Current Events > The IT situation in literally every office in the universe:

(+) Yeah! (+)

Oh, you need to use the printer by the break room? You just need to add it. The name is VTJFTHKIDBVOUVRX34. Be careful you don't do VTJFTHKIDBVOUVRX31 by mistake because that one's in the Barbados office.

People living in Alpha Centauri hate having to commute to the Barbados office.

"Is that clock correct?"
"No, it's stopped."
"Can't someone replace the batteries?"
"We put in a ticket for it."
"When?"
"2011."

There are offices that tie printing to your work badge, so you just send the job to the shared service and then tap your badge on the printer you want to print at and then it prints right there.

1337toothbrush posted...

There are offices that tie printing to your work badge, so you just send the job to the shared service and then tap your badge on the printer you want to print at and then it prints right there.

That's how it is where I work. You submit to a virtual queue, then just go to the nearest printer and swipe your badge to release it. It's pretty easy.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

"Is that clock correct?"
"No, it's stopped."
"Can't someone replace the batteries?"
"We put in a ticket for it."
"When?"
"2011."

good thing time hasnt moved since then

Every photocopier/printer I've ever used:

ME: *accidentally sends a 100 page print job incorrectly*

PRINTER: *has a CANCEL button*

ALSO PRINTER: *CANCEL button does nothing, there is no way to stop the 100 pages from printing no matter what you do*

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

"Is that clock correct?"
"No, it's stopped."
"Can't someone replace the batteries?"
"We put in a ticket for it."
"When?"
"2011."

No IT but maintenance was like that at my last job. We would annoy them though we'd submit a new ticket everyday till they did it.

Only one time did I see something get fixed ASAP and I'm the one who put the ticket in. I wrote in there "this a lawsuit waiting to happen." Basically it was about 5 ft cinder block wall and it was wobbly. Inmates would lean on it and shit. Officers would sit on it. And what brought it to my attention was a inmate flat footed jumped on top of it like you see some people do for a work out it about gave way when he did that.

Euripides posted...

Every photocopier/printer I've ever used:

ME: *accidentally sends a 100 page print job incorrectly*

PRINTER: *has a CANCEL button*

ALSO PRINTER: *CANCEL button does nothing, there is no way to stop the 100 pages from printing no matter what you do*

Unless it runs out of paper, in which case it will never resume that job, or any job after it, even if you reboot the thing, and you have to open the print spooler in Windows (except that doesn't exist anymore and they call it something else now) and delete the job from there, except it won't delete even when you right-click it and choose "delete."

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

Unless it runs out of paper, in which case it will never resume that job, or any job after it, even if you reboot the thing, and you have to open the print spooler in Windows (except that doesn't exist anymore and they call it something else now) and delete the job from there, except it won't delete even when you right-click it and choose "delete."

It's 2024 and no one has figured out how to program "stop printing" into a printer. What a timeline

OMG Outlook did the thing again where it changed its own settings so I have to double-click an email and have it open in a separate window in order to read it.

Why does it hate my preferences so much?

In my office they would just remote login and do it for me. They don't want us regular schlubs poking around the network

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

"Is that clock correct?"
"No, it's stopped."
"Can't someone replace the batteries?"
"We put in a ticket for it."
"When?"
"2011."

IT isn't the building maintenance

We named ours by the location the printers are at but staff kept moving them around without asking us for permission first. So really if your IT department named your printers a bunch of numbers its because your coworkers deserved it

We renamed our printers by department. Like "Main <copier model>" or "Accounting <printer model>"

Yeah no that's why I don't own a printer. It's literally the McDonald's Ice Cream Machine of the office

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

OMG Outlook did the thing again where it changed its own settings so I have to double-click an email and have it open in a separate window in order to read it.

Why does it hate my preferences so much?

I haven't had this problem.

VeggetaX posted...

IT isn't the building maintenance

Well, I don't actually have an issue with a clock. It was just an example using something familiar that doesn't require any explanation.

Euripides posted...

It's 2024 and no one has figured out how to program "stop printing" into a printer. What a timeline

I assume its on purpose because places like Xerox can see how much ink youre using or how many pages youve printed and charge you for it. So its probably for that reason it still prints even if you hit cancel.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

Well, I don't actually have an issue with a clock. It was just an example using something familiar that doesn't require any explanation.

Funny enough this is an IT situation in a lot of offices. People treat IT as building maintenance. If it has power, IT is in charge of it. Also IT is in charge of building and moving around office furniture because computers sit on them. When I was first starting out in IT, I built many an office chair. Had people ask me if I could take a look at the broken microwave in the break room. Eventually I learned to say no.

BlazinBlue88 posted...

Funny enough this is an IT situation in a lot of offices. People treat IT as building maintenance. If it has power, IT is in charge of it. Also IT is in charge of building and moving around office furniture because computers sit on them. When I was first starting out in IT, I built many an office chair. Had people ask me if I could take a look at the broken microwave in the break room. Eventually I learned to say no.

I love IT folks; it's the process that screws everything up. The change management software is a total black box and if one of the nine people who have to touch the ticket to get it to the person who's actually going to work it doesn't know what to do with it, it just gets lost in the ether forever.

If it's something local IT can handle, I generally put in the ticket, then walk over to their cube and ask them about the problem, and it's taken care of in minutes. I dunno what they do about the ticket situation but.

It only sucks when this mystery person is on Neptune or somewhere and no matter how many times you send the "do you have a status" email, the answer is always crickets.

This hasn't been true at any office I've worked at in the last 15 years.

The last 2 places I worked named the printers based on their location (1st floor copy room, 2nd floor admin, etc).

At my current office, we use our fob/badge. You hit print. There's only 1 option. It's the default for everyone. Click ok. Then you go to literally any printer in the building, scan your fob, and tap "Release Job."

Admins pushing out updates that pollute desktops with useless shortcuts like Adobe Reader that I don't have privileges to delete. Or hides file extensions in Explore by default.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

"Is that clock correct?"
"No, it's stopped."
"Can't someone replace the batteries?"
"We put in a ticket for it."
"When?"
"2011."

"low priority, I've been monitoring the clock and it is still right twice a day"

BlazinBlue88 posted...

Funny enough this is an IT situation in a lot of offices. People treat IT as building maintenance. If it has power, IT is in charge of it. Also IT is in charge of building and moving around office furniture because computers sit on them. When I was first starting out in IT, I built many an office chair. Had people ask me if I could take a look at the broken microwave in the break room. Eventually I learned to say no.

I learned so say no immediately especially since we had a dedicated maintenance guy. When I use to do Help Desk people would ask me to help move around their desks and shit and I laughed that shit off.

BlazinBlue88 posted...

Funny enough this is an IT situation in a lot of offices. People treat IT as building maintenance. If it has power, IT is in charge of it. Also IT is in charge of building and moving around office furniture because computers sit on them. When I was first starting out in IT, I built many an office chair. Had people ask me if I could take a look at the broken microwave in the break room. Eventually I learned to say no.

This is so true. When I first started at this company as help desk, I had to do things like changing out light bulbs in these little lamps placed on the bottoms of overhead credenzas at people's cubicles. Also, at one point, someone got a standing desk. Shortly after, everyone wanted to copy her and started requesting standing desks to which the CEO said "Absolutely! Anything for my people." So I was responsible for setting up these heavy ass standing desks for people. I was even asked by my boss to see if I could repair a faulty desk phone (surprisingly, I was able to band-aid fix it).

Ours have the floor, but then just a letter, so one of the printers is 1C, for example. Which means you have to memorize where printers are, and to make a dumb situation even dumber, if you physically look at the printer, it doesn't say 1C anywhere. So if you accidentally print to the wrong printer and don't know where it is, either you shuffle through the printed stuff at each printer or you redo the job on the correct one.

I dunno man when I need to print something I click print and then walk up to any one of the eight printers on the floor and tap my id badge and boom document comes out.

A long time ago, I worked for a major Federal law enforcement agency. They had a semi-decent criminal investigation case management system, but no mechanism for tracking any other kind of tasking. So you'd end up with "investigations" for moving office furniture, transferring phone number assignments, getting plane tickets, etc. Totally scrambled metrics (not to mention access controls).

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pQGtucrJ8hM

Notti posted...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pQGtucrJ8hM

I love the irony that now that we've gone almost completely paperless in the modern world (with people even working on not a pc, but straight up their phone) printers have finally started working. The laserjet printer has been printing documents hassle free for the most part, but it was 20 years too late. Should have developed working printers back in the 90s and 2000s.

Then there's HP insisting on doing subscription based service for ink and printing... I'm glad paperless is screwing them over like smartphone screwed over the kodak company.

saspa posted...

The laserjet printer has been printing documents hassle free for the most part, but it was 20 years too late. Should have developed working printers back in the 90s and 2000s.

No, you have it reversed. They developed it too early. The Laserjet III (the first recognizably modern one) came out in 1990. But the problem was, because we are talking about HP here, it was hideously expensive. That price point is basically the only reason why inferior inkjet technology even exists. Maybe Laserjets would have been cheaper if they came out when the components had dropped in price and HP was actually feeling pressure to compete.

I cant print this black-and-white document, because Im out of yellow ink.

saspa posted...

I love the irony that now that we've gone almost completely paperless in the modern world (with people even working on not a pc, but straight up their phone) printers have finally started working. The laserjet printer has been printing documents hassle free for the most part, but it was 20 years too late. Should have developed working printers back in the 90s and 2000s.

Then there's HP insisting on doing subscription based service for ink and printing... I'm glad paperless is screwing them over like smartphone screwed over the kodak company.

That's one thing I love about my career. When the internet went down for companies all of the world this year and it was causing mayhem within a lot of companies because they couldn't do certain things we just busted out the old school paper work. We may do most stuff on computers but we always have physical paper versions in stock just in case.

saspa posted...

I love the irony that now that we've gone almost completely paperless in the modern world (with people even working on not a pc, but straight up their phone) printers have finally started working. The laserjet printer has been printing documents hassle free for the most part, but it was 20 years too late. Should have developed working printers back in the 90s and 2000s.

Then there's HP insisting on doing subscription based service for ink and printing... I'm glad paperless is screwing them over like smartphone screwed over the kodak company.

Bro, 90's printers worked. You had to tear the tracks off the sides but they were no-bullshit devices.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

Oh, you need to use the printer by the break room? You just need to add it. The name is VTJFTHKIDBVOUVRX34. Be careful you don't do VTJFTHKIDBVOUVRX31 by mistake because that one's in the Barbados office.

They should be able to block people from printing to certain devices. Its not that hard.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

"Is that clock correct?"
"No, it's stopped."
"Can't someone replace the batteries?"
"We put in a ticket for it."
"When?"
"2011."

The clock battery is not a valid IT request. Nor is your broken coffee maker. Not everything with a plug is an IT problem.

No action.

Ticket closed.

VeggetaX posted...

When I use to do Help Desk people would ask me to help move around their desks and s*** and I laughed that s*** off.

This one is almost valid, depending on what "move desks" means.

If they're physically moving desks, that's recableing. If they're taking their laptop with them, that's probably dealing with cabling a dock and power supply with it.

If they're going to a new cube with a desktop already there, fuck 'em. Use your network login, and I hope you saved everything to your network share. You were told not to use the local drive.

DnDer posted...

This one is almost valid, depending on what "move desks" means.

If they're physically moving desks, that's recableing. If they're taking their laptop with them, that's probably dealing with cabling a dock and power supply with it.

If they're going to a new cube with a desktop already there, fuck 'em. Use your network login, and I hope you saved everything to your network share. You were told not to use the local drive.

No you're mixing up move desks with what he said which was moving around their desk. Relocating to another desk and getting their computer stuff is fine. He's talking about people asking IT to move around furniture all the time.

I know exactly what youre talking about and its fucking stupid. My prints were being printed in an office 3 hours away for like a week.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

"Is that clock correct?"
"No, it's stopped."
"Can't someone replace the batteries?"
"We put in a ticket for it."
"When?"
"2011."

How is that IT's problem? O_o

DnDer posted...

This one is almost valid, depending on what "move desks" means.

If they're physically moving desks, that's recableing. If they're taking their laptop with them, that's probably dealing with cabling a dock and power supply with it.

If they're going to a new cube with a desktop already there, fuck 'em. Use your network login, and I hope you saved everything to your network share. You were told not to use the local drive.

Its not even a valid request to ask an IT person to cable things for you. If a grown adult who expects to get paid money for a job cant plug in a computer, thats not ITs problem

Rika_Furude posted...

Its not even a valid request to ask an IT person to cable things for you. If a grown adult who expects to get paid money for a job cant plug in a computer, thats not ITs problem

When I worked for Lockheed Martin, it took three tickets to move cubes: One for facilities support to physically move the desktop computer for you (lest you hurt yourself and a file worker's comp claim). The second was for IT to plug it in (because that's a hardware problem). The third was to get your phone number transferred by telecom support. Of course, if you had multiple desktops (due to air-gapped networks), it would take an additional two tickets for each of those...

Rika_Furude posted...

Its not even a valid request to ask an IT person to cable things for you. If a grown adult who expects to get paid money for a job cant plug in a computer, thats not ITs problem

Ehh...cabling things is a valid IT thing even if you think it's common sense. Plus you have situations where the ethernet cable to the computer is daisy chained from the VOIP desk phone in order to save a wall port. Also newer generations of people are growing up without desktops or even laptops in their homes so that makes the concept of the cabling all the more foreign to them.

UnfairRepresent posted...

How is that IT's problem? O_o

Is this really such a foreign concept, to use a more accessible comparison as an example?

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

"Is that clock correct?"
"No, it's stopped."
"Can't someone replace the batteries?"
"We put in a ticket for it."
"When?"
"2011."

Why would the IT department be responsible for replacing batteries in a clock?

BloodyBenten posted...

Why would the IT department be responsible for replacing batteries in a clock?

I give up.

Because IT is responsible for everything, duh. I spilled coffee on myself this morning and I'm still waiting for them to respond to the ticket I put in about that.

I thought we were talking about Pennywise and what the fuck he was doing in an office tbh.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

I give up.

Because IT is responsible for everything, duh. I spilled coffee on myself this morning and I'm still waiting for them to respond to the ticket I put in about that.

Remember to sue McDonalds for a large cash settlement.
-IT