Beyond that, every user thinks their issue is “just a quick question”. When you have 100s of people who all think that, that’s a whole week of work right there.
And often times something that looks small can turn into a big problem. Why did that screw fall out? Screws don’t just “fall out” for no reason. Did the threads get stripped out? How did that happen? If so maybe the chassis needs to be replaced. Did it pop out because of a swelling battery? If you don’t start with a ticket, there’s nowhere to keep track of all that.
Or just swap the drives with another laptop and send them on their way and then diagnose the other laptop later.
I worked in IT and our mission was always to get the customer working again as quickly as possible, and put as much work on us as possible.
That’s how you add value as an IT organization.
You may be quite adept with computer machines, but work a few days in IT support, and you'll understand why there is a ticketing process.
If they actually came by, we would just help them and then file a ticket for them to track our work.
There is no reason to force people to file tickets before you help them.
If you want to be seen as a force multiplier for the business that helps people get work done quicker, then actually help people and do the record keeping on your time, not theirs.
[1] Primary business, the shit the makes the money. [2] Support, shit that is done only to support #1.
I think at least a part of that problem is that the usual support ticketing process infantilizes users. If you call in and the first question is along the lines of "is it plugged in? have you tried turning it off and on again?" then of course your next ticket will take that level of questioning into account. And call in even for a switched off monitor next time. Because they wouldn't ask that question if that wasn't their job to fix, right?
Also, of course users will try and fail to fix issues themselves. They should be applauded for the intent and empowered to be successful next time (if possible). Instead they are usually berated for failing and breaking stuff along the way. Which leads to the usual sheepish "I didn't do anything, I didn't touch it, it always was broken like that".
Of course there is a minimum number of imbeciles. But most people can be educated and empowered, so they do behave like adults when dealing with problems. "The system" just has to give them that chance.
My experience: when tech support are (very) competent, (very) patient, (very) people-loving people, left to do their work in a low-turnover place with no ticket system, it is (very much) more efficient in the short-term, and absolute magic in the long-term.
Things that take a support person 5 minutes are the bulk of the job, and those things have to be accounted for. If you slack on that, people will make their own determination of what constitutes a "simple" issue, you'll wind up with most of the issues the help desk solves not showing up in their metrics at all, and it looks to the higher-ups like the support people are just lazy.
In the places I've worked, support always _loved_ the "idiots" because their problems were simple. Being able to resolve a ticket by putting in a single screw, telling the person to turn on their computer, or initiating a password reset was the easiest kind of win you could get.
Needing tickets is just reality. Companies see IT as a cost center so they need to justify their existence, which they do with tickets. Creating tickets itself doesn’t need to be adversarial, but the process can be used to try to get people to leave you alone (or at least make it onerous to do so) if that’s what you want.
With this said, if the management demands IT has tickets, this is something that must be reiterated to every employee. "If you go to IT without a ticket, they cannot and will not help you"
While you as an employee may not have been adversarial, it is extremely common for angry users demand help right now for their life ending issue that's more important than anything else in the world! You know, they need that PDF printed right now... While you happen to be working on the server that's keeping 100 other people from working.
(Realistically, everyone outside the department knew me by name. They would call and ask for me any number of ways including outright lying. They'd tell me I was the sole source of any problems getting solved! "Everyone else in that department can't do a thing.")
Please just put tickets in before you reach out to IT and have the number ready. Print it off, even.
Process like jira tickers are literally the thing that improves quality of life of non-idle IT worker.
Your example is actually example of the above. You want your screw to be treated as #1 priority right now. Allowing the technician to finish what he was doing and only then get to your request is not fast enough. But, with that being the norm, work becomes jumping between tasks and trying to finish three things parallelly. It becomes impossible or super ineffective to finish larger tasks.
How many of these did we do, how many of those, how long did it take to close this type of ticket, etc. So while the technical people could fix things on the spot, they are not allowed to due to the demand for metrics and tracking.
I can see both sides of the debate, but there needs to be a good balance. We can get stuff done and provide metrics without too much overhead.
About ten times as long as wihout using the ticket system and involving middle management
But HR themselves wont check whether you do jira tickets or whether you do something else. For HR, IT is one of many departments with own set of rules that HR does not get to decide.
The only way they are being unreasonable is if your company is in the high single or low to mid double digits of employees and they are using it as an excuse to avoid work. For large companies, there's enough trouble with managers and officers of the company all thinking they can just take an IT worker at their pleasure regardless of other workload, so they're probably going to be extra defensive for anyone else.
You should work IT servicedesk for a few months for a large company that doesn't want to plow money into IT and see how it is.
IT Operations lives and dies by all the “5 minute real quick” tasks. The fact is that many requests fall into that category, but there can be 100s of those per day. The only way to manage that is by forcing people to open tickets, and then handle them according to priority.
Triage is incredibly useful in life and death situations, and has some value in many others. Sticking to unmovable policy no matter what however is not IT Support, it's Corporate, Faceless IT Support that makes everyone who isn't IT dislike us.
The world doesn't have to be this way, and rigid adherance to policy and your disparaging attitude are some of the main reasons I hope I never have to work in soulless corporate IT again.
As with all the other criticism in this topic, the fault is with the execs, and not the frontline IT workers.
Running a tight ship may not make everyone happy, but it does force people to prioritize what really needs to get done vs what’s not critical.
No one wants to take 4 hours to replace a screw. But the answer is not always so cut and dry. The best we can do is to find a balance. For example, the IT guy fixes the screw right there BUT ensures a ticket was put in by the customer within next few hours.
The situation you describe does sound pretty extreme though. Maybe your org is large enough to warrant it who knows. I don't think I could work someplace that had that much red tape.
I think there can easily be two queues. The formal ticket queue and the "lets just do it to save admin"-queue.
Like, big tasks can't block small fast tasks due to congestion.
The person recommending a clamshell replacement was telling you "I don't know what screw goes in that hole and actually I don't know how to order that off the vendor's website". They do not turn screws for a living and don't have the technical vocabulary to cope with your problem.
The only way they can get rid of you is to make it the vendor's problem; which means they need to transform your problem into something in the vendor's catalog. Hence, clamshell replacement.
When you went on-site with a ticket it seems like the front desk had no easier option left than to find a "screwdriver turner" (with the big pile of broken stuff in the back room) and get them to actually fix your problem.
But it would have been interesting had you told them you couldn't use your computer because the screw is missing, and how do they expect you to log the ticket? Sounds like there is an arsehole in the service desk. I'd lodge a complaint internally.