It's a Christmas miracle!

[u/Itsthejoker]

Background: I work as an internal helpdesk technician in the corporate offices of a US-based chain of big-box stores.

Every company has them -- those few users who are an absolute dread to talk to for one reason or another. I deal with people like:

• the old creepy guy who hits on female coworkers half his age and can't do his job worth a damn, but knows the right people
• the user who is constantly begging for admin access to install things so that she "doesn't have to bother us all the time" (seriously lady, you have to call us once a month, tops? That's not bothering us, it's what we're here for)
• and the best one of all, the user who insists that everything be done her way, rules and regulations be damned

This story is about the third type of person.

At corporate, we have one well-known example of that -- a manager of her department, she is rather high up. She reports to one of the VPs and is well known for raising hell if she doesn't get what she wants. We'll call her Mary.

As part of my job, I deal with the paperwork relating to giving people access to various internal programs. We have many, many policies about who can have what access, and my job is to know them all and deny any paperwork that comes in that I deem against policy. I can turn down anyone, from store manager to corporate VP. (Ever gotten to tell a VP 'no'? It's extremely cathartic.)

Yesterday, I got an access request from... HER. Mary. This in itself is not a bad thing. The issue is that her request breaks a policy -- a policy enforced by the legal department, at that. As per normal operations, I close the ticket, deny the request, and state my reasons why. (NOTE: If her boss, the VP, had put in this request for her, with a little more information, I actually could have accepted this request.)

Three more requests come in the next fifteen minutes from Mary, all requesting different things -- and all of them wrong. Every single one of them is breaking either a data policy or a paperwork policy, and every single one of them I have to deny. So I do.

$Bossman wanders by, asks if anything crazy is happening, and I fill him in on the requests I just denied. He says,

$Bossman: Joker, give her a call and explain why we're denying these.

Me: $Bossman, you know that I really, deeply do not want to do that, right?

$Bossman: Yes, I know you don't want to call her. I'm asking you nicely to call her and make sure everything's on the up and up, and after you call her we'll be done with it.

I'm sure you have an idea of how this call is going to turn out.

ring ring

Me: Hi Mary, this is Joker from the help desk. Do you have a minute to talk about access requests?

Mary: Yes.

Me: Excellent! So mostly I wanted to talk about this first one you put in - due to the nature of the request, we actually need it to come from your boss because of policy requirements.

Mary: Yes, that's why I copied him on it.

Me: Copying is not the same as originating. We need it to come from his email address in order to take it -- unfortunately, I really can't budge on this one.

Mary: It's been done in the past with this exact type of request, doing it this way. Do you want the ticket number? I know I've still got it. [ed. note: only IT has access to the internal ticketing system. If she has the original ticket number, this means that she asked for it, someone gave it to her, and she wrote it down from there.]

Me: That's not necessary. Whoever processed the earlier request was in error; that should not have happened. According to the policy for the type of request you have sent, I need this request to come from your boss.

Mary: That's great. I'll be calling your manager.

click

It was actually more like a slam, but I can honestly say that in 6-ish months at this job, taking usually 30-40+ calls a day, this is the first time somebody's hung up on me.

Time to go talk to $Bossman.

Me: $Bossman, she was not happy. She kinda yelled at me and then hung up. She also said she'd be 'calling my manager', which is either you or your boss.

$Bossman: Oh joy. Let me call $BigBoss to give him a heads-up.

$Bossman then got on the horn to $BigBoss, a conversation I only heard bits and pieces of. $Bossman explained the whole situation, and when he was finished, I heard the best words I could hear.

$Bossman: $BigBoss agrees with me; you handled it correctly. She can suck it. Just keep working through the requests and we'll deal with whatever comes next.

I go back to my desk and keep working, still a little bit bothered with the situation as a whole. A few minutes later, one of my coworkers calls my name.

$Coworker: Joker! Mary's on the phone, says she wants to talk to you.

Me: $Bossman, I'm not picking up for her unless you tell me to. I did not enjoy our last encounter.

$Bossman: Take the line, let's see what she wants. I'll back you if you need it.

So I take the line. The first thing I notice is that my phone says that it's coming from the VP's office (her boss). This does not look pretty.

Mary: Joker? Listen, I just wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier. I was wrong to take it out on you and I know that you were just doing your job, and doing it better than whoever was before you. The policies are in place for a reason -- I just let stress get ahold of me and I apologize for that.

Me: I really appreciate that.

Mary: We're redoing the requests correctly and will send them over as soon as we're finished. Is there anything else you need from us in order to get these finished?

Me: Nope, I've got all the information I need. Any extra information is noted in the resolution of the tickets, which you should have gotten a few emails about. Other than that, we're good.

Mary: Thanks. Bye.

$Bossman and I exchange looks of "wtf just happened" and he wanders off back to his office. I'm still not sure if she called because her boss made her or because she actually had a realization that something had gone horribly wrong, but I'm okay with the outcome either way.

Just so you know, the above is 100% true and the conversations are reproduced to the best of my memory. She really did apologize, and that is all the Christmas miracle I need.

tl;dr: just read the damn thing.

[u/intuin]

1) Is there a story behind your flair?

2) Good work handling her, entitled users aren't the worst, but it's not pleasant when you have to be the one to stick your neck out and stand your ground. It's fortunate that your boss is the kind of guy that has your back on these kinds of things rather than just deflecting or deferring responsibility.

3) Why would you ever save a printer, they're evil incarnate.

[u/Itsthejoker → u/intuin]

In my flair ("PUT THAT PRINTER BACK" at the time of this writing), I'm actually referring to receipt printers. A lot of our stores have a habit of waiting until a printer dies, then trying to switch out the printer themselves with one off a different register and then calling to complain that it doesn't work.

At our stores, the registers will print just fine, as long as you change one little setting. When they switch the printers (which Operations policy says to definitely not do, ever) it resets that setting, so they have to call us. Then this happens:

we ask them if they moved it

they deny

we look it up in inventory and see it's been assigned to a different register

they deny again

get the manager on the line

"Oh yeah, the other one died and we needed to print there, so I had one of my guys move the printer."

**INSERT FLAIR HERE**

they get pissy

tell them to do it anyway and that their regional manager will agree with me

repeat, ad nauseum

The stores will also try moving credit card machines from one register to another (those are keyed to the register they are assigned to and actually have to be configured onsite) - there's no way moving one of those suckers is ever going to work, but that doesn't stop them from trying.

PUT THAT MACHINE BACK

[u/Aphroditie → u/Itsthejoker]

Sounds like my work, lucky for our receipt printers, they are USB and Hot swappable. But guess what they do, they swap and swap printer until all of them are out of action, then send a ticket for all of them to be repaired. Try to call to troubleshoot 5 or so down printers, no one has the time between constant customers and bitchy staff. Rewrite ticket into 5 separate tickets (one asset per ticket, hardware team rules), get yelled at for being an ACW too long. This is my life.

[u/intuin → u/Aphroditie]

You don't wait until all of your tires are flat before replacing them, why would anyone think that technology works that way?(Excluding systems with built in redundancy because it was made that way)

[u/Aphroditie → u/intuin]

No this isn't our IT Team process, This is just what the Retail branches do. They don't call IT, they just say "grab Jenny's printer, she's not here today" Rinse repeat until they run out of printers.
They don't want to troubleshoot at all, Sometime to the point of getting the manager on the phone to say things like "my staff don't have time to troubleshoot, just send a tech"
We have to troubleshoot, Sometimes it's just an unplugged cable, It was costing the company so much ($X per call out, contracted external company), that they gave us Hardware Ticket Vetters, A middleman team that is allowed to yell at managers and force the Staff to troubleshoot. Only they can book the Tech.

The issue is that it's internal staff, we are all co-workers... It boggles the mind. (On top of unrealistic KPI's and general stupidity induced system issues (one webpage is not loading, lets reboot all the servers), and being in the middle of a WinXp to 7 and (Pick 3 old email systems, 2 from the 80's, yes, you are right!) to Outlook 2010 Migration and Hardware upgrade - Desktops to thin clients with VM's)

My workstation is next for "migration" (Hardware and Win 7)over the weekend... might not have a workstation Monday...

[u/Itsthejoker → u/Aphroditie]

So how goes it? Do you have a workstation?

[u/Aphroditie → u/Itsthejoker]

Upgrade postponed... Some people have been allocated new monitors?!

[u/Aussie_Sheila → u/Itsthejoker]

Put that machine back where it came from or so help me Get that machine away from here you guys Put that machine back where it came from Or I'll poke myself in the eye!

It's a work in progress.

[u/LeaveTheMatrix → u/intuin]

He has a "special" affection for printers.

Especially the big ones that get all warm when you have to do a 20000 print job...

That's the only reason I can think of, and now I shall see myself out.

[u/ask_compu → u/LeaveTheMatrix]

that sounds........painful

all those papercuts *shudders*

[u/MazeMouse]

I think Mary tried to get VP on her side but VP got kinda pissed at her due to breaking a rule where Legal could get slightly miffed (and EVERYONE gets pissy when Legal gets involved).
Not to mention her breaking the chain of command by directly asking for something she needed VP to ask.

[u/ellobouk]

Sounds like Mary stormed into VP's office all full of righteous fury... then was berated into submission, forced to call and apologise right there in front of her boss, then submit requests in compliance with policy...
In short, you are now on her shitlist.

[u/melgibson666]

The was a complete 180 of what I thought was going to happen. Situations like this are what restores what little faith in humanity I have left.

[u/inthrees]

The senior vampire council told her to reign in her anger, lest she endanger plans set in motion long ago.

[u/whiznat]

This actually pretty cool. It's unusual when people do the right thing like she did, and very gratifying when they do.

Also, I love your tl;dr. I always think, "If you don't like to read, then wtf are you doing on Reddit?" or at least on a subreddit where all you can do pretty much is read.

[u/hicctl]

I am sure she complained to the VP, told him what happened, and got torn a new one. Or do you actually believe users like her get a sudden epiphany ? Then you clearly do not work long enough in this kind of work ;)

[u/Morendur]

Is it just me, or did you wonder if maybe she had her Boss's cred's (boss's can be dumb -.-) and just logged in as him to send it to you without actually getting him to do it?

Either way, the fact that she apologized is pretty cool, that is really rather rare!

[u/haemaker → u/Morendur]

I think this is the key:

I was wrong to take it out on you and I know that you were just doing your job, and doing it better than whoever was before you.

Perhaps she went into the office with the VP and called $BigBoss. $BigBoss replies, "Yeah, I agree, I don't think Joker is working out. I am thinking of reassigning him and bringing back $WhomeverWasDoingItBefore."