back to article That man told me to stuff a ROLE up my USER ENTRY!

“Who are you, again?” Well, that’s just great. I’ve been talking to tech support customer services for barely two minutes and already he’s forgotten my name. To be honest, I can hardly blame him, considering my own inability to memorise names instantly, as recounted in this column many times. Tell me your name and within 10 …

  1. Warm Braw

    "To question the managerial understanding of business processes"

    That's your role, right there. Inquisitor.

    You can probably get a chit for a comfy chair, too.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Gimp

      There's a need for inquisition all right!

      I tell him I’m none of those things: I am a freelance contractor, which makes me nobody’s boss and nobody’s servant.

      Please sit down.

      Are you, or have you ever been, an anarchist?

      Do you believe in State, your savior?

    2. TitterYeNot
      Coat

      Re: "To question the managerial understanding of business processes"

      "That's your role, right there. Inquisitor."

      There you go, thats the problem in a nutshell. Tech support Customer services never expect a call from the serfish inquisition...

      1. Anonymous Custard
        Headmaster

        Re: "To question the managerial understanding of business processes"

        The usual answer to "What is your role" has to be either "minion" (which in this case would ironically have been right), "blame magnet", "unsung hero" or "ground zero", depending on situation and whom you are talking to (whether they have a sense of humour and/or the right to get you fired).

        Either that or you just pick the role that has the rights/privs/access/whatever you need to actually get things done, although most of the time "miracle worker" seems not to be on the list when it's needed...

      2. launcap Silver badge

        Re: "To question the managerial understanding of business processes"

        >>"That's your role, right there. Inquisitor."

        >There you go, thats the problem in a nutshell. Tech support Customer services never expect a call >from the serfish inquisition...

        I was thinking Inquisitor on more of the Warhammer 40K Stylee. With the authority to slay unhumans (ie middle management) at will.

  2. chivo243 Silver badge

    Horrible at names too

    Hi, my name is John,

    I too suffer from namenesia. I find using the person's name with in the first 30 seconds helps reinforce who they are.

    1. Sgt_Oddball

      Re: Horrible at names too

      Do you end up at parties (I've reached that age where parties have wine that costs over a fiver and have a cheese course..rather than scrumpy and casual sex. Sad times) had an indepth hour long conservation and then got asked by the wife ' who was that then? ' to the now stock response of 'no idea.' I don't even ask now but somehow she always manages to figure who the hell it was I conversed with.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Horrible at names too

      '..I too suffer from namenesia. I find using the person's name with in the first 30 seconds helps reinforce who they are.'

      Weirdly enough, myself and a colleague were discussing this at the beginning of last week. It can take me up to a month to remember someone's name, We've hired some new minions over the past couple of weeks, and, for the life of me, I can't tell you their names.

      I've tried the saying it within 30 seconds trick, doesn't work in my case, tried all sorts of mnemonic aids, no deal.

      After chewing the fat about this for a couple of minutes, my colleague turned round and said, 'probably just as well, a month seems about right nowadays, no point remembering someone's name if they'll be gone in a couple of weeks..just a waste of brain space'

      sadly, I fear he's right..

  3. cmannett85

    I was in the States years ago and being introduced to a couple via a friend. The man stated his name, and being useless at names I frantically repeated it to myself in my head.

    "Pat", " Pat", "Pat".

    A few minutes later his girlfriend introduced herself, "what's your name?" She said.

    "Pat".

    My name is not Pat.

    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
      Happy

      My name is not Pat.

      There is the old story about the actress Diana Dors, whose real name, the one her home village knew her by, was Diana Fluck. She was due back in the village to open the village fete, and the local dignitary charged with introducing her was terrified about getting it wrong and embarassing himself. He concentrated really hard on getting that 'l' right...so much so that he introduced her as Diana Clunt.

  4. Roq D. Kasba

    Login names

    Back in the days of steam, before anyone standardised user names etc., I remember a guy who decided to try to bring some order to the company using LLLLLLFS as a template (lastname * 6 chars, then first and second initials). In most cases this was perfectly acceptable and brought things under control.

    Techies, being techies, would use that login as a monicker, much as a public schoolboy is referred to by his surname. 'kasbardee', etc

    His own name was something akin to Alistair Patrick Cochran, making his username monicker a variant of 'cockcrap'. Bet he wishes he'd thought that template through harder before imposing it ;-)

    1. Christoph

      Re: Login names

      "(lastname * 6 chars, then first and second initials)"

      I saw a story about another place that did that, and point-blank refused to vary the policy. Mary Elizabeth Cummins was NOT amused.

      1. VinceH

        Re: Login names

        Anyone who's last name is fewer than six letters might have problems, too - unless it was up to six letters of the last name, rather than a strict six.

        1. Roq D. Kasba

          Re: Login names

          >>>.Anyone who's last name is fewer than six letters might have problems, too - unless it was up to six letters of the last name, rather than a strict six.<<<

          Yes, it's a format riddled with limitations, similarly not having a middle name also means an imperfect fill. Namespace collisions are also more common than you'd imagine, leading to abominations like 'kasbar03' which help nobody.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Login names

        The first initial + surname rule was a problem when we hired Peter Enis as well. An exception was permitted, for once.

    2. Kubla Cant

      Re: Login names

      As a contractor, I've had more than my fair share of usernames. In my current job my username is a 9-digit number.

      Though I too have a poor memory for names, I can usually remember a username derived in some way from my real name. But a number is impossible. I daren't log out.

      I am not a number, I am a free lancer.

  5. AndrueC Silver badge
  6. Dr_N

    X/ext

    Mr Dabbs "I am a freelance contractor"

    I thought you were a "Freelance Technology 'Ho" ?

    Did you get assigned an "userx" or "user-ext" username/email account? The contractor's mark of Cain.

  7. OzBob

    Cue call from User Rep for Corporate Mainframe Application I maintained code for

    user: we are recoding usernames of support staff to be role based.

    me: nice

    user: what best describes your role in [Application name]

    me: God

    user: ha ha, not enough characters, try again

    me: jesus, then

    user: don't be a wanker, you can have "coord". What's my role best described as?

    me: "brian"?

  8. jake Silver badge

    The quislings much beloved by middle-management.

    Can't shoot 'em, so you gotta love 'em. Sez upper manglement.

  9. Doctor_Wibble

    Minions Of The Hierarchy

    Ignoring the fact that I've just revealed title of the next film in the series, is 'middle minion' more or less important than 'drone' or peon'?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    First rule of contracting club is to get I.T. to give you the permissions of a senior manager or someone that actually does the work using the systems signed off by your manager who has better things to do than scrutinise your request. Works every time, saves a lot of pain later in the role and enables you to get the job done. I speak from experience on this one.

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      >> First rule of contracting club

      I quite agree, but I always ask not to be given deletion rights. The drawback is that I have to ask a college to delete things for me every time. The huge advantage is that I will never get blamed for deleting something important (which some damn freelancer asked me to delete for them).

      1. Anonymous Custard

        I would certainly agree with the sentiment, but from experience "senior manager" and "gets the work done" are mutually exclusive. At least unless the only privs and accesses you need relate to arranging meeting rooms and issuing minutes.

        Normally asking for enough priv's "so I don't have to bother you again asking for what I need" to the IT person is usually enough, especially if requested over a pint (or the promise of one, duly delivered).

      2. Captain Obvious
        Joke

        How can a college delete records (unless maybe you are Harvard)

    2. Dr_N

      "First rule of contracting club..."

      Is don't mention Contracting Club, surely?

  11. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Nobody's boss and nobody's servant?

      I've been a freelancer contractor/consultant for years, and I've found that while I'm not technically anyone's employee, on any given contract I have an average of six people who act as though they think they're my manager. The trick is to balance their needs/requests to keep them happy in their order of importance / ability to affect future gigs.

      I've also been defacto placed into roles as team lead / lead architect where I was essentially directing the work of full time employees as if I was their manager, but fortunately got to avoid the really horrible stuff like ratings/evaluations which were one of the things that drove me out of my full time management role and into freelancing in the first place.

  12. frank ly

    Access Permissions

    Some years ago, I was involved in the testing side of a large and classified communications ground station project. We had a meeting about the formalisation of the design 'database' that was being finally populated. It seemed obvious to me (and all other engineers) that the modems team should have full permisions for the modem design documents and read access for everything else. The test team should have full permissions for tests specification documents, etc, etc, etc.

    When management got involved (having shown no interest up to that point), they started to draw a matrix with system functions down the left vertical and functional teams along the top. Then, they went into long discussions about what sort of permissions should be at each intersection. Should the modems team have the ability to read the r.f. comms documents? Should the test team have the ability to read the modem specifications (yes, they actually discussed that!).

    What happened after the first ten minutes is lost to me because my mind closed down in self defence.

    1. Hollerith 1

      Re: Access Permissions

      Management got involved and drew up a matrix and assigned permissions and someone actually implemented it? I have had Management do something similar. We knew that they would never check back or see what had actually been implemented or care, so we did what we thought needed to be done and, yes, nobody ever checked or asked, because everything worked out fine. We did have a cover story about a 'system glitch' (using language they would understand) that meant some permissions had to be re-mapped to fit a preexisting etc etc la la la. Never had to use it.

      I did it under my authority (such as it was) because I was a freelancer and, if sh*t ever did hit fan, I would be long gone. Seemed only fair to the lifers in that place.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Access Permissions

      '..When management got involved (having shown no interest up to that point), they started to draw a matrix with system functions down the left vertical and functional teams along the top. Then, they went into long discussions about what sort of permissions should be at each intersection.'

      Oh FSM yes, I left IT to avoid meetings like this, as they were becoming both increasingly more common and really annoying. Guess what?, after five happy 'pointless meeting avec management' free years , they've bloody followed me and I've sat through 10 of them over the past three weeks.

      We've management who don't truly understand what we physically do trying to tell us how to do our jobs (and I'm talking about micromanagement even down to the feckin' tool level - real physical workshop tools, that is), drawing up schedules, risible workflows etc.

      It's almost like dealing with medieval magicians, they thought various dinky scribbles on parchment could control the universe..our management think they can do the same with Gantt charts..(seriously, they employed a new sub-manager who, once he got his bum on the seat, claimed he couldn't do the job properly unless they installed a copy of Project on his machine..)

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Login Names and Access...

    Oh the memories.

    One contract I had around 2003 was just a short one, 1 month. It took the IT department who were the keeper of such things exactly 26 days from the time I started to issue me with a login.#

    Two days work later I was out of the as fast as I could. #

    Yes I got paid for doing nowt. I turned up for work every day on the understanding that my login detail would be issued that day.

    Easiest contract I ever had. Even the permies had to apply to keep their accounts active every month. Passwords had to be changed weekly. Woe betide you if you took a Friday off because that was when everyone had to change them.

    Happy to report that the IT security manager who was responsible for their system was one of the first to get the chop when the company was taken over in 2006.

    Went back in 2007 to find a much saner system in place.

    1. DiViDeD

      Re: Login Names and Access...

      Been ther, feel your pain. I did 6 months at a leading US bank, there to improve and (far more importantly) document their investment management 'systems'. I kid you not, multiple billion dollar investments with the fees calculated in Excel because their mainframe couldn't handle non standard fee structures.

      It took 2 weeks to fast track a user account, so I couldn't access anything I was supposed to be working on. My manager's solution? "Try to look busy when the BUM is around, otherwise she'll reassign you"

      Played a lot of Angry Birds with the sound off.

    2. Kubla Cant

      Re: Login Names and Access...

      Passwords had to be changed weekly. Woe betide you if you took a Friday off because that was when everyone had to change them.

      If I've ever changed my password on a Friday I spend most of Monday morning trying to guess what I changed it to.

  14. sandman

    Can be a laugh

    I worked for one company that had a very simple-brained HR system. Because my role (Project Manager) was a standard one it gave me a charge-out rate of 2k a day. My boss was grandly titled "Head of Technology", a non-standard role, therefore the system gave him the minimum charge-out rate of 1k a day. Obviously I couldn't help but point out our respective worth ;-)

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Huh

    Try sorting that sort of thing out when you are working with Education and NHS staff on the same site. Then you'd know insanity.

    The NHS staff had to have an entirely different network, for starters and where the work was combined ( a lot of it),or they needed to use shared hardware (projectors and the like) we had to arrange permissions on the education network. But since they were then also using education servers their managers only agreed to let them use our network (even for this additional work) if I lost my permissions to manage our network, which had to be managed by central IT instead being managed by us locally. But of course the usernames then couldn't be assigned to non-education employees, because central IT had to use corporate protocols and no one in central IT had worked out how to do this. Even though there was no in principle objection the NHS staff weren't known to the people who now had to adminster the system and couldn't provide the right employment credentials to be allocated a username.

    And of course, since ours wasn't part of the main corporate network, we also couldn't provide computer access to people who came to work with us from other education departments anymore, since by the time we'd arranged that through corporate IT they'd have long gone.

    So for a long time log-ins had to be shared just to get the work done. Which made a mockery of all of the precautions.

    Until I was able to collect a few spare log-ins to give to people who needed to work in our building, by "forgetting" to tell Corporate that some people had left and asking them to leave me their passwords.

    AC to protect the guilty.

  16. Sgt_Oddball

    The real trick is....

    Having worked at peon grade in a previous life (one involving a phone and legalities to work in the financial sector), there was 3 different systems to play with all of which I supposed to have the lowest of the low access level. You'd still be amazed at how far into the main frame I could dig to chase missing transaction (to this day I have to wonder how many international banks intentionally lose transfers just to get the interest on it). There's always a way around things if you dig long enough.

    Might also explain why when I asked to leave the job I was walked out by two security guards. Thanks arseholes...make me look like a criminal did doing a better job than even some of the managers (no good deed goes unpunished and all that)

  17. This post has been deleted by its author

  18. Sandtitz Silver badge
    Mushroom

    UI design

    So what you’re saying is that I should look for missing icons? My user role on the system is clearly displayed as a row of icons that aren’t there? I should keep my eyes peeled for icons that cannot be seen?

    In my experience, the people who come up with and code such braindead UI designs cannot be talked into changing the behaviour. They don't understand why it is braindead even though you show how it is counterintuitive or just stupid design. They just dismiss any disagreements with their beliefs or get angry. There's plenty of otherwise great coders who know nothing of designing interfaces.

    I've seen plenty of software where the UI is coded without utilising the standard window/UI controls provided by the OS - when you're filling a form for example you cannot tab from field to field, Oh no, you must use the mouse. And clicking on the field erases its old contents first. And even if TAB does work then the order of the fields is seemingly randomized.

    1. Andy A

      Re: UI design

      Ah yes. The application written by someone who never had to use it, or any other application, ever. Non-standard behaviours, such as Lotus Notes using F5 to lock your session rather than refreshing the window. Users who believe that the mouse is the only input device possible, and use an on-screen keyboard to log in rather than the purpose-built object right in front of them.

      To be honest, VB was rubbish at sorting out the order to tab round a dialog box when I last played with it. You had to key in the sequence number in the properties for each element. The default was zero, meaning "inaccessible".

      Developers ought to be forced to do their testing without a mouse available.

  19. Marshalltown

    Ah yes - access permissions

    Many moons ago, my employer at the time, engaged in an entirely unrelated business, decided to become an internet service provider as well. It had already fallen to another fellow and I to wire the office for a peer-to-peer system so that files could be moved around in Windows98 without resorting to sneakernet. We had one computer that we used as a print server, and every one in the office, aside from the lady up front who ran the document publishing system when she wasn't playing solitaire, used it for printing. And, when we weren't handling the occasional hell desk call, were actually supposed to be writing - and printing - scientific reports with math and everything.

    However, the ISP side of the business hired an operator with delusions of BOFH-hood. Our office network was wired directly into the ISP side via the print server for some obscure reason. We had nothing to with that part of the wiring job. Young Would-be, the operator decided that the firewall between the office and the ISP was to be the print server and blocked our use of the server for printing. When we objected he said we didn't have the permissions necessary - because he wasn't going to grant them. So - it was an NT system - every time he left, we would take a little floppy out with a DOS program on it that "read" NT files. Using it always left the NT file system unstable, but once we rebooted it we could print. When young Would-be returned, he would immediately discover that he was unable to access the "firewall" any more and complain bitterly to the owner. The owner would then confront us. We would then hand him the reports we had printed and that he had to read before leaving for home --- which would have been available by noon had we had access to the print server. Ultimately, young Would-be was let go, and a saner version hired who was happy to workout a modus vivendi.

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: Ah yes - access permissions

      Thanks for the anecdote. It's nice to know I'm not the only one to experience this weird approach to rolling out corporate systems – in which the business spends $50 squillion on bespoke software, then thinks up all manner of ways to prevent its own staff from using it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Ah yes - access permissions

        I used to work in a school (not the IT part of my job) where someone ( never found out who) had decided that all the staff log-ins were in a fixed format ( fair enough) that had to be changed monthly and couldn't be reused.

        However, there is a limit to how many passwords they could think of, and school terms don't fit round months. And of course the Summer holiday is a five week absence period with teachers coming and going according to work load.

        So the start of every term had any number of teachers unable to log-in, because the password that they weren't sure they remembered wasn't working, getting irate while waiting for IT support to answer the phone and reset the password, then getting even more irate trying to think of yet another new password because all the ones they could remember had already been used.

        One or two had a favourite machine. SO that was the one they put the post-it note on.

        I told them to just increment a number on one password they could remember, which softened things a bit.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Genious

    "Don’t blame the ... : it is entirely the fault of senior departmental managers ... . These are people ... whose job description insists they should know fuck all about anything beyond cars and golf."

    Dabsy, you have encapsulated a vast amount of what goes wrong in IT in a very pithy sentence which I have abbreviated somewhat above.

    Cheers

    Jon

  21. deadlockvictim

    Finance & Controlling

    I would have thought that if you (as a contractor) are being paid by the hour, that a simple e-mail to the beancounters would get this problem solved very quickly. In my experience, contractors get a lot of attention and get their way without too much hassle.

    If anyone can get you senior management moving quickly, it is the thought of the beancounters telling them that their budget is being depleted on a mere technicality.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: "a simple e-mail to the beancounters"

      That idea is directly on par with having to send an email to IT support when your PC does not work.

      The solution is not always email. The solution I employ, as a contractor, is to go the person responsible for hiring me and telling him that I can't work because I don't have a login. Cue embarrassment and a quick call to some IT person and the problem is generally solved in the hour. If I am told that I can't have login before tomorrow, I then state that I will be back tomorrow and leave because otherwise I have to bill them.

      Up to now, I have never met a manager who does not prefer not being billed and getting started the next day. Personally, in these days of cash scarcity, I can't imagine a private company's department manager who would dream of paying me a day to do nothing, let alone a few weeks.

      Governmental organizations are, admittedly, different. Wasting a whole morning before finally getting a working login is par for the course. If I don't even have a desk, there's generally some meeting to wait for anyway, so it's not like I don't know how to "look busy" in the meantime.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "a simple e-mail to the beancounters"

        'That idea is directly on par with having to send an email to IT support when your PC does not work.'

        Aye, though I should point out that more email is sent via phones at my place of employ than via the infernal email system, yes, phones and external ISP email accounts. You know it's a bad sign when it's easier to get IT support's attention when you use their personal external email addresses rather than the works one.

        '...Personally, in these days of cash scarcity, I can't imagine a private company's department manager who would dream of paying me a day to do nothing, let alone a few weeks.'

        Oh, you'd be surprised..

        Don't imagine, look harder.

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