Welcome to another riveting tale of Idiots in the Workplace.  In todays edition, we will explore what happens when a Partner does not follow office protocol and makes me look like an idiot. 
 
Let me open with our office tech support protocol.  We have a small tech support team that consists of the office manager at our second office, an outside consultant, and myself.  We have a special e-mail group that if an e-mail goes there, all three of us receive it.  Now if there is any kind of problem in any office, a user is supposed to e-mail their problem to this tech support queue and it will be responded to as soon as we can get to it.  Sounds simple right?  Apparently it is not. 
 
The partner in question has not e-mailed the tech support queue in well over four months when he got a pretty nasty virus.  Here is an e-mail that he sent to the member of the tech team directly and to all of the partners in the firm.  The only things that are edited are names. 
 
"  Sarah… am getting messages saying important windows updates need to be done, but they can’t be done…I now have 3 messages.  I assume something is wrong with my settings which prevent me from implementing these updates. When I try to update it says I can’t do it…it says get help!  Is this important?…we have no guidance from our computer person(s). Also I have a message saying my files are not being backed up. Is that true?  Do I ignore this?  I wonder if others get these messages and do they(we) do anything about them or do we ignore them  Again, it would be helpful to have some general guidance from our computer person(s) about how one deals with these kind of messages, what do we do, etc.  Thanks."   
 
This e-mail was forwarded to me by my direct boss who thought that I had just been ignoring this partner and was starting to get mad at me.  I told her about not receiving any contact from him and blah blah blah.  So I started to work on this issue.  I couldn't figure it out on my own (as I am still an entry level tech), so I e-mailed our consultant for help.  This was as I was receiving e-mail after e-mail from this partner wanting some kind of protocol in place when there already is (as outlined above).  
 
Around 3 PM, another partner had had enough of the complaining.  She sent the following e-mail to all of the partners and my little tech team.  Again other peoples names are edited. 
 
" Bruce,

As always, if you have a problem with your computer, you should contact tech.  My understanding is that the tech group is exploring the issues with your computer now so you should have a resolution soon.  Meanwhile you can feel confident working on your system, according to the tech team. Virus scans are all automatic – in this instance I would ask that you get with Sarah to resolve why his computer is not automatically running virus scans – the others in the system are running automatically.  Generally we would prefer that staff do not make manual changes to setting in order to avoid slip-ups like this.

Certainly we are attempting to improve our procedures, and have made significant headway over the past few months.  James is an excellent resource in this regard, and is working with us to create a good in-house maintenance program.  We have some problems that will no doubt be up for discussion tomorrow.  Also, admittedly, we have had large issues to deal with (bandwidth, Citrix instability, etc) that are close to resolution finally.  We all look forward to the day when we can ask the tech team to take the time to develop SOPs of all processes.  Some have been done; we look forward to continuing the process going forward.  I understand your frustration but ask for continued patience – I can attest that James, Sarah and Ruby are doing their best to help us get where we all want to be, and progress is being made within the confines of the resources available."