I Got Yer Standard Load Right Here...
If you ever hear the phrase "standard load" at your company, make peace with your maker for you are about to enter a special kind of IT hell. When I first joined The Company, they had their own IT department. Not the most efficient or talented in the world, but they tried and were amicable enough. But in the name of the bottom line, someone up the food chain decided that what they really needed to do was outsource it all to some other Company.
Obviously I can't specify who this nefarious OtherCompany is (goodness, it sounds so tawdry!) but I associate the OtherCompany with quality IT work about as much as Zaporozhets make me think of hot rods. A co-worker who has to deal with these "people" on a regular basis best summed it up when he said "they use a hammer to fix a watch." And their hammer of choice is the "standard load", basically some corporate pre-approved configuration, which is great, so long as you don't have to do any real work other than read email and or make spreadsheets. Install "non-standard" software, such as, oh, say that C compiler you need to write your code, and you've gone off the reservtation their tidy little "fix-it scripts" can handle.
Oh, wait. My bad. That implies that calling their 888 number will result in any actual tech support. It won't. You're simply routed to a call center somewhere (I assume in the US, I haven't been able to detect any foreign accent) where an agent will dutifully write up a "work ticket" (another phrase signaling your entry into the 666th layer IT Hell) that'll enter a queue in which it languishes for some indeterminant amount of time before eventually trickling its way down to the local people, the ones across the hall you're not supposed to talk to directly anymore.
And they mean it too. They've gone so far as to tape cut-up Dell boxes all over the glass windows, presumably to keep out prying eyes, because, you know, that hot game of online chess they're playing is highly sensitive work. A rogue stare, broken concentration and the game is lost! Oh, and the obligatory "Authorized Personnel Only" sign is now prominently displayed on the door. I guess I wasn't the only one who isn't amused by their make their little hovel the IT version of Isengard, someone had cleverly taped an "Un" onto their precious little sign - it took them a week for them to notice.
To give you an idea of the quality of service the OtherCompany provides, it took me nearly a month to have a new printer installed on the network, something I could have done myself in about an hour. I had made my call, had my work ticket written, where it sat in the queue while the desktop people waited for the network people to do something, who were waiting for the desktop people to do something. I finally had to dig up one of my few contacts in their bowels (having been transferred to this other Company during the Great Assimilation) to beg him to Do Something. Suffice to say, the next time I have an IT issue, I'm willing to risk getting dinged for following the addage of "If you want something right..."
Obviously I can't specify who this nefarious OtherCompany is (goodness, it sounds so tawdry!) but I associate the OtherCompany with quality IT work about as much as Zaporozhets make me think of hot rods. A co-worker who has to deal with these "people" on a regular basis best summed it up when he said "they use a hammer to fix a watch." And their hammer of choice is the "standard load", basically some corporate pre-approved configuration, which is great, so long as you don't have to do any real work other than read email and or make spreadsheets. Install "non-standard" software, such as, oh, say that C compiler you need to write your code, and you've gone off the reservtation their tidy little "fix-it scripts" can handle.
Oh, wait. My bad. That implies that calling their 888 number will result in any actual tech support. It won't. You're simply routed to a call center somewhere (I assume in the US, I haven't been able to detect any foreign accent) where an agent will dutifully write up a "work ticket" (another phrase signaling your entry into the 666th layer IT Hell) that'll enter a queue in which it languishes for some indeterminant amount of time before eventually trickling its way down to the local people, the ones across the hall you're not supposed to talk to directly anymore.
And they mean it too. They've gone so far as to tape cut-up Dell boxes all over the glass windows, presumably to keep out prying eyes, because, you know, that hot game of online chess they're playing is highly sensitive work. A rogue stare, broken concentration and the game is lost! Oh, and the obligatory "Authorized Personnel Only" sign is now prominently displayed on the door. I guess I wasn't the only one who isn't amused by their make their little hovel the IT version of Isengard, someone had cleverly taped an "Un" onto their precious little sign - it took them a week for them to notice.
To give you an idea of the quality of service the OtherCompany provides, it took me nearly a month to have a new printer installed on the network, something I could have done myself in about an hour. I had made my call, had my work ticket written, where it sat in the queue while the desktop people waited for the network people to do something, who were waiting for the desktop people to do something. I finally had to dig up one of my few contacts in their bowels (having been transferred to this other Company during the Great Assimilation) to beg him to Do Something. Suffice to say, the next time I have an IT issue, I'm willing to risk getting dinged for following the addage of "If you want something right..."
posted by The Doctor at Monday, March 21, 2005
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