The grown-ups in my department have been sequestered to do data cleansing for one of our third party distribution deals so the peons have been left (mostly) to our own devices for the last week.
In the absence of a more responsible member of the staff (i.e. one whose job isn’t classed as “unskilled) one of the things I get tasked with is minor IT testing and break-fix reporting. To that end, the big boss requested yesterday that I open a ticket on behalf of the entire department, as the main module we use seemed to be experiencing technical difficulties. The ticket was something like “No one can use $MODULE, please fix ASAP.” A few follow-ups were made showing the exact error message we were receiving, some members of IT worked on it and by the time I got in this morning, the module was working just fine. I then received an email from one of the offshore IT guys (remember like three months ago when our Company claimed they were getting rid of all offshore IT?) telling me that I could no longer request access to $MODULE via ticket, and instead, I must go through some arcane process involving drop-down menus, radio buttons and burnt offerings. I responded to him that I have had access to all roles in $MODULE since 2006, and then explained that the original ticket was to fix the broken module for everyone, thank you for your time and hit send. He just now emailed stating:
We checked and found that currently you don’t have $MODULE access. The process to obtain access has been changed and we no more do the manual provisioning.
Kindly apply for the access as per the instructions provided below and revert back in case you find any difficulty.
Huh? Is this a threat? Are they going to remove my access just so that I have to jump through the hoops all new hires have to? (it takes them a minimum of 2 weeks to get it right – somehow IT can’t figure out what “mirror $JOHNNY LONGTERM EMPLOYEE access” means). Here was my terse response to that veiled threat.
The ticket opened below was to fix a problem for all $MODULE users. The issue was fixed and $MODULE users are no longer receiving error messages. I am using $MODULE right now and have been using it all morning. My access has not been removed. Please update your records.
My former manager surfaced from the terrarium they’ve been locked in to let me know he had put my snotty response up on the big screen in the conference room. “Did you see how she’s responding to IT?,” he whined in mock outrage. The Big Boss, who noted at my last non-binding review that one thing that may keep me from getting promoted is the perception that I am “mean”, looked it over and said, “Good. Let her say whatever she wants to these people.”
nerdycellist 