Take this Crackberry and Shove it!

I work for a decent sized non-profit.  When smart phones began appearing, people at work began purchasing quite a variety of them.  Since there was no policy and we’re an `open’ environment, people had every right to purchase what they wanted (on the company’s dime or off).  No one would argue that point.  The problem came when everybody demanded my department support and service each and every one of the phones.

I saw this coming and kept bothering people to put a policy in place.  As you may or may not know, putting a policy in place in an Open Environment has roughly the same effect as setting loose a bunch of tarantulas on the main floor (but the spiders are much easier to work with).

Since two of us were Treo owners, we suggested that Manglement, the folks who congenitally require the most assistance, just get Treos and be done with it.  Surprisingly enough, this went over relatively well.  There was a small learning curve at first (that ran somewhere between a bump and climbing Mt. Everest) but everybody got comfortable with them and used them.

I managed to cut the time my department spent on cell phones way down.  For nearly a year.

Of course every department has its Problem Child: we had five.  One of them was exasperating.  For reasons no one could divine, her phone would become screwed up at two week intervals.  My entire department took turns spending two days each at her desk, trying to undo the damage.  It is a fact that certain people have a bizarre effect on electronics; I know people who can blow out cell phones, computers, and car electronics.  I thought our Problem Child might be one of these.  As if this weren’t bad enough, Problem Child was in Manglement, way up the ladder.

It wasn’t until two years later that we found out there was less electrical activity involved than almost deliberate sabotage.  We’d walk past her desk and see her messing around in screens that were five levels deep that some of us hadn’t seen.  Within hours, there was a trouble ticket for that phone.  Again.

Fast forward to the rumblings about the iPhone.  One of our number is a Mac fanatic (I hear that can be successfully treated with drugs and intensive therapy these days).  He went on and on about the perfection that was the iPhone.  We got so tired of hearing about it that we printed up double size pictures of the iPhone with a red slash through it and put it up all over the office.  He was, strangely enough, less than amused.  He retaliated by putting a huge iPhone graphic in the light fixture above my desk.  He was less than amused again when I completely failed to notice it after a few days and he had to point it out to me.

Eventually somebody got an iPhone and wanted us to help.  With full server virtualization going on, in addition to the normal load, there was no time to deal with this, plus we put in a policy for this reason.

Not to be outdone, earlier Blackberrys started to appear.  And like clockwork, their owners started to appear in our office, demanding help.  It probably shouldn’t surprise me by now but I am amazed by the sheer gall of some people who purchase something for themselves and expect their employer’s MIS department to support it.  People have lugged home computers in to work and dumped them on our desks, expecting us to fix/support/customize for them.

Shortly thereafter, we began hearing rumblings that Manglement was not happy with their Treos and was looking into other phones.  It’s like the rumbling before an earthquake, only more destructive. One of the more inquisitve members of the department got sucked into this nonsense.  This mushroomed into participation in the Phone Committee<tm>.  The Phone Committee<tm> consisted of some Manglement and the aforementioned MIS guy.  MIS guy started to collect information on a number of choices mentioned by Manglement, largely consisting of the iPhone and the Blackberry.  He put it all together for a presentation to the Phone Committee<tm>.  And that’s where it sat.

Two weeks later I get notice that there are ten Blackberrys in the building, in a box.

Not only was this a surprise to me, it was a shock to the department, my boss (the CIO), and every member of the Phone Committee<tm>.  No one had any idea how those phones got there so it became time for Detective Work.  We could not get a single person to own up to ordering the phones but we did get something approximating an explanation: they went to look at phones, mainly the Blackberry.  The salesman, obviously an honest, upstanding young man, like all cell phone salespeople, told them that if they wanted the latest one, they had better order them now, as they were likely to be immediately backordered.  So they ordered ten.

Ten of these brand new model phones showed up and nobody knew about them.  So they sat for a while.  The phones were purchased on approval, with a thirty day return option.  When the Phone Committee<tm> heard about this, they were flummoxed.  Nobody knew who made this decision, although it was widely suspected that our Problem Child had something to do with it.  In the midst of being flummoxed, one of the support people overheard and noted that you never buy a phone as soon as it comes out… you wait until the bugs are worked out.

The irony of the lowest paid worker in the company explaining this to the highest paid people in Manglement was lost on everyone.

By now, about fifteen of the thirty approval days had passed and there was not a single phone deployed.  That was about right for the company.

Have I mentioned the server yet?   Blackberry has a server that must be run if you want to take full advantage of the functionality.  So whoever made the Secret Decision to purchase these phones also decided the company was going to license and build a new server and administer it strictly for Blackberry phones.  I suggested that the person who made the Secret Decision get the server dumped on his or her desk to set up and run.  After all, it was only fair.

With a week left to go, somebody finally decided to DO SOMETHING.  The server software was finally ordered and a few phones were deployed, independent of the server.

It was no great feat to predict what came next.  We’ve seen it over and over again, with each new piece of hardware that hits the floor.  It’s called I Want One Too Syndrome<tm>.  There was a manic flood of requests for Blackberrys.  Because they wanted one too.

When we started ordering flat screen monitors, the Jealousy Rate went through the roof.  They were coming with new computers only and the decision was made to keep the existing CRT monitors until they failed.  As soon as someone saw their neighbor get a new computer with a FLAT SCREEN MONITOR, the Green Monster reared its ugly head and they wanted one too.  Even when we explained they were only coming with new computers, they would go to their supervisors and make up excuses as to why they needed one too.

Meanwhile, the brand new phones started to get returned to the store and exchanged for the previous model because everyone hated the touch screens (that they had to have).

Our brave MIS Blackberry Volunteer went to work on the server next.  He was pretty excited to learn a new technology, especially one that would allow us to push out a complete configuration of a new phone in seconds.  This was a good thing because of what some of our Problem Children managed to do to their Treos.

The server took two days to get in place, largely due to Instructions from Hell.  Fourteen calls to Blackberry support later, the server fired right up.   Our server victim pushed out ten configurations in under five seconds.  He was overjoyed.  Temporarily.

The next day he got a call from Problem Child Number One.  Her phone wasn’t working right.  He asked if she followed the directions on the email sent to her.  What email?  She deleted it.

The very server software that was going to save us from people hosing their phones had just been trumped by Problem Child Number One.  The email could not be regenerated until it expired, twenty four hours later.  So Problem Child Number One had already completely hosed the concept, less than twenty hours after the server had first started up.

We also discovered that Blackbery now has a license to print money.  Each phone, regardless of cost, requires a license to access the server.  A license at the cost of one hundred dollars each.

I strongly suspect we can justify a staff of twelve being hired exclusively to manage the cell phones at our company.  Especially if they’re the phones that can be easily managed by one small server.