IT Career advice on a service desk... Should I quit?

[solado]

I wanted to get back into IT for some time. I worked as a computer technician for a small firm from 2007-2012 while doing my college courses and Cisco. I loved the physically taking apart machines, running network cable and installing hardware for businesses. I wasn't exactly amazing at it but I knew enough to get me by and comfortable in doing so.

I had a period of health problems that caused me to leave IT and I worked basically administration jobs in offices. Nothing IT related just pushing paper and spreadsheets, in my free time I tinkered and dabbled with networks, computers and thing as a hobby. Due to being out the IT loop for a while I had to start at the bottom as no where would entertain me.

I just started a job on an IT service desk for the NHS (4 weeks ago) and iv'e never hated a job so much in my entire life. I feel chained to the desk with a call logging screen at the front of the room where everything is timed. (breaks, toilet, call length, admin time etc.) The training is none existent you're basically expected to know how every clinical system works and the documentation on how to fix certain problems is poor to non existent. By the time you fix it and go to write notes the phones off again.

Users are rude and demanding - I live life by be polite and it will be returned but this just isn't the case. Staff are stressed and when I ask for help as I am still new with some areas people sign or just give very short answers which doesn't actually help.

The "service desk" also processes other departments such as the clinical systems and mobile devices. Users want their IPADs configured (fine) but when they want to collect it you spend 20 minutes looking for someone from the mobile devices team only to find they're no where to be found.

The tier 2 & tier 3 guys are always first to comment when tickets are raised incorrectly and super picky about minor details. Yet these guys leave off contact information for staff, leave off departments and other critical information and it's not a problem or ever mentioned.

I was called into my managers office because I left work at 5:05 when I was scheduled to finish at 5:00 and it was commented that "I didn't look dedicated enough to impress tier 2". My manager comes into the service desk office and shouts about how "poor quality work" is happening even though she doesn't know the process herself or any technical knowledge.
She has openly shouted at people on the service desk for things which aren't even falling into the criteria of their job or doesn't have the decency to take them out the office for a quiet word.

I don't know if this is just my experience of a service desk in the NHS but I feel like I should simply quit this job and go back into some low stress line of work while learning Cisco / Networking in my free time. Sit my CCNA routine and switching and try leap frog over the service desk route? Has anyone managed to leap frog over the service desk because I know many recommend that this is the "entry" to IT but I just can't stand it.

 

[solado]

Why would you even want to work for the NHS, they don't know what organisation means in any area of there doings.

It was the first job that came up for IT in the are that gave me an interview.

Clinical side of work they're exceptional.
Administration or logistics it's in tatters.

 

[solado]

Well I am back after another week in the job. My shifts have been altered so I am working late half of this week and half early the rest so I am prepping my body to be out of whack.

Since last week the following has happened:

• One of the contractors threatened to beat someone up over a disagreement in training me, he threatened that he was going to basically beat the hell out of him when his contract ends.
• My manager came in and shouted at everyone over a toner, basically someone forgot to mention a minor detail in order a toner to a department and this was enough to cause her to come in and shout at everyone like school children.
• The tier 3 team basically told me to F&@K off after I told them there was a problem with one of the GP surgeries and needed an update on the server status. Turns out the tier 3 wasn't aware of this and took his frustrations out on me.
• The mobile devices team have not been calling staff for IPADs and the workloads out of control so we have staff shouting at us as 1st line demanding IPADS configured when we can't do anything but pass messages on.
• I was told that I was too white to work in IT, not even as a joke but called a white monkey.
• Had multiple phones slammed on me by Doctors / consultants / nurses and administration staff because I can't fix their problem "right now" because my boss is shouting at me spending >10 minutes on a call.
• I had tier 3 rush into the office behind me and asking if I was ok because I was on a call 15 minutes configuring network printers at a GP surgery but my boss was monitoring call times remotely and complained that people were taking too long per call.
• I had to stay behind an extra 20 minutes due to a problem call and I wasn't allowed to claim this time back...

I really am tempted to go back to basic office administration because I am getting borderline depressed.

 

[solado]

That sounds disproportionately bad. Like every one is super stressed and taking it out on everyone else.

If you do leave, how confident are you of finding another role in IT?

If you do decide you cant take this job any more tho, I'd say dont just quit. Start getting your CV out there and going to interviews whilst employed here. Use leave and or doctors/dentist excuses to go on interviews.

If I walk out of this job where I live IT jobs are pretty rare. They do come up as there was a tier 2 engineer at a local school but i'd need to step into a basic office job until another opportunity came out.

 

[solado]

@OP Obviously we've only got one side of the story here but it certainly doesn't sound like an ideal work environment! On the other hand there probably are things you can address, some of the things you mentioned are telling... in particular spending too long on tickets, getting grief for not updating tickets properly and getting grief for asking questions. These are partly down to your own experience or lack of it, there are ways of asking questions too... maybe they're all ass holes or maybe you've annoyed some people by being annoying/not making a decent attempt to solve something before coming to them - no one is going to want to spoon feed people and support can be a bit of a sink or swim environment. This coupled with the talk about spending too long on calls does highlight that there are perhaps arras you could work on... yet in both posts you hint that you're the sort of person who wants to clock off right away - in the first post you mention leaving at 5:05 and in the second you mention begrudgingly not being able to claim for some extra 20 minutes... I think it is one thing to be on top of everything, not taking longer than average to handle calls etc.. and then leave on time and rather another if you are not really up to speed and haven't been performing as well as they'd like, in that instance I'd be inclined to stay a bit longer and get yourself up to speed.

Other aspects do however indicate an unpleasant work environment - I'd try to leave as soon as you can, though if you want to stay in the industry it would perhaps be better to stick with the current role until you can land a new one and learn as much as you can.

I give it my best to solve the problem and will only go to tier 2/3 if it's a physical hardware problem or a network issue / server that I don't have access to. 99% of the time when I go escalate something it's for a good reason (e.g a patient needs a prescription but the servers down or hard drive throwing errors in event view and crashing) If anything my ass is at my desk far more than any of the other tier 1 guys who are now passing calls to me because they can't fix them. I would be pretty annoyed if someone expected to be spoon fed the answers, I did come from an IT background before my mental health crippled me beyond functional so I do have experience in networking and troubleshooting.
With the >10 minute calls it's for a good reason, one example was a GP practice was down and none of their printers worked. Most of the guys would have logged it and sent it to tier 2 who probably would have picked it up later on that day and been angry about it because they wasn't informed. I decided to take the initiative to work out all the network printers and set them up so the GP surgery could get on with their work and save the tier 2 guys a job who are probably so busy they can't sit down.

If anything the environment is calmed down allot. My manager actually talks to me with respect all of a sudden and has been telling me people are providing feedback of me by name and giving praise. One of the tier 2 guys said he was delighted to get tickets I raise because they're well documented, clear and troubleshooting is extremely helpful for him to go to a job.

It feels this week something changed and I can't put my finger on it but people seem to respect me, One of the tier 3 guys has given me some material and asked if I want to sit down with him and go through a few areas I want to learn. He often pops in the office for a chat to check how my study is going.