The IT user
Hannes is annoyed. He is sitting in his office at the PC and has to draft the task for preparing the next meeting in a Word document, format it and, if possible, send it to his colleagues in the management before the meeting starts tomorrow morning at eight. Time is of the essence.
He writes and writes, hastily hammering his fingers on the keys. The keyboard has tremendous typing qualities. However, it lacks others, such as the reaction speed. After each keystroke, it takes around two to five seconds for the letter to appear on the screen. The tendency to delay is increasing. In between, entire sentences plop onto the screen in a flurry - along with the errors that only now become apparent. Hannes slams his right index finger rhythmically and with vehement pressure on "Delete backwards" to the point of correction. But even this "delete backwards" turns out to be more homeopathic than intended by a few seconds. With his nerves on edge, Hannes picks up the phone and contacts the company's IT hotline. "All technicians are busy at the moment. We ask for your patience for the short waiting time. For a question regarding office automation dial 1, for SAP dial 2, for hardware and location questions dial 3, for printer and scanner problems dial 4" and so on. Key 8 promises a callback from your personal consultant, who will get back to you about an hour later.
As a manager, Hannes is used to making decisions and taking action.
Hannes, still tense and distracted with manual work, explains his problem to the IT consultant. The latter's smug smile can even be perceived over the phone and makes Hannes even more upset. "We announced three days ago that there would be a release of the Office system today. It will last until five in the afternoon. During that time, the PC systems can't be fully used. But tomorrow everything will be working again." Hannes is not very enthusiastic: "This is the first time I've heard of this". The IT head-for-specialist support dispatch manager says snottily, "It was in Tuesday's e-mail." Knowing that IT always has the upper hand and that the IT consultants are the real managers, Hannes gives up.
Nevertheless, he furtively searches for the corresponding e-mail message. Slightly ashamed, he finds it: unread, arrived on Tuesday at 09:01. He admits defeat and logs off to visit a customer. Nothing works in the office without IT anyway.
Shortly after five he comes back in a much better mood. Now the IT should work. He thinks. He starts up the PC. "The system is currently unavailable," is the terse message. In addition, a little smaller in the same window: "Please contact your system manager".
Hannes doesn't need to be told twice. With fresh energy and just as much anger, he picks up the phone. "Welcome to IT Service. Thank you for calling. The support hotline is available from 08.00 - 17.00 for your concerns. For calls outside these hours, leave a message or send us an email message." "That's right! Send an email message when the system is out of order." Hannes only talks to himself when his nerves are on edge. Like now. As a manager, Hannes is used to making decisions and taking action. He picks up his smartphone and searches software user blogs for solutions on how to reset an in-house office system. "They'll get to know me," he says in a whisper, but not without irony.
"Aha, there it is", Hannes finds it, cracks the protection systems via a link and uninstalls the Office package. Triumphantly, he notes: "Microjunk is gone.
In the office, nothing works without IT anyway.
- himself is the man - especially outside of office hours". He downloads the latest Linux version and puts Apache-OpenOffice on it. Now he can write his document without delay. It seems to work fine - only the printer now spits out everything in Japanese characters.
Hannes' nerves are hanging by a thin thread. But continuing to search for solutions, he lives up to his reputation as a "stubborn man of action". He writes the preparation task by hand on a DIN A4 page, scans it in at 600 dpi, saves the document as a compressed jpg file and prints it out. "Looks perfect, doesn't it?" he praises himself, copies the message and puts it in the physical mailbox of his management colleagues. As he does so, he suppresses the thought of how unpleasant the conversation with the IT head-for-specialist support dispatch manager will probably be when he contacts him tomorrow on his own accord. Well, businessisbusiness - if you don't act, you lose.
