I’m more professional than you

As an IT guy my hours sometimes vary. A lot of things we do have to be done after normal business hours due to user interference or even just because of personal preference. Because of the nature of my work as a consultant if I didn’t have set business hours, I’d be working 24/7 and I’m not being paid to do that.

My hours of work are Monday through Friday between 8am and 5pm. Yes I understand that certain things fall out of that time frame, and we react accordingly. But my company has a strict policy, that if we work after 5pm or before 8am, we must be paid overtime rates for that. And because of companies in the past not paying us, we must have approval from a decision maker in the company who can be responsible for paying us if we work outside of normal hours.

So when some low on the totem pole nobody calls me after 5pm and demands that I answer the phone I can do nothing but laugh. As soon as I answer that phone call from him, his company is going to get billed. No matter how much he fights, I can’t not bill him for a phone call.

A few weeks ago I made some changes for a client, they sent me the info they had, I made the changes according to their instructions and that was that. They were DNS changes to it takes some time to make it through the internet.

At about 4:45pm I get a phone voicemail from the employee, I was on the other line so I didn’t get it when it came in. The voicemail says, “Hey the website is down, please call me back, I need this back up.”

I get the voicemail after 5pm and I email him back from my phone asap, just to tell him “Hey just leave it where it’s at and it will come back. As long as you sent me the full instructions we will be fine. I cannot answer the phone after 5pm without prior approval for OT.”

About 5 minutes later I get another call, “Please call me back, the site is not up and I need the site up, please call me back.”

Then he replies to my email, “I’m changing it back to where it was before, I need my site up.”

I reply to his email, “OK I will not touch it until you tell me too.”

I get one last call back about 5:20pm, “You need to call me back, the time for being nice is over. Whatever change you made took my site down. You need to call me back or answer your phone, you are replying back from your phone but not answering. That is not very professional.”

Ok first off, fuck you buddy. You don’t call a consultant that is here to help your company and tell them what to do, I don’t work for you, I’m not employed by you. I’m not on the org chart, so fuck off. Professional is not calling someone demanding a call back because you screwed up by not getting the consultant the information they needed.

So about 20 minutes later I call him back on his office line, someone picks up and I hear oops and then a hang up. So I call back on his cell phone and leave a message.

“Hey I’m sorry I didn’t call you back, we cannot make calls after 5pm unless we have prior approval for overtime from the owner of the company and from the owner of my company. We do not have that approval so I cannot answer your call. I emailed you simply to be nice and tell you that so you didn’t think I was just ignoring your calls. Apparently I didn’t make that clear enough. However, I’ve checked the site and it appears up. If you need anything else, please contact the support team. Thank you and have a wonderful evening.”

I haven’t spoken to this person since then, I don’t plan on speaking to him either. Leaving demanding voicemails is not they way to get something done. Dick bag.

Our definitions of “Emergency” differ

What a user or client thinks is an emergency or a problem and what actually is an emergency or problem are two VERY different things. You see a typical user doesn’t understand that if you allow the IT guy or department to take control of everything IT, giving him a budget which allows for him to cover all of his bases, you will be ok.

IT guys know what needs backed up, they can’t prevent every single problem that might happen, but they can at least keep your company from losing information. And frankly, as long as your company isn’t losing information or data and isn’t losing money because of the IT department, then we feel we are doing our jobs.

Your mouse not working, is not an emergency. If you ask us nicely we can probably point you to a magical box full of mice that you can replace yourself. We don’t necessarily need to crawl under your desk to replace it either, you can simply plug it into your own computer, we are ok with that.

Sometimes a user will have a problem that we just don’t have a definitive answer for, but if there is a work around, that now becomes the way. Work arounds are a way to do things that aren’t necessarily the easy way.

Client emails me the other day, “My email is not working, it hasn’t updated in 3 weeks.” She’s in another state so we scheduled a GoToMeeting for to 10am the next day. Around 9am I get an email, “It’s working it’s working, thanks so much!”

I didn’t do anything, but ok. Just a moment later I get another email, “So it’s working and everything, but it doesn’t say Outlook at the top, is it broken?”

My response, “It’s working fine right, and you can work?”

Her response, “This is way too annoying, I CANNOT work when it doesn’t say outlook at the top. When I minimize it, I can’t find it!”

My response, “Look for the little Outlook Icon, it’s an orange O. I’m sorry I don’t consider the wrong app title bar an emergency or a deal breaker.”

Her response, “Maybe I did overreact a little.”

Ya think?