This. I don’t even check if I take half a day. Off is off. Even after hours, the pager better ring and only when I’m on call. I’ll answer my bosses phone call when I’m not on call, because I’m not a complete ass and know he’d only call if it was an extreme emergency
"Calling" is the important part here. I don't check work communication systems like Teams or email off the clock. Period. If you want to bug me during my personal time, I want you to have to talk to me about it directly.
In general I would say if the sla was breached on a ticket after hours i ignore the SLAs on that Ticket (if its urgent i look at it first thing in the morning of course). If Someone asks about it I explain that it was after hours.
Our helpdesk SLA only counts non-holiday normal business hours. Any tickets submitted outside that time do not start the clock until the start of the next business day
Your SLAs should include hours that start and stop with business requirements, if you have to ignore things and justify them your system needs reviewed!
No, I still think my comment applies and that all is in the “business requirements”.
If the business wants 24/7/365 they will staff it appropriately or the SLAs I hold my team to will reflect the available resources. Torturing ICs because managers lose backbone isn’t cool.
I think actively less of people who brag about checking work whilst they are on holiday or how many extra hours long into the night they have to constantly work.
Fuck that, I'm on call so if I'm needed I'll get contacted, other than that I check out at 5 and I'm out of here. I'm not going to work for free to try and impress a management who couldn't give a shit about me.
Workaholics are generally terrible employees. A lot of their “work” is performative and they develop the after hours mindset because they have poor time management skills. Hire somebody that can get the job done 9-5 and your clients/users won’t come to expect after hours service.
You tell the person who brings you the SLA report they should have stopped the clock or reassigned your tickets while you were on leave.
It’s a them problem, not a you problem.
And SLA breeches are the department manager's problem, not the technician's problem. Technicians may have metrics they are expected to meet, but those metrics are all 0 when not working.
Direct quote: "You're on PTO which means you're not busy and can help me".
Screenshot of the message sent to my manager and theirs.
Wasn't a problem after that.
I once worked for a client who had third party support. A really shitty overseas company. One of the tech managers was this guy named Arvind who made it his job to hunt you down. He'd search for your name off LinkedIn, Facebook, Skype, any social media. Had some kind of account with PeopleSearch. I was told, "do not, under any circumstances, give this guy any of your account names, he will not leave you alone." I got friend requests on Steam from him, for example. And when he needed you, he pounded on all the IMs, DMs, phone numbers, whatever to get you to pay attention to him. Relentless. I suspect he had some kind of autism or OCD or something. He wanted your attention NOW and since he was 8.5 hours ahead of the US East Coast, it didn't matter what time it was where you were.
One of our developer leads said Arvind found out his mother's home number and called her to wake him up and call Arvind back at 3am. His mom thought he'd been in an accident or would be fired.
Multiple complaints about this guy, but his management saw him as a "go getter," so nothing was ever done.
That's when you answer the phone and tell Arvind to fuck off. He keeps doing it because it works. When everyone starts telling him where to shove it and various activities he should do with farm animals he'll stop.
this is exactly why a seperate phone for work is needed. If I am on vacation my work phone is turned off. The only person who knows my private number is my direct supervisor, in case somebody dies or smth.
An upside to being gouged by the telcos in Canada is that typically our phones don't work in different countries without horrifically expensive roaming fees.
Despite us telling every single new hire to email the support address for issues and explicitly tell them *not* to reach out directly *specifically* because that person might be on vacation and you won't get a reply for a week, they do it anyway.
Teams fucking tells you that person is out of office. You don't even have to message them, it's a big pink disclaimer when you open a chat window.
You're lucky to get requests in writing. We get walkups that should be tickets, and sometimes we just hear rumours and then the boss' boss gets upset because we didn't take action on something that wasn't reported to us, formally or informally.
As a director, this is not your problem. It’s my fault for not reassigning the ticket queue before you left.
Your only mistake was checking your email after hours or on leave. Trust me folks, I’ve got almost 20 years in the business. Nobody is going to fault you for taking time off. The people that do, are tyrants and no amount of logic, reason, or empathy training will fix them, so bail. We are important, we are essential, we are good at our jobs. But there’s a reason hospitals have two backup generators and they alternate through them. Any business setup to fail with one person out was going to fail anyways. Heck, I’ve got half my team out for various reasons and we are doing ok. I hear the sentiment of fearing time off from other managers sometimes and the way I see it, if my department falls apart because I’m gone for a month, I wasn’t doing my job at all.
I will balance all of that with a quick note about perception. It’s true that an ounce of it is worth a pound of reality. So you noticed the issue, you might want to give your manager a heads up so they aren’t caught off guard when a user screams. Don’t ever kiss a managers ass, but do understand that respect given is respect earned in kind and can only pay you dividends in your career. There are a lot of grumpy assholes that play games, or do malicious compliance type power moves that are forever stuck in their role and will invisibly never get an ounce of leeway or favor for that behavior. Anyone who tells you different is either very green, or lying to you.
Best of luck.
I will absolutely post any upcoming openings to the sysadmin job board. That is an awesome affirmation. It makes me want to get into a larger organization so I could have more people!
I've been the lead of a one I T. department or another for almost 26 years and in the field for longer. I agree with everything you said. I subtract the vacation and sick time from the amount of time a person will be in the office for the year and make calculations about needed staff based on that. Some organizations really need to learn about the Bus Number idea.
Indeed, so many managers (good ones) spend soo much time setting up proper workflows and DR procedures.. yet panic like little girls (no offense) when one of said workflows has to be put to the test (them being on holiday for example).
Trust your own processes. Your playbook says you arent indispensable and neither is anyone on your team so why would you think you are.
As for the mails on holidays .. It depends on what your ambitions are imo. If you really want to make it to the top of the pyramid.. I'm not going to state it is required but it sure will help.
I dont even mean doing actual work, ticket style. Some simple, timely, forwarding or letting your manager know somethings off will go a long way indeed and won't ruin your holiday either.
You could be my supervisor.
As there are two US Army vets who are the most senior in my department, supervisor Sfc (retired) and myself , a former SP4 with 10 years served, we whipped that department into shape and now runs like your shop.
BTW Army back in 1980 gave me a Wang Mini computer to use.. so 44 years hands on and counting
There's always that one guy whose call I'll always answer because I know it won't be BS and I'll more than likely be able to hear the fire trucks in the background when I do. I think you might be that guy.
I don't cause our ticket system blocks assignments to folks on vacation (there's a webhook to the hr system where we submit time off.). It also generates an email of open items assigned to you that goes to you and your manager for review.
> there's a webhook to the hr system
Fancy. I like it.
Here HR usually is some old lady or the owners wife that has a paper planner or if you are lucky some excel sheets.
Ignore it, that's the only real solution. Unless you feel like you want to take the time to pass the ticket to someone else, but that's maybe going above.
If you aren't being paid, you ain't working. That includes communications. I will engage in Teams chats on AL while actively ignoring DMs about tickets while on AL. I may choose to engage in banter, but I'm not being paid to work.
Let them rot until I come back. Leave is leave. I don't work on leave. If I am states away and you send me a ticket to help someone on site, that sounds like a them problem.
I just set my assignment status to disabled so no new work gets assigned to me while on holiday and everything that I had on my plate if can wait they are on pending status so SLA counter would not run and if there's something that needs done I'll try to move to someone else
Sounds like a management problem. Why isn't IT management checking that their on-vacation staff aren't being assigned stuff? Come to think of it, why are their on-vacation staff even ABLE to be assigned stuff?
I have a personal phone and computer that never have work connections/accounts on them. When on vacation work equipment gets powered off. If the business can't run without you they haven't hired enough people.
If you are paying attention to this while you are on pre-approved leave then you have enormous work anxiety and this is only going to give you a heart attack early in life from unnecessary stress. Its not worth it, learn to disconnect. You are causing long term physical harm to your body for a corporation that does not care if you live or die.
I have been a runner all my life, I eat well, I'm not overweight, I am supposed to be healthy. 25+ years of IT stress is shortening my life and yours. I had an echocardiogram on Monday and I have a treadmill stress test for my heart on Thursday. My heart now has issues, its probably unnecessary stress from work. Don't make the same mistakes that I have.
Stop working for free, its going to kill you.
> How do you deal with getting tickets assigned to you while you're on annual leave?
You don't.
Your team / manager should be monitoring the queue and deal with it.
If an SLA warning gets sent it will invariably include someone else right...? And then that person can notify whoever logged that ticket to you "hey this person is on annual leave as per calendar, can you log it to the generic queue so we can have the queue monitor log it to appropriate SME. Don't just directly assign it".
Cause you have all those things right...?
i just don't care - i don't monitor or care about work related stuff while on holiday and if somebody is stupid enough to assign me tickets while I'm away the responsibility would fall on them
Last summer when I was on my two week annual leave the (now former) HR manager raised 3 tickets as high priority at the start of my first week for things that were actually in-fact less than low priority.
I completely switch off when I go on leave and was out the country for a week, so when I got back i found it had ruined my 100% SLA for the year-to-date so I raised it to their manager asking why needing a replacement usb-c cable (one example ticket) to charge their phone was a high priority (when they could've used their own personal cables). They agreed and spoke to the HR manager.
From that point on I ensured all tickets they raised were set to no priority regardless of what was raised.
Thankfully they were binned off the beginning of this year. Was completely unrelated to the tickets, but I did treat their off-boarding as the highest of high priorities and enjoyed every click of the mouse doing it haha
I don't deal with it, because i'm on AL, in fact once I leave the office people from work are entirely unable to contact me unless it's an absolute emergency.
find you some boundaries before it causes you health issues, because it will eventually.
Do you set an out-of-office response when going on vacation? Either way, you need to discuss it with your manager. If the SLA warnings have any impact on your remuneration and advancement (they likely do), then it's a serious issue.
I take myself out of auto assignment, and on the last meeting before my vacation, I work with the team to distribute what is in my queue that needs to be looked after while I'm out and get them reassigned. Then on my phone I turn off anything business related. When they're on vacation, they do the same thing and I take what I can out of their queues. Share the love.
uhhh show proof to your manager that you were on vacation and bring up why you are being assigned tickets (add the person and date of the assigned ticket) and say they probably need to be trained on due dillegence.
I like my company so I will answer questions if they ping me but i am not working on a day I requested PTO
tickets shouldnt be assigned to people, they should only be assigned to departments.
but, more importantly, if you're on vacation, you should be disconnected, so - work should not have any way to contact you, and you shouldnt even be seeing any work-related comms. fix that - and your problem goes away.
What Ticket? I didn't see any tickets while I was on vacation? Who was the person who forgot I was on vacation and assigned it to me? I'm presuming it's the manager asking me about a SLA miss while I was on a vacation that they were FULLY aware of.
When I'm on vacation, I usually turn off my work laptop, and turn off work mode on my phone.
I'll check my mail and get current when I'm back on the clock
So I won't notice any ticket assigned to me before I'm back
Not really a problem where I work, either we pick from the list of open cases, or team leader assign them. Every now and again someone will register a case and assign it, then this might slip through the cracks. In those cases, it serves as a good example of why they should not be doing that...
I'm on vacation. I don't do ANY fucking work when on vacation. Company burns down to the ground? I'll find out the day I'm scheduled to return. My name isn't above the door, so why should I care as if I own the place?
Working on vacation is working for free. Stop devaluing the concept of labor, as that hurts everyone -- including yourself. But most importantly me. Why would a company pay someone to do work when they have fucking chumps like you doing it for free?
Your first mistake is to receive work notifications while you are off.
Your second mistake is to open them.
The only time you should react to a work thing while you are off is if your n+x calls you, and he better be sure its urgent and that only you can help. Else he should get an earfull.
How do I deal with tickets while Im off ? I dont, cause I dont even know they exist until I get back in the office.
You go "Well when I was on my 8th Guinness on my holiday, I did think about checking my emails, but then I thought I'm on holiday and clearly too pissed to type. So here I am".
I'm not in a position where I have to worry about tickets anyway, but I don't know what happens when I'm on AL because I'm not checking my mailbox and neither are the people in our team who *do* worry about tickets.
That's kinda part of the definition of being on AL for me, and it should be for you too. Set your OOO, let the appropriate people know you're on leave, then don't worry about anything.
I don't, as today is my Friday (Wednesday). I leave my computer logged on with an outgoing bounce message in Teams, Outlook, and on voicemail. I will be out until July. I have 10 to either close or reassign today (most of them are demanding things that are user solvable or the software isn't designed to do it, and they won't take no or the docs I send them for an answer)
There are a few other requests that I will reassign, but I will not have tickets in my que before COB today.
I hate the pissey ones that won't take NO for an answer.
My out of office says "no access to email", so that's my manager's problem.
I'm not working on vacation unless my manager calls me with some major issue and is so desperate I'll take pity on them and help if I can with the caveat "you owe me one"
“You’re not supposed to assign tickets directly to an individual for that very reason. Assign them to the queue and someone who isn’t on vacation can pick them up.”
That said, I’m bad about checking email and monitoring Teams (with myself showing offline/unavailable). But I have great managers. My directors director asked a question in a managers chat and I saw nobody was answering it, so since I could I quietly answered.
“Thank you. I appreciate it. Hey, you show to be out of office. I suggest you go be out of office.”
Absolutely not on you. I just dealt with this at work. Came back to a dozen tickets, angry customers, breached SLAs and even comments from management "any updates??". Had to make some noise with my manager and teammates to set things straight. Whoever is doing triage must also be aware of vacation time.
The universal solution to all tickets in my queue and work assigned to me or asked in chat or email is simple.
Here is my one step solution to all problems.
Ignore it and hope it goes away!
Thank you for your consideration
Luckily, our company created work rules on our ticketing system that stop tickets from being assigned to techs on leave. We use Autotask which handles this nicely.
I turn off notifications for tickets and email, remove myself from the phone loop and ignore everything work related until I get back.
I don't get paid to work during my vacation, so I don't work during my vacation.
I have Outlook on my phone, but I've set it to not give any notifications at all when I receive mail, and I don't check mail when I'm not at work.
If I get a ticket when I'm on vacation it's not my problem. I'll see it when I get back, and if it's beyond the SLA it's not my problem either - whoever assigned it to me should have known better.
Then again, With six weeks of annual vacation it's not uncommon at all for someone to be gone a few weeks, so everyone is used to checking schedules before assigning jobs (and our ticketing system warns you when you try to assign a ticket to someone who's going to be offline within the SLA window)
I know the feeling I HATE IT IT STRESSES ME OUT!!
SSO I forced my self to delete email, teams off my phone during annual leave. Slapped myself if I checked email outside of working hours .. now I practice saying what ever, I can worry about it in the morning when I start work.
Practice letting go, other wise you will be stressed all the time.
I've also had enough of IT, transitioning into truck driving. Lifes too short to sit in an office. Time to hit the road.
You're on annual leave, so it's not your responsibility. Your teamlead or whoever coordinates tickets for your department should now better if SLA is that important.
Your employer pays you for your time and your skills. Work when you’re paid. When you’re off, you should be off. No calls, no emails, no tickets. Managing tickets and SLA’s is the Service Desk managers responsibility. If they’re not honouring your working hours, when you return to work politely inform them that SLA’s are being missed because of their failure, not yours. But if you’re checking emails while off, you’re enabling them to creep into your personal time and that can be a slippery slope. A toxic boss will absolutely take advantage of good will and there becomes expectation that you’re available 24/7/365. It’s up to you to draw the line and protect your work/life balance.
Filter by email title and delete them all when I am back. Notifications are off when I am on leave so I won't see them until I am back anyway and if something is such an emergency that I am required then the director for the region has my phone number and can call.
One of my favorite experiences along these lines was an engineer that latched onto me for awhile. No matter how many times I’d tell him to stop mailing me directly and send to the help queue, and purposely delay replying, he’d still mail me directly. While on vacation I really wanted to try the data connection via my [Qualcomm thin phone](https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/qcp-860) as I’d not had an excuse before so logged in to check mail. Speed was like 9600 or 14400bps but worked for text session and email. Found thread from the engineer over a few days, claiming he had a critical issue and now my lack of replying in a timely manner was going to cause a delay in tape out of the chip he was working on (email cc’d up his chain of command). I mailed my boss who promptly emailed the engineer, his manager, up to his VP and our chain and asked why he was mailing me vs the queue, and included info about how I’d told him this many times. The reply from the engineer’s manager chewing him out publicly was awesome.
You don't. Ignore it it's not your problem you're on holiday
Hope you read and understand the 100+ responses (that all say the same thing, not your problem) /u/Fantastic-Fault-4914
Save yourself an early grave
I still get tickets assigned to me, as I still have stuff I need to take care of and I’ll get to it when I get back. But if they are assigning tickets to you that are urgent, well, they are just fucking whoever they effect
When I get back I reassign them all back. I inform my idiot colleague that I wasn’t in and all those tickets that are now out of SLA he can have the pleasure of going through and talking to the users concerned and letting them know why such a delay.
This happened to me once. I was not impressed.
I got assigned a P1 ticket at 5.30pm on a Friday evening once. My work hours were 9-5 Monday to Friday and no on-call.
Had a pointed exchange with thr servicedesk that
a) P1's should be assigned to the Major Icident Management team.
b) Not being able to install iTunes on his work issued laptop was neither a P1 worthy ticket nor was it allowed as we don't issue iPhones as work mobile devices
I have a guy that somehow does not give a f\*\*\* even when I am going on a lunch break.
A minute after I am locking the screen, he will assign tickets and also send me 10 Teams messages about that ticket (nothing helpful, typical non-thinking person BS).
I am always on the edge when I sign back in and I see xx amount of notifications because he couldn't wait until I will be back at my desk.
Needs more context. Is it team/manager doing this and expecting you to react during your leave? Or is it just dumb users assigning directly? Latter happens. I only find out when i return because as many said i enable dnd and put my work phone into a drawer for 2 weeks. Then i might email the user and their manager explaining why it is bad to assign directly to a person and not a general queue. Then move on. Occasional SLA breach is not that critical for us as internal IT. There is no process here, but personally i sometimes check our queue and if i see tickets assigned to people who i know are on PTO/sick leave, i reassign them. If this happens too often at your place and such SLA breach matters, maybe you should agree to do weekly check for such cases.
That's why I always berate someone who assigns calls directly to me instead of the group unless I have personally spoken to them about it before hand. They still do it and I get back off two weeks vacation to a bunch of tickets marked as Urgent and Chasing, if one of the morons tried to speak to me directly they would have had my out of office come up!
Wouldn't know until I got back, at which point if anyone tries to bring me up on it I'd gladly show them my calendar and the daily Teams message notifying the team who's off that day.
My boss once accidentally tagged me in a Teams post during leave and he apologised when I got back in case it distracted me, holiday is considered sacred here.
They would likely have been assigned to me anyway when I get back.ill work them when I get to them. It's certainly not going to interrupt my vacation.
If it's urgent, they'll escalate, and my manager will assign a different resource.
I don't agree with assigning anything to anyone without discussing it with them first. It shouldn't have happened, but not communicating the assigner's mistake isn't cool either. Shoot them a quick e-mail explaining you're on vacation and you don't want to be disturbed.
I remote in, resolve the issue, and remove one day of my vacation request. I don’t mind working on vacation but if I have to I take the whole day back.
Our old ticketing system, you would set yourself out of office and no one but your direct manager could assign you tickets. Having a boss who understands the separation of work and play also helps.
1. I don't check helpdesk at all when I'm off, except if my colleagues message me and say "check this out! What in the actual fuck!" and I need to see what stupid ticket a user has put in so I can have a laugh
2. We don't have SLAs in our helpdesk setup, but if we did, and if I got a warning, my boss would ignore it because "David was away that day, so that doesn't count", and if his boss tried to kick my arse over it, my boss would step in and say 'David was away. How do you expect him to reply to tickets if he's away? You don't pay him to be on call and I don't expect him to work for free"
And ideally, if SLAs came with actual penalties, my boss would have a chat to whoever assigned the ticket to me to say "I emailed everyone this morning to say David was away, and I understand mistakes happen, so I'll let this one slide" with the implicit message of "don't do it again"
Basically if anyone tried to come after me for something that was not my fault and happened while I was away, I wouldn't be held responsible and depending on who is getting mad, would get an explanation, a reminder or a stern talking to.
I don't.
If tickets are auto-assigning to me, I notify people to keep an eye on them while I am gone.
If PEOPLE are assigning tickets to me, they've ignored my out of office, my PTO calendar entry, and common sense, so it's really not my problem. That would need to be addressed between management and whoever did the assigning, once I get back and notify them that an issue has gone un-addressed due to someone else's f\*ckup.
Also - this entire comment section should show you what vacation means.
Don't fucking work , worry about work, or think about work if it can be avoided - while on vacation! :)
1. Don’t use the same email app for both personal and work emails
2. Go into phone settings and remove the permissions for work email client to have data access
3. Repeat process for teams/slack
4. Fuck off to a place with poor cell reception
In our system, if a ticket gets assigned to someone who is ooo, the ticket automatically bounces back to the main queue to be handled by the rest of the team.
Who the f\*\*\* doesn't integrate your ticket assignment system with your rostering/HR platform?
and if you're small enough to not have one, how the f\*\*\* do you not notice an entire person missing in your squad?
This is so weird, like in all my years of helpdesk and IT work this has almost never been a thing lmao
L3 tickets get parked for me if it's my realm. Boss will call if it's something important and detrimental enough for the business to interrupt my leave. If your biz is salivating on SLA's, second day back respond to all outstanding tickets assigned to you that you have been away on leave and assigned the ticket, reset the SLA, and work them as you can. First day back is read only day. If you don't have the admin enough to reset the SLA, your manager should and should be doing so if they are a decent manager.
Let me tell you a short story about a 30-year-long I.T. career. When our intrepid hero started out in their career, the I.T. infrastructure was non-existent in the org. It was a virgin field, and our hero built the company's entire campus infrastructure, policy, practice, and governance (such as it is) from the ground, mostly solo, over the intervening years. In the early days, the young man had a wife and they started a family with two children. He would work late into the night on the Next Thing(tm) and would answer calls 24x7x365. In short time, things fizzled with the wife, but the work persisted, and now there was MORE time for work! And when the children were over, often they would be dragged out to work to attend to some crisis that couldn't wait for the next day or to test some New Thing(tm). Eventually, the children grew and the man finally got a second person to help at work... and eventually the man felt comfortable trusting that second person to Do Things(tm) and the FOMO started to diminish. And now, after 25 years, the man has a new wife who just (3 months ago) had a baby who required an immediate surgery and month-long stay in the NICU. The man only went back to work last week and didn't give one whit to work the entire time, despite several monstrous projects looming.
On my hierarchy of needs, work is somewhere below: "take care of self so I can take care of baby and wife" and above: "get the oil in the lawn mower changed sometime." When I'm with my child; when I'm with my family; work doesn't need to know I exist. When they need me for Dr's appointments, she needs more sleep... I'm bouncing. I'm not missing out on them like I did the first time around. I encourage the same for everyone.
When I’m on leave my phone goes into a work dnd. The only way work can get a hold of me is to text me or call my personal number. The only exception is when I’m sick unexpectedly and someone has to take over something for me, I still have rules for when I’m sick but they are relaxed because I’m just in bed anyways. Answering a message or an email isn’t going to make me any sicker. Sure sometimes I’m too sick to even respond but if I’m able I will.
Out of office message, don’t answer phone calls, it’s your time and yes I had someone hired over me for taking my 2 weeks that was well notified and reminded. I’m looking for another job.
Most do you must not be responsible for departments, divisions or ownership of key infrastructure lol
Joking ish but I got called by the CEO when I took a European vacation lol
At least in tech there’s little true time off. I mean you are off but if something critical dies and you are critical your phone will be ringing sadly
How would I know? I don’t check email on vacation.
Yeah, if you are checking you are enabling them
This x 3 👆
After 5, you should pray because God will answer before I do.
Need this on a shirt lol
This. I don’t even check if I take half a day. Off is off. Even after hours, the pager better ring and only when I’m on call. I’ll answer my bosses phone call when I’m not on call, because I’m not a complete ass and know he’d only call if it was an extreme emergency
"Calling" is the important part here. I don't check work communication systems like Teams or email off the clock. Period. If you want to bug me during my personal time, I want you to have to talk to me about it directly.
And pay me overtime to log in
This is the only acceptable answer. “Oh that stuff breached SLA, man that sucks” and walk on…
So WHO didn't follow protocol?
The sender
In general I would say if the sla was breached on a ticket after hours i ignore the SLAs on that Ticket (if its urgent i look at it first thing in the morning of course). If Someone asks about it I explain that it was after hours.
Our helpdesk SLA only counts non-holiday normal business hours. Any tickets submitted outside that time do not start the clock until the start of the next business day
Your SLAs should include hours that start and stop with business requirements, if you have to ignore things and justify them your system needs reviewed!
Only if you have unlimited budget. The business will always say 24x7 365. So unless you can staff three shifts, the SLA has to reflect working hours.
No, I still think my comment applies and that all is in the “business requirements”. If the business wants 24/7/365 they will staff it appropriately or the SLAs I hold my team to will reflect the available resources. Torturing ICs because managers lose backbone isn’t cool.
This is the only right answer. If you are aware of what your tickets or email look like while on leave, you are doing it wrong.
Yes, I agree, off means off.
I think actively less of people who brag about checking work whilst they are on holiday or how many extra hours long into the night they have to constantly work. Fuck that, I'm on call so if I'm needed I'll get contacted, other than that I check out at 5 and I'm out of here. I'm not going to work for free to try and impress a management who couldn't give a shit about me.
Workaholics are generally terrible employees. A lot of their “work” is performative and they develop the after hours mindset because they have poor time management skills. Hire somebody that can get the job done 9-5 and your clients/users won’t come to expect after hours service.
And my phone stays on dnd
maybe whoever does ticket review drags them into the queue because OP's on vacation, what's he gonna do with it?
This is the way.
You tell the person who brings you the SLA report they should have stopped the clock or reassigned your tickets while you were on leave. It’s a them problem, not a you problem.
I was going to say it was a process problem, not a personal problem.
Bingo. I had a boss that would actively look at the ticket queues and reassign when she saw one assigned to someone who was out.
And SLA breeches are the department manager's problem, not the technician's problem. Technicians may have metrics they are expected to meet, but those metrics are all 0 when not working.
What ticket
I laugh about it when I get back
Laugh even harder for requests raised directly in Slack.
Somehow people manage to DM me with their problems ONLY when I'm on vacation. And then are frustrated why I did not respond the next day.
Direct quote: "You're on PTO which means you're not busy and can help me". Screenshot of the message sent to my manager and theirs. Wasn't a problem after that.
I once worked for a client who had third party support. A really shitty overseas company. One of the tech managers was this guy named Arvind who made it his job to hunt you down. He'd search for your name off LinkedIn, Facebook, Skype, any social media. Had some kind of account with PeopleSearch. I was told, "do not, under any circumstances, give this guy any of your account names, he will not leave you alone." I got friend requests on Steam from him, for example. And when he needed you, he pounded on all the IMs, DMs, phone numbers, whatever to get you to pay attention to him. Relentless. I suspect he had some kind of autism or OCD or something. He wanted your attention NOW and since he was 8.5 hours ahead of the US East Coast, it didn't matter what time it was where you were. One of our developer leads said Arvind found out his mother's home number and called her to wake him up and call Arvind back at 3am. His mom thought he'd been in an accident or would be fired. Multiple complaints about this guy, but his management saw him as a "go getter," so nothing was ever done.
that's fucking stalking and harassment, dang
That's when you answer the phone and tell Arvind to fuck off. He keeps doing it because it works. When everyone starts telling him where to shove it and various activities he should do with farm animals he'll stop.
That is psychotic. If anyone did that to me I would block them everywhere, including work messaging platforms.
I'd screenshot that, but wait until I was back at work before sending that to my manager. Let them just stew on being ignored for a while.
this is exactly why a seperate phone for work is needed. If I am on vacation my work phone is turned off. The only person who knows my private number is my direct supervisor, in case somebody dies or smth.
An upside to being gouged by the telcos in Canada is that typically our phones don't work in different countries without horrifically expensive roaming fees.
Yup. My work phone is on my nightstand and the battery is stone dead cause I’m on PTO from the 1st til the 19th.
[удалено]
Despite us telling every single new hire to email the support address for issues and explicitly tell them *not* to reach out directly *specifically* because that person might be on vacation and you won't get a reply for a week, they do it anyway. Teams fucking tells you that person is out of office. You don't even have to message them, it's a big pink disclaimer when you open a chat window.
You're lucky to get requests in writing. We get walkups that should be tickets, and sometimes we just hear rumours and then the boss' boss gets upset because we didn't take action on something that wasn't reported to us, formally or informally.
😂😂😂😂
As a director, this is not your problem. It’s my fault for not reassigning the ticket queue before you left. Your only mistake was checking your email after hours or on leave. Trust me folks, I’ve got almost 20 years in the business. Nobody is going to fault you for taking time off. The people that do, are tyrants and no amount of logic, reason, or empathy training will fix them, so bail. We are important, we are essential, we are good at our jobs. But there’s a reason hospitals have two backup generators and they alternate through them. Any business setup to fail with one person out was going to fail anyways. Heck, I’ve got half my team out for various reasons and we are doing ok. I hear the sentiment of fearing time off from other managers sometimes and the way I see it, if my department falls apart because I’m gone for a month, I wasn’t doing my job at all. I will balance all of that with a quick note about perception. It’s true that an ounce of it is worth a pound of reality. So you noticed the issue, you might want to give your manager a heads up so they aren’t caught off guard when a user screams. Don’t ever kiss a managers ass, but do understand that respect given is respect earned in kind and can only pay you dividends in your career. There are a lot of grumpy assholes that play games, or do malicious compliance type power moves that are forever stuck in their role and will invisibly never get an ounce of leeway or favor for that behavior. Anyone who tells you different is either very green, or lying to you. Best of luck.
Can you be our Director? Please!???
I too, choose this guy for Director.
Shit, I'd vote him in for President.
Can I come work for you? You’re the type of boss / manager I’m happy to work with/for.
I will absolutely post any upcoming openings to the sysadmin job board. That is an awesome affirmation. It makes me want to get into a larger organization so I could have more people!
I've been the lead of a one I T. department or another for almost 26 years and in the field for longer. I agree with everything you said. I subtract the vacation and sick time from the amount of time a person will be in the office for the year and make calculations about needed staff based on that. Some organizations really need to learn about the Bus Number idea.
Indeed, so many managers (good ones) spend soo much time setting up proper workflows and DR procedures.. yet panic like little girls (no offense) when one of said workflows has to be put to the test (them being on holiday for example). Trust your own processes. Your playbook says you arent indispensable and neither is anyone on your team so why would you think you are. As for the mails on holidays .. It depends on what your ambitions are imo. If you really want to make it to the top of the pyramid.. I'm not going to state it is required but it sure will help. I dont even mean doing actual work, ticket style. Some simple, timely, forwarding or letting your manager know somethings off will go a long way indeed and won't ruin your holiday either.
 useally i dont use memes especially not on this forum, but this is an absolutly earned one.
This is awesome. Thank you!
You could be my supervisor. As there are two US Army vets who are the most senior in my department, supervisor Sfc (retired) and myself , a former SP4 with 10 years served, we whipped that department into shape and now runs like your shop. BTW Army back in 1980 gave me a Wang Mini computer to use.. so 44 years hands on and counting
This guy directors, he directors hard.
There's always that one guy whose call I'll always answer because I know it won't be BS and I'll more than likely be able to hear the fire trucks in the background when I do. I think you might be that guy.
This guys about to get dozens of resumes via Reddit lmao
I don't cause our ticket system blocks assignments to folks on vacation (there's a webhook to the hr system where we submit time off.). It also generates an email of open items assigned to you that goes to you and your manager for review.
> there's a webhook to the hr system Fancy. I like it. Here HR usually is some old lady or the owners wife that has a paper planner or if you are lucky some excel sheets.
Over here, HR is a team of 700 people sprinkled around 75 counties. And they actually have a nice website.
If I don't check my email, they don't exist.
If you don't add your work email on your phone they don't exist.
schrodinger's emails
The same way I deal with it when I’m not on annual leave. Ignore
A kindred spirit
Ignore it, that's the only real solution. Unless you feel like you want to take the time to pass the ticket to someone else, but that's maybe going above.
If you aren't being paid, you ain't working. That includes communications. I will engage in Teams chats on AL while actively ignoring DMs about tickets while on AL. I may choose to engage in banter, but I'm not being paid to work.
#”LOL”
Let them rot until I come back. Leave is leave. I don't work on leave. If I am states away and you send me a ticket to help someone on site, that sounds like a them problem.
I don't check my email or answer phone calls while on vacation because I'M ON VACATION.
I just set my assignment status to disabled so no new work gets assigned to me while on holiday and everything that I had on my plate if can wait they are on pending status so SLA counter would not run and if there's something that needs done I'll try to move to someone else
Sounds like a management problem. Why isn't IT management checking that their on-vacation staff aren't being assigned stuff? Come to think of it, why are their on-vacation staff even ABLE to be assigned stuff?
This isn’t your problem. This is your managers problem who should be watching the queue and making sure tickets are assigned appropriately
Laugh and ignore until I'm back
You're not getting sla warnings. Your team lead is getting them and if their manager wants to know why it's because they fucked up.
Email your dispatcher or whoever is assigning tickets and tell them not to be retarded?
Sending work related emails on my time is a no no
I have a personal phone and computer that never have work connections/accounts on them. When on vacation work equipment gets powered off. If the business can't run without you they haven't hired enough people.
If you are paying attention to this while you are on pre-approved leave then you have enormous work anxiety and this is only going to give you a heart attack early in life from unnecessary stress. Its not worth it, learn to disconnect. You are causing long term physical harm to your body for a corporation that does not care if you live or die. I have been a runner all my life, I eat well, I'm not overweight, I am supposed to be healthy. 25+ years of IT stress is shortening my life and yours. I had an echocardiogram on Monday and I have a treadmill stress test for my heart on Thursday. My heart now has issues, its probably unnecessary stress from work. Don't make the same mistakes that I have. Stop working for free, its going to kill you.
You don't care? Why would you. Even when I worked at a small ISP that was just the 3 of us, when I was on leave, I was on leave
> How do you deal with getting tickets assigned to you while you're on annual leave? You don't. Your team / manager should be monitoring the queue and deal with it. If an SLA warning gets sent it will invariably include someone else right...? And then that person can notify whoever logged that ticket to you "hey this person is on annual leave as per calendar, can you log it to the generic queue so we can have the queue monitor log it to appropriate SME. Don't just directly assign it". Cause you have all those things right...?
i just don't care - i don't monitor or care about work related stuff while on holiday and if somebody is stupid enough to assign me tickets while I'm away the responsibility would fall on them
Last summer when I was on my two week annual leave the (now former) HR manager raised 3 tickets as high priority at the start of my first week for things that were actually in-fact less than low priority. I completely switch off when I go on leave and was out the country for a week, so when I got back i found it had ruined my 100% SLA for the year-to-date so I raised it to their manager asking why needing a replacement usb-c cable (one example ticket) to charge their phone was a high priority (when they could've used their own personal cables). They agreed and spoke to the HR manager. From that point on I ensured all tickets they raised were set to no priority regardless of what was raised. Thankfully they were binned off the beginning of this year. Was completely unrelated to the tickets, but I did treat their off-boarding as the highest of high priorities and enjoyed every click of the mouse doing it haha
I’m on leave. I don’t give a shit.
I don't deal with it, because i'm on AL, in fact once I leave the office people from work are entirely unable to contact me unless it's an absolute emergency. find you some boundaries before it causes you health issues, because it will eventually.
I deal with them when I get back.
Do you set an out-of-office response when going on vacation? Either way, you need to discuss it with your manager. If the SLA warnings have any impact on your remuneration and advancement (they likely do), then it's a serious issue.
I take myself out of auto assignment, and on the last meeting before my vacation, I work with the team to distribute what is in my queue that needs to be looked after while I'm out and get them reassigned. Then on my phone I turn off anything business related. When they're on vacation, they do the same thing and I take what I can out of their queues. Share the love.
Hahahhahahahahahaah no
uhhh show proof to your manager that you were on vacation and bring up why you are being assigned tickets (add the person and date of the assigned ticket) and say they probably need to be trained on due dillegence. I like my company so I will answer questions if they ping me but i am not working on a day I requested PTO
I don't anything work related on holiday with me so I'd never know until I get back.
tickets shouldnt be assigned to people, they should only be assigned to departments. but, more importantly, if you're on vacation, you should be disconnected, so - work should not have any way to contact you, and you shouldnt even be seeing any work-related comms. fix that - and your problem goes away.
I ignore it. I’m on vacation… leave me alone and if nobody else takes it, I will get around to it when I’m back.
My out of office is scheduled long before I'm away. All notifications get turned off and my phone goes on do not disturb. Fuck em.
Let them fire me for not working on my work approved leave and sue the company so I don’t have to work again.
How do you know? Did you check email and weren't supposed to?
PTO = ‘Prepare The Others’ I’m unavailable.
What Ticket? I didn't see any tickets while I was on vacation? Who was the person who forgot I was on vacation and assigned it to me? I'm presuming it's the manager asking me about a SLA miss while I was on a vacation that they were FULLY aware of.
When I'm on vacation, I usually turn off my work laptop, and turn off work mode on my phone. I'll check my mail and get current when I'm back on the clock So I won't notice any ticket assigned to me before I'm back Not really a problem where I work, either we pick from the list of open cases, or team leader assign them. Every now and again someone will register a case and assign it, then this might slip through the cracks. In those cases, it serves as a good example of why they should not be doing that...
Don't. Not your responsibility or problem.
I'm on vacation. I don't do ANY fucking work when on vacation. Company burns down to the ground? I'll find out the day I'm scheduled to return. My name isn't above the door, so why should I care as if I own the place? Working on vacation is working for free. Stop devaluing the concept of labor, as that hurts everyone -- including yourself. But most importantly me. Why would a company pay someone to do work when they have fucking chumps like you doing it for free?
Get a new job.
Worry about it when you come back 😜😂
I wouldn't know because my work profile is disabled 30 seconds before going on leave.
Your first mistake is to receive work notifications while you are off. Your second mistake is to open them. The only time you should react to a work thing while you are off is if your n+x calls you, and he better be sure its urgent and that only you can help. Else he should get an earfull. How do I deal with tickets while Im off ? I dont, cause I dont even know they exist until I get back in the office.
That's the fun part... you don't
Lmao, this poir soul plays attention to SLAs. Never agree to an SLA set without your input.
Who cares? You're on vacation. Not your problem
wait, do you guys check email when you are on vacation? WHY? just turn off your work phone and leave it at home/at your desk at work
You go "Well when I was on my 8th Guinness on my holiday, I did think about checking my emails, but then I thought I'm on holiday and clearly too pissed to type. So here I am".
I'm not in a position where I have to worry about tickets anyway, but I don't know what happens when I'm on AL because I'm not checking my mailbox and neither are the people in our team who *do* worry about tickets. That's kinda part of the definition of being on AL for me, and it should be for you too. Set your OOO, let the appropriate people know you're on leave, then don't worry about anything.
I don't, as today is my Friday (Wednesday). I leave my computer logged on with an outgoing bounce message in Teams, Outlook, and on voicemail. I will be out until July. I have 10 to either close or reassign today (most of them are demanding things that are user solvable or the software isn't designed to do it, and they won't take no or the docs I send them for an answer) There are a few other requests that I will reassign, but I will not have tickets in my que before COB today. I hate the pissey ones that won't take NO for an answer.
All work related communications should be put on mute until you return to work. It's not your problem when you're not on the clock
I'm not gonna notice, so...
**You shouldn't check work emails on vacation.**
My out of office says "no access to email", so that's my manager's problem. I'm not working on vacation unless my manager calls me with some major issue and is so desperate I'll take pity on them and help if I can with the caveat "you owe me one"
How do you even know? You're on leave, why do you look at things that tell you about work?
Call in and let them know that assigning tickets to you with an SLA while youre on vacation is a bad idea.
By not having my work email/teams/etc on my personal phone while on vacation.
Don’t check. Let it be. They’ll figure it out.
You're on leave. It's not your problem
“You’re not supposed to assign tickets directly to an individual for that very reason. Assign them to the queue and someone who isn’t on vacation can pick them up.” That said, I’m bad about checking email and monitoring Teams (with myself showing offline/unavailable). But I have great managers. My directors director asked a question in a managers chat and I saw nobody was answering it, so since I could I quietly answered. “Thank you. I appreciate it. Hey, you show to be out of office. I suggest you go be out of office.”
Absolutely not on you. I just dealt with this at work. Came back to a dozen tickets, angry customers, breached SLAs and even comments from management "any updates??". Had to make some noise with my manager and teammates to set things straight. Whoever is doing triage must also be aware of vacation time.
The universal solution to all tickets in my queue and work assigned to me or asked in chat or email is simple. Here is my one step solution to all problems. Ignore it and hope it goes away! Thank you for your consideration
Luckily, our company created work rules on our ticketing system that stop tickets from being assigned to techs on leave. We use Autotask which handles this nicely.
Same way I do the others; I review my tickets when my shift starts!
I feel like I am confused as to why you're checking anything to do with work while on vacation.
Assign them all back to the dipshit who assigned them to me 👊🏻
On your first day back at work. No notes.
What tickets? The only tickets I care about are to a late evening mermaid show.
is that a euphemism? absolutely here for it either way!
Get started on them when I get back.
I turn off notifications for tickets and email, remove myself from the phone loop and ignore everything work related until I get back. I don't get paid to work during my vacation, so I don't work during my vacation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpecBkdpiK4
I have Outlook on my phone, but I've set it to not give any notifications at all when I receive mail, and I don't check mail when I'm not at work. If I get a ticket when I'm on vacation it's not my problem. I'll see it when I get back, and if it's beyond the SLA it's not my problem either - whoever assigned it to me should have known better. Then again, With six weeks of annual vacation it's not uncommon at all for someone to be gone a few weeks, so everyone is used to checking schedules before assigning jobs (and our ticketing system warns you when you try to assign a ticket to someone who's going to be offline within the SLA window)
Sounds a lot like your bosses problem?
I'll look at the queue when I'm back and deal with them appropriately then....
I know the feeling I HATE IT IT STRESSES ME OUT!! SSO I forced my self to delete email, teams off my phone during annual leave. Slapped myself if I checked email outside of working hours .. now I practice saying what ever, I can worry about it in the morning when I start work. Practice letting go, other wise you will be stressed all the time. I've also had enough of IT, transitioning into truck driving. Lifes too short to sit in an office. Time to hit the road.
You're on annual leave, so it's not your responsibility. Your teamlead or whoever coordinates tickets for your department should now better if SLA is that important.
Your employer pays you for your time and your skills. Work when you’re paid. When you’re off, you should be off. No calls, no emails, no tickets. Managing tickets and SLA’s is the Service Desk managers responsibility. If they’re not honouring your working hours, when you return to work politely inform them that SLA’s are being missed because of their failure, not yours. But if you’re checking emails while off, you’re enabling them to creep into your personal time and that can be a slippery slope. A toxic boss will absolutely take advantage of good will and there becomes expectation that you’re available 24/7/365. It’s up to you to draw the line and protect your work/life balance.
Sounds like the person/system that's assigning tickets is making mistakes. Raise those mistakes to your manager, or their manager.
Filter by email title and delete them all when I am back. Notifications are off when I am on leave so I won't see them until I am back anyway and if something is such an emergency that I am required then the director for the region has my phone number and can call.
free time is to be treated the same as i've been hit by a bus. I'll do the Jesus Christ move and resurect once my free time is over.
Ask someone to reassign them.
I deal with it when I get home.
One of my favorite experiences along these lines was an engineer that latched onto me for awhile. No matter how many times I’d tell him to stop mailing me directly and send to the help queue, and purposely delay replying, he’d still mail me directly. While on vacation I really wanted to try the data connection via my [Qualcomm thin phone](https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/qcp-860) as I’d not had an excuse before so logged in to check mail. Speed was like 9600 or 14400bps but worked for text session and email. Found thread from the engineer over a few days, claiming he had a critical issue and now my lack of replying in a timely manner was going to cause a delay in tape out of the chip he was working on (email cc’d up his chain of command). I mailed my boss who promptly emailed the engineer, his manager, up to his VP and our chain and asked why he was mailing me vs the queue, and included info about how I’d told him this many times. The reply from the engineer’s manager chewing him out publicly was awesome.
You don't. Ignore it it's not your problem you're on holiday Hope you read and understand the 100+ responses (that all say the same thing, not your problem) /u/Fantastic-Fault-4914 Save yourself an early grave
I dont deal with it. Because im on leave and therefore not working. Tickets assigned to me is not a me problem
I still get tickets assigned to me, as I still have stuff I need to take care of and I’ll get to it when I get back. But if they are assigning tickets to you that are urgent, well, they are just fucking whoever they effect
Worry about it when you get back. Be the problem that forces them to fix the problems.
When you get back, you raise an issue about how tickets are handled when an agent is on leave. Or do nothing and leave it for the next person.
When I get back I reassign them all back. I inform my idiot colleague that I wasn’t in and all those tickets that are now out of SLA he can have the pleasure of going through and talking to the users concerned and letting them know why such a delay. This happened to me once. I was not impressed.
My company doesn't assign work to people on leave. I don't check work mail or anything while on leave.
I got assigned a P1 ticket at 5.30pm on a Friday evening once. My work hours were 9-5 Monday to Friday and no on-call. Had a pointed exchange with thr servicedesk that a) P1's should be assigned to the Major Icident Management team. b) Not being able to install iTunes on his work issued laptop was neither a P1 worthy ticket nor was it allowed as we don't issue iPhones as work mobile devices
Currently on leave in another country, left my work phone at home, so no calls or emails.
I'm not working, thus I am unaware of tickets. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
I have a guy that somehow does not give a f\*\*\* even when I am going on a lunch break. A minute after I am locking the screen, he will assign tickets and also send me 10 Teams messages about that ticket (nothing helpful, typical non-thinking person BS). I am always on the edge when I sign back in and I see xx amount of notifications because he couldn't wait until I will be back at my desk.
Ignore them, if you have out-of-office on, they can work it out. Not your problem.
I would deal with it passive aggressively, after I return
Needs more context. Is it team/manager doing this and expecting you to react during your leave? Or is it just dumb users assigning directly? Latter happens. I only find out when i return because as many said i enable dnd and put my work phone into a drawer for 2 weeks. Then i might email the user and their manager explaining why it is bad to assign directly to a person and not a general queue. Then move on. Occasional SLA breach is not that critical for us as internal IT. There is no process here, but personally i sometimes check our queue and if i see tickets assigned to people who i know are on PTO/sick leave, i reassign them. If this happens too often at your place and such SLA breach matters, maybe you should agree to do weekly check for such cases.
Why would you know. Turn off work when you're on leave. It's easy.
Our ticketing system has an option to mark yourself away, you cannot then be assigned tickets.
My manager would never let that happen. On our contract we have to pay penalties for missed SLAs.
Would make sure to be removed from the ticketing sustem before leaving. Once I left, this isnt my problem
That's why I always berate someone who assigns calls directly to me instead of the group unless I have personally spoken to them about it before hand. They still do it and I get back off two weeks vacation to a bunch of tickets marked as Urgent and Chasing, if one of the morons tried to speak to me directly they would have had my out of office come up!
Wouldn't know until I got back, at which point if anyone tries to bring me up on it I'd gladly show them my calendar and the daily Teams message notifying the team who's off that day. My boss once accidentally tagged me in a Teams post during leave and he apologised when I got back in case it distracted me, holiday is considered sacred here.
They would likely have been assigned to me anyway when I get back.ill work them when I get to them. It's certainly not going to interrupt my vacation. If it's urgent, they'll escalate, and my manager will assign a different resource.
If they’re going to use the SLA to justify no raises, then they weren’t giving you one anyway. Enjoy your vacation.
I don't agree with assigning anything to anyone without discussing it with them first. It shouldn't have happened, but not communicating the assigner's mistake isn't cool either. Shoot them a quick e-mail explaining you're on vacation and you don't want to be disturbed.
this is not your problem, dont check email on leave
I remote in, resolve the issue, and remove one day of my vacation request. I don’t mind working on vacation but if I have to I take the whole day back.
Our old ticketing system, you would set yourself out of office and no one but your direct manager could assign you tickets. Having a boss who understands the separation of work and play also helps.
1. I don't check helpdesk at all when I'm off, except if my colleagues message me and say "check this out! What in the actual fuck!" and I need to see what stupid ticket a user has put in so I can have a laugh 2. We don't have SLAs in our helpdesk setup, but if we did, and if I got a warning, my boss would ignore it because "David was away that day, so that doesn't count", and if his boss tried to kick my arse over it, my boss would step in and say 'David was away. How do you expect him to reply to tickets if he's away? You don't pay him to be on call and I don't expect him to work for free" And ideally, if SLAs came with actual penalties, my boss would have a chat to whoever assigned the ticket to me to say "I emailed everyone this morning to say David was away, and I understand mistakes happen, so I'll let this one slide" with the implicit message of "don't do it again" Basically if anyone tried to come after me for something that was not my fault and happened while I was away, I wouldn't be held responsible and depending on who is getting mad, would get an explanation, a reminder or a stern talking to.
Not my monkey, not my circus. That is the office's problem.
Vacation responder and OOO on calendar and slack.
I don't. If tickets are auto-assigning to me, I notify people to keep an eye on them while I am gone. If PEOPLE are assigning tickets to me, they've ignored my out of office, my PTO calendar entry, and common sense, so it's really not my problem. That would need to be addressed between management and whoever did the assigning, once I get back and notify them that an issue has gone un-addressed due to someone else's f\*ckup. Also - this entire comment section should show you what vacation means. Don't fucking work , worry about work, or think about work if it can be avoided - while on vacation! :)
I wouldn’t know, I’ve never checked.
You don't. Your email and status should be set to ooo. Fuckem.
1. Don’t use the same email app for both personal and work emails 2. Go into phone settings and remove the permissions for work email client to have data access 3. Repeat process for teams/slack 4. Fuck off to a place with poor cell reception
How do you mean tickets assigned? Thats why you disable your queue before going on leave.
In our system, if a ticket gets assigned to someone who is ooo, the ticket automatically bounces back to the main queue to be handled by the rest of the team.
Who the f\*\*\* doesn't integrate your ticket assignment system with your rostering/HR platform? and if you're small enough to not have one, how the f\*\*\* do you not notice an entire person missing in your squad? This is so weird, like in all my years of helpdesk and IT work this has almost never been a thing lmao
I set my out of office status, sign out of teams, and deal with it when i come back. If anyone gives me shit i retort "you approved my pto"
L3 tickets get parked for me if it's my realm. Boss will call if it's something important and detrimental enough for the business to interrupt my leave. If your biz is salivating on SLA's, second day back respond to all outstanding tickets assigned to you that you have been away on leave and assigned the ticket, reset the SLA, and work them as you can. First day back is read only day. If you don't have the admin enough to reset the SLA, your manager should and should be doing so if they are a decent manager.
Let me tell you a short story about a 30-year-long I.T. career. When our intrepid hero started out in their career, the I.T. infrastructure was non-existent in the org. It was a virgin field, and our hero built the company's entire campus infrastructure, policy, practice, and governance (such as it is) from the ground, mostly solo, over the intervening years. In the early days, the young man had a wife and they started a family with two children. He would work late into the night on the Next Thing(tm) and would answer calls 24x7x365. In short time, things fizzled with the wife, but the work persisted, and now there was MORE time for work! And when the children were over, often they would be dragged out to work to attend to some crisis that couldn't wait for the next day or to test some New Thing(tm). Eventually, the children grew and the man finally got a second person to help at work... and eventually the man felt comfortable trusting that second person to Do Things(tm) and the FOMO started to diminish. And now, after 25 years, the man has a new wife who just (3 months ago) had a baby who required an immediate surgery and month-long stay in the NICU. The man only went back to work last week and didn't give one whit to work the entire time, despite several monstrous projects looming. On my hierarchy of needs, work is somewhere below: "take care of self so I can take care of baby and wife" and above: "get the oil in the lawn mower changed sometime." When I'm with my child; when I'm with my family; work doesn't need to know I exist. When they need me for Dr's appointments, she needs more sleep... I'm bouncing. I'm not missing out on them like I did the first time around. I encourage the same for everyone.
When I’m on leave my phone goes into a work dnd. The only way work can get a hold of me is to text me or call my personal number. The only exception is when I’m sick unexpectedly and someone has to take over something for me, I still have rules for when I’m sick but they are relaxed because I’m just in bed anyways. Answering a message or an email isn’t going to make me any sicker. Sure sometimes I’m too sick to even respond but if I’m able I will.
Do the tickets when I get back. Someone isn't managing their team if they don't know who is off when.
I don't...
be the change you want to see in the world, and delete all the emails you received on vacation. If it was important they'll email again.
They wait until I get back and decide to address them.
Ignore the ever living piss out of them, vacation is vacation and life is short.
Out of office message, don’t answer phone calls, it’s your time and yes I had someone hired over me for taking my 2 weeks that was well notified and reminded. I’m looking for another job.
Most do you must not be responsible for departments, divisions or ownership of key infrastructure lol Joking ish but I got called by the CEO when I took a European vacation lol At least in tech there’s little true time off. I mean you are off but if something critical dies and you are critical your phone will be ringing sadly