The WND & The Master of my Domain
I arrived in the office early one morning, still trying to shake the snow off my jacket. My boss, Motorcycle IT Guy (MITG) was out for the week on holiday. I was left alone, to fend for myself against our 100 some odd users. My cubicle is in the dregs of the office, and the only sound I hear is the Woman Next Door’s model M keyboard clacking away. WND is about 50, tall and starting to grey. I figure that she has to have some form of social anxiety with how much she gets worked up over nothing. I’m still waiting for my computer to boot when I hear the whimper that drops my spirit.
“Um, rstrt, can you come here?” She asks, barely audible over her clacking.
“Sure, one minute.” I say as I go to answer my phone.
“This is for KVP! It can’t wait!” She yells. King Vice President or not, the CEO’s name is on my caller ID. I quickly run through his inquiry of a password on an account of his and hang up, walking into WND’s office.
“Whoever that was, could have waited. You know that KVP is priority.” She has no real authority over me. She was at one point the paper-pushing Director of IT before MITG decided to take the title and hire on another IT staff member. Her technical knowledge is close to zero, but she’s usually nice enough that I don’t mind her occasional “correction” of an ongoing issue.
“That was CEO. Anyways, what’s up?” I ask, attempting to break the tension. “Well, KVP wants these letterheads so he can print to them!” she barks, shoving some letterhead into my hands. “He also wants a ‘digital signature’ done, so he can have his signature on his emails.”
“Sure, I’d be hap-“
“I scanned them to PDF and saved them as a template already, so you don’t have to do anything. Just get it done.” WND interrupts me.
I go back to my desk and pull up the emailed PDF’s she sent. When I inspect them, I find that they all have “SAMPLE” watermarks that the scanner picked up like a nuclear weapon. They are also crumpled up like someone threw them away, and had stains from coffee cups being placed on them. Instead of using her scanned documents, I find it much faster to just pull up the already existing templates for these letterheads. Before I can press send on the email to KVP, I hear the familiar shrill of WND.
“WHY AREN’T YOU DONE YET!? THIS IS TAKING TOO LONG!” She yells.
“I’ve only had this for 5 minutes now, wha-“ she cuts me off again.
“I was working on it for over an hour! Get it done now!” she barks again.
At this point, I’m considering using the Hammer of Malicious Intent (HoMI for future reference.) that I keep in my backpack for just this reason. However, I have a family to feed so I shoot off the email and go to KVP’s office with my tablet to get a signature. That was a 30 second job, thanks to tablets.
All is done and well, the KVP is happy and the WND has gone back to her quiet clacking. Leaving me to actual IT related work. Everything was fine, showed a user how to burn a CD again, changed a password or seven, even had time to polish the HoMI. The day seemed mildly uneventful after WND’s berating about my 5 minute task, until I heard a familiar squawk. “Um, rstrt. Can you come here a minute?” She whimpers, once again barely audible over the machine gun she calls a keyboard.
“I’m a little busy, what’s up?” I ask, almost immediately regretting the decision to reply. “Why do I not have domain admin credentials?” My heart rate triples, my eyes grow wide, and my spirit is crushed. She has admin to her machine, and that’s always been enough to placate her “admin” issues.
“Why do you need a domain admin account?” I ask, grabbing the HoMI.
“I want to install a program on the server.” I hear her rustling in her chair, about to come to my desk.
“Not without IT approval.” I say, immediately regretting my decision.
“This is for the HOHR.” She barked “She has something she’s installing to prevent texting while driving.”
There was no way I could go up against the Head of HR without a fight, and without MITG to back me up it was just me and the HoMI…
TL;DR – He whoever is worthy to lift the hammer, shall possess the power of IT.