An IT Worker Was Ignored by a Software Company—Until She Put Them on Blast Online to Force a Response
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Sometimes, you gotta rattle a few cages to get changes made.
That applies to a lot of things in life and work is no exception.
And if you’ve been ignored and neglected, there’s only so much you will put up with before you decide to fight back.
Check out what this bank worker did when her pleas for assistance kept getting ignored.
We think you’ll be impressed!
In the days before help centers…
“This is many years ago, in the late 1980s.
I was working in the tech section of a bank when desktop computers were new and deeply suspect to the owners.
Somebody bought a new software program. In typical bank fashion, he ordered it loaded on a junk-closet desktop computer which didn’t have the legs to run it.
It doesn’t work that way!
Said so right in the documentation, but somebody thought he could bully the machine the way he bullied his secretary.
Remember, this is a *long* time ago. His generation used a dictation machine, a typing pool and an adding machine with a crank.
They gave this unfortunate configuration to me, and told me to make it work without asking for anything that cost money. And I did, pretty much, but I couldn’t make it run reliably.
She gave it her best shot!
The problem wasn’t with the poor suffering antique IBM PC-AT, but with the software. I studied the manual, which did not admit to the possibility of such problems. Troubleshooting was basically ‘reboot and pray.’
The software company was on the other side of the world, twelve hours offset from our time zone. They didn’t have a help line, just an email address monitored during their office hours. My requests for aid were replied to on the next day if I was lucky.
Hmmm…
Every email was answered with the same pre-written stock letters. ‘We didn’t read your email and aren’t going to, so reboot.’ ‘Here’s an answer to the question we assume you asked.’ ‘We do not admit that telephones exist, especially if it means getting out of bed.’ ‘We will not give you the email of an actual person.’
I documented the whole month-long conversation to a fine fatuous fatheaded fare-thee-well. I was not going to carry the can for this nonsense when Somebody tried to blame me for it.
Meanwhile the software company bragged in many jolly advertising emails about how great they were.
Oddly, I did not love them for it.
In their last email they informed me that they had set up a user forum where their customers could joyfully burble about how wonderful their software and company was. Do join up and tell the world how you love us.
This is pretty hilarious…
I posted the whole interaction, nearly a month of daily pleas for help, plus a brutally complete recap of the problem, to their forum. This was not at all what they had planned for – that someone would actually use it to publicly demonstrate a failure of software, documentation and support.
A near-human got back to me as soon as they woke up over there. And told me how to fix it. Even though I was a woman doing a man’s job.
I was very sweet to him and said a number of things he probably didn’t figure out for several hours.”
Check out what folks had to say about this on Reddit.
This person weighed in.
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Another individual shared their thoughts.
This Reddit user spoke up.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who got back at slacking coworkers with fresh-baked treats.
And another individual weighed in.
She nailed it!
And I, for one, was pretty impressed by how she handled this.
Give this woman a promotion, now!
This was pretty frustrating…but she got the last laugh.
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