When lazy meets overpriced: Alternate title: IT Consultants

My company employs IT consultants for some reason I will never fucking understand. We pay them almost 3x what we'd pay for actual employees in a given year and get much worse service.

Chalk it up as another thing that exists solely to make me lose my goddamn mind every time I think about it.

They only fucking work till 5pm of course. Because nobody has emergencies after 5pm. Oh, but wait, don't worry, they have a great method of taking care of after hour emergencies. You just leave a voicemail or email at the helpdesk and "everyone" is alerted and someone calls you back. Or they don't. You know, whatever.

So we are currently having a crisis with a computer connected to the building control system at one of the properties we manage - it is stuck and we can't get it to disconnect. We are afraid to just shut it down in case that causes a major problem at the other building. Nobody is answering the phone at the IT consultants' office STARTING AT 4:35 NOT 5.

FUCK YOU IT CONSULTANTS. FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.

My boss is an utter douchebag to receptionists everywhere

Here is an example script of a phonecall that just happened.

He makes a call on speakerphone in his office.

Receptionist: "Hello, such-and-such office."
Boss: (almost cutting her off) "Extension 350"
Receptionist: "Who is that?"
Boss: (probably misunderstanding her question) "Joe so-and-so. Extension 350."
Receptionist: (Trying again) "May I ask who's calling?"
Boss: (actually cutting her off) "Yes it's _Last Name_"
Receptionist: Attempts to repeat his last name in a questioning voice, as most normal people use either their first name or a full name, not last name only.
Boss: "Yeah sure, that's it. Whatever."
Receptionist: Puts him on hold.
Boss: (to me) "Fucking people. You don't get it. (To me, as I give him a look like he's being an utter asshole.) When you answer the phone you need to just transfer people. People don't have time to wait for you to ask them a thousand questions." (I shake my head in disgust. To be clear - digust with the boss.)
Receptionist: "He's not available, can I give you his voicemail?"
Boss: (cutting her off again) "Yeah that's fine just put me in voicemail." (Leaves a rambling voicemail for the person he is calling. Because apparently that guy's time isn't valuable.)

OK, I hope the problems with this are apparent to any normal human being. He uniformly acts like this about the terrible trials and tribulations he faces when having to speak to receptionists. By the way, he gets extremely annoyed with other people who act exactly like he is acting. He followed this up with another quick lecture to me about how I don't understand how important it is to transfer people quickly.

I have been a receptionist. In fact in many cases receptionists are NOT trained to just transfer calls as quickly as possible, many times they are asked to screen calls. And I guarantee you that if I received such a call from a person behaving as he did just now in my days at the front desk I would make quite certain that he had a very hard time getting through to anyone in my office ever again.

Fuck you, you're not too important to follow the normal rules of society, asshole. Treat the receptionist with some courtesy and stop making yourself feel special by doing things like using only your last name which obviously confuses the fuck out of everyone. You're not goddamn Madonna.

Not everything is about you, boss

Just came from a meeting with all the admin staff and the new President. Boss asked me to come in to his office and said, "Not that you have to tell me but..." and then asked about whether it came up that he also has regular meetings with the admin staff.

I tried to explain that it really wasn't that kind of meeting. This was about him just hearing about each of us a little, any immediate thoughts we had about things that do or don't need to change, etc. It wasn't about what our bosses do. He didn't get it. Seemed disappointed. Then annoyed.

God, everything is not about you. Stop being paranoid and ridiculous. Calm the fuck down.

On unreasonable anger at voicemail

Dear Boss:

You get unreasonably irate about voicemail systems when you call other offices. I am aware that you feel rushed and in a panic virtually at all times (though I do not understand why) but that does not account for your intense fury at a voicemail system that gives you instructions before letting you dial the party you are trying to reach. You should be able to understand that if they did not do that, nobody who had not called that office before would know what to do in order to get through to the person they were trying to reach.

Also, there is no need to get angry when you "can't reach a human being" after normal business hours. Most people, especially people who do things like operate switchboards at offices, leave on time. So it is completely unreasonable to get angry that other people choose to work normal hours, when you yourself do not.

Please make note of these important facts that I am sharing with you, as letting your blood pressure rise about 200 points because you have to spend 10 extra seconds on the phone is really not worth it.

On how to select a new phone system

Or rather, how not to.

Probably, you shouldn't set up demos with several vendors, then upon receiving their quotes for various systems (before the demo) have me call them to ask me why we should get this or that system versus something else.

Well, they are probably just giving us a range of options and I think it's kind of the point of the demo. Right?

It's like trying to cover the topics of a meeting before a meeting. Less effective, especially when a demonstration is involved, and then sort of renders the demonstration pointless.

Also, comments like, "Call this phone expert that so and so knows and ask them what the absolute best most reliable phone system is," are stupid.

Well, since in my recent conversations I have found out that there are probably at least a half dozen major phone system manufacturers, and each probably offers a range of at least 3-4 different products, I'm pretty certain there is not one easy to point to best system.

I mean, is there one best car? One best TV? One best computer?

SIGH.

On making and keeping appointments

My boss has been trying to make an appointment with a phone vendor to look at our phone system here at the office. We have been having various problems for a while now.

Last week he had me start calling vendors to submit quotes to us and come in to do demos. Last week I scheduled a vendor to do a demo today at 1pm.

Yesterday at about 5pm he had me cancel today's meeting because "something came up" today. (Hint: something always comes up.) Today he asked me to try to reschedule with the vendor, plus another one, for tomorrow.

I don't know about you, but most working people try to schedule their time in advance by more than 1 working day.

Neither vendor is available at the very specific times he wanted tomorrow (not just anytime tomorrow, but, like 10:15 or 4:30 only).

His response to this was, "Neither of them can do tomorrow? Neither of them?" ... "OK well schedule a meeting, put it in my calendar, for 4pm tomorrow for you and me to sit down and go over this phone stuff. It is not being dealt with at a high enough level. It needs to be escalated."

Dear boss: You cancelled today's meeting with less than 24 hours notice and then tried to set up a new meeting again with less than 24 hours notice. This is not how normal people operate. Your time management skills are non-existant. FAIL.

I'm not sure if it's irony but it's something

When I visit this blog which I have forsaken for literally years, and find that my last post is from over a year ago, and it's called "Ah blog, how I have forsaken thee". Oops.

Sorry.

Honestly, I probably have 10 ridiculous tales to post here literally every day so I really shouldn't forsake it.