Who says you can't have an upside down assistant hanging from a trapeze these days?

That was the PG-13 version of my comment.

Eh... Skype for Business does webex-esque stuff, too, and can integrate with Polycom desktop phones nicely, which kind of amazes me.

But, yeah, it would be nice to at least have a standard that all the various tools use together, so this fragmentation doesn't require having x different clients installed on your machine.

I'm forced to jump from Skype For Business to Hangouts ... because although we've emphasized Skype For Business as our standard, Certain Other Coworkers won't jump to it because it doesn't install properly on their machine.

And the IT dept won't help them because they aren't on corporate machines.

Yet, I look at these guys having this problem, and think to myself, "WTF are you working for us, that you can't figure out how to fix this on your own." I mean, we teach cyber security, right, so system administration should sorta be a part of that.
(Then I remember that I can't get it to work properly on my home desktop, either... and I figure Microsoft probably screwed something up with it such that won't install on that machine properly because of some conflict they really oughta figure out).

[Then, I remember that if a dev team doesn't know about a problem, they can't fix it, or provide any advice towards addressing it, so maybe I should approach Microsoft and say 'WTF?']

That was the PG-13 version of my comment.

Well you can have a PG-13 comment at your desk if you'd like.. But I'm not certain what that gets you.

Well you can have a PG-13 comment at your desk if you'd like.. But I'm

not certain what that gets you.

Fine. Have it your way.

The uncensored version was supposed to be "Hey baby, come over here and sit on my lap and take a memo."

If anyone is offended by that ... BLAME AAHZ.

Eh... Skype for Business does webex-esque stuff, too, and can
integrate with Polycom desktop phones nicely, which kind of amazes me.

Yeah, we've got that, and we use it for instant messages and 1-to-1 screen sharing. We even got the voice integration working. And no one uses it for conferences "because some people had problems with it".

At some point I'm just going to throw together a screen sharing app that works in a web browser and displays the phone number to call in a corner of the screen. It would be easier than all of the unsuccessful cat-herding that goes on now. It isn't a difficult problem to solve.

Hmmm.. Having someone sitting on my lap does make skype a little more difficult. .Both for typing and for seeing the camera.

Certainly a more creative way to deflect blame, though, having someone on your lap while engaging the camera.

My company does UC monitoring, and no one uses video internally. My guess is that no one wants to show where they really are and what they're really doing.

Perhaps they aren't turning the camera on because they don't want anyone to know who's sitting on their lap. Unfortunately, the era of having an administrative assistant who would sit on your lap and take a memo, didn't overlap with the era of video conferencing. For most of us, our laps would more likely be occupied by a cat or a small dog. My cat prefers to sit on a folded up blanket on one side of the desk, under a desk lamp, but that's out of the shot.

We had a conference call over some IP tool with a customer today. Another vendor used her camera, which nobody else had done. I turned my camera on for solidarity, but frankly, for that discussion, it added nothing of value.
So, eventually, I turned it off.

With co-workers, though, it's useful sometimes. You can convey a lot with eyebrowse.

I'll actually turn on the camera to dangle the cat and show off her grumpy she is.. Or I've been known to be seen wearing a jester hat.

I thought that was a dunce cap.

Now that's very possible as well.

fooker.

Can someone please explain to me why when an organization treats someone like crap for years, don't support them, don't listen to them when they try to explain what they're doing and ignores the actual important job that they do, so that when they leave there's no one to do it and no one who knows how to do it because of course there's no fooking backup, it becomes my problem to train their new user in a week?

Fook them. It's not even money. They offer to pay. I don't have anyone to dedicate to this stupidity. Everyone is covering stuff full time. It's not in our contract with you to do it so stop pushing me for it. We're not ignoring you. I just don't have the magic to snap my fingers and make someone appear to do your every fooking thing that you should've been already doing.

2019-01-10 23:23 from wizard of aahz
Can someone please explain to me why when an organization treats
someone like crap for years, don't support them, don't listen to them

when they try to explain what they're doing and ignores the actual
important job that they do, so that when they leave there's no one to

do it and no one who knows how to do it because of course there's no
fooking backup, it becomes my problem to train their new user in a
week?

Dealing with the exact same thing in my office. I have a customer who let pretty much everyone go who knows our product. Now they're demanding on site training. We offered a WebEx, but they're saying no, it won't work for them.

Ugh.

Sounds like corporate ditto-heads who don't seem to get that reducing staff has a dear cost to it when not performed properly.

I wrote several long replies explaining why we ain't showing up for three days and magically training the new person. It doesn't work that way. I think we have some direction now though that can work.

I've learnt over time that one should never ever reward bad behaviour,

Come on now. Facebook is built around doing that exact thing, all day every day, and it makes billions.

See also: IG's First Rule of Everything.

In Aahz's case however, I believe he is a third party contractor who has been called in a panic to train a replacement for the person who was being treated like crap.

And now, in the Really Bad Planning department ... it seems that I have to fly to the same city two weeks in a row for two completely different projects.
Some people need to talk to each other.