I’m an IT Manager at a national company, with a variety of responsibilities on my plate. Managing a helpdesk is one of those responsibilities, and one that’s had me wanting to change careers lately?
Is it the unrealistic demands of entitled employees fresh out of college who believe they’ll be treated like the IT folks were in the late 1990s? That a six-figure salary must be right down the road for a person who is, fresh out of school, already too good for help desk work?
Sure, that weighs on it, but most of it are the industry vendors themselves. Let’s take a look at where two hours of my time have gone today (and see if this blog is a good catharsis for my troubles):
- I got a call from a user who is frustrated that Acrobat keeps crashing when opening a PDF from Outlook, and that the service desk has not been able to fix this.
- I reproduce the issue, which seems related to the “New Outlook” that’s been constantly rammed down my user’s throats, despite me turning it off everywhere Microsoft has said I can.
- I Google the issue. Recent code changes have made it such that these documents are opened from a different security zone than they used to be, making Acrobat unable to read the files when opened in this manner (i.e. when a user double-clicks them).
- I change the Compatibility Mode for Acrobat to Windows 8, based on a Google response (and after twenty minutes of trying things). The error goes away. I believe I am done with this issue.
- I get a call back about ten minutes later. Acrobat now “sits and spins” for 30-60 seconds each load, before displaying a dialog encouraging them to sign up for a bunch of really awesome, “will change your life if you let it” AI features that let us get contracts signed legally, right now! My options are to “Try Now” or “Remind Me Later”. There is no option – repeat, none – to say I’m not interested.
- Reproducing the issue makes it clear the program is loading a ton of Cloud content that we don’t use.
- I find the setting to stop showing me messages from Adobe, and uncheck it. Problem still persists.
- I find the settings aren’t being saved. Perhaps I need to run it as Admin?
- I can’t run it as Admin, because the program requires a sign-in to load, and the Administrator does not have an Adobe account, nor can I use the user’s login because they already have an install somewhere else.
- I create a registry key from their site’s support forums that does nothing to stop the pop-up.
- I disable Windows 8 compatibility mode, which lets me save the setting, but does nothing to stop the pop-up still, and I can no longer open PDFs from Outlook.
- I do an update of the program, which crashes.
- I remove and reinstall the program, which fixes neither issue.
- I put it back into Compatibility Mode for Windows 8, which allows me to open PDFs from Outlook, but the program still freezes up when opening before gently demanding that I use their fucking AI features again.
- As this is a paid program, I open a chat support session, which starts and ends like this:
- I eventually type the correct things to get a friendly agent on the chat to tell me how experienced they are with the program. They want me to remove and reinstall.
- I remove and reinstall, which predictably does nothing.
- Did you try creating this registry key, dword and value?
- Delete it and retry it.
- No fix? Here, uninstall but this time delete about fifteen different directories before reinstalling.
- Struggle with Windows Explorer bugginess, regress to command prompt.
- Reinstall program from scratch, log in as user.
- Greeted with a pop-up to try and new AI features. Disable the pop-ups, restart program.
- Greeted with a pop-up to try the new AI features.
The problem with IT is that you’re never really in control of anything. You’re always, always responding to whatever changes a vendor wants to make. Those changes are, increasingly and almost exclusively, designed to force you into paying for something more, signing up for more, or giving your data to them. It’s relentless.
The kicker? This is the third issue like this I’ve had today. I have no time for my job anymore. I’m just feeding more and more users into a handful of corporation’s desires to put their hands, arms and torsos entirely in our business. To be our everything. And to pop up dialogs until we relent and agree to give everything.
I will be working well late tonight to get the stuff I was supposed to do today done, and because tomorrow I’ll likely be rebuilding a C-level staffer’s PC to get a pop-up to stop – if that does anything.
Endless rushed-to-market features, buggy code, and a complete lack of respect or regard for people who don’t want to enable the latest AI Contracting features in their PDF viewer (while they open scanned copies of drivers licenses for employment verifications) will tear this industry down to its knees, and I can’t stand it anymore.
Its death can’t come fast enough for me.