Office Space Moments

I’ve had 1 day off in 2009.

The reason I haven’t taken another day off since is because I’ve spent my day off thinking about all the stuff that needed to be fixed.

I’m directly responsible for just about every fsckup OWN has and I’ve been instrumental in bringing it all together so we can focus on driving the company forward in 2009.

We’ve had our growth curve turn completely vertical and it took a better part of two years to get everything tied together, streamlined, documented and moved forward.

Over that time I’ve hired many talented and very smart people.

Having spent this week in their shoes makes me wonder why they haven’t blown their brains out.

Today, I had my fourth straight day of Office Space moments:

My biggest incentive to work hard and not take another day off is to make sure I don’t have another call like this.

I actually said that on the phone today to a new customer.

Earlier in the day I asked a customer if the support ticket was a joke. His beef was that ExchangeDefender control panel didn’t allow him to enter an email address with the & in it.

Later in the day, after telling a partner that I would pray for him in hopes that his support request will get answered, and him subsequently hunting me down with screenshots over IM — I finally broke down and gave him the answer:

Vlad: you accepted it and bounced it
Nick: Where does it say that?
Vlad: 5.0.0
Nick: wtf
Vlad: dude, are you drinking today or WTF is up?
Vlad: first you ask me to explain a mail delay
Vlad: now a SMTP code  5.0.0
Nick: spam right?
Nick: hummm
Vlad: no
Vlad: PERMFAIL
…
…
Vlad: you’re killing me
Nick: sorry man
Nick: OK, feature request
Nick: ready? 🙂
Nick: { In a nutshell, he wants a warning when his server is catastrophically broken. Apparently SBS 2008 wasn’t enough of a f’n hint }
Vlad: YEAH
Nick: I’ll take that as a NO 🙂
Vlad: Because  I want to have this f**king conversation with 50,000 sysadmins
Nick: Seriously… there should be a notification
Nick: otherwise your system looks bad
Nick: and…. you are having this conversation

So let me get this straight.

Refusing to do something that the customer didn’t bother to spec in the contract and is now refusing to pay $450 to have done after discovering that he can’t run a server is something that we should cover?

SMTP security and business continuity product should also advise it’s users, whose mother3@#$#@$#@$ job it is to run the server, that their server is broken?

Seriously?!?!!?

And people complain about OWN’s support?

The very reason I am doing support this week is because I’ve tasked my entire support team to completely document all problems, issues and FAQs they frequently deal with. My hat is off to you. Not just for the technical expertise to help our client base, but also for the restraint you show in not killing “Vlad’s friends.”

I can’t promise I will do the same.

I am printing the “How’s my support? 1-800-___-____” tshirts right now.

Y’all fill in the blank.