Karma in the workplace

Yesterday I had my work load down pretty far and asked my co-workers if they needed any help. One of the techs handed me a high priority ticket and said he’d been trying to contact the end user for 2 days unsuccessfully. I told him I would take care of it. After leaving 5 voicemails in an hour, she decided to call me back. She explained she uses an application to program the phone systems here on our main campus, as well as at 2 of our large distributors, but recently she hasn’t been able to connect to the 2 distributor systems. I asked if it was just happening on her system or on any system she logged in to. She tried another system and had the same issue. That eliminated an issue with her computer. I went through several other steps, eliminating the network, Data Security, and any potential firewall or proxy issues, leaving only the application itself.

I explained to the user everything I had done and my findings, and that she would need to call the vendor because we don’t support that software. The user starts yelling at me saying it wasn’t the software, that I had to fix it, and it was all my fault. Um…ok. So I went and talked to my boss, explaining everything I had done, and asked if there was anything else I could try or do. My boss calls the users boss and explains everything to him. The users boss wasn’t even sure why she called in a ticket for the issue since it wasn’t we supported. He said he would go talk to her. My boss gives me an update but asks me to leave the ticket open just in case. So I leave for the day thinking the issue is resolved and the end user was going to call the software vendor. See where this is going?

This morning, the end user calls again asking why I hadn’t fixed the issue, and what was I going to do about it. I calmly explained that all the troubleshooting we had done pointed at the application itself, which we did not support. You can imagine how happy she was to hear that. So I get another ear full about how I’m supposed to magically fix this, and yes it’s still somehow my fault. I got off the phone with her and started double checking everything from network connectivity to group policies to active directory and so on. Everything still point right back at the client application.

The user, in the meantime, has decided I’m evidently incapable of doing my job and runs to the desktop operations manager. What she didn’t know was said manager had overheard how the user had talked to me, and said manager happens to like me and considers me a very capable technician. You can imagine how that conversation backfired. Finally I get an email from the end user saying how she appreciated all the help I had given her and the she now feels it’s an issue with the application and will call the vendor.

…wow…wonder why I didn’t think of that!