On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
There are a lot of thankless jobs in this world, and I'm sure Ricochet members do many of them. Our hardworking Busy Systems Administrator has the most thankless job at Ricochet. Basically, we only think about BSA under two circumstances: When he posts one of his thoughtful comments, or when something goes wrong with the site.
This is a new site, and we're trying to make a lot of ideas that sound great when we come up with them become reality quickly. So from time to time we encounter a few technical glitches. When this happens, and this is the part you don't see, all the editors make the BSA's life a misery. We send him increasingly impatient e-mails--sometimes a lot of them, often all reporting the same problem. And if something goes really wrong, say, a post gets lost and we were dumb enough not to save it somewhere else, the tone of our e-mails can be pretty anguished.
BSA has never once replied the way I know I would: "Hey, Claire, I'm only one guy. You've got no idea how complicated this problem is, so lay off." Or, "Hey, Claire, I realize it's morning in Istanbul, but it's the middle of the night here. I'm going to bed." Or, "Hey, Claire, just figure that out yourself, you obviously weren't paying attention to what I told you last time."
You know what he does in response to every single e-mail I send him? First, he acknowledges it right away, no matter what time I send it. Second, he apologizes for the problem--even though logic tells me that no way they could all be his fault. Third, he explains the problem in a way that would make sense even to someone like me, who doesn't really understand the technical side of things that well. Fourth, he tells me what he's doing to fix it. Fifth, he lets me know--usually pretty accurately--when I should expect it will be fixed.
Finally, and this is the part that shames me, he thanks me for bringing the problem to his attention. Every time. He must be gritting his teeth with frustration, deep down, but it never shows. That's where graciousness comes in.
The world would be a better place if every time we were about to snap, we all asked ourselves, "How would our BSA handle this?"
Thank you, BSA, for your superb graciousness.
PS to BSA: Hey, the page load times seem slow today. What's up with that?
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Comments :
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
Vivat BSA!
Aug '10
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
Thank you, Busy System Administrator! We hope to see you on Red Eye!
Nov '10
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
Don't go too far. Every BSA in the world has a big switch. Think of it like that big lever on Jokers Wild. That switch is called the RPG, or random problem generator. And when the users make him mad, he flips that switch. Then he waits for some amount of time. He gets to decide how long. Oh, he's always nice about it when you e-mail, that's just to throw you off. He then says it'll be fixed in an hour, or 4 hours, or tomorrow morning. It depends on how angry you've made him. When he feels you've been satisfactorily punished, he moves the RPG back into the off position. It's as simple as that really.
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
Wow, you've just described the entire Turkish Republic.
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
Where would we be without you BSA? Thanks for all the hard work!
Feb '10
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
Well, thank you. You exaggerate by at least twice.
And Ken, I know you're joking, but every sysadmin I've ever known is too busy to have the time to create random problems. That's like a janitor creating random spills and leaving garbage out randomly, to punish users for putting things in the trash can and spilling things by mistake. It would be masochistic. The software and computers themselves already have enough RPGs built in that it keeps us busy just figuring out where they are to turn them off.
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
I have had the exact same experience with BSA. Thanks for the post about it, Claire. It just (further) proves my point that Ricochet has all the best people.
Sep '10
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
Kudos to BSA. I wonder if I should tell the story of how I used to be a BSA in a past life? Nah. Maybe later.
May '10
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
Better BSA'ed than TSA'ed... that's what I always say.
Andy, can I put the dongle in my USB now?
Aug '10
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
BSA, I tried to change my photo and I keep getting these lengthy red errors. I have reduced the jpg to 145 x 145 px. Suggestions?
Feb '10
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
Send us the photo in question to support@ricochet.com so I can test it on my dev server. It is quite likely that one of our image cropping and uploading extensions needs to be updated to match the new software platform.
Feb '10
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
I confirmed this on our dev server. I think I can fix it with an upgrade to the photo uploading and cropping extension, but it will take me some time to get to this, possibly after the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanks for alerting me to it!
Feb '10
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
We have several known problems stemming from the upgrade:
For the time being, I have rolled the production servers back to the previous version, but I don't plan to keep it this way for long. After further testing and fixes for the new version, it will go back up.
Edited on Nov 30, 2010 at 1:14pmFeb '10
Re: On Graciousness: A Word of Praise for Our Busy Systems Administrator
Rolling back to the previous version caused problems with & nbsp; codes appearing on the site. I have put it back to the current version, and was able to solve at least some of the login problems. However, if you Edit one of your own comments, you may still see the occasional & nbsp; code until we also upgrade the text editor component. Due to some customizations we were not able to upgrade it right away.
Other remaining issues:
- Inability to upload a new avatar
- Redirection to home page after logging in
- Others
Edited on Nov 30, 2010 at 1:33pm