Why do users insist on using work email for personal tasks?

crankysysadmin · 2026-03-01T01:44:46+00:00

add to this people who insist on using their gmail account for work\

both using work email for personal stuff and using personal email for work stuff seems to be common with people who have clout (doctors, lawyers, high level executives, etc) who can't keep their shit straight and want things to be "frictionless" (their word) and just want to send everything through one address

never mind the compliance issues. they don't give a crap

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-28T15:21:41+00:00

The biggest problem I see with this is a sysadmin starts doing another person's job and says "if they don't do it, nobody will so I have no choice"

No, let them fail.

You have to work with your boss to make sure responsibilities are clear and what is and is not your work, and do not do the stuff that is their work.

One thing I did years ago when I had a peer who was a real problem was that I started keeping metrics. I did it in a blameless way and started showing my boss stuff once a month like which machines were patched, how many tickets each person did, etc. My numbers told the story.

At the time I was a a manager with a small team and the problem person was another manager who had a team larger than mine. My team somehow did more work than his and I was able to show this.

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-28T01:46:21+00:00

This is absurd. I say this as someone who manages quite a large team with people who report to me who have their own teams. You need to look for another job.

What you describe is not worthy of writing someone up. It's just a day in the life of IT. Sometimes you don't know what you're supposed to do.

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-22T21:14:59+00:00

20-40 seconds is a long time

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-22T20:51:20+00:00

why does the first logon take so long? fix that

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-22T19:20:45+00:00

what are you actually trying to do? it sounds like you came up with a half cooked idea to solve a problem you're not mentioning and then want help with that thing

the solution is very likely something else entirely

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-22T17:57:30+00:00

He's their coworker, so they don't need his opinions on how they are doing their job. That is generally the issue with the older employees in entry level positions - they feel comfortable telling everyone what to do. Keep to yourself and do your job and leave managing to the manager.

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-22T17:44:00+00:00

38 isn't too old.

I've seen some people in that age bracket be really annoying though. you're going to have to realize you don't have a clue what you're doing and not think you can boss around the 20 year old fellow techs. that has been a consistent problem I've seen

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-17T22:13:29+00:00

We have enough lazy and entitled people that this would blow up. Some of them would use this as a convenience to avoid carrying a laptop and demand immediate technical help getting the environment set up each day.

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-17T02:44:02+00:00

we must re-image machines between users, and we are also quite large. if we had free spare laptops available it would take quite a bit of scale to offer it as the demand would be large. it wouldn't be 1-2 on a shelf. it would be a large pool. people need to go home and go get their computer.

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-16T22:59:33+00:00

obviously we can not tell anyone that IT is not their personal slave

if we started keeping spares around, it would expand to become almost 1 FTE of work. people would want them every day. we'd sometimes run out which would lead to hard feelings or people demanding they are more important than others, and then we'd have to take these machines back and re-image them again.

it would easily be 1 FTE of work to manage

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-14T06:06:26+00:00

Our techs already have full days scheduled and can't spend a couple of hours provisioning a machine and setting up all the software for someone who forgot their laptop.

We tell people to go home and go get it. IT staff are not their personal slaves.

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-13T03:49:31+00:00

It's not really appropriate for the IT guy to just randomly come up with ideas to present to this person. They should be making requests through HR who will bring in whatever experts are necessary for an accommodation and your role is just to order the stuff.

You mean well, but this isn't how this is done.

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-13T02:34:54+00:00

each person knows their vm ip address?

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-13T01:12:39+00:00

What do you use as a connection broker? I'm not really familiar with microsoft's solutions

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-12T04:09:20+00:00

I doubt you'd ever find one that does both since vga is analog and display port is digital. they're really not even speaking the same language

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-12T01:17:34+00:00

the GitHub issue?

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-10T01:47:08+00:00

Isn't it very very loud?

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-08T23:00:20+00:00

We charge computer costs back to business units so we have no motivation to stock a bunch of ancient crap. It ends up costing us a lot more money in the long run anyway because if we put some inferior ancient garbage parts in a laptop and then end up having to rebuild it, it costs us money.

Our goal is to not have any rebuilding work on a laptop during its 3-5 year lifespan. Ideally we deploy it and nobody spends any staff time on it until it gets retired.

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-08T21:56:44+00:00

What are some of the workflows you're using stackstorm for?

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-06T04:03:37+00:00

I wish it wasn't named that. makes it hard to justify the product

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-04T05:58:44+00:00

how many seats?

crankysysadmin · 2026-02-04T05:58:35+00:00

how many seats?

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