I.T Depts

[Miss Demeanour]

The talk of killing sprees has been inspired today by dealings with our IT dept  
 
Why oh why oh why oh why do they have to make everything so fecking complicated?..

We have had 6 new starters join this week. They therefore need laptops so that they can hotdesk . Each desk has a docking station so they can just put it on and it will all be connected to the keyboard, monitor, printer etc. Usual practice I'm sure.

So the 6 new laptops arrive this morning ? except they are a lot smaller and therefore do not fit the docking stations.  

You do not have a choice when ordering a laptop as they are all standard apparently  

So I.T. man comes down from his protected , oxygenated penthouse in the sky and assesses the problem.

These laptops are smaller he says. Some of the connections and the power cable is different he says.

Feckin genius I think and instantly fall in love with him for that  

So is there any chance of any smaller docking stations I ask ? so that at least we can install those on a couple of desks and there will be a choice.

?No love? he says ? we don?t provide docking stations any more. There was always a problem with incompatibility.

So does that mean that every time a person comes into the office they have to disconnect all the cables from the old docking station, connect what they can from this and then plug in all their other attachments , having to lift up the desk to reach the hidden power cables and then put everything back together again ?

?Yes love? he says


 

[Barman]

He is a grade A arsehole... Period.

[Snoopy]

He is TRM and I claim my fiver in used notes. 

[Miss Demeanour]

There is no grease under his fingernails 

[The Moan Ranger]

He is TRM and I claim my fiver in used notes. 

Who be he?

[Snoopy]

In the good old days ~ before Bill Gates ~ I used get into the office and my post would be delivered by a lovely from reception. I would open and read it, consider that which needed an immediate reply and that which could wait. I would make a couple of phone calls by dialling 9 for an outside line and if none was free the switchboard would get the number I wanted for me and call me when they achieved a connection. This would deal with the "urgent" replies with a following letter in confirmarion of the telephone call. To send a letter I would press the switch on the intercom that connected my office to the outer office and ask if one of the secretaries was free. A lovely in a short skirt would trip into my office, take a seat where I had a good view of her legs/thighs (depending on time of year and length of skirt), and take down my replies to the letters in shorthand. She would then depart, to return some hours later with the letters, neatly typed in duplicate, for my signature. She would then ensure that the correct postage was put on each letter according to my instructions (1st or 2nd class, Recorded delivery etc) and an office boy would leg it to the nearest post office before the last collection at 6.30pm. The lovely would file the duplicate with the original enquiry and no matter if I was absent on leave, sick or just down the pub anyone who needed to could seek and find the query and reply.

Suddenly it all changed and we got PCs on our desks, lost the secretarial support and the office boy. Post still arrived but was tossed through the door by some numpty of a security guard, usually the bundle would contain other people's post as well and half an hour would be spent whilst we all resorted the letters between ourselves. Replies had to be typed by the recipents but the printer was at the end of the corridor and everyone was connected to it. You had no idea when it had run out of paper or when your mail would reach the end of the queue and get printed. Instructions pencilled on envelopes were routinely ignored by the new "post room" ~ same security numpty in there as threw your letters at you in the mornings. Post would be collected from each floor by said numpty at about 3pm so anything not yet ready to go waited until the following day.

Filing cabinets in which copies used to be kept were disposed of only to be replaced six months later when it was realised that unless a paper copy was retained all record was lost. BUT now we each had to have a filing cabinet because we had to keep our own files and we all kept them locked to ensure no-one accessed the bottom drawer where the drinks were kept.

Then came EMAIL ~ and more filing cabinets, more printing and a person to take charge of the printer as it was forever running out of paper. This was swiftly followed by a deluge of early morning messages from a variety of people asking if you has received their email as they had not yet received your reply. These calls always commenced the moment you walked into the office and before you had even turned your screen on.

Finally there came the day, when at a sales management meeting, we pointed out to our MD that we were losing business because we were now so tied to the office dealing with mail (e and other) that we had little time left for doing the basics of selling ie getting in front of the buyers. This point was made so strongly (well there were 6 sales managers in the room ~ he didn't stand a chance by the time we had each produced the graphs of our own working week + those of our salesmen of which we each had about dozen showing the unproductive time etc. The poor man must have thought Power Point had been invented to destroy his mind) that he authorised the employment of secretaries for us all and life returned to normality.

[Snoopy]

He is TRM and I claim my fiver in used notes. 

Who be he?

Your cousin The Right Moaner

[tel]

I should probably comment on this thread, but I shall refrain.

Made me laugh.

Tis reality come home to roost.

[Miss Demeanour]

It gets worse..... the keyboards they have provided with these laptops have no backslash button. I checked and double checked and even got someone else to check.

When IT bod came back this afternoon I didn't say anything but asked if he would configure the laptop to the networked printers etc  then stood back. Watched him get as far as I did earlier and then the fatal next step which requires - guess what a backslash button 

he then did this 

followed by this 

followed by me doing this 

[Snoopy]

So pleased we have brightened your day tel. 

You see the one thing all those who advocated the "paperless" office and the use of lap-tops, emails, blackberrys (ies?) etc forgot was that previously girls (and some boys) who wished to be secretaries had been trained to type and could go, with all fingers flying, at a rate of 80 words per minute, with few errors and good shorthand note takers could be reckoned on reaching about 60 words per minute. Your average secretary or girl from the typing pool was capable of achieving 50 wpm shorthand and 65/70 wpm typing. I use two (sometimes three) fingers to type and achieve about 25wpm but it is full of errors which then have to be corrected. I cannot touch type of course. Also the secretary would correct, as she went, any gramatical errors etc and the signatory would give the letter a final proof read. The secretary could also deal with letters, dictated into a dictaphone, that you recorded whilst en route to the office for her to transcribe whilst you got on with other tasks. All these skills and attendant double checking is lost when you take modern educated people and tell them to produce their own letters and NO-ONE checks them before they are sent. Just a few more reasons why newer is not always better and a pointer as to why we all receive so many poorly written letters from various businesses, councils, etc these days.

[tel]

I can't see why you need a "backslash".

Printers are connected at logon or by selection if allowed by the administrator.

Someone ain't doing their job properly or efficiently.

[Nick]

So her tecchies are nincompoops then! 

[tel]

As they are not her personal ones, she won't be offended when I agree with that assessment.

[Miss Demeanour]

You cannot connect new laptops to the networked printers etc at logon I'm afraid , if only life was that simple  - they have to be set up by tekky man ( nincompoop that he is ) - and I'm afraid the backslash would appear to be essential in this process.

However they have now gone away to come up with a workaround ...to be continued tomorrow 

[Miss Demeanour]

As they are not her personal ones, she won't be offended when I agree with that assessment.

Please feel free to call him whatever you want - I would be interested to see if you came up with names I haven't used yet