[Werk] Today's email

[dancefloorlandmine]

I wonder if this will work?

I shall be leaving the office today at just after 5pm. If you have any IT emergencies planned, please have them before four pm, so I have time to have a look at them.

Thank you.

Fielded a question from BagpussOnSpeed last night as I was heading out of the door, with coat and bag, and managed to postpone it to today. Hopefully no-one will come up with anything else to be done by Saturday that they could have mentioned at any point during the week, but decided that leaving it until late Friday afternoon would be best.

Comments

[duoinchains.livejournal.com]

Would it be worth managing their expectations further by stating that any reports received *after* the 4pm deadline will be dealt with next week??

That usually works for us emailing our customers to chase up responses to work sent out weeks ago.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but that would lead them to expect that I might then actually deal with the issues next week ... [grin]

[palmersperry.livejournal.com]

Hmm ... good point!

How about "Reports received after 4PM will be looked into the following week"? It only says you'll look at them, it says nothing about actually dealing with them!

[lost-house.livejournal.com]

it is a specialised subsection of murphy's law that ensures that problems (especially the small, relatively easy to fix IT problems that involve disproportionate amount of time. password resets being a key example) will only ever show themselves just as the only person in the office competent to fix them is preparing to leave, most likely just as they log off the appropriate system.

the in-house reps of our out-sourced IT providers have managed to dodge this law quite neatly. not only do they leave the building before 4pm each day (hence, nicely avoiding the critical 5pm event horizon), they also manage to exude a high enough *lack* of competence that the poor law completely confused. it continues to dutifully churn out small annoying problems just at the point of most inconvenience but the IT guys are completely unaware of the effects...

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

It continues to dutifully churn out small annoying problems just at the point of most inconvenience but the IT guys are completely unaware of the effects...
[snork]

[cookwitch.livejournal.com]

Well said you. Whether they'll listen....