Since I’m being the responsible, “socially-distanced” individual (working from home), I figured I might as well try to update a post throughout the course of a day at work. I’m a few hours late – started work at about 7:30 this morning – but I’ll gloss over those three hours and keep things updated going forward.
I started the day by kicking Joshua out of my office chair. He’s decided that it’s his. I’ve decided that he can have it when I don’t want it; and, since I’m bigger than he is, I get the last word. He and Boo are currently sharing the cat tree by the front window.
Spent some time BS’ing via Microsoft Teams (chat) with the other leads in Alpharetta – who’s feeling sick, who’s buying ammunition (not kidding!), how are teams are handling the enforced isolation, etc. While doing this, I went through my team’s ticket list trying to identify cases that could be resolved or needed updates. I also started working on the cases that were auto-assigned to me overnight.
At around 9:00, the “Open Office Hours – Coffee Chat” meeting started. This is something that my boss put together on Monday as daily meeting for anybody who wants to join it (webcams, microphones, and chat) just to combat the feeling of isolation that some folks might be having. It’s a good idea and people seem to enjoy it. Early on – from 9:00 to 9:15 or so – pretty much everyone who’s working will be in the meeting, just to shoot the shit about nothing or to ask questions about specific tickets. After that, people just start to drop out and get back to focusing on their work.
One of the tickets that I’ve been working on since 9:30 or so has to do with a user email account that’s having problems. I’ve been unable to attach to it with my own testing account, which is a red flag. Other users have said that they’ve gotten kickback messages when trying to send something to the problem address, but I’ve been unable to replicate that. So I’m waiting on a few more details from the users before opening a case with Microsoft.
Right now, I’m putting together call and ticket statistics from yesterday for my team.
Got the stats out. Now I’m trying to coach one of my people on what sounds like an incredibly simple ticket (a user can’t get connected to a Citrix session), and it’s like pulling teeth to get my person to follow simple troubleshooting steps. We’ve been dealing with a lot of clients having problems getting set up to work from home this week – everything from, “My monitors look funny,” to “How do I print to the office?”
The answer to that last question, should you be wondering, is, “You don’t. And why on earth would you want to?”
At any rate, if a user can’t get connected, there are only about 3 things it could be. I could jump into the call and do this work for my direct report, but I really want her to figure it out on her own. I get amazingly frustrated when my people don’t follow the simple troubleshooting steps that I preach to them every week.
20 minutes later and she still hasn’t figured it out. She also hasn’t answered any of the three troubleshooting questions that I put in front of her. I know that she’s expecting me to jump into her call, jump onto the remote machine, and fix it for her. It’s not going to happen. I have a meeting in 10 minutes – ironically enough, one concerning how to deal with “uncomfortable” discussions with our consultants – and she’s either going to have to figure it out by herself or get some help from the rest of the team.
She did end up getting help from one of my senior consultants. As expected, it was an incredibly simple fix (literally – click “Reset”).
The meeting was a rundown of new procedures for issuing warnings (verbal, documented, written), PIPs (performance improvement plans), and terminations if the warnings and the PIP don’t work. Happy stuff.
Speaking of happy stuff, I’ve learned that a large number of sporting/gun stores in the metro area are running out of guns and ammunition. This bothers me. A week ago, we were in a normal society. Now we’ve got people stockpiling firearms? Believe it or not, I registered at Adventure Outdoors – literally the largest gun store in the world. Perhaps I have to finally pull the trigger (no pun intended) and buy an actual gun, rather than counting on the BB pistol I’ve got to deter people.
We’re now in a possible SysInc (System Incident), although it looks like it might be restricted to a couple of cities in Texas where ISPs are having trouble. Not surprising, since the load on them from people suddenly deciding to work from home is probably pretty intense.
Chamberlain has replaced Joshua and Boo on the Kitty Tree. Joshua has – you guessed it – settled into my office chair. I’m standing. Good thing I brought home the Varidesk when I moved from the office!
This afternoon has been fairly slow. We’re still having clients call in regarding disconnects, but it’s become widely known that multiple ISPs are having problems and there’s isn’t really much we can do about it.
My team has chugged away and we’ve gotten back down under 30 tickets, though how long that will last I don’t know. A couple of my guys will be working tomorrow, so that will help. Call volume will be low and I hope they can snipe some of the low-hanging fruit on our ticket board.
At 3:00, we had “Beer Cart Friday – Virtual Style,” which was interesting. Normally on Fridays, we push a literal beer cart around the office and everyone grabs a beer. Today, we all just took pictures of ourselves holding up beers (or a shot of bourbon in my case) and shared them in our internal bulletin board.
I’m just wrapping things up now – helping some younger consultants with tickets that they’re working for my clients, finding documents for them, etc. Most of my team has gone offline for the day, and I’m not far from joining them. So I’ll wrap this up here. Happy Friday!
