How much time do you waste to IT issues

[rubytue]

Inspired b/c its been a big topic in our office lately, and b/c I have been trying to login to out VPN for 90 minutes (on my 4th reboot and about to cal IT for the second time).

Somewhat related, the space bar on my personal laptop is sticking. Really annoying.

[chessie]

LOL I am in IT, all the time. When users are sleeping upgrading, fixing, maintaining.

Then again who really could do their job with out any IT resources, circuits, laptops, desktops, networks..

[lishie]

I'm at 4 weeks and counting for my work laptop. We got them a month ago, and IT still can't figure out how to remote onto them to install the specific legal software we require. I'm ready to scream. Also, an error happened when I had to renew my encryption certificates. I tracked it and it took me 10 hours to resolve the issue with IT, and I had to do my own research and work on top of that because they were so incompetent.

[joenali]

My district has the most outdated technology and it could take several days to get a tech person into our school. Tonight I am showing a video at our curriculum night and it keeps pausing because my computer keeps flashing "something" every few mintues. I have no idea what it is but it's like the computer "puses" for a split second and then it's fine. It drives me batty.

[thoseareradishes]

I used to spend whole days doing nothing because my computer was broken. After a while they would send me a loaner laptop, but only after a lot of pleading. Sometimes they made me work on the computer in the common area that everyone used to scan things.

The thing was, I never had any work to do (there as not enough work to go around for everyone in my office), so I spent most of my time farting around on the internet anyway. Made for some very long and boring days.

[Deleted]

Very little.

Our servers crashed the other day, and required us all to be offline for hours while they fixed it, so we all got to go home. And our remote access through Citrix was down too so we couldn't work from home. That was the best. I'd happily deal with that every day.

[Deleted]

Our school system has an awesome IT program but I know we are not the norm. We went through a digital conversion and all of our students have laptops. I've never had an IT problem that didn't get fixed the same day. They have even come and helped me get my calendar synced with my personal phone.

[ejpint]

I can't quantify it except to say that's it's ridiculous. Like many companies, our IT help desk has been outsourced to India. We have three IT people on site, but they are contractors. I can't ask them for help, I have to call India. If I'm lucky, my request is correctly understood, and then correctly translated to someone in Michigan. Someone in Michigan then (again, if I'm lucky) contacts our local contractor, and it's about a 50/50 shot that they get the issue right. I then have to wait for them to respond to me.

Recent example:
My phone stopped working. I could take calls, but could not dial out or use our directory. It took two full days to get someone into my office to get me a new phone. Two days without an office phone is ridiculous to me.

[gt7301b]

Probably an hour or so a day. They frequently push updates during the day that require me to reboot my computer. I would be happy if I never got a new update because they rarely make anything better.

[Becca]

Not as much time as having technology saves me. I can't imagine doing my
job manually.

[ssmjlm]

We have 3 SA's on staff, but we are still at the mercy of NEC for a lot stuff.

We're getting ready to go to telecommute 1x a week and I'm not so sure it's going to work well in the beginning, but we'll see. People are already pissed that they haven't issued us laptops and keep buying desktops. I'm not sure if they're going to make us buy our own CAC readers or not.

[schrodinger]

Way too much time. I use software that isn't really supported by the company that produced it. To compensate, we have a group of people in Chicago, London and Paris that write patches to get it to do what we want it to do. When something goes wrong (weekly), its impossible to troubleshoot and figure out where to start fixing things. And the time changes don't make it easy to get in touch with the right people.

There are three people in my office that use this software and daily someone will let loose a big "fuck you (software name)!"

[rubytue]

Well, I've officially been bumped up the list for a new laptop. Of course it doesn't help my immediate needs. Oh well.

I have a friend whose company actually has a time code for "productivity loss due to computer issues."

That all said, I do agree with it being far better than trying to work without computers. Up until 18 months ago, we still had to carry around hard copies and get physical signatures before we could publish something. Now that is all online and we can work on the documents collaboratively. Yay! Except, some days there is a 15-30 second lag on the server documents. Doesn't "sound" that bad, but imagine every time you type a sentence, it takes 30 seconds to come up? Or you click to accept a tracked change. Ugh! Mindnumbing. Takes me back to IRC in 1992!