He will complain about me to my manager.  It is another example of privileged individuals who are not required to use the helpdesk.  This would have been far better handled if the helpdesk had intercepted this call and tried to follow the guidelines set out by Simon Tatham here.

In my first IT job in  Melbourne the helpdesk was taken very seriously. If a helpdesk ticket was generated you would have to respond within 15 minutes or you were in trouble. You had to talk to the user either in person or over the phone and tell them you were aware of the issue and would soon have it resolved. At this place helpdesk tickets are often ignored. We all know that no one will ever follow up. The users sense this and avoid using the helpdesk and prefer to stalk the technicians.

The people who have no clout can be made to call the helpdesk.  We just ignore them otherwise.  We will probably ignore them even after they have put in a ticket.  A lowly mail room clerk approached me to fix his printer.  He had a PC solely for the purpose of logging shipments.  His printer had not worked for 10 days.  I cleared the jam, cleared his print queue, restarted his spooler, then I went over to the helpdesk office to let them know to close the ticket.  They let me know there was no ticket.  “We don’t help them.” was the explanation.  There was some feud or disrespect that had not been settled.   How long can a company go on like this?

These events are connected by a clear failure of management.  Where I worked before we had a CIO and that is why priorities were established and rigidly enforced.  Philip is not going to enforce anything. That is akin to making waves and the successful manager knows to keep a low profile in all matters other than reporting successes. Here, CIO is an empty title that has no rank and can enforce no policies. It was bestowed on Philip to justify a rise in pay.

Barry

Melbourne