Training and Pavlovian Conditioning

I work in a 'service industry.' This is not by choice, and I have attempted in more than one way over several years to keep myself away from working with customers because I have one slight problem. I hate people. This hatred, though is exacerbated when I have to deal with people who out of ignorance or laziness make me do more work.

Working in a ticketing system involves a user calling in with a problem and creating a 'ticket' with the issue, which is then put into a 'queue' that is accessed by a program that I have to refresh before I see updates on. There are frequently times that I will see a user's name in the queue, and I will do one of two things. There are also people who are known in the ticketing system. These users follow Einstein's definition of insanity (doing the exact same thing over and over, expecting different results).

So I'll jump in and take a look at the ticket. If the user is asking for something new, I'll assign it to someone else - just because I'm sick of assisting them, and probably wouldn't be able to be nice if I needed it. However, if the user is asking for the exact same thing I just fixed for them a few minutes ago, I will assign myself the ticket, do the work, but let the ticket sit.

I will let that deadline come and - not wanting our managers to be put in a poor light - set the ticket as completed literally with 5 minutes left on the deadline. Most of our tickets are 4 day issues, and it makes it even more entertaining when the user calls in and tries to mark the ticket as 'RUSH' or 'IMPORTANT' or 'HURRY.' Severity was an option when the ticket was created, and if it wasn't severe when it was created, the user is bored and just wants it.

Emails or communication I receive to follow-up these 'escalations' usually end up with me asking what has changed. If the user responds nothing has changed between when they opened the ticket and when they escalated it, then I respond that I have other important issues, and will make it to their ticket as soon as I get free time, but responding to emails actually detracts from the time I have to work on tickets as I only have one functional keyboard occupied by two hands responding to the users' status request.

Of course, if they cc their boss, I enjoy updating the ticket (as the work was done), and sending the completion email. Then I wait 2 min and respond to the cc with my own cc saying, "I just emailed you that this work was completed - why are you escalating this when the work's done?!" That always gets a good apology  out of them :)

Plain-old aggressive office toy of the week: This one's fun to just leave half-hidden under a pile of papers - Airsoft pistol

Cube Warfare

It seems people have taken issue with my actions - various complaints have come in about various incidents from projectiles to 'workplace distractions.' I've started being more subversive in my actions, like this morning when I taped electricians tape across the bottoms of all the mice on the developer's cubes across from me. It took 5 of them over 20 minutes to get a desktop supply person to point out to them that the reason the red light wasn't on was due to a piece of tape.

The staggering combined intelligence of that group aside, I find myself running out of ways to not be petty, but still extract my revenge. Hmmmm...

Plain old aggressive office weapon of the day:  Zero Fog Blaster (surprisingly annoying, especially when done on a regular basis)