I have a co-worker “Ed” who’s working 1st level support.
He’ll take a call (but only if the caller hasn’t given up after letting it ring for 20 seconds), then write in Teams:
“Joe Smith called. He has a problem in Outlook.” (We have a ticket system, but Ed doesn’t use it)
Now, Joe Smith expects IT to help him. So I can’t just ignore it.
If I reply “what kind of issue?”, Ed will ignore my question, because he doesn’t react to Teams notifications.
If I physically walk over to his desk and ask him, he’ll reply “Sorry, Joe didn’t say”.
Literally the quickest way to get this shit off my desk is to call the user back and fix their Outlook issue myself.
And that’s exactly why Ed does this.
Of course, Ed isn’t the problem.
The problem is that he wasn’t fired years ago because he knows certain things about the owner of the company and the CEO.
Ed got “promoted” to IT from another department.
He used to train new hires.
There’s a reason he’s been with the company for decades and works first level support.
Everyone’s just waiting for him to retire.
Okay, so you see what works to fix the problem, you could have a conversation with him about how his skills are wasted in HelpDesk and that he should be making more money by doing job X in department Y. If he has enough dirt on the CEO, he can get his promotion.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t want a promotion.
He wants to sit on his ass and watch Youtube for another 5 years.
Then he can fuck off with one of the good old retirement packages that people joining 20 years ago got.
And that’s what the CEO wants, too. At this post, Ed can’t cause any damage, except to my nerves.
He wants to sit on his ass and watch Youtube for another 5 years.
Set up a bandwidth restriction policy against his devices. Choke it down to 100kps for video sites so that watchability is garbage with low resolution and constant buffering.
Or I’ll go all out and redirect Youtube to lemonparty.cc for his account.
I wouldn’t go that far. The goal is to cause him to complain to other employees/managers that Youtube is too slow. You want the question forming in other people’s heads “Why is he watching so much Youtube here at work that this is a problem?”
Even better is if he is using the company internet/equipment to consume content that isn’t safe and appropriate for work. If it can be shown his behavior is legal liability then the company may decide he’s more trouble than he’s worth.
Luckily I had my Engineers backs when dealing with “Ed’s”. First I would go to his manager and tell them what is happening, along with evidence of what was going on. Then, when the manager ignored it, I would go to our shared manager to inform him of the problem. During this time I would tell my team to push back on it and if the internal client had issues first I would direct him to the service desk manager and then to our shared manager. A little petty at times but usually ended up working since I could lay it out with evidence.
I’d start by replying “Please get that fixed for him and create a ticket and escalate if you can’t fix it”. When that didn’t work, I’d probably just hit him with the thumbs up react, or literally nothing. A coworker not doing their job even after guiding them through the process shouldn’t be your problem.
I usually insist “we solve the problem together” what means I solve it and he gets to watch in the call “as a teaching moment”. It just means he can’t just dump the problem on me and walk away so thinks twice before asking next time.
At least you can just ignore “Hi”.
I have a co-worker “Ed” who’s working 1st level support.
He’ll take a call (but only if the caller hasn’t given up after letting it ring for 20 seconds), then write in Teams:
“Joe Smith called. He has a problem in Outlook.” (We have a ticket system, but Ed doesn’t use it)
Now, Joe Smith expects IT to help him. So I can’t just ignore it.
If I reply “what kind of issue?”, Ed will ignore my question, because he doesn’t react to Teams notifications.
If I physically walk over to his desk and ask him, he’ll reply “Sorry, Joe didn’t say”.
Literally the quickest way to get this shit off my desk is to call the user back and fix their Outlook issue myself.
And that’s exactly why Ed does this.
Of course, Ed isn’t the problem.
The problem is that he wasn’t fired years ago because he knows certain things about the owner of the company and the CEO.
There’s an “office politics” solution here. Sounds like Ed needs a promotion to another department.
Ed got “promoted” to IT from another department.
He used to train new hires.
There’s a reason he’s been with the company for decades and works first level support.
Everyone’s just waiting for him to retire.
Okay, so you see what works to fix the problem, you could have a conversation with him about how his skills are wasted in HelpDesk and that he should be making more money by doing job X in department Y. If he has enough dirt on the CEO, he can get his promotion.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t want a promotion.
He wants to sit on his ass and watch Youtube for another 5 years.
Then he can fuck off with one of the good old retirement packages that people joining 20 years ago got.
And that’s what the CEO wants, too. At this post, Ed can’t cause any damage, except to my nerves.
Set up a bandwidth restriction policy against his devices. Choke it down to 100kps for video sites so that watchability is garbage with low resolution and constant buffering.
That’s actually not a bad idea.
Or I’ll go all out and redirect Youtube to lemonparty.cc for his account.
I wouldn’t go that far. The goal is to cause him to complain to other employees/managers that Youtube is too slow. You want the question forming in other people’s heads “Why is he watching so much Youtube here at work that this is a problem?”
Even better is if he is using the company internet/equipment to consume content that isn’t safe and appropriate for work. If it can be shown his behavior is legal liability then the company may decide he’s more trouble than he’s worth.
Luckily I had my Engineers backs when dealing with “Ed’s”. First I would go to his manager and tell them what is happening, along with evidence of what was going on. Then, when the manager ignored it, I would go to our shared manager to inform him of the problem. During this time I would tell my team to push back on it and if the internal client had issues first I would direct him to the service desk manager and then to our shared manager. A little petty at times but usually ended up working since I could lay it out with evidence.
I’d start by replying “Please get that fixed for him and create a ticket and escalate if you can’t fix it”. When that didn’t work, I’d probably just hit him with the thumbs up react, or literally nothing. A coworker not doing their job even after guiding them through the process shouldn’t be your problem.
I usually insist “we solve the problem together” what means I solve it and he gets to watch in the call “as a teaching moment”. It just means he can’t just dump the problem on me and walk away so thinks twice before asking next time.