On the subject of blinky lights...

[mjolnir]

(DISCLAIMER: Small IT, well, telecomms rant ahead. The issue has already been resolved, I'm just venting about it now.)

Here's a simple situation I want to share with all my TB brethren: Imagine a new employee is hired and given an office in one of the temporary contractor shacks near the construction site. Imagine that his phone is a regular standard telephone, he wants to call someone, he picks up the handset and dials the number. He notices one day, maybe a week into working here, that whenever he receives a voicemail message, his phone does not blink to notify him. He idly mentions this to his boss (the VP of Engineering) and promptly forgets about it.

Now picture if you would this boss becoming absolutely livid. He broods for maybe an hour on the absence of blinky lights on his new employee's phone, then storms downstairs to the IT offices and rains hellfire and brimstone on my boss for not supplying his new employee with a blinky phone.

My boss comes into my office with a look like he's just been put in a burlap sack and beaten with reeds, and says to me (and I quote) "Brandon, we need to give the new guy a phone with blinky lights."

Now, without going too deep into it, the new guy had an analog phone line in his office. Our analog lines are old enough that they don't support phones with blinky lights, so that means I would have to transfer his outlet over to a digital line, of which we have very few. This is a long difficult process, and we have so few digital lines I actually had to steal one from another office which will be filled again very soon (thus causing even more problems I don't want to think about right now), and here's the kicker:

I got him set up with a new phone (also stolen from another office) and made sure it was all working while he was out of the office, and about an hour later I got a call from him that went a little something like this...

(ring)

"MIS."

"Hi, Brandon?"

"Yessir."

"Hi, this is Paul from downstairs."

"Yessir, what can I do for you?"

"I was wondering... Why do I have a new phone?"

"...I'm sorry, what?"

"I came in just a little bit ago and there's a new phone on my desk. I was wondering why, I kind of liked the old one better..."

"..."


Am I off base thinking this whole situation was just a little bit ridiculous?...

[/rant]

[Phalex]

I feel your pain.

You just can't fix stupid!

[Pilgrim]

Good time to draft a proposal for digital lines that your boss can forward to the VP Of Engineering. You now have the justification.

And if you DO that, when the next office is filled and you have no digital phone lines available, you will be able to say "that's why you got that proposal - and now you can see that we must go ahead with it."

[mjolnir]

Originally Posted by Pilgrim

Good time to draft a proposal for digital lines that your boss can forward to the VP Of Engineering. You now have the justification.

And if you DO that, when the next office is filled and you have no digital phone lines available, you will be able to say "that's why you got that proposal - and now you can see that we must go ahead with it."

A solid idea, except any proposals that come out of IT are generally shot down by the president of the company...

...Because he's an idiot.

We've actually been trying to switch to an IP phone system for almost a year now and upper management keeps insisting our current phone system is just fine (it's been in place since before my boss even worked here and it's getting harder and harder to find hardware and software support for it because it's been obsolete for years).

Now I find out my boss had to shut down our firewall, our ENTIRE firewall, on orders from the president of our company because he tried to go to a wine site and it was blocked because our firewall (which he himself INSISTED we set up to block and monitor EVERYTHING) denies access to websites involving alcohol. Now it was explained to him we can remove the restrictions on one type of site only so he can see his precious wine site, but he completely ignored that and ordered the whole thing shut down.

I am at the mercy of far too many stupid people here.

[cheesemonkey]

Originally Posted by mjolnir

A solid idea, except any proposals that come out of IT are generally shot down by the president of the company...

...Because he's an idiot.

We've actually been trying to switch to an IP phone system for almost a year now and upper management keeps insisting our current phone system is just fine (it's been in place since before my boss even worked here and it's getting harder and harder to find hardware and software support for it because it's been obsolete for years).

Now I find out my boss had to shut down our firewall, our ENTIRE firewall, on orders from the president of our company because he tried to go to a wine site and it was blocked because our firewall (which he himself INSISTED we set up to block and monitor EVERYTHING) denies access to websites involving alcohol. Now it was explained to him we can remove the restrictions on one type of site only so he can see his precious wine site, but he completely ignored that and ordered the whole thing shut down.

I am at the mercy of far too many stupid people here.

wow... i feel sorry for you...

[moomoocajoo]

Rofl.

As an earlier poster said, you canny fix stupid!

[mjolnir]

Originally Posted by cheesemonkey

wow... i feel sorry for you...

In a lot of ways it's a sweet gig, very cool boss, lots of personal space, plenty of leeway to do my job on my own time. It's the constant fighting with upper management that sucks.

[Lalabadie]

This is Dilbert-grade material.

[mjolnir]

Originally Posted by Lalabadie

This is Dilbert-grade material.

...I've honestly never thought of it like that.

I'm suddenly much more amused by the whole situation...

[Fretless1!]

[quote=mjolnir;5973872]

Now I find out my boss had to shut down our firewall, our ENTIRE firewall, on orders from the president of our company because he tried to go to a wine site and it was blocked because our firewall (which he himself INSISTED we set up to block and monitor EVERYTHING) denies access to websites involving alcohol. Now it was explained to him we can remove the restrictions on one type of site only so he can see his precious wine site, but he completely ignored that and ordered the whole thing shut down.

QUOTE]

Woah!! I'm afraid I'd have to insist he put that in writing!
CMA. Wow...

Good to see I'm not the only Telecom guy here. I get some bizarre requests, too. People are strange.

[mjolnir]

I'm not actually supposed to be telecomms. I'm only supposed to be the clientside IT tech, but lack of man power forced the three of us in IT to become resident phone experts. And systems administrators. And programmers. And electricians.

[moomoocajoo]

and bassists?

[PSPookie]

I like blinky lights.

[mjolnir]

Originally Posted by moomoocajoo

and bassists?

Actually... My boss is a bassist too.

[gdthomas]

Originally Posted by mjolnir

Now I find out my boss had to shut down our firewall, our ENTIRE firewall, on orders from the president of our company because he tried to go to a wine site and it was blocked because our firewall (which he himself INSISTED we set up to block and monitor EVERYTHING) denies access to websites involving alcohol. Now it was explained to him we can remove the restrictions on one type of site only so he can see his precious wine site, but he completely ignored that and ordered the whole thing shut down.

I am at the mercy of far too many stupid people here.

I once worked at a place like this. The entire network staff turned over in less than six months. Our IT director caused us to shut down the entire network during normal hours, after opening and forwarding a virus email we warned him about less than an hour before. I really do feel your pain on this.

[hbarcat]

[hbarcat]

[hbarcat]

[peterbright]

My brother gave me a mouse pad that has Dilbert telling his boss how to reboot his laptop (by shaking it). The "laptop" is actually an Etch a Sketch.

[hbarcat]