Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The Diary of a Useless Manager - Useless IT

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is NOT my diary. This is just a fictional story of an useless little manager working in a large local organisation. If you work in a large local organisation and find this figure looking suspiciously like your manager, it is only because these useless managers breed freely in large local organisations and the only way to stop them is to remove their stable diet - their subordinates.

Today was the day that I went for long breakfast, followed by long lunch, and then even longer afternoon tea-break. Okay, I know I am already doing that everyday, but make it even longer today. Because I couldn't log on to the office network.

This morning when I didn't find the very important report in my inbox, the one that I was supposed to present to my boss and my assistant manager was supposed to do for me, I stomped out of the office to questioned her. She then placed her hands on her hips and answered with a voice louder than me,"I've already sent to you yesterday!". It was then that I realised that my Outlook was not updated because I was not on the office network.

Not being able to log onto Outlook is very serious. This means I can't receive and forward all the reports that I dedicated out, and if I don't send any email anytime soon, my boss will have the wrong impression that I'm not doing any work and I'm very free!

Immediately, I panicked and asked my PA,"I can't access to the office network! How?" and almost immediately, she snapped back at me,"How I know how?! I'm only your PA, I'm not IT! I'll log a ticket for you.". Well, at least she logged a ticket for me.

But after I returned from my long breakfast, my outlook still looked as outdated as I have left it. So I asked my PA whether she has logged my ticket as super urgent, and she answered with a long "Yes".

After my long lunch, I was still off the office network. Being impatient, I asked my even more impatient PA for the IT Manager's number and gave him a ring...

"Have you logged a ticket?"
"Yes, my PA has done it for me."
"Then you'll need to wait for help desk to respond."
"I've already waited the whole morning! Can't you send someone over to take a look?"
"Nope. We can't do anything until help desk has called you, understood your problem, done the first diagnosis and then forwarded us the ticket. Then I'll ask my guy to go over, okay?"
"But I heard that our help desk is in India and they are super slow!"
"Yah, they're slow, but I'm sorry, this is the process. My hands are tied till I receive the ticket."

And I found someone in the organisation who is even more idle than me.

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