Human difficulties in System Administration
Today is a day that makes me feel very bad about my job. There are just to many things that come together today. Each of those problems alone could be handled - but the immense mass of concurrent issues drives me crazy. But it's not about the number of issues, but about the source of problem: They all rely on layer 8 of the ISO/OSI model (for the non techies: This means the problem comes from the humans that try to use the IT equipment).
This post is mainly for calming down and flushing some things that I have in my head - and to amuse some of my readers...
There is a blog post from a German System Administrator who writes about the reasons for not giving out administrative priviledges to the users of the network he's maintaining. It's written in German - sorry for all others. But how he writes his text is almost the same as I feel right now: Beeing pissed-off of stupid users that don't event think about using their brains...
Mini-Story #1 - Why do we train staff for certain procedures?
There is someone new in the team. On his first day he got a new notebook and some advice. One point in this short information was "If you ever have any problems with your equipment, write an email to our helpdesk. This ensures that your issue will be taken care of as soon as possible by one of the sysadmins on duty." He agreed.
30 minutes later, the same guy called one of the sysadmins on his direct phone line with something like "Hey, I'd like to have XY installed on my notebook".
Mini-Story #2 - Different understanding of priorities
Another staff member has a notebook from the company. This one is configured and working fine without problems. Now he bought a MacBook on his own. We're open and everyone can use the equipment he likes. But the internal IT department does not support Mac. No problem as long as the users are able to configure their stuff. This young man wasn't and started to make hotline terror via MSN, Email and personal appearance in the IT office.
It took some harsh words until he understood that this issue is somewhat priority 27 as long as he has a working company-notebook on his desk... (Other question: Why does he have time to try-and-error on his private notebook during work time for almost a whole day?)
