So my inability to suffer fools gladly or otherwise is making for some bad days at the office. There was huge contretemps over a PC used by our recently separated director (now off to champion consumer protection for the attorney general). It’s prudent to remove login permissions when people leave an organization, as anyone in the IT game would recognize. But rather than just remove access for the former staff member and appoint a new owner for those files, all access to them was blocked, without a single attempt at asking what we, the customer of a service organization, wanted done with them.
After denying anything had been done to the PC, lo and behold a CD is delivered to the ten year old daughter of one of the staff (she happened to be in the office and the messenger couldn’t be bothered to wait around). And after another day, we get admin rights to the PC.
That only took five days. Getting hectored by a law professor on how this is standard procedure (if it was, why not say so up front or at any time in the ensuing 5 days?) and that locking down a login is not doing anything with a PC is a little much for me: I could almost see the head of computer services’s hand moving the mouth of the person speaking to me.
And today I learn that one of the IT staff has engaged his brother as a vendor to sell server equipment to the new law school building. This is a large state law school at a large state university, so we’re talking either taxpayer dollars or gift dollars from the building campaign going to staff under the guise of vendors.
I’m not sure if I should file an action or check my basement for stuff I can sell.
I also was appointed to a working group to discuss technology needs and plans, chaired by the head of computing: her assistant sent around an email with her superior’s availability for our initial meeting. I suggested we might set a good example if we used the calendaring system to help plan the meetings. No reply yet.
It might be time to look for a real job where accountability matters and where tenure does not equate to competence.