Workload unreasonable?

anything I don't mind

anything I don't mind

anything I don't mind

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Am i being unreasonable?

I support 3 sites at third line level 2x 100 user and a smaller site of 20 users. Ive got loads of work on my plate at the moment and i don't get much help with the work. There is someone else who works with me in third line but he does not do that much work.

Now one of my many bosses wants to send me to poole to look at some some desktop performance for a client and i've told them that there is nothing that i will be able to do to fix the problem as it needs new hardware. they are using windows xp as thin client on p4 512mb ram desktops and citrix receiver with xenapp. They have mcafee installed on the xp machines and citrix and the xp machines are on the domain. One of my bosses thinks that removing mcafee and taking them off the domain will speed the pc up. I told him that is a waste of time and i don't have the time to uninstall mcafee or whatever he thinks will fix the problem.

But they just went a head and booked a ticket to poole from waterloo for 8am, it takes me 1 hour and half to even get to waterloo from where i live so ill have to wake up at like 5:30 to catch the train.

Do you think this unreasonable and would you tolerate this?
 
deeply involved? lol

Its more like he does not what he is doing and is wasting my time sort of involvement. It was their bad choices that created that situation in the first place by implementing a bad solution. Just because i did an ok job implementing desktops at the clients i am based at and support, now they think I should be able to fix that mess. But its more just sending me to poole when i have a full time job that i have a problem with. Its not like anyone is going to do any of my work while i am away.
 
Exactly what i have done. I have told him that it won't make any difference but he insists that him and another support guy took one of the pc off domain and removed mcafee and this made a big difference. I said that i doubt it and that it won't make a difference. I offered to take a look remotely but he said that i won't be able to do it remotely and used the term, we just need another set of eyes on the problem. They booked the tickets while i was saying that i could do it remotely.
 
Well i suspect the problem is a result of mcafee and using windows xp as a thin client os. As its not a real thin client os it is not optimised for use of thin client. Ie it is going to be using its own ram etc. I suggested adding more ram to the desktops but he siad that they want to find a solution without the client spending any more money. Looks like they just wasted £15k on a backend solution hoping to have a fast solution and its terrible and now i am meant to go in and fix it. Its a joke and honestly i am considering moving jobs because this is not the first time this sort of non sense happened. Just surround by incompetence people who do not do any actual work.

How many managers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
 
I already pointed out that XP is no longer supported but that just went right over his head as if i never even said it. The manager who is actually a project manager and not very technical at all, has the problem where he does not listen. Sort of talks over everyone and just ignores what they are saying.

The thing is i don't have time to sit their proving what is causing their pc to be slow or uninstalling mcafee on 50 pcs. To me its not rocket science, they have slow old crap hardware and probably some poorly implemented xenapp environment. HE actually suggested that i should create windows xp image that they can deploy to all the machines. Its like banging my head against the wall sort of bs.
 
Well most of the time I end up having to do their job because they are so incompetent. If i am not making their decisions for them I am cleaning up their bad decisions.

Yes i would do a better job of pretending to do be useful and pretending to do actual work. How difficult could that be?
 
Caged said:
Instead of explaining why it won't make a difference. A good manager.
Click to expand...

Exactly, more bad decisions to try and fix bad decisions from the past, which is fine they can get on with it. Just don't include me in your bad decisions and waste my time that i could spend on forums messing about or actually doing all the other work that i have to do.
 
Yea he says he wants me to do the work over anyone else because i am technically apt in that regard. Which is messed up beacuse he seems willing to respect my technical ability enough to ask me to do the work but not enough to reconsider his position on the solution. In other words he respect my technical ability but ONLY if it means working within what the bounds of what he thinks is best.

Which is like going to a specific mechanic for his expertise on fixing your car only to disagree with his solution and suggest he does it the way you want to do it.
 
The point I made to him was that even if you did remove mcafee and optimise it, it is never going to be much faster. Therefore it seems to me like a waste of my time. They could get any one in there to remove mcafee on those machines. Why send me all the way down there when based on the information at hand and my experience in technical problems like this, just removing mcafee and taking it off teh domain is not going to make much of a difference.

It seems to me that its more of a PR exercise and this is what this guy is known for, he is a project manager that tries to get on the side of the client by not sticking up for the technical department. Of course the lawyers just see right through this and exploit his bending over backwards to please them attitude. The way i look at it is i have better things to do than play PR games after 3 hour train journeys. They want it to appear like me going down there is them "trying to improve their situation" if i did it remotely that would not have the same effect, so it is effectively just PR bs.

While I would rather take a more sensible long term approach to the problem and fix it for good instead of BS the client, as he likes to do.

I guess the correct analogy would be a middle level mechanic is told to travel 3 hours to fix a car that he has already told his non mechanic quasi-boss it can't be fixed without spending money, but he is just ignored and told to go so it looks like we are trying to fix the car.
 
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I was thinking about the anology its more like. lol

A middle level mechanic who looks after two large auto shops and has 10 car back log on each site to resolve is sent to 3 hour train journey and stay over night, to try and improve the speed of a car at no cost to the client even though he told the non mechanic middle level manager that it was not possible to increase the speed of the car.
 
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