Helldesk Woes
Toward the end of the last decade I worked on the IT servicedesk for a consulting firm who recently lost a memory stick with a load of prisoner data on it.

They insisted on referring to users as 'customers'. They also referred to the helldesk as 'a high pressure environment' which is companyspeak for 'similar to a sweatshop in wu-han - we own you and we can do what we like with you.'

All of the users, or customers, were under high pressure deadlines to allow for the management teams appalling accounting and basic inability to treat people with the respect their intelligence demands.

Things I remembered in my 6 months working there:

- The abusive user who called me a stupid little shit on the phone.
- The user who demanded I fix his laptop problem because he had a 'more important job than I did'.
- The user who used to write mails to the Chairman whenever we didnt solve problems to his satisfaction, which was always.
- The abuse we used to get when we didnt pick the phone up after 3 rings or less.

This company employed some of the biggest fatheads and morons in suits you have ever seen in one place. They all had delusions of grandeur and self importance, and the CEO was a complete cunt.

I spent 6 months there during which time I had a nervous breakdown and almost quit my career altogether.

I have never worked for anyone quite so appalling since.
(Vic Flange, Sat 6 Sep 2008, 18:26, 2 replies)

I know the feeling
I once worked for a firm that used to sell all sorts of financial products (and holidays) to old people.

One particular director kept on at me to make sure one of the databases was backed up properly. (This is what happens when you let users have MS Access, they start with a tiny little database and before you know it a whole chunk of their business is relient on the piss-poorly written lump of shite.)

Anyway, I stuffed it on a network drive (this was the days of Windows 3.0), but was told by 'networking' that it 'couldn't stay there' - it's a live application.

Fine, so I asked for a purchase order to buy some backup software - "No" was the answer.

I tried to use that really crap windows scheduler that came with the early versions of Windows - you may remember the one. Sometimes it did what it was supposed to, and sometimes it didn't.

Most days I had to use pkzip (not Winzip, oh no, that would have cost 30 dollars or similar) this ever increasing .mdb file across several floppys and put it on another desktop machine.

One week I was off ill. You guessed it. Shedule didn't work, no-one else had backed it up.

Yet, somehow, without any funding, or assistence from 'networking' and despite my not actually being there, this was my fault. When I pointed out that if it was that important it might have been worth spending 50 quid or so on some backup software, or an hour of someone's time in IT, I was very quickly shouted down.

The bloke was a nob. I'm suprised he didn't question why we even wanted paying to be honest.
(dchurch bah, Sat 6 Sep 2008, 19:23, closed)

share
I share your pain. I used to work for Freeserve tech support. Highlight of that job was talking to Rolf harris on the phone.
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Sat 6 Sep 2008, 22:35, closed)