Communication Is Everything, Especially In IT

I work for a decently-sized chain of repair shops. One day, we get a ticket from one of the newer locations, a location we acquired six months ago.

Ticket: “Subject: Two of our computers are offline. Ticket: Everything was working fine when we left on Friday. But when we got back, two of our computers and our Xerox were down. We have customers waiting in the lobby. Please address.”

This kind of thing happens pretty often in our stores. The cleaning crew comes in over the weekends and sometimes they’ll bump the power cable to the switch in the front office, knocking the machines offline. I figure that is the case and call them, expecting this to be an easy fix. I speak with the store manager.

Me: “Hey, this is IT, calling about that ticket about the offline PCs. Can you tell me a little more about what’s happening?”

Manager: “Yeah, man, two of our modems are down and we’ve got a lobby full of customers. What do you need me to do?”

Half of our employees call computers “modems”, for some reason.

Me: “Can you go trace the ethernet cables on the computers that are affected? The box they’re connected to probably got unplugged.”

Once I describe the ethernet cable to him, he does ask what I asked.

Manager: “They’re all unplugged, man. Where should they go?”

That one stumps me.

Me: *Shocked and surprised* “Unplugged? What? Um, they should go into either the wall or the switch. Why are they unplugged?”

Manager: “Oh, they probably did that over the weekend when they were remodeling.”

Me: “Hold up. Remodeling? What all got remodeled?”

Manager: “The entire front office. They ripped the walls out completely and moved a ton of stuff. It looks like a whole new building now, at least inside.”

Me: “Who did the wiring?”

I’m not the head of our department, so I don’t know everything going on, but I know we didn’t have our wiring crew scheduled to go to that store over the weekend.

Manager: “I dunno, the electricians? Look, where do I need to plug these in?”

Me: “Let me call my manager real quick.”

I end up calling and talking to our IT director, who tells me he had no idea the store was being remodeled. He calls the person in charge of remodeling and asks her what is up.

IT Director: “So, who did the wiring in that store that got remodeled this weekend?”

Remodeling Manager: “[Employee], the company electrician.”

IT Director: “No, who did the network cabling? Who ran the ethernet cables?”

Remodeling Manager: “What’s an ethernet cable?”

This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation with her. She is notorious for pulling this crap. This right here is just the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

IT Director: “Hold on a moment. Let me call someone real quick…”

He proceeded to call the CEO and tell him the full story of what was going on. A few minutes later, we were all CC’d on an email to the head of the remodeling team that basically said, “Inform the IT department before you do any remodeling.”

The store itself was half a day’s drive for our wiring crew at the time, so we hired some local contractors and paid an emergency fee to get them there the same day to run wires. The story doesn’t end there, though. The same store was scheduled for more remodeling, which we were made aware of. We just weren’t told when it was going to happen…

…until we got a ticket on a Friday at 4:45 Central that the store was being remodeled over the weekend and that we needed to have it wired and ready to go by Monday morning. The store in question was in Eastern time, which meant it was already closed by the time we were notified.

This resulted in another call to the CEO, who sent out yet another email. This time it said something along the lines of, “Inform the IT department two weeks before you do any remodeling.”

We never had issues with that lady again.