u/annoyedCDNthrowaway

This happened about 15 min ago and I just stopped laughing.

As mentioned in a previous post I am a long time software admin and my org just recently completed a software transition from a platform in use for 21 years.

On Tuesday, we discovered a major minor bug in the platform. Minor in that it seems really small, but major in that the ramifications could be seriously problematic.

I documented the problem and filed a priority 1 ticket with the vendor as well as providing work-around documentation to prevent unexpected consequences to the impacted team.

Cut to today which is a stat holiday and I'm the one monitoring tickets so my team can have the weekend. An email comes from a member of the affected team that has their entire team copied.

"Z report is showing the old Y, when it should be the new Y."

I responded asking if they had made the correction via the provided work-around. Confirmation comes from the user from my other post (hence pretend incompetence), letting everyone know they've resolved the issue and reminding the rest of the documented work-around.

A random member of the affected team pipes up after adding our CEO and COO into the email thread with the wisdom in the title. Before I get a chance to respond he hits back from vacation with "you mean like C bug in the old platform that you've been working around for 4 years?"

Sometimes being dysfunctional is hilarious.

I am a software admin in an industry that you'd swear would be on the cutting edge. And if you think about military contractors who develop some of the tech we all eventually benefit from: you'd be right... well usually.

For those of us in the civilian sphere though; change comes slow, glacial even.

We recently transitioned from our 20 year-old primary platform to a new one. 6 months of blood, sweat, tears, and some new gray hairs for me. But we got it done.

Many of my users though were married to the old system and not happy with the change. Their objections were partly that it was different and partly that the new system no longer allowed our operation to behave like it was the wild west. Nothing brings out user animosity like justified permissions restrictions.

One in particular loves to send in support tickets that consist mostly of vague complaints with little directional hits thrown in. After many back and forth emails (it is mandated that we never do his initial troubleshooting over the phone for... reasons), my team can usually translate his vague complaints into an actual task he's struggling with.

At this point it is moved to a recorded call.

The conversation from here generally goes as follows:

Support: if I understand you correctly you are attempting X task and it's not happening as fast as you want.

User: Yes, it was so easy in the old system, why can't it be like the old system.

Support: I understand, using a new system can be frustrating, but you know how unstable the old system was. You wouldn't want us to continue using a system that puts (insert very VIP client here)'s data at risk because we didn't upgrade? Let's see what we can do for this issue.

Are you completing process X via steps D, E, F, G, H, & I.

User: Yes... insert vague complaints again.

Support: While those steps do work, try step A, B, C, D, you should get the same results, but much faster.

User: That does work and it is faster. (tone should be as begrudging as possible)

Support: Wonderful, do you think that will help you complete task X more efficiently and reduce some of your frustration?

User: No. I don't like steps A - D. I'm going to do it the other way.

User: hangs up.

We've been fully in the new system for 6 ish months now and this call happens so frequently, I had to ban facepalming because my team were giving themselves bruises and start to plot vengeance. As of three weeks ago his tickets are now exclusively directed to myself and our IT manager because as soon as we respond the answer is usually "never mind" because he knows we won't tolerate his pretend incompetence.