Case of the Tuesdays...

[frazil]

So I'm leaving tomorrow for a conference and I came in early this morning to print out a poster I need to bring with me. I sent it over to the plotter in our department and walked over to pick it up. I knew something was wrong when I got there and there was no activity whatsoever coming from the plotter. Right then the IT guy came in and saw me staring at the plotter and said 'It doesn't work'. WHA??? I'm leaving tomorrow - what do you mean? He shrugs his shoulders and smirks and walks away.

So I scramble around trying to find someone else who can print it out and finally find someone in printing who can do it but it will cost. Fine, I say, go ahead. Then I call the secretary in our branch and say, Can we pay for this to be printed? I can pay out of my project funds, but I really think it ought to come out of department funds since I wasn't able to use our plotter. She then gives me a lecture about planning ahead!!

I'm so furious!! What is wrong with these people??? Am I just extra-sensitive today?

 

[Dark Knight]

So I'm leaving tomorrow for a conference and I came in early this morning to print out a poster I need to bring with me. I sent it over to the plotter in our department and walked over to pick it up. I knew something was wrong when I got there and there was no activity whatsoever coming from the plotter. Right then the IT guy came in and saw me staring at the plotter and said 'It doesn't work'. WHA??? I'm leaving tomorrow - what do you mean? He shrugs his shoulders and smirks and walks away.
So I scramble around trying to find someone else who can print it out and finally find someone in printing who can do it but it will cost. Fine, I say, go ahead. Then I call the secretary in our branch and say, Can we pay for this to be printed? I can pay out of my project funds, but I really think it ought to come out of department funds since I wasn't able to use our plotter. She then gives me a lecture about planning ahead!!

I'm so furious!! What is wrong with these people??? Am I just extra-sensitive today?

Yeah Fraz. You had to plan ahead that the plotter, that is supposed to be working, was not going to be working this particular day. You also had to plan ahead that the IT guy did not have any compromise. At least he should tried to find you options to solve the situation. I would do that but I am not an IT guy. Finally, you also had to plan ahead and check your Cristal Ball so you could knew that you were going to have problems.

If you could plan ahead all these Fraz, please tell me the winning lottery numbers this Friday here in Florida. I will give you 50%.

Now, you might be nervous or extra-sensitive but you have all the right to be furious.

 

[bigray76]

It is amazing how the accounting and IT departments here act like the company is all about them... we do $425M a year in volume and we are at the mercy of when the IT people decide to do a server shut down for maintenance (like in the middle of one of my $20M bids last year - an hour before the bid was due!)

We all joke that we are essentially 'A major accounting firm that dabbles in construction'.

We implemented a new accounting software package that makes my job more difficult... more coding, more breakdowns, and has essentially added abotu 15% more time per project in just manipulating the numbers.

It is amazing that we can actually build a building anymore.

-Ray

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

So I'm leaving tomorrow for a conference and I came in early this morning to print out a poster I need to bring with me. I sent it over to the plotter in our department and walked over to pick it up. I knew something was wrong when I got there and there was no activity whatsoever coming from the plotter. Right then the IT guy came in and saw me staring at the plotter and said 'It doesn't work'. WHA??? I'm leaving tomorrow - what do you mean? He shrugs his shoulders and smirks and walks away.

If it's gonna be a major pain in the ass to do - can you go to one of the copy shops nearby that plots large documents? We've got accounts at Ace Blueprint and Gnomon and they churn out stuff that looks professional.

As for the 'not planning better' comment: Serisouly, what were you supposed to do? Look at the calendar to see if it's a regularly scheduled broken plotter day. :jerkit: What a dumbass comment.

 

[benbo]

I deleted an earlier comment because on review it sounded condescending and didn't express what I meant. The truth is that the "plan better" comment was really stupid.

 

[frazil]

Benbo - I didn't think it was condescending. I think "furious" might have been a little strong, but I was seriously annoyed by the "Hey, that's your problem" attitude I got. I'm still pretty f$^&*ng annoyed - I think it was pretty poor planning on their part to wait until the toner was out to replace it!

<deep breaths> Obviously I'm not quite over it - I think I need to go for a run.

I don't have to make a presentation (besides the poster), and actually I'm looking forward to the conference - one day walking around a stream and one day listening to talks. I tried calling all over town but no one prints larger than 24" - my poster is 36" wide.

 

[FusionWhite]

Im with Fraz on this one! This tuesday sucks. I spent all day yesterday tracking down a piece of equipment. I even got a VP of the company to make a couple phone calls on my behalf when the people in our Cincy office wouldnt return my calls/emails. Well at the end of the day I finally get a call that a guy at our Lexington office may have found it. So I drive there this morning and it turns out to not be what I needed. ARGGHHH, the project manager is crawling up my ass to get this testing done and no one in the company can find this rather expensive piece of equipment!

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Is ity me or is 'smirk and walk away' typical of the IT guys? SNL did a great send up of them.

 

[Flyer_PE]

Is ity me or is 'smirk and walk away' typical of the IT guys? SNL did a great send up of them.

Not just typical. I think it's a skill set required for employment in the field.

Jim

 

[Dleg]

I loved the "smirk and walk away" line. A perfect, one-sentence description of the IT guy we all all know and hate.

Nice work, Frazil. :laugh:

 

[DVINNY]

Well, I've printed off the wall crazy shit to various printers throughout our company in different states and such.

The IT guys now have it so that you can't "print out of your location" without some special setup or something.

I keep them hoppin'.

I'm VERY surprised they haven't pulled the plug on EB.com yet.

 

[Dleg]

Geeze, I just came back from lunch and saw some skinny white dude with a pony tail hanging outside with our IT guy. It seems we now have TWO IT guys, for an office of just 55 employees. What a waste.

The scary thing is, when I walked up they both stopped talking and walked away. I hope I'm not in trouble! Creepy little fuckers.

 

[Desert Engineer]

I carpool to work with one of our IT guys, he is pretty normal. But they other people in the IT department are strange.

One guy is like Lurch from the adams family. I swear, when you ask him a question, he formulates how he can respond in the fewest words possible. As if it cost him a quarter for each word. He them mumbles quietly and does nothing. The other IT guy that is more interested in doing work for the church he goes to or listening to music, than helping out. I call this guy "the minimum", after that de-motivational poster.

The other two IT guys are so bad, that they called my carpool buddy IT guy back from his vacation to fix the phone system. Some of the stories he tells me about the other IT guys are unbelievable. The IT guy "The Minimum" barely knows how to operate a computer (above what the common person knows). And "lurch" sits around reading magazines all day.

The IT guys are so apathetic that, if I have a problem I call my carpool buddy or just fix it myself if he’s busy. It usually takes just as long to fix it myself as it does to wrestle these guys from the coma they sit in all day.

Going back to the original topic, I'm not sure if it’s better to have smart ass IT guys or comatose IT guys.

 

[frazil]

Creepy little fuckers.

:Locolaugh:

 

[Guest]

I'm VERY surprised they haven't pulled the plug on EB.com yet.

Same here. I am surprised I haven't been called down to the pricipal's office to discuss my 'usage' of EB.com hmy:

JR

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

I love the fact that we don't have any net nazi crap here. My boss shows me T&A stuff on his machine all the time. :bananalama:

 

[FusionWhite]

After asking around the office it turns out the only things which the company watches out for is streaming audio/video (internet radio/YouTube) and pages like MySpace or Facebook. It sucks that I cant watch videos but I figure its a small price to pay for unlimited surfing other wise.

We just hired a second IT guy for our office. Hes a nice guy but Im dead serious when I say hes almost perfectly spherical. I hate to make fun of big people but you could turn him on his side and roll him down the hall. He knows his stuff though.

 

[ktulu]

I love the fact that we don't have any net nazi crap here. My boss shows me T&A stuff on his machine all the time. :bananalama:

Same here, although there's only two of us; we are now trying to figure out a way to sneak in a bottle of whiskey w/o the owner finding it (who just happens to be the boss' wife....)

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

^ There is frequently some beer in our fridge at work. Our LA group will occasionally drink as they go. My boss (civil group) ain't down with that and I wouldn't do it anyway. I do on Fridays sometimes hang out with folks and kick a couple back after hours.

 

[bigray76]

I love the fact that we don't have any net nazi crap here. My boss shows me T&A stuff on his machine all the time. :bananalama:

Certain people here are unblocked. The son of one of the co-owners of the company just started in our department... he sits in a cube and looks at porn and plays poker online all day. My boss looks at porn all day... but I get blocked going to youtube or the daily racing form. Go figure.

There is a somewhat strict no drinking policy here, but when I come in on the weekends to work, I bring a cooler of beer - management is never here then anyway.

-Ray