Wednesday, September 22, 2010

ASAP

The four letters that seem to accompany every single help desk request, ASAP. ASAP is an acronym for "as soon as possible". More often than not, however, it means as of yesterday. Most users in my company think they are the only people who actually work here. It's unfathomable to them that I could possibly be working on an issue for another person. When I'm lucky enough to actually get someone to use the help desk, those four letters always seem to appear somewhere on the request.

Well, that brings me to today. It's my 2nd day back from an extended stay in common sense land (aka: ANYWHERE BUT HERE). I have a certain VP who I don't really care for much call me up at around 9:10. I proceed to ignore the call. I then receive calls from him every 5 minutes until around 1:30 this afternoon. I do not receive any voicemails or help desks from him. Just hang ups. Finally I get a call from my boss at around 1:45 saying that I need to go see said VP ASAP (there's that word). "What's the issue?", I ask. "Oh, I don't know, but he said it was urgent. I get there and the problem is that the moron VP doesn't know how to transfer a call. Normally I would give him the benefit of the doubt since we just changed phone systems. Unfortunately for him, I included a cheat sheet with every phone. Each phone came equipped with a little 3x5 laminated card with instructions on how to perform day to day tasks (Transfer calls, check voicemail, conference call, etc) in hope that it would reduce my help desk volume related to phones. To my chagrin though, his lack of common sense would prove to be too strong for the power of reason.....

When I spoke to him regarding this urgent issue, I asked him, "Why didn't you look at the card?". He said he didn't have time to read instructions. He needed to learn this ASAP. So, you didn't have time to read 3 sentences on how to transfer a call, which even if you read at a 1st grade level would have taken 2 minutes at the most. Instead, you decided to call me for the next 4 and a half hours??? That seems like a much better use of your time as well as mine. Thanks for that. Yet another reason why, IT is HELL!!