As much as I love my job there are times when I find that it can drain you entirely. I am reminded of the first scene in the play "Man of Lamancha" when Cervantes is  originally taken to jail. He is tried by his fellow inmates and found guilty (because everyone is guilty of something). He is informed that the guilty are usually fined all of their belongings.

"Everything?" he asks.

"It's not practical to take more" he is told.

That' s my current feeling. I'm being drained of everything only because it's all I have. Let's run through a few examples: Recently I was upgrading a user's laptop, transferring all the information from an older system to a new, faster model. For technical reasons I had to do this through the parallel port; for you non-techies that means it was a very slow process. I inform the user that it's going to take a while to transfer 4 GB worth of information, as I'm not going to be babysitting it while it goes through its copying routine. I figure about 8 hours.

So, during the day, the user interrupts my work 14 times to ask how it's going. Think about that: 14 times. Every 30 minutes for the entire day. What job is this man performing that allows him to do this? I rarely have a chance to hit the bathroom until just before noon. An hour-long lunch is a myth I heard about one time. Even screaming at him didn't stop him. I have to assume he is somehow damaged.

During that same time period another user had problems with his laptop; his email program had become corrupted. He dropped it off at 3:10 p.m. and told me the problem. At 3:25 p.m. he came back and asked if I'd had any luck with it. Here's a shock: I had projects that I was in the middle of, and couldn't drop at whim to look at the PC. So I told him "Yes, a lot of luck. I threw it underhand and it didn't slide off the table!" He left rather abruptly after that.

For the most part I get along with everyone from my office. But there are times when I have to ask them "why haven't you replied to [whatever]"? And they tell me "Well, I've been really busy". These are the same folks that I watch come into the building every day & leave every night. They wonder why I leave my car parked here overnight (I don't; just seems that way to them). For two weeks I've worked to at least 8:00 p.m.; on several evenings I've been here until midnight. But they can't get back to me because they're "too busy"?

Give me a freaking break. How long does it take to respond to e-mail? I can tell you; I get upwards of 40 a day. (Of course, some I don't know how to reply to. I got an e-mail as I was writing this column that said "Brian, please help. I can't send e-mail". Sometimes I just have to shrug and move on).

I could give a real long list of such examples. If a System Administrator is reading this then s/he is nodding their head up and down and smiling. Like me they wonder why they put themselves through this. Every day we perform miracles, to the point where they're expected. A System Administrator has a very strange job; if you do your job well then nobody notices what you're doing. "Hey, the network has been working flawlessly for the past 3 months. The only problems I've had are minor. Internet access has never been interrupted, I get all my faxes and email. I wonder what Brian does all day? Loaf around in his office?"

But if there is a problem then all hell breaks loose. Why is it when there is a major problem that people feel it's necessary to call me every 10 minutes for a status? "How long is it going to take" they ask. Well, if phone calls keep interrupting me it's going to take one heck of a lot longer. (And yes, I know how to put my phone on DO NOT DISTURB; people know where my office is and feel free to walk in at any time). My usual response is "how long is a string?" My boss knows the status; I keep him up to date. But when a user calls and informs me that their supervisor wants to know how long the Internet is going to be down I am tempted to respond: "Yes; the entire Internet is down. It's a global catastrophe; New York is in flames and there is mass rioting in California. We haven't been able to contact China for an hour and the last we heard from London were the air raid sirens going off. It'll be at least 2 hours".

Then, of course, there are the folks who have read a book on computers and try and fix things themselves. These are the same type of folks I used to run into eons ago when I made my living as a professional painter. They would call us into their house and be utterly flabbergasted when we gave them a quote to paint their kitchen, which they had screwed up.  "$600? It was only going to cost me $75 to do it myself!" they would lament. I would usually reply "Actually, with our charge, it will be costing you $675".

These people look at me blankly when I asked them what they've done. "Nothing!" they insist, yet when I start troubleshooting their machine I find personal screen savers loaded, or purity tests, or programs that are in no way business related. As a Systems Administrator I want to scream at these people "I DON"T CARE WHAT YOU PUT ON YOUR PC! JUST TELL ME THE TRUTH OCCASIONALLY AND SAVE ME 20 MINUTES OF TROUBLESHOOTING!"

Of course, as a Systems Administrator I want to scream that while holding their head in a lime pit, but that's a different story.

Then again, maybe that would removed this drained feeling…..

Let me know what you think.

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