Well, today was definitely one of those days. It started out very well - I had an excellent morning and made it into the office without incident. The first three hours or so of the day were pretty productive and peaceful - and then things took a turn for the worse. By the end of the day I was tired, short-tempered, and pretty frazzled.
I came home and had a very simple dinner - a bowl of chicken noodle soup, spent some time with TR, and wandered the internet for a while, looking at the excellent work out there on Deviant Art and Red Bubble. From there, I popped over to Amazon and saw a book that looked interesting, so I added it to my wish list - The Buddha in the Robot.
I got chewed up today by one of the things at work that is a constant hot button for me. We have a pretty good desktop support group (the group that configures and supports the PC's). For the most part, as individuals, they are talented and professional. However, we've got a problem that a lot of help desks deal with. The analysts on the help desk are measured on ticket based metrics. They are measure based on home many tickets they open - and close. The cycle time between opening and closing is also one of the key metrics.
Years ago Deming pointed out the irony in this type of arrangement - people perform to what they are measured on. Pure human nature. Measure someone on how fast they close a ticket and guess where their emphasis lands. (I also run a help desk and on my help desk the analysts are measured on customer satisfaction and task resolution - not cycle time.) Our emphasis is on figuring out what the problem is and fixing it. So, there is a place where I collide with the culture of ticket based metrics.
We periodically get cases referred to us that are the PC help desk cases because they close and refer tickets out as soon as possible. If they have an opportunity to transfer something out - boom, out it goes. Now, our applications and systems run on the desktop environment - so, if there is a problem with one of our systems or applications, they pass it over to us - as they should. Except, in a good number of cases - it is a PC problem, not an application problem. So, we have to hand it back to them - and the customer gets caught in a loop.
There is actually a very simple test to prevent this hand-off. Access the system and see if you (on your PC) can do the task the customer is reporting as broken. If you can - then it is not an application problem, but a PC configuration problem. However, sometimes, in order to keep their metrics down, the analysts on the central PC help desk simply see "X Application" and close the ticket and transfer the call out, without doing any troubleshooting.
Sometimes it gets truly absurd. I've personally called the help desk to try and get a desktop support person to address a problem, or at least open the right kind of ticket and route it correctly, only to have the try to transfer my call...to me! (To my help desk that is.) It's very frustrating. Despite repeated training efforts and documentation efforts - all of which are contained in their reference materials - they still "transfer and close" to keep their numbers down. Unfortunately, it sucks up my time and the time of my help desk analysts on trying to get the customers out of the loop they land in. Of course, to the customer - it's all Greek - they don't care who helps them, they just want help. Today, what sent me spinning into a frustrating mood was a succession of these types of calls.
The pure frustration of bureaucratic nonsense and corporate group-think is one of the things that can be so draining. I get home and I just want to lay down and stare at the ceiling, or perhaps nap, or perhaps both. It usually takes a while to get free of that crappy and crabby feeling. It is very tempting in a company to "measure the easy things" (like ticket cycle times) and ignore the hard to measure things (like customer satisfaction or actual problem resolution). Ah well, as my stress counselor successfully reminded me - you chose this job. I did. And sometimes, having chose it, I just need to put on my armor and suck it up Today was definitely a suck it up day.
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