The grumpy thread

[richardmorris]

  On 28/11/2023 at 13:41, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Had one at work yesterday and into today.  In essence, a company has had issues with their multi-factor authentication all day after (presumably) Microsoft do some manner of change to the policy without telling anybody.  The director (let's called him Humphrey) does the following:

i) Humphrey emails one of our 3rd line engineers.  Who lives in New Zealand.  Rather than emailing support.  So he doesn't get a reply because the 3rd line is asleep.
ii) Support then get a very cut email a few hours later that basically tells us to turn MFA off for the whole organisation from Humphrey.  But reporting that a specific user was having issues.  That user hasn't called us about the problem.
iii)  Issue is passed to me from a 1st Line engineer.  I think about it and am slighly flabbergasted and mentally file it as a 'tomorrow' problem as we got the email at 1430 and our response SLA is 4 working hours.  Bear in mind at this point, I'm on a train returning from a customer site in London.
iv) I get frustrated and later in the evening email Humphrey, saying that turning MFA off is a terrible idea, that it leaves his business wide open to attack and jeopardises the safety of third parties in the (much more likely) event of an account compromise occurring due to the phishing stream that will be sent out from a compromised account.
v) We get an email back at around 2100 from Humphrey basically telling me that I don't get to decide, it's up to him and if it's not turned off first thing in the morning, they're going to find another IT provider.
vi) My director (fortunately) intervenes and explains to Humphrey that actually I'm actually doing the right thing and that turning it off is a bad idea and I've said what I've said because I want to protect his business, our business and their customers.
vii) I get a email this morning from the manager of the original user experiencing problems with MFA without any contact details.
viii) We reply, get the contact details and then phone the user.  It's fixed within 5 minutes.

So.  Let's look at the stupid things that went wrong here:

i) User doesn't contact the support team and instead talks to her manager.
ii)  Her manager takes it up with the company director (Humphrey) rather than telling her to contact support.
iii) Humphrey emails a 3rd-line project engineer, not support.  Who happens to live in New Zealand and is in the Land of Nod.
iv) Humphrey doesn't understand what he's asking for.  But tries to sound like he does and gets up in arms when a security-conscious, fairly senior IT technician (me) politely refuses his request, with a well-worded explanation and also mentions that the user should have contacted support first.
v) User still hasn't contacted the support team.

What should have happened:

i) User notices an issue with their MFA application not working.  They call support.  Support fix it.  Total fix time?  5 minutes.

I have sympathy for you guys working in motor repairs.  I think I would have an aneurysm by now in your profession with the absolute roasters you have to deal with.

 

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Is the problem with their in-house heirachy in which everything had to go through a manager snd not direct to support ( you)?

[GrumpiusMaximus]

  On 28/11/2023 at 21:13, richardmorris said:

Is the problem with their in-house heirachy in which everything had to go through a manager snd not direct to support ( you)?

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I don't think so, it doesn't strike me as that sort of set up.

Reporting issues via their manager is one of the first things we talk about when we onboard new customers now.  We emphatically (but politely) request that they do not do this and that the affected user reports one problem with one ticket or email.  People putting multiple requests in one ticket, or reporting on behalf or doing both at the same time is a complete and utter pain in the arse to deal with and actually slows the service down considerably, especially the reporting on behalf.

Working a lot on our service delivery processes and user experience so think about this practically every day, tragically.

[Rust Collector]

  On 28/11/2023 at 21:25, GrumpiusMaximus said:

I don't think so, it doesn't strike me as that sort of set up.

I must admit, reporting issues via their manager is one of the first things we talk about when we onboard new customers now.  We emphatically (but politely) request that they do not do this and that the affected user reports one problem with one ticket or email.  People putting multiple requests in one ticket, or reporting on behalf or doing both at the same time is a complete and utter pain in the arse to deal with and actually slows the service down considerably, especially the reporting on behalf.

I work a lot on our service delivery processes and user experience so think about this practically every day, tragically.

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As a manager, I emphatically encourage my team to contact our IT provider rather than bother me when their computer ‘doesn’t work’.

It interrupts me from posting on autoshite.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

  On 28/11/2023 at 21:27, Rust Collector said:

As a manager, I emphatically encourage my team to contact our IT provider rather than bother me when their computer ‘doesn’t work’.

It interrupts me from posting on autoshite.

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I know people hate phoning IT but knowing the team as I do (and I also sometimes answer the phones) they're a nice bunch of people and the more experienced team members are happy to just have a chat whilst incidentally fixing the computer.  We're a quite approachable bunch and have good relationships with the vast majority of our customers.

The customers that have the 'report to manager' issue tend to be the ones that get the worst experience.  But that's only because every single support request is delayed by at least 20 minutes when our Line 1 has to go back to them and ask them for the contact details of the user with the original issue!  They also tend to be the least IT literate.  Work for us to do on the consultancy front there...

I have before had a manager on the phone asking me to reset a user's password.  I've just politely told them to pass over the affected user.  Once or twice it's been a case of 'well they're at home now, they left for the afternoon'.  At which point my head firmly hits the desk whilst I repeat that the user is much better off calling us directly.  I just do not fathom the mind that thinks that reporting on behalf is quicker, more efficient or more effective.  It's actually stupid.

[Rust Collector]

  On 28/11/2023 at 21:32, GrumpiusMaximus said:

I just do not fathom the mind that thinks that reporting on behalf is quicker, more efficient or more effective.  It's actually stupid.

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The reason I hate it is that I normally have more pressing things to sort, and so if it gets left to me to contact IT then it’ll get forgotten done later when I have a chance to sit on the phone. Meanwhile, my team member hasn’t been able to work efficiently/at all.

It’s a complete waste of time, much better if the affected person gets in touch.

Also, from a lazy employee POV: talking to IT is a doss… you look busy, but you’re really doing fuck all as it’s the IT person doing the work, you’re just explaining what’s wrong. Why wouldn’t you want to call them?!

[GrumpiusMaximus]

  On 28/11/2023 at 21:39, Rust Collector said:

The reason I hate it is that I normally have more pressing things to sort, and so if it gets left to me to contact IT then it’ll get forgotten done later when I have a chance to sit on the phone. Meanwhile, my team member hasn’t been able to work efficiently/at all.

It’s a complete waste of time, much better if the affected person gets in touch.

Also, from a lazy employee POV: talking to IT is a doss… you look busy, but you’re really doing fuck all as it’s the IT person doing the work, you’re just explaining what’s wrong. Why wouldn’t you want to call them?!

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Because most outsourced IT providers are shit.  I like to think we're a bit less shit.  Actually, I tend to think we're pretty good...

[High Jetter]

  On 28/11/2023 at 17:43, dozeydustman said:

Failed. We’ve only ran out of juice once. They have a 24 volt supply to power the ECU and whatever is left of the original chassis electrics. That conked out so no lights, hazards operate on one side only, and worst of all no brake compressor. They’re at the depot and struggling to get it off the low loader with hardly any air left in the system.
 

On both electric trucks the fails have been the non-motive systems. This is the second major failure for this one. The other electrical vehicle has had about 15.

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Basically rubbish, then?

[GrumpiusMaximus]

  On 28/11/2023 at 21:58, Nyphur said:

So which one was it? Company has had issues all day due to Microsoft make a change to their policy, or one user has an issue?

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As far as I can tell, a handful of them needed to re-authenticate and they may have had an older version of the app as as they weren't seeing the push prompt for the on-screen two-digit number.  They're on security basics as they haven't paid for conditional access.  All of them managed to sort it apart from this one user, who needed to have it reset.  But at the point we got the email, it was just the one user having the issue and we hadn't had any report of the wider issue, or if we had it had been sent to our 3rd line project engineer who was fast asleep.

Of course, Humphrey sees all of this as meaning that MFA is bad.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

They have their own tenants, we manage them through Partner Centre (GDAP, obvs) and GA and we resell licences in most instances, both Microsoft and for other SaaS products.  We usually do all of the management but we also offer co-managed services to some of our customers if they have an internal app support or IT team.

Conditional access is something we're keen on trying to bring in where we can but it's a bit of a hard sell, especially if a customer doesn't understand the implications of a breach.  We have had an instance of MFA being breached but only once in the time I've been with the company but that would have been stopped by conditional access...

This has at least led to a conversation between our MD and their director about improving the relationship and looking at their policy, etc.

[Wack]

  On 28/11/2023 at 20:44, Jazoli said:

It is completely fucked and a complete waste of time now, you can filter a lot of it out but the number of scamming cunts far outweighs the genuine sellers now.

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I once spent ½ an hour reporting about 15 of them 

All got the same bot response , doesn't breach guidelines , if you feel this isn't correct  resubmit for sn actual person to look at it 

A week later , we don't have time to look at it , useless 

[GrumpiusMaximus]

  On 28/11/2023 at 22:26, Nyphur said:

I don't miss working for an MSP 😂

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I genuinely love it.  I was brought in as L2 support 18 months ago but given that we're a small team (fewer than a dozen in total) I get to put and implement ideas for improvement all over the shop.  We brought in HaloPSA back in May and I've developed our ticketing and support processes, user experience, etc.  Currently working on reporting and improving the alerting along with projects.  I get a lot of flexibility with my work and very light-touch management.  Huge contrast to my old job at a University.

If I was still doing just L2 support... Jesus....

My brother is a developer and there is a bit of envy as he's never had to deal with customers.  Bastard.

[Pieman]

  On 28/11/2023 at 22:25, Wack said:

I once spent ½ an hour reporting about 15 of them 

All got the same bot response , doesn't breach guidelines , if you feel this isn't correct  resubmit for sn actual person to look at it 

A week later , we don't have time to look at it , useless 

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As I've posted elsewhere - them scamming the public is absolutely fine, but if you call someone a "scammer" in a comment thread, that is HATE SPEECH and gets your account disabled - not suspended from posting or anything, completely disabled with no warning!

[SiC]

  On 28/11/2023 at 19:32, Wack said:

Facebook marketplace is fucked as a selling platform 

There are the first cars I saw for sale 

 

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eBay isn't much better at the moment either. Seems to be scammers are using Gumtree from a hacked account to list cars. As Gumtree and eBay are the same company, they also get listed on eBay too. Presumably it's the way they're getting around it now. 

The scammers have got a bit more advanced*. They're reusing the advert text they have pinched from the photos and all the original photos. Then putting it at a cheap price but one that isn't ridiculously cheap. 

[wuvvum]

Found out today that my manager is leaving.  On Thursday.  Nothing like giving us plenty of notice...

I should be used to it by now as there's been quite a turnover of managers since I joined the company 12 1/2 years ago, but she was definitely one of the better ones we've had - genuinely felt like she was on our side.  At the moment we have no idea who's going to replace her.  We've had a lot of shit flung at us recently system- and process-wise, and the team is half the size it was at the start of the year (one's buggered off to do a master's, one's moved to another department and two are on long term sick) and it's a busy time of year anyway, so we really could have done without this at the moment.

Fair play, the head of department called us all individually to talk through it with us and answer any questions that she could (she was on the back foot too, she'd only found out today as well), which was good of her - would have been a lot easier just to hold a Zoom meeting with the whole department at the same time - but obviously no decisions have been made yet so there was a limited amount she could tell me.  

It's put me in a proper grump - I hate change at the best of times and there's been far too much of it recently, even without this latest development.

[High Jetter]

  On 28/11/2023 at 22:33, GrumpiusMaximus said:

I genuinely love it.  I was brought in as L2 support 18 months ago but given that we're a small team (fewer than a dozen in total) I get to put and implement ideas for improvement all over the shop.  We brought in HaloPSA back in May and I've developed our ticketing and support processes, user experience, etc.  Currently working on reporting and improving the alerting along with projects.  I get a lot of flexibility with my work and very light-touch management.  Huge contrast to my old job at a University.

If I was still doing just L2 support... Jesus....

My brother is a developer and there is a bit of envy as he's never had to deal with customers.  Bastard.

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Knowledge, tho. Get him on here

[jakebullet]

I haz been on holiday. Ruined by Mrs's parents who happen to live there. Last time we went it was the first time Mrs. had seen them in about 15 years. Super, marvellous, must do it again.

Mrs has been telling mum that we're coming for a few weeks now on messenger. No reaction. Nothing to 10 decimal places. We're here! No reaction. Can we call n see you tomorrow? No reaction. Hmm. This is going well. Goes round, nobody home. No reaction again. 

In between the no reactions mad mum is sending random crap on messenger, but not you know answering questions. N I mean random. EG:

This is an Hellicopter coming to land in Parkol Shipyard, Whitby, which is an unusual place to land. They had to deliver a special message.

Er, something* tells me this wasn't recently. N you don't deliver urgent messages by helicopter, you phone people as it's actually faster.....

As the Mrs has spent a fair chunk on shite for xmas I have another go at delivering it before going home. Dad opens the window, I say I've got this for you, he remotely opens the garage door, says put it in there and shuts the window. Possible he thought I was a random delivery bloke.

Chuff knows what's going on with them, unless they've discovered drugs.

[High Jetter]

 No sister tho?

[wuvvum]

Is anyone in your extended family normal?

[Volksy]

My office is five miles away from my house, granted I have to drive through Stoodent-Ville on my commute, however last night it took me over an hour and twenty mins to get home. The reason? One small hole dug by Northern Gas Networks next to a set of traffic lights.  The lights were covered over and a set of temporary ones installed, and seem to have been programmed by an idiot. The result, complete and utter gridlock in all directions spanning a good few square miles. One chap decided to perform a U-Turn to try and make his escape, only to be stuck across the road, as no one was moving in any direction. 

I really must look at the Idle Control Valve on the Big, as it omm nommed its way through over quarter of a tank of juice in the process. 

Temp stayed rock steady at about 85, despite not having an electric fan, so I'm glad I had the pump and thermostat done. 

[jakebullet]

  On 29/11/2023 at 00:50, wuvvum said:

Is anyone in your extended family normal?

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The Mrs's brother John is shagging his cousin. So be normal if he moved to Norfolk.

[sierraman]

It’s icy as fuck in the morning and people still insist on driving up your arse.

[Supernaut]

  On 28/11/2023 at 22:26, Nyphur said:

I don't miss working for an MSP 😂

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I've only been at one for a week and a half but I want to leave already.

 

I never wanted to go back into IT at all, TBH.

[chadders]

  On 28/11/2023 at 22:49, wuvvum said:

Found out today that my manager is leaving.  On Thursday.  Nothing like giving us plenty of notice...

I should be used to it by now as there's been quite a turnover of managers since I joined the company 12 1/2 years ago, but she was definitely one of the better ones we've had - genuinely felt like she was on our side.  At the moment we have no idea who's going to replace her.  We've had a lot of shit flung at us recently system- and process-wise, and the team is half the size it was at the start of the year (one's buggered off to do a master's, one's moved to another department and two are on long term sick) and it's a busy time of year anyway, so we really could have done without this at the moment.

Fair play, the head of department called us all individually to talk through it with us and answer any questions that she could (she was on the back foot too, she'd only found out today as well), which was good of her - would have been a lot easier just to hold a Zoom meeting with the whole department at the same time - but obviously no decisions have been made yet so there was a limited amount she could tell me.  

It's put me in a proper grump - I hate change at the best of times and there's been far too much of it recently, even without this latest development.

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How the hell did the HoD only have 2(?) days notice?

Unless it was something very serious I'd be going f*ing ballistic if I was her.

[wuvvum]

I honestly have no idea.  It's all rather odd.

[chadders]

In my opinion it was good that she spoke to you all individually, to me that means a lot. It takes time which is in short supply in these sort of situations but people remember it.

The only times I've come across anything like that is when they have personal issues that blow up, a pending divorce or similar. In which case you might never find out why and rightly so.

Anyway good luck.

[Tenmil Socket]

I’ve just spent the last 4 days doing a 1000 piece jigsaw and today I finished it but there was 5 twicers 😩

[sdkrc]

  On 29/11/2023 at 13:28, chadders said:

The only times I've come across anything like that is when they have personal issues that blow up, a pending divorce or similar. In which case you might never find out why and rightly so.

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Could just be a big lump of annual leave and a 4wk notice period? Interesting to see how many places of work are now chaotic with people quitting, teams diminishing in size and folks off on sick leave. Seems to be a more common theme post-pandemic

[Rust Collector]

  On 29/11/2023 at 16:55, sdkrc said:

Interesting to see how many places of work are now chaotic with people quitting, teams diminishing in size and folks off on sick leave.

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Makes you wonder where everyone is going. 'Lean' working is common in my industry post pandemic, I think there was originally an idea that companies would grow their teams again as things improved but where money has remained tight and people have been working harder there appears to be a reluctance to take on more staff to reduce the workload of existing staff. The more people I speak to in my industry the more I hear that people are exhausted and frustrated that they're not getting any further forwards.

Interestingly, we were contacted by the company we buy currency from to use for international stock purchase. We weren't looking to buy any currently as we're reviewing what the new year may look like (it definitely doesn't look like what I would've expected it to had you asked me in March), but we had a chat, and he volunteered the fact that he's seen a slow down in his business since about July - the same time my figures show a marked slow down in our work against previous years.

Whilst people say 'there's no cost of living crisis, I still see everyone is at the pub' etc., there's definitely something happening that's causing a lot of businesses to falter.

[Zelandeth]

Surge pricing.  Which can plainly be read as "screwing people over during busy periods purely because we know we can get away with it."

Having a last look at hotel pricing in the vicinity of the NEC for an event there in May (well, actually at the Hilton Metropole next door, but everyone knows where the NEC is so it's a useful landmark).  At the hotel I've historically used the a stay of the same length on a "normal" week comes to around £500.  There are cheaper options, but I've always had good experiences with the Moxy, and it's literally a 5 minute walk from the convention venue to my room so it really handy.  However if I do a search for the weekend I'm actually interested in, £905.  It's gone up quite a chunk each year (and last year I accepted that somewhat due to making the decision I was going at the last minute so I knew I'd be paying above the odds) but £900 for a booking that's six months off is just taking the piss.

The Novotel at the airport is £510 (also stayed there before, albeit for work rather than leisure) for the same period - so about £100 more than what the cost would have been for residential stay at the event (which I did enter the lottery for - we're vastly over-subscribed - and wasn't successful in securing a space in) which isn't that bad really in the grand scheme of things.  Just trying to weigh up whether the extra walk between the sites is likely to impact my enjoyment of the event, as the ability to come and go as I please (or need) is quite instrumental in that working for me.  It's an expensive week regardless...but seeing the prices at the closest alternative hotel having gone that high just really put my back up.

[chadders]

It's basic demand and supply, it's as old as the hills.