Where's my shotgun?

Because I need to blow some people away. Grab a sandwich, something to drink, and sit down. Here's a little story.

I come into work on Monday morning, and Ben tells me that OIT (the other IT department on campus) is looking for some help with the student check-in this semester. Apparently, they want to make sure that student's computers have virus protection and the latest security updates before they plug them into the network. Makes sense. So I send the coordinator lady an e-mail expressing my interest. She e-mails me back ten minutes later and says I need to come to a training session either Wed or Thurs. I reply, saying I'll come to the Thurs session. All this occured before lunchtime on Monday.

Fast forward to today, 1:55 pm. I show up at OIT, ready for the training that's supposed to take place from 2-4. They're not ready. 10 minutes later, I get called in. I walk into the conference room, and I swear I've stepped into the wrong room. There's no one there (besides me) that doesn't work at OIT. I hesitantly take a seat, and wait for some clarification that this is, in fact, the wrong room. It turns out that I'm in the right place afterall. They hand out a step by step "training manual" and then commence with a 45 minute spiel on how to install and update McAfee VirusScan, go to the Windows Update site and download critical updates, and set up Wireless Networking. All of which I already know how to do.

Here's the sad part: the other folks didn't. A few of them did (those heading the presentation), but the others were completely clueless, based on their questions. Just to clarify, these people work in IT. They use/troubleshoot/support computers every day. It's their fucking job.

Which begs the question: Why are the regular employees wasting their time to do this check-in? If they had put out a listing asking for students, they would have gotten plenty of replies. Hell, students already know how to install programs and run Windows update, they wouldn't have had to waste the time and money to hold not one, but two 2-hour training sessions and print up 2-3 dozen manuals. That's the way OIT does things, though. Extremely inefficiently.

So after that guy gets done blathering, another lady steps up to talk about HEAT. HEAT is a program that OIT has a hard-on for. We use it at COP IT only because OIT does. Basically, it's a program that we can record trouble calls in, mainly so there's a record of the work we've done. Sometimes, when we can't complete a task (such as needing a network port activated) we assign the HEAT ticket to someone who can. It's actually a nice system, to keep track of what's been worked on where, and by whom. Extremely useful in certain situations.

OIT, on the other hand, uses HEAT for everything. Call them on the phone, it goes in HEAT. Send them an e-mail, it goes in HEAT. Ask them a question in person, it goes in HEAT. This bitch has to talk about how they've set up automated HEAT tickets for frequent issues. Including one for if a student asks directions. To a building. That's right, if someone wants to know where the Registrar's office is, they put it in HEAT. She goes on to explain that this is so they can generate reports on what the most prevalent problems are, so they can release training material and help users help themselves. Great idea on paper. OIT must have burned that paper and pissed on the ashes, though, cause it doesn't work that way.

Ben informed me that after OIT had rolled out HEAT, they told him about the reporting capability. He goes, "Great, can you send me a report on this and this and this?" And they go, "Uh, well, we have to send someone for training on that." So they send the guy to get trained, and he comes back and makes the report. Ben gets it, and it looks real nice, but contains no useful information whatsoever. Great job, OIT.

So anyway, I've just spent an hour and a half sitting in a conference room, learning absolutely nothing. "Ok, that's it, we're done." So I go to leave, walking back down the hallway I came from initially. I start to turn into a doorway that I thought was the way to the exit. I quickly realize that it's some guy's empty office, do a 90 degree spin, and continue back down the hallway. A split fucking second after I took my one and only step into the office, I hear a voice from behind me down the hall, "Whoa, not that way."

I ignored the prick, but I was extremely pissed. See, even though OIT does exactly jack and shit, and their employees are just this side of brain-damaged chimps, they got a brand spanking new building last year. Inside and out renovation and expansion. I really wanted to whip around and say, "Well, if you fucks had a building the size of your IQs I wouldn't have gotten lost, now would I?" but I just wanted to get out of there.

So I'm walking over to the COP IT office, fuming, and I flip open the manual to the page that lists the schedule for the check-in weekend. It says who's supposed to be where, and when. There's just one problem: I'm not on it. Remember when I said that I got in touch with the coordinator on Monday? They held a training session on Wednesday. The manuals they handed out then had mistakes, so they reprinted them for today. I was informed today, Thursday, that they still had mistakes, and would have to be reprinted a second time. So, they had 3 days and a reprint in order to put me on the schedule, and they couldn't get it done. At this point, I wasn't surprised.

I had always suspected that this was the way OIT operated. The reason all their employees are always so busy isn't because they're actually solving problems, it's because they're organizing/attending fucking meetings and committees! No one knows what anyone else is doing at any given time, and they don't care. What's worse is that they don't even try and get better. If they run into something they can't handle, they call someone else. There's no communication, so that guy has to try a bunch of shit the other guy already did, and if he does manage to fix it, neither one of them has learned anything. In fact, they actually get dumber, because as they increase their "specialty" knowledge, they forget everything else that actually makes them a useful team member.

You know what I say? I say give us OIT's budget, and their building. We get to choose who gets hired (competent professionals), who gets fired (all the fucking morons that work there now), and what projects to tackle. Then, the faculty and staff fills out a survey six months in. If at least 50% think it's better than before, we get to stay in control. If not, things go back to the way they were like it never happened. Except that as the employees of OIT were fired, they were lined up against and wall and executed, that is.