Please please please do not log tickets RIGHT BEFORE YOU GO ON VACATION!!

[draggar]

OK, I understand this is the holiday season and people go on vacation. Fine.

What I don't understand is why do people feel the need to log tickets on their laptops right before they go on vacation? I can see logging the ticket a day or two before you go on vacation, well, early the day before, most likely it will get to me in time for me to be able to resolve the issue before you leave for the day.

I'm talking about people who call in their issues 15-20 minutes before they leave and with issues that they KNOW they'll have to dispatch a tech for. I am not getting the ticket until it is too late.

People, we're timed on these tickets and I need a damn good reason to have a ticket late. I now have 5 late tickets for the week (counting the current ones) because people logged their issues right before they left for several days. Luckily I was in communication with my supervisor (who is now on vacation until the end of the year) but the bot-computers that run these reports don't care and I'm red flagged for corrective action because of my late tickets, not to mention the potential smaller raise because of them.

People, if you need to go on vacation, please log your ticket at least 24 hours before you go, that will at least give enough time for the ticket to get to my team and for us to at least look at it. Don't tell me you've been having the issue for "weeks now". You should have logged the ticket then.

Also, to one person in particular, just because you bought an express PCI air card and your lap top only has a PCMCIA card slot does NOT warrant a high priority ticket for us to "fix" the issue. Go get the right card or an adapter. (Plus the fact that you logged this ticket 5 minutes before you went on vacation just adds you to my shit list, which you've been on plenty of times in the past anyway).

[Shabo]

Man... I hear ya. I hate it too when people call and log a ticket, then we call them back a short while later and leave a voicemail... and call them again a couple of days later and leave another voicemail... usually rinse/repeat a third time. Then they call back a few weeks later and complain that nobody called them. *rips hair out of head*

The only time we ask people to call right before vacation is when we need to reformat their hdd. Then it's ok.

[Depot Denizen]

We have help tickets here at the Helpline, too. We are supposed to follow up on at least two per shift. It also irritates the hell out of me when someone submits a ticket and then goes away for the weekend or week.

Luckily we have a nice policy for it. If we get back to them three times and they don't respond, the ticket is closed. Typically we reply with the solution, and ask if they are all set. If so, great, we close the ticket. After the semester ends we close about 90% of the open tickets, since all the students are gone.

[draggar]

Also, bitching and cursing me out just because I can't pull a laptop battery out of my ass won't give me the ability to. I gave you the options. There is no way a battery will be at our office by the next morning, especially when you come very late in the day. The order will not be processed until the next morning anyway. I understand you won't be back until after the new year, but you stated youself that you KNEW about the battery for a few weeks now, why not log a ticket a FEW WEEKS AGO?

Go ahead, get your supervisor, he doesn't have the authority to tell me to break policy by giving you other people's laptop batteries. He can't fire me, he can't reprimand me. All he can do is cry like a baby to my supervisor, who will ignore his whining. Doing this will only add you to the IT department's shit list, which if you ever expect a favor from us, don't be on that list.

Sometimes I love IT, I don't have to put up with the whole "Well, my boss is going to tell you what to do". Uh-huh. Try it.

I'm closing the last two tickets tomorrow, I don't care if they're not resolved.

[earl colby pottinger]

but you stated youself that you KNEW about the battery for a few weeks now, why not log a ticket a FEW WEEKS AGO?

This use to bother me too until I started writing on the ticket that the customer had the problem for months but did not report it to date yy/mm/dd at which point I knew I was covered if the customer moved it up the ladder.

My top of the ladder boss (ie the company owner) was not impressed with how busy the customer was as that made him no money, he was more concerned about how busy I was, the more busy the more money.

It was also fun to added recent file log dates to a ticket for a machine 'that has not worked for months/the last time it was serviced', amazing how much work can be done on machines that were reported dead.

[Bluenomi]

Thankfully we can change the due date on our tickets. Makes life so much easier.

[Impetrix]

Heh, I remember one we had when WE, not they, were on vacation (or at least the weekend). It was over the summer, school wasn't in session, so our tech desk had reduced hours and they were all during the week. There was some sort of alumni event one weekend, and I came in that Monday to a series of increasingly distressed voicemails from one alum asking for the wireless password to put on his crackberry.

Poor guy. I think he made it through the weekend alive, though.

[Seshat]

I'd actually call that poor tracking system design, rather than a suck on the customer's part.

If it were me in that position, I'd log a change request: ask for some sort of 'initiator of the ticket is unavailable until X' marker, that delayed the due date of the ticket until X+standard-ticket-time.

There's no reason for the clients to have to remember their computer's problems when they can shove it into the system, tell the system they'll be away until X-time, and go on vacation knowing it'll be handled, or at least will be remembered by the metal memory.

And, clients being clients, the tech should be able to flag the system with 'user away' as well. Perhaps the supervisor should be able to review the 'user away' flags, just because some co-workers are sucky too, but eh.

I just think that when the computer is better at something - like remembering stuff - we should let the computer do it.

[DannyboyO1]

Or just file the ticket as resolved - Customer and equipment missing. "Was informed this TS client was on vacation since date of ticket. Issue closed."

[sonny100]

I've seen several tickets opened by customers who are just about to go on Maternity leave...MATERNITY LEAVE!!

That's a minimum of 6 months!!