Sorry, IT still doesn’t do attitude adjustments

Technology is now so ingrained in our culture that we’re surprised when it’s not immediately available. Whether that’s because we take the system for granted or simply don’t plan ahead, the nearest party may take the brunt of our frustration. Who better to blame than the techs, whether or not they have magical powers to fix all things? Not that you’re the worst offender — there are always less reasonable users to deal with.

Enter User 1, who we’ll call “Angelica.” An account executive, Angelica was a self-regarded person of importance who believed the tech team was at her beck and call. Rules did not apply to her. She was high-strung and needy, armed with many demanding, last-minute requests. You get the picture.

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Angelica had planned a weeklong vacation in another state to see her in-laws, coincidentally timed with Labor Day. As a career-oriented power seller, Angelica had planned on taking her laptop with her and working while on vacation. Not for nothing, she was the primary point of contact for several lucrative accounts, so keeping the customer happy was her bread and butter. However, on the Wednesday of that week, her RSA token had expired. True to form, she didn’t bother to let IT know until around 4:45 p.m. on the Friday preceding that long weekend.

Hey, it’s only network security

Standard company policy dictated a mandatory 48-hour period between the request of a new token and the issuance of the token so that all the proper approvals could be documented and the network team could prep the token. From there, Tier II desktop support still had to install the token on the user’s PC.

The VPN software was set to give popup notices of an impending token expiration for an entire week ahead of time, and Angelica had been through the token renewal process on several occasion before — this should’ve been old news for her. When Angelica called the help desk, she got the standard response that, in short, she was out of luck. If she had contacted them earlier in the week (as she should have), they could have helped her, but now it was too late.

This “type A” personality salesperson wasn’t about to take that one sitting down. After an angry call to the director of IT, all policies were waived, the network team issued her a token, and at 7 p.m. desktop support was installing it on her laptop. Crisis averted — her token was renewed and she could work to her heart’s content during her vacation.

The worst-laid plans almost always go astray

Naturally, it wouldn’t be that simple. She had also failed to do her homework about where she was traveling. Her in-laws were located in the heart of West Virginia, and on this trip she had opted to stay with them rather than getting a hotel room. Therein lay the problem: They did not own a computer, so they had no Internet connection. However, even if they wanted an Internet connection, no modern broadband connections existed in the remote hollow where they lived. Cellular service? Ha! That’s a good one.

Her BlackBerry had a little red X on the signal meter; not only could she not get email, her customers couldn’t even call her. Dialup internet was technically plausible, but A) the large amount of data being sent back by the sales software would have made this prohibitively slow, and B) her in-laws sort of needed to use their telephone.

Angelica placed a series of frantic calls to the on-call help desk person — who could do absolutely nothing to help her. No matter how much she yelled at him, reminding him of how important her accounts were to the company, he could not alter the physics of the universe and give her something that was impossible.

I’m not sure what her solution was, if she drove into town every day to find a connection or stomped out of the house to check into a hotel. But the amount of grief and noise she made when she discovered her predicament is in sharp contrast to User 2, who found herself in a similar situation in the middle of nowhere with no service. Let’s call her “Helena.”

A true professional

After a courteous call to the help desk, Helena found a solution on her own. She had noticed a cellular tower on the top of a distant mountain that was only visible from a certain angle for about 10 seconds before disappearing behind another mountain. It was a carrier not compatible with her BlackBerry, but after a visit to a local electronics store, Helena learned it was a local carrier with GPRS data service. Helena bought an aircard, and on the way back stopped at the gap in the mountain to use the VPN. It worked just well enough that she could respond to emails and keep tabs on things. This became the daily routine until she could finally rejoin civilization.

The lessons learned? Users, when the VPN software says your token is about to expire, it’s no joke. Also, a little planning goes a long way before taking a vacation. At the very least, don’t berate the help desk when there’s nothing we can do.

Send your own IT tale of managing IT, personal bloopers, supporting users, or dealing with bureaucratic nonsense to offtherecord@infoworld.com. If we publish it, you’ll receive a $50 American Express gift cheque.

This story, “Sorry, IT still doesn’t do attitude adjustments,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more crazy-but-true stories in the anonymous Off the Record blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.