Tech Support Idiocracies #4: The FIBC Strikes Again!

What do you get when you combine 1 part fail, 3 parts incompetence and a farm animal?  You get the FIBC of course!  The Fail Incompetent Blonde Cow is a rare species and one that deserves special attention.  In today’s blog I’m going to pay homage to the FIBC seeing as she’s the winner of this months epicly failed contest.

My tale starts in the past, 3 months ago to be precise.  Travelling back through time we find ourselves enjoying a merry day at my place of employment.  I am notified by my manager that HP have decided to, out of goodwill towards our company, provide us with a printer, this is not just any printer mind you, it’s big, it’s bulky but who cares because best of all it’s completely free!  “Great!” I proclaim but I think to myself “Where will I put such a beast?”  After some thought I come to the conclusion that the Engineering department will benefit the most from this new printer since it prints in colour and supports 11×17 papersize.

Enter problem #1.  After a quick look-see I realise that there’s no room in the Engineering department to set this monstrosity up but notice there’s also a lot of wasted space with the cubicles being set far apart from each other.  I proceed to initiate correspondence with the FIBC and the head of engineering to determine what we can do to resolve the issue.  The initial idea is to move some furniture around, a menial and trivial task at it’s core.  This would solve the problem…no?  Easy enough you think?  Have you met FIBC?  I’m sure you’ll agree with me when you do.

As this wasn’t a high priority item at the time we fast forward three months.  I receive notice from the IT Manager that there’s been a ‘motivated suggestion’ to move the printer off the warehouse floor which is where it sat peacefully for 3 months.  “Hey, I got no problem with that but where can we put the box as it’s bulky++ in size?”

I make the decision to re-establish contact the FIBC to find out what the status is of moving the furniture, as the best thing to do would be to just setup and install the printer instead of moving the un-opened box around.

Enter problem #2: The FIBC.  The two of us, we have a history, there must be a personality clash of some kind because we just don’t seem to get along.  I try very hard and make a concerted effort to help her whenever she needs help but her problems are often along the lines of “I’m pretty stupid, I can’t figure anything out by myself, please hold my hand.” oh and, “I’m also a cow so you better help me or else!”

I phone and leave a voicemail with her and she instantly shoots back an email reply:

FIBC: No, XGS has no part of office moves and Desks are not being moved.

My query involved asking her if XGS (our back office function people) would be able to help me to plan on moving some furniture around.  Of course, she never responded to the second part of my original question so I restate it nicely and with different wording:

Jon: Ok any word on when desks are going to be moved?

She responds quite bluntly with the following unprofessionalism:

FIBC: They are not being moved at all.

I am quite taken back by that reply, why would there any opposition to my query at all, it’s such a simple task! I remain calm and compose the following:

Jon: Is there any particular reason why the desks aren’t being moved…or plan to be moved?  We have a printer for engineering and it needs to be moved off the warehouse floor as soon as possible. I had sent an email to you and the Director of Engineering 3 months ago about it.

If you could let me know, thanks.

She replies with:

FIBC: And I personally spoke to you about it 3 months ago and said no. You told me at that time that you had someone else who could use the printer.

Uh yea DUUUH, the engineering department is that ’someone else’.  Why would I say the printer is for engineering and then change my mind?

Jon: Can we move forward with the process, the requirement is to move the printer off the shop floor as per <name withheld to protect the innocent>.  This has always been assigned to the engineering department and I was waiting for space to be made so that I could set it up.

What needs to be done to make this process move forward?

I’m not understanding her position at this point:

FIBC: It’s not being done right now. Move offsite to Blackfoot for now

Blackfoot is our other office in town but it’s up for sale so the suits are trying to keep it from becoming a permanent place for storage so having us spend time and money to move this gigantic printer to a building which may or may not be vacated in the near future is simply not an option, FIBC understands that…..or does she?  I decide to bypass her ignorant comment and reply back with this:

Jon: We currently have some printing capacity concerns on the second floor so utilising the printer from the shop floor and locating it in Engineering would alleviate quite a few problems including reducing human traffic in your wing of the building.  Is there any way we can proceed forward with this without moving the printer to Blackfoot?

I try to play my ace card, ‘reduce human traffic’!  FIBC’s boss has complained about the increasing number of traffic down his wing of the building due to it being the location of the main printer hub on that floor.  I figure that offering her an incentive would get her on my side to assist with getting the new printer installed in the Engineering department.  Well it didn’t work because this is what I got in return:

FIBC: no

Wow, what a blunt and completely unprofessional reply, not even a fullstop afterwards, I’m hurt.  At this point I’m trying to figure out her mentality:

Jon: Is there a business justification why we are not able to do this?  If it means having to get a moving company in to move tables then by all means let’s get them in to help us with that.

Three days go by without a reply from her so I get the ball rolling again:

Hi FIBC,

I didn’t receive a reply from you on this one the other day, any word on the business reasoning why we are not able to do this?

Thanks

She jumps right back onto her horse (which is a midget pony by the name of Little Pumpkin by the way) and shoots out this:

FIBC: I am not justifying anything to you Jon. The subject is closed.

Wow!  Just WOW!  I loved that reply, I loved it so much I decided that what is supposed to be quite a trivial task has turned out to be too much of a mission for the FIBC to carry out and I’ve just about had enough of her pathetic existence, I reply to her but CC all the higher ups, people that can actually make thing’s happen without causing me undue, and completely unnecessary, grief.  I remain calm and professional throughout:

Jon: The printer is for the engineering department, you will have to justify to them why they’re not going to get it when they start asking questions why they’re not going to get a printer.  I have also been requested to remove the printer from the warehouse floor as it’s been sitting there for 3 months now waiting to be put in place in the engineering department.

Can we work as a team to make this happen?

Thanks

Within 10 minutes I receive a reply back from one of the VP’s with the answer I was looking for right at the start:

Jon,

Looks like the desks will be moved back a few feet to accommodate the printer in the central part of the engineering wing.  You will be notified when the desks have been moved, and the printer has been moved to its new home.

thanks

I havn’t spoken to or heard from FIBC since…and she still hasn’t replied to my question about working as a team to make thing’s happen. *sigh*

Such simple tasks. Tsk.