I hate the phone

When I’m not busy complaining loudly about things on the internet, I work at a day job where I sometimes fix computers. I say “sometimes” because I’m really good at my job and so the computers rarely break.  Haha!  Ok, that was a lie. The truth is I only sometimes fix them when they break, because I hate you all.

Anyhow, the other day I got a help desk ticket from someone needing a file restore. Backups are one of the things I’m actually responsible for, so the ticket came to me. No problem! I can do that. I’m good at file restores. Except, hey, what’s this? The ticket doesn’t actually say what file the user wanted restored. In fact, it just says, in essence, “I’ve deleted a file! Call me!”

Now, to me, this defeats the entire purpose of a help desk ticketing system. See, the point is, you describe your problem in detail, and I fix it. Simple, huh? I’ve always thought so. And for the most part, it works fairly well. Alas, some people just don’t “get it.” This person was apparently one of those people. So I (rather nice and calm-like, I thought) emailed the user and asked that she email me the name of the file she wanted restored, and also the full path, if that wasn’t too much trouble.

I waited, and never got a reply. The next day, I instead receive a call from a coworker. He had just fielded a call on our help desk phone line from this user, complaining that I had not yet resolved her issue! I pointed out that she had not yet, in fact, told anybody exactly what it was she wanted done. After looking at the ticket himself, he agreed that this was so, and called the user back. She then apparently dictated to him the path and folder name (it was actually a whole folder, and not just a file) she wanted restored, he updated the ticket for her, and I went ahead and restored said folder and closed the ticket.

Problem solved, right? No, of course not. A few hours later I get an email that says “Hi, I see you closed the ticket for my file restore. However there are still folders missing! You found this one so I was hoping you could find the others too.  Call me!”

Grumble grumble grumble.

I had to get up and take a walk for a bit after that. I mean, really? You took the time to type out an email to me explaining how I failed to restore folders you never told me you wanted restored, but you didn’t bother to take the extra ten seconds to actually tell me which folders are still missing?

After my cool-down walk and a bit of stalling, I finally gave in and picked up the phone. After all that, the user didn’t answer and I got her voice mail! I cheered this tiny victory and left a message, politely asking that she email me the names of all the folders she needed restored. I fully expected to receive an email saying something like “Hi I received your voice mail.  CALL ME!” So convinced was I of this that I steeled myself for the next hour, waiting for it to come in.

Thankfully, it never came. The user finally decided she’d better communicate her problem, and sent an email with the information I needed to be able to help her.

VICTORY IS MINE!