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First post! It's not as, uh, dramatic as some stories I've read here, but it made me want to alternately laugh and bang my head against my keyboard...
I currently work as a web admin for a fairly large company in the UK. We're quite a small department, so we get all the junk that IT and customer services don't know how to deal with (or don't want to). I've only been there for two months but I'm learning fast, and I'm being given all the fun problems "to help me learn". Yay me.
The latest one was a lovely man - he was very polite, if a little abrupt at the end. He emailed me at about 11am to say "I'm trying to do a webpage and the border doesn't work, help!" I haven't got anything else urgent so I take a look. It's something I learned how to deal with a few days before (for web people, he'd put a link in without breaking it and it was too long for the width of the page, so the central text was pushed down). I put a break in, and lo and behold, it fixes his problem! I was really happy that my fix worked.
Too easy.
Next email. "Thanks! Uh...how do I fix the link in the border?"
He doesn't tell me which border he's trying to use. Go in, find the webpage, find the border, get one of the web team to unlock it from him to let me get at the wretched thing, fix his link, add a button he forgot he needed and then couldn't find, and push it live so he can see it.
"Brilliant, thanks so much. Can you help me fix the links in the text too? They don't work for some reason."
They're links to documents, which in our very fun convoluted computer system are uploaded into a document library and then linked to the page from there. Sooo...back into the webpage to find out what he's put and which documents he possibly wants, over to document library to see if he has put them in (astonishing! he has! They're even spelled right). Back to webpage and fix the document links (our system doesn't like spaces), and send him the preview. I add a nice little email to say "Here you go, all fixed, and by the way - next time you upload documents, we have a naming convention (underscores instead of spaces) that you might want to follow as it makes it easier for the system. Hope the page is all ok!"
In between all the other work I've been doing and his slow replies, by this time it's 4pm, and as I do a seven-hour day and have been in since half eight, so I'm hoping to shortly heading home.
Don't be silly. 4.30pm.
"Uh, yeah, the links still doesn't work and I don't know why. By the way, this has to be fixed tonight because I'm not in tomorrow and I can't have a page that doesn't work sitting around until Friday."
And you didn't mention this earlier why? And as it is now half four and I am not allowed to do overtime (and your page is not important, sorry to shatter your tender illusions....) I head home.
Come back to it on Friday (as most of our department had Thurs off as well). Ok, what's wrong with the page? The documents are still spelled right...check page, check links, then go to check the document library to see if he's managed to delete the documents somehow.
Oh.
He'd re-imported the documents with the names correctly done: but now, of course, because he'd used underscores instead of spaces...they didn't match the links I'd so carefully re-written on the webpage to make the thing actually work.
He must have happily done this after my nice email, and then emailed me back in a panic to say "The links don't work! They have to work! Help!" I have this mental image of this happy smiling guy, so pleased that he has done things the way the helpful web admin told him to...look, he's done it right! She will love him so much for doing things the right way!
Fixed in five seconds and sent him the link, no comment (I didn't think I could be trusted to make one that could be read without seeing the sarcasm). He was very happy that it all worked. I pushed it live before he could break anything else and dusted my hands off gratefully. Luckily, I haven't heard from him since.
We have also had a lady who couldn't find the start button on her desktop. The poor guy who had to deal with her had his patience strained by both her interesting manner "Oh, the green button? Ok, I found notepad. Ok, so how do I copy things?....what's a right click?" and by four web admin staff sniggering in the background. Fun times.
I currently work as a web admin for a fairly large company in the UK. We're quite a small department, so we get all the junk that IT and customer services don't know how to deal with (or don't want to). I've only been there for two months but I'm learning fast, and I'm being given all the fun problems "to help me learn". Yay me.
The latest one was a lovely man - he was very polite, if a little abrupt at the end. He emailed me at about 11am to say "I'm trying to do a webpage and the border doesn't work, help!" I haven't got anything else urgent so I take a look. It's something I learned how to deal with a few days before (for web people, he'd put a link in without breaking it and it was too long for the width of the page, so the central text was pushed down). I put a break in, and lo and behold, it fixes his problem! I was really happy that my fix worked.
Too easy.
Next email. "Thanks! Uh...how do I fix the link in the border?"
He doesn't tell me which border he's trying to use. Go in, find the webpage, find the border, get one of the web team to unlock it from him to let me get at the wretched thing, fix his link, add a button he forgot he needed and then couldn't find, and push it live so he can see it.
"Brilliant, thanks so much. Can you help me fix the links in the text too? They don't work for some reason."
They're links to documents, which in our very fun convoluted computer system are uploaded into a document library and then linked to the page from there. Sooo...back into the webpage to find out what he's put and which documents he possibly wants, over to document library to see if he has put them in (astonishing! he has! They're even spelled right). Back to webpage and fix the document links (our system doesn't like spaces), and send him the preview. I add a nice little email to say "Here you go, all fixed, and by the way - next time you upload documents, we have a naming convention (underscores instead of spaces) that you might want to follow as it makes it easier for the system. Hope the page is all ok!"
In between all the other work I've been doing and his slow replies, by this time it's 4pm, and as I do a seven-hour day and have been in since half eight, so I'm hoping to shortly heading home.
Don't be silly. 4.30pm.
"Uh, yeah, the links still doesn't work and I don't know why. By the way, this has to be fixed tonight because I'm not in tomorrow and I can't have a page that doesn't work sitting around until Friday."
And you didn't mention this earlier why? And as it is now half four and I am not allowed to do overtime (and your page is not important, sorry to shatter your tender illusions....) I head home.
Come back to it on Friday (as most of our department had Thurs off as well). Ok, what's wrong with the page? The documents are still spelled right...check page, check links, then go to check the document library to see if he's managed to delete the documents somehow.
Oh.
He'd re-imported the documents with the names correctly done: but now, of course, because he'd used underscores instead of spaces...they didn't match the links I'd so carefully re-written on the webpage to make the thing actually work.
He must have happily done this after my nice email, and then emailed me back in a panic to say "The links don't work! They have to work! Help!" I have this mental image of this happy smiling guy, so pleased that he has done things the way the helpful web admin told him to...look, he's done it right! She will love him so much for doing things the right way!
Fixed in five seconds and sent him the link, no comment (I didn't think I could be trusted to make one that could be read without seeing the sarcasm). He was very happy that it all worked. I pushed it live before he could break anything else and dusted my hands off gratefully. Luckily, I haven't heard from him since.
We have also had a lady who couldn't find the start button on her desktop. The poor guy who had to deal with her had his patience strained by both her interesting manner "Oh, the green button? Ok, I found notepad. Ok, so how do I copy things?....what's a right click?" and by four web admin staff sniggering in the background. Fun times.
>
I AM the evil bastard!
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