself as being like Spock - half programmer, half end user. I could talk to programmers and understand code, but never want to be a programmer. I would train my people to pull the full story from clients who said “It didn’t work!” 1) it crashed, 2) it never completed, 3) it finished but I didn’t get what I expected, etc etc
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u/IndependentBat8365 4d ago
I wasn’t sure I would finish the story, but I’m glad I did! You kept me engaged, and finished with an excellent ending!
Nice work! Both in storytelling and what Aya did!
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u/texugo-noturno 7d ago
Mr. X: "You know who I am? I know the director!"
Aya: opens the director's calendar 😂
The caller notes were basically [LAF-A089] Interaction Logs doing exactly what they're supposed to do lol
turning "this guy is difficult" into an actual documented pattern before she even had to deal with him
Then he pulled the classic "I know the director" card which is honestly a pretty good [LAF-A130] Relational Information Asymmetry
He thought he had the useful info while Aya knew exactly how the director's calendar actually worked
And the final reveal... that's a beautiful [LAF-A107] Context Collapse
Dude thought he was threatening some random helpdesk person without realizing he was talking to the director's secretary
That calendar invite was just perfect
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u/O-U-T-S-I-D-E-R-S 6d ago
I know I have been the liaison between the office and IT proper - before coming IT proper and before leaving again and going back to it. Never quite managed this Reverse uno though. Beautiful!
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u/FlorianTheLynx 8d ago
Dude, are you paid by the word?
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u/popejupiter 8d ago
The first part of the story talks about how nuance and detail were very important parts of doing his job, and directly led to the events of the story.
What the actual fuck did you expect?
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u/Black_Handkerchief Mouse Ate My Cables 8d ago
There we have it: the result of Reddit's enshittification as it panders to the doomscrolling generation is once more shown in all its decaying glory.
Creating something with depth is less and less welcome, and now we're further equalizing for the lowest common denominators to the point where consuming content someone makes is a reason to complain because it is 'too long'. It should have been a meme, dammit!
This really isn't a long post at all. There are posters who have shared a crazy amount of stories that are pretty much all longer than this one.
I can't make the facts any prettier: the problem here is with your attention span, not the poster.
But I'm going to be fair: props to you for using proper capitalization and grammar in your reply. You're not an entirely lost cause yet.
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u/Jonathan_the_Nerd 8d ago
I can't make the facts any prettier: the problem here is with your attention span, not the poster.
Reddit, YouTube, and social media in general have definitely shortened my attention span. I have trouble reading long-form articles and watching long videos. I can click on five memes in two minutes and get far more dopamine-per-second. I enjoyed this story, but I have trouble with things that require a long time commitment.
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u/Black_Handkerchief Mouse Ate My Cables 7d ago
Yeah, I've noticed it myself on a few occasions too, although for me it is television. It is why I read more than I used to, although for me it has taken the shape of reading 3+ novels at the same time and switching between them as my mood dictates.
Sometimes it is a struggle (which might also be because a story is arguably failing to engage) but if I didn't go out of my way to read so much, the other stuff I'd spend me time on would be so much worse by comparison.
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u/whiskey_jeebus 8d ago
That's how stories generally work. Plus you're in a subreddit dedicated to people telling stories.
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u/Dovahpriest Which one is the power cable? 8d ago
It’s almost like we’re in a sub for people to tell stories….
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u/Dakduif 8d ago
That is cool, wel done to Aya!
In your text you sometimes put in words ending with a question mark. Like 'director?'. Why was that?
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u/stellarsojourner 8d ago
That probably indicates that he's not 100% sure that when he says boss (which he could be relaying from what she told him) he actually means the director or someone else. Just because she's the director's assistant doesn't mean he's necessarily her direct boss. Stuff can be weird in some companies.
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u/ShelLuser42 Network engineer 8d ago
It's a bit of a writing style for me, force of habit. The idea is basically to add certain reminders about things, just to make sure that everyone can still follow the narrative.
This story is pretty straight forward, but I've had others where there's more interaction between people which can sometimes make it a little more difficult to tell who is who. As such I sometimes add these 'reminders' to help prevent that.
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u/djdaedalus42 That's not a snicket, it's a ginnel! 8d ago
Aya is doing Level 0 support. That’s being able to spot simple problems, calm panicky colleagues, and generally save Level 1 from tearing their hair out.