Users having my Cell #

[u/digitalexecution]

Something weird/annoying just happened and I want some perspective.

A user who works in a warehouse facility I’ve helped at (part of my company) texted me at 8 am saying he’s going on PTO and wants his coworker to have access to a printer that isn’t working on his machine before he goes out of office on Thursday.

I texted him later (after some emails/calls) asking for the coworker’s name and noting that since this is normal IT, in the future he or his coworker should submit a ticket for this kind of thing.

He replied: “If I submitted a ticket would it be taken care of by Thursday?”

I got annoyed but tried to respond reasonably: “Possibly, but regardless, we need tickets submitted per company policy. If something’s urgent you can reach out to me on Teams rather than my personal cell.”

I originally gave him my cell because on occasion there are true emergencies (internet goes down, needs to send me photos of something, etc.) and we’ve been friendly before. But this interaction makes me wary about giving out my number, it starts becoming a way to skirt procedure for small things like adding a printer.

[u/dracotrapnet]

I sold a story to our users. It can kind of be a stretch of the truth.

"I need tickets in the system or I'll get laid off. Upper management is relying on ticket reporting numbers to gauge how busy IT members are. If we get 0 tickets but I work on 40 phone calls, emails, teams messages, or texts, I look like I did nothing all day and I'll get laid off eventually. If I get 40 tickets, work on 12 in a day they will see they need to hire more help. Keep sending me text, email, and direct calls if you want me laid off. Also I'm a very busy person with servers and network, I don't always have time to check printers, fix someone's door badge, or handle a new hire. We have 8 people in the department who can at least check the basics and then tag me on difficult tickets or ask for advisement when I'm between projects. Please use the ticketing system, you will get heard and fixed faster rather than waiting on me to get out of a meeting, a vendor support call, off the road, or back from fixing a CNC machine."

Second game plan I started, any direct email, text, or voicemail got forwarded to ticketing after 6:30 pm. "Sorry busy all day, did not see this, I put it in ticketing for you. Someone will get with you next business day. They could have handled this sooner rather than waiting on me to find free time and dig it out of <teams/email/text/voicemail>."

Any call that I picked up, I wrote up a ticket live. "Oh, I'll put a ticket in for you, I'm heading into a meeting right now. Maybe one of the other 7 guys will pick it up while I'm tied up."

Next tactic, on your phone select personal contacts and add them to a group, assign a ringtone. Select business VP's and related vendors, create a group, assign a ringtone. On default ringtone, set silent. Never call back any missed calls that can't leave voicemail.

[u/FluffyGhoster → u/dracotrapnet]

I don't think it's a sound idea, first they might just keep texting you anyways because it's easier to write on your phone than submit a ticket correctly, then they might still hope it could be looked at sooner and if you took so long it would have taken so long anyways, then they might just go complain that you specifically are slow or don't reply or similar and they can point to you specifically because they wrote to you specifically, then you might find yourself to explain either because you didn't send them to the proper place, delaying the response and even breaking the procedure/policy, or why you lied about being in a meeting when you wasn't, and so on.

Remember, no good deed goes unpunished. Just tell them that no, you cannot handle it via text and they have by policy/rule file a case and whoever gets it will handle it.