Never was a story of more woe...

[cosmolinguist]

I had so much work to do today, and yet an hour after I started I still hadn't managed to log in to my computer.

I had to change my password yesterday (yay security theater! thanks I hate it!). Today I could log in on my phone but not my laptop. I carefully typed my password so many times. Always the same response. I even went through the inaccessible process to change the password AGAIN so then had to remember the new new one and not mix it up with the old new one all these times I typed it... (I even tried the old old one a few times, just in case.)

I felt like I was coming unglued from reality.

I had to call IT.

I hate my workplace IT. I hate it so much I just lived with a fairly significant problem (not being able to access some documents I need), for years, after repeated attempts at getting them to fix this problem that ended with them not even listening to it or understanding it. As soon as they heard a word that meant it could be someone else's fault they switched off, and no amount of me explaining that there wasn't anything anyone else could do and it started when they made me use an authenticator app which I get is more secure than SMS but also didn't fucking have the settings I needed... I just gave up trying and do without access to those things.

So for me to call them is really dire straits. But I have a ton of work to do and it has to be done today! So I called.

The guy I got told me to do a thing that I said I couldn't when I couldn't even log in. He barely let me finish talking before he said, "Totally incorrect."

I don't know if you've ever offered a simple problem -- like "how can I do anything on the computer if I can't log in?" --only to be met with "Totally incorrect" as a reply but lemme tell you, it has a really physical effect!

I could hardly hear what he was saying after that because I was doing that wheezing, disbelieving laugh that I associate with Michael Hobbes being on a podcast where he's just been told something that a fascist has said. I was actually speechless. It actually knocked the breath right out of me.

People just...should not talk to each other like that!

I just hung up on him.

In the process of treating me like a Victorian schoolboy who was about to get beaten for making a mistake in his Latin, he'd inadvertently reminded me of something that would actually help me address the problem, so I hung up and did that.

But at 10:30 this morning I still hadn't gotten any work done because I had to log back into everything on my phone since I'd changed the password again, and process all the emotions I've been through before I'd even had a chance to make tea... It took most of the morning to do that, make breakfast and settle down to my task. I didn't manage to empty the dishwasher or give Mr. Smith his meds or get my laundry out of the dryer or anything else I might do in a day. I barely managed lunch.

But! I sent off the much-awaited long-overdue first draft to my boss and his boss, the next stage, at 16:44 today. Is it a good first draft? No! Is it done, 16 minutes before the end of the last possible work day I said it'd be done for after pushing the deadline twice? Yes!

Comments

[barakta]

Your IT sounds so bad, that really does smack of them needing a formal complaint about rudeness and poor customer service as well as lack of basic competence. So fucking maddening that so many medium sized orgs have terrible outsourced IT.

Our IT are usually good but I had two in a row of uselessness (nice, but useless) which was frustrating enough...

Hope you get some reboot from Stupid Stressful Day Of Shit Soonest!

[wildeabandon]

Fucking hell. That's staggeringly rude. It's it worth saying something to his boss (or getting your boss to say something to his boss), or would they just circle the wagons?

Normally I wouldn't advocate going over someone's head without trying to address it with them directly, but that's so far outside reasonable professional behaviour that I can't really envisage a sane direct conversation.

[otter]

Working remotely has obviously saved that IT guy too many times from getting kicked in the crotch.

Sending hugs. I hope you get some restful sleep and have a less stressful day tomorrow.

[angelofthenorth]

Bloody hell. Much beer and Commiserations.

I hope that IT guy gets a taste of his own medicine one day

[silveradept]

That's so far away from useful that it's a surprise that this parson hasn't been dismissed, because I doubt you're the only person who gets told they're doing it wrong when they yet to get help.

With something like that, I feel like you could charge them a day's pay without having some work because the IT person didn't want to help you do work.

What a rude, mean person

[jesse_the_k]

to add even more stress to this day!

Given your org's mission, it seems like they could well afford to pay a decent salary to an alpha blind computer geek staff member who actually knows how to communicate and would also (not coincidentally) be familiar with the access tools required by many employees.