How can one NOT disdain users?

Like peasants of old, scratching at the muck, discussing who voted for the King of England (insert Monty Python quote here), our faithless users wander about the digital landscape wondering why they don’t have quantum computers that can’t do their job for them without producing some sort of error and making them coffee all at the same time.

Garbage in, Garbage out. If the user screws something up, they never take the responsibility, they blame the system.

I have a user that places a help request for a file restore. I send a email reply asking for the path and filename and the date he wants it restored from about one business hour after he places the request. He does not respond. At all.

Two days later I send another email, asking again. What a surprise, he does not respond.

I call him, asking what he needs. He replies that he cannot read my emails. (He apparently lost his eyeballs somehow? I have no idea how he is functioning in his job if he is not reading email and just sending it. They are plain text emails, no pictures, no attachments, and our mailboxes are on the same damn server.) Somehow, I get the info I need to perform the restore.

He calls back after I perform the restore. Wrong file (oh so he does read email, just not any from me). So I get a different date restored for him. No call back that anything is wrong. No email. Nothing. I assume all is well. After all I have a thousand other things to go do since I have two offices moving, a corporate re-ip underway, and a MPLS WAN to deploy.

So now, a week after all that happened, I get another ticket from his SUPERVISOR, accusing me of ignoring the request and not addressing it in a proper time frame, saying that not only did I skip the user’s request once, but TWICE.

My word, this world is full of douche bags.

Listen here, mate. Just because your employee can’t read emails, and he can’t follow through, and he can’t get shit done on his own time is not, in any sort of fashion, my fault. You do not shit on the IT guy just because you can’t manage your employees effectively. So instead, why don’t you try a little respect and get all the info in hand before you go shooting from your damn hip. Just a thought. You cannot shit on my head and expect me to thank you for the damn hat. (That is my boss’s job, not yours.)

What a tool.