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Databases, Demoralization, and the Oroborus-esque nature of crappy job performance?
ANTVGM64
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Howdy friends, I think I've probably posted here about my job before - the one where I've had junk piled up on my desk, or gotten e-mails for being poor at loggings calls in a database, and so on and so forth.
Welp, it turns out I still suck at my job, and still suck at logging calls into an access database, and got my....35th e-mail in 7 years regarding just how shitty I am at keeping track of the stuff I do, and I'm simply at a loss.
A bit of background:
Anyway, I guess my question is this:
At what point can I stop feeling like a loser of a tech support person and shift some, at least a tiny, little bit, of this blame back at my work place? I'm in a loud computer room, I'm constantly distracted by calls or other duties, and I'm at my wits end. Are there rules or industry standard something or others that help desks should have? Is there some sort of website support group for this kind of thing?
Also, for people who work in this field, what do you consider an acceptable 'oopsie' 'call back' rate? I take about 5000 tech calls a year, not including call backs and (ha) issues I forget to log. Even IF I'm responsible for say, 10 call backs a week, isn't that still a relatively low number compared to my volume of calls taken?
Here's a video that explains pretty much my frustration at the entire situation
Welp, it turns out I still suck at my job, and still suck at logging calls into an access database, and got my....35th e-mail in 7 years regarding just how shitty I am at keeping track of the stuff I do, and I'm simply at a loss.
A bit of background:
I work in a POS support environment for a large retailer. We have something like 200 open stores, each with a register, PC, network equipment, and various our technology do-dads our department is in charge of. There's...7 of us total, with 4 typically being on during the day, and then one 'night guy' covering the overnights. I'm the night guy.
Anyway, generally a store will call and say something like "Oh my register 2 is frozen on the desktop" (though often times they won't know the terminology and I have to parse it out of them, multiply this by fifty depending on how complicated the problem is), I'll remote in, fix their problem, and then log it into our Access Database, which is a kind of cobbled together system and doesn't really have any actual ticketing functionality.
For example if a store calls and says their internet is down, you type their store number into the logging database, then have to jump over to ANOTHER access database to enter in their information to find their IP address and all that, copy the IP from there, open up a CMD window, ping them, and then walk them through the resetting of their stuff, then go back into the calls database and log everything.
The database itself is a pain in the ass. There's something like 9 categories with weird labels like "Hardware" then "IBM" or then "PC" and it's really, really frustrating to parse through these categories over and over again to find the right one. Worse still, when I think I find the right one and get tagged in an e-mail saying I entered the wrong one.
I've suggested several ways to make this easier - including making all the subcategory stuff in one big DB, then have it fill in the category based on that. So if the problem is "network equipment" I can just type in "n.e.t.w.o" and have it fill in from there, and then fill in the header category which is "Megapath" for some reason, linking the two access databases together, and so on. It's *really* easy to forget what I was doing or simply forget to log the call in the DB, since I'll generally have it in my notes or something because the DB system is so cumbersome.
I've been with this company 7 years and I constantly feel behind the 8ball, and am really quite sick and tired of being called out on stuff because I'm technically the only person who CAN be called out on this stuff. All the other employees work during the day and are
1) Capable of fixing their own call-backs
2) 'ahead' of me chain-of-command wise so they're not getting in trouble for anything they get wrong,
3) When I DO find something they've done wrong, or mis-logged, I'm not so petty as to send a flame e-mail.
There are literally dozens of things I'm supposed to keep track of, by myself, and then log, with insane specificity, what I did and how, despite the fact I'm the ONLY ONE held to this standard and the ONLY ONE who has to deal with the fall out this way because everyone else is on during the day and can catch their own oopsies.
Can I go on disability for being in a large computer room for 7 years and I talk like 3 or 4 octives louder than most people because of it?
Also while I'm feeling sour, we recently hired a new person from a store with no tech expierence, which is cool, but I was recently told I couldn't move over to an AWESOME position I found within the company doing video and media stuff because I wasn't qualified.
Anyway, generally a store will call and say something like "Oh my register 2 is frozen on the desktop" (though often times they won't know the terminology and I have to parse it out of them, multiply this by fifty depending on how complicated the problem is), I'll remote in, fix their problem, and then log it into our Access Database, which is a kind of cobbled together system and doesn't really have any actual ticketing functionality.
For example if a store calls and says their internet is down, you type their store number into the logging database, then have to jump over to ANOTHER access database to enter in their information to find their IP address and all that, copy the IP from there, open up a CMD window, ping them, and then walk them through the resetting of their stuff, then go back into the calls database and log everything.
The database itself is a pain in the ass. There's something like 9 categories with weird labels like "Hardware" then "IBM" or then "PC" and it's really, really frustrating to parse through these categories over and over again to find the right one. Worse still, when I think I find the right one and get tagged in an e-mail saying I entered the wrong one.
I've suggested several ways to make this easier - including making all the subcategory stuff in one big DB, then have it fill in the category based on that. So if the problem is "network equipment" I can just type in "n.e.t.w.o" and have it fill in from there, and then fill in the header category which is "Megapath" for some reason, linking the two access databases together, and so on. It's *really* easy to forget what I was doing or simply forget to log the call in the DB, since I'll generally have it in my notes or something because the DB system is so cumbersome.
I've been with this company 7 years and I constantly feel behind the 8ball, and am really quite sick and tired of being called out on stuff because I'm technically the only person who CAN be called out on this stuff. All the other employees work during the day and are
1) Capable of fixing their own call-backs
2) 'ahead' of me chain-of-command wise so they're not getting in trouble for anything they get wrong,
3) When I DO find something they've done wrong, or mis-logged, I'm not so petty as to send a flame e-mail.
There are literally dozens of things I'm supposed to keep track of, by myself, and then log, with insane specificity, what I did and how, despite the fact I'm the ONLY ONE held to this standard and the ONLY ONE who has to deal with the fall out this way because everyone else is on during the day and can catch their own oopsies.
Can I go on disability for being in a large computer room for 7 years and I talk like 3 or 4 octives louder than most people because of it?
Also while I'm feeling sour, we recently hired a new person from a store with no tech expierence, which is cool, but I was recently told I couldn't move over to an AWESOME position I found within the company doing video and media stuff because I wasn't qualified.
Anyway, I guess my question is this:
At what point can I stop feeling like a loser of a tech support person and shift some, at least a tiny, little bit, of this blame back at my work place? I'm in a loud computer room, I'm constantly distracted by calls or other duties, and I'm at my wits end. Are there rules or industry standard something or others that help desks should have? Is there some sort of website support group for this kind of thing?
Also, for people who work in this field, what do you consider an acceptable 'oopsie' 'call back' rate? I take about 5000 tech calls a year, not including call backs and (ha) issues I forget to log. Even IF I'm responsible for say, 10 call backs a week, isn't that still a relatively low number compared to my volume of calls taken?
Here's a video that explains pretty much my frustration at the entire situation
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Far Cry 4: 10 Essential Features it Must Have
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1) Play office politics and start reporting the small stuff you find just as they are reporting yours
2) ignore it and keep chugging along. Your post makes it look like you are not in risk of losing your job
3) Find another job within or outside the company. You've got 7 years of tech support experience with zero direct supervision and have proven you can still get the job done. Any place of employment would love to have you with that skill alone
You can go to your supervisor, or your supervisor's supervisor, or HR, but depending on the way your company operates that could end up anywhere from helpful to losing your job for rocking the boat.
As for callback rate, when I worked in phone support for garage door openers the metrics we followed to determine an acceptable job was a 95% completion rate (95% of calls were fully dealt with on the first call), a sub 7 minute call average, and correct notation every single call. Missing notation once was a verbal warning which lasted 30 work days, then a second missed notation in that 30 day period would be a written warning, with a third missed notation in that period equaling termination. I considered this extreme then and still do, turnover was pretty insane (as much as 75% of a training class didn't last a month), but if the person who gets the call next doesn't know what you did then they have to run through everything again which can result in a lot of wasted time and effort.
Example: You wouldn't need another whole database just for categories: it would be a table, with id's that link to other tables for subcategories. Same could be said about having to use another access database just to get their IP address. My guess is, whomever has setup your Access databases did a really shoddy job at it and tying it all together: leading to a lot of your headaches.
Look at Veevee's 3rd option: 7 years of tech support experience is what I'd try the market out with.
Shitty jobs aren't shitty because there's no solution to problems, they're shitty because whoever is in charge makes bad decisions. Which means that 90% of the time, your solution won't matter, because it's just the leadership's fault that things are done poorly.