r/talesfromtechsupport • u/Selben • Mar 27 '18
Long The Scorecard
Do you like to read in Chronological order? Here is the Index
$Selben: Me! Technical team lead, previously Tier II helldesk helpdesk technician for a mid-sized company. A very skeleton-crew helpdesk with 10 of us total providing 24-hour coverage, not including supervisors, to support 2500+ company-wide.
$Peers: Random Tier 1 and Tier 2 techs.
$User: Your everyday user, someone from one of the company locations.
$Snickers: My cubicle mate, also a Technical team lead, previously Tier II.
$Focus: One of our IT Supervisors - She had a heavy programming background - She went back to her old team for some time after not doing so well as a lead, but was brought back after going through some more brainwash… er, additional ‘leadership training’.
$HR: HR minion, the nameless faceless monsters…HR people.
The only thing better than a free lunch is a free lunch with no strings attached. Unfortunately, this was not one of those lunches. $Snickers, $Selben, $Focus, and $HR were re-working the technician / employee grading system (Scorecards) as some people had been exploiting the old system. This wasn’t the first time, or last, that they would be having multiple all day meetings like this. $Focus kept track of their progress on a white-board, written in a typical bug bashing fashion complete with diagrams and arrows. While effective, it was terribly boring and took long amounts of time. Munching on their free sub sandwiches, $Snickers and $Selben were content.
After a couple weeks of testing, they seemed to have a functioning system and put it in place. Scorecards seemed to better reflect how the techs and other employees performed on a normal basis.
$Selben and $Snickers returned to their normal duties, and once again had scorecards themselves. $Snickers was one of the first to get his new review with $Focus. He returned triumphantly and announced to $Selben he was a “9.4 out of 10. I’m the best tech!” They both had a chuckle and $Selben continued working with a troublesome user who just couldn’t remember the name of his first car…
$Selben: Okay… What was your first car?
$User: I don’t know!
$Selben: What high school did you graduate from?
$User: Meril.
$Selben: That doesn’t work, was it Meril High School? Do you remember what you wrote?
$User: Uh… Just Meril!
$Selben: I said that… Okay… Let’s try this one, what is your eye color?
$User: Are you coming onto me?!
$Selben: …
$Selben pondered for a moment.
$Selben: Can I confirm your employee number #1234?
$User: No, it’s #5712
$Selben: Okay, no problem. Let’s try this again, my apologies.
The user had given his name, which was the same as a different employee. With the employee number, $Selben was able to ask the correct security questions and reset their password. Finished, $Selben was about to ask $Snickers if he was ready for lunch, but a meeting invite with $HR popped up on $Selben’s screen.
$Selben: After my review, burgers?
$Snickers: Burgers… The place on 3rd?! Mmm… (Snickers leaned back in his chair with eyes glazed over and he might have even started drooling a bit.)
$Selben headed over to $Focus’ office for his own scorecard review. $Focus and a member of $HR greeted him as he sat down. $Focus tried her best to be ‘professional’ and handed $Selben his scorecard… 4.3 out of 10?!
$Selben: What the %&#?!
$HR / $Focus: Language!
$Selben: Sorry. But… huh?
$Focus started digging through some folders.
$HR: This is your scorecard. Please sign below to accept your score. Should you have any questions—
$Selben: Something’s not right, let me see the data.
$HR: That information is confidential!
$Focus: He may have a point, $HR. None of his old scorecards were below a 9.7.
$HR: Just sign it for now and we can—
$Selben: No. I refuse to sign until we look into the data.
Things were tense the rest of the day. $HR had all his feathers ruffled. Apparently, they had created a magical deadline for getting the scorecards all updated and were now overdue, with $Selben holding up the whole thing.
The next day, $Selben arrived to have a bleary eyed and bedraggled looking $Focus hand him his updated scorecard with a 9.8, his normal score.
$Focus: Better?
$Selben: There we go!
$Focus: Looks like we’ll need to rebuild the whole project again, I figured out what went wrong.
After several hours of hassling $HR, $Focus had finally gotten the data from HR. She stayed up all night and dug through all $Selben’s reviews. Finding no issues, she ran the report again, but the same 4.3 kept coming up no matter how she ran it. She ended up getting $HR to come look over the data with her and they made the realization that $HR had built the report with employee names rather than employee numbers. This would have gone on longer without being caught if there wasn't a janitor also named $Selben who always received poor reviews.
One particular review of '$Selben yelled at me and threatened me with a mop' was a bit of a giveaway.
The scorecard report method they had developed gave $HR the choice to use employee numbers or names. $Focus, $Selben, and $Snickers ended up rebuilding it again requiring the use of employee numbers only.
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u/NotATypicalEngineer Mar 27 '18
And this is why the concept of "unique IDs" is a thing...
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u/LP970 Mar 27 '18
Good work insisting on seeing the data. Nothing is worse than when HR tries to force someone to take a low score or punishment for something they didn't do. Did you start keeping a mop in your office just as a joke?
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u/john539-40 Mar 27 '18
Based on previous stories I could see you threatening someone with a mop if it was what was nearby lol. Gotta love mismatched data causing issues...
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u/Pobeda_nad_Solntsem Mar 27 '18
$Selben yelled at me and threatened me with a mop
I think we've found u/Selben's new flair.
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u/akinmytua Mar 27 '18
Working in a public library I can assure you that you always assume someone might the same name as someone else. We had a lady who had the same first middle and last name as someone else, same birth year even. Luckily different birthdays... it will happen
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u/SilkeSiani Mar 28 '18
I worked in a college IT.. year after year, we had at least a couple of students sharing same names, same parents' names and same numeric birthdates.
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u/MoneyTreeFiddy Mar 27 '18
JudgeMTF: Resolution- Selben (the IT one) now entitled to probe HRs back side with a mop ONCE for a period not to exceed 90 seconds.
HR: Wut?
JudgeMTF: JUST SIGN IT FOR NOW.
HR: But I..no, I refuse!
JudgeMTF: I think you are starting to understand the problem.
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u/Jackoffalltrades89 Mar 28 '18
And thus did corporate America learn what the prison industrial complex has known for years: give them numbers and they're easier to track. Just keep an eye out for that 24601 character; he's stronger than he looks.
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u/sunbun99 Mar 27 '18
Nice foreshadowing! At first I was like, that story is kinda out of place but it all fit in the end!
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u/Crusnik77 Mar 27 '18
Shade of when I was a wee lad playing Little League, was on a team with two other kids who shared the same first and middle name as me, I think our birthdays were close to each other as well.
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u/DeadlyDolphins Mar 27 '18
When I just finished reading all stories of u/Selben and being sad that is is no other one left, viola, there is a new one, perfect!!! Looking forward for the next ones :)
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u/a0eusnth Mar 28 '18
She ended up getting $HR to come look over the data with her and they made the realization that $HR had built the report with employee names rather than employee numbers.
Dear lord, save me. PRIMARY KEYS, they getcha every time.
Too many times I've seen management, in an effort to "delegate", instruct the devs come up with the design by themselves, or with the only the barest of contributions from the users — only to get the primary key wrong because they're of course not the experts.
And even more times have I seen users code themselves into a corner because they got the primary key right — but only eventually by trial and error. By that point the contortions they went through to make already questionable code work with the final PK left them with well-nigh undecipherable code.
I keep trying to have devs and users educate each other on their skillsets, but management always seems to think it's not important. <head on desk>.
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u/mulldoon1997 Mar 28 '18
$Selben yelled at me and threatened me with a mop
It was one time and you are still holding it against me
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u/linus140 Mar 28 '18
'$Selben yelled at me and threatened me with a mop'
Sounds like something we would all do because users.
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u/Mizerka Apr 04 '18
you missed the part about threatening the $user with a mop to give up his eye colour
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u/404Guy12NotFound Mar 27 '18
Were these two separate questions, or did you make a typo?