On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:27:03 -0600 Stan Hoeppner stan@hardwarefreak.com articulated:
Jerry put forth on 11/15/2010 2:26 PM:
I am not seeing where you got this "self contradictory statements" from.
Then apparently you didn't read the thread. The OP told his users long ago "do this". Then he made a change and told them "oh, you don't really need to do that anymore". Then, possibly, down the road, he tells them, "oh, now you need to do it the old way again".
Users see that as self contradiction. Or "why can't he make up his mind?"
Furthermore, a reasonably educate individual does not see "change" in the terms of anal discomfort, unless they as conservatives. A conservative being someone who never envisioned a new concept that they did not dislike. In any case, this is not a job for the PR department. Rather, it just requires someone with a "set". More apropos, I believe you are simply blowing this whole thing out of proportion.
I'm blowing nothing out of proportion. I simply made an observation. I don't know about Europe, or anywhere else, but in American cusiness culture, in general, most users either dislike or outright hate the IT staff, regardless of the level of education. In fact, it's the ones who "think" they are highly educated who usually hate IT the most, because they think that given the chance they could do the job better. This is because they don't have a clue as to the work that goes on "behind the scenes", and the fact that their requests may never get implemented, or may take 6 months to go through the IT vetting process before being approved. The requirement of calling IT just to get a piece of software installed on the user's desktop because the user doesn't have rights is the first thing to turn users against IT.
Now, throw in the original scenario up top, and it's easy to understand how and why users would resent the best practices policy espoused by the OP.
My original reply to the OP was geared toward saving him grief. My recommendation to the OP was to simply say nothing to the users to save himself potential grief. That simple.
I believe you are making this into more than it needs to be. Have you ever worked in an IT environment with over 1000 users? And those users all love the IT staff, baking cookies for them etc? Send me contact info PLEASE so I can forward my resume.
I have no idea how they do things in Europe either since I live in the USA. One of my first jobs was maintaining a network for approximately 500 users for a municipality. My first project was installing Postfix and Courier, since changed to Dovecot to replace a pre-2000 Exchange box. I would have gladly stayed with Exchange if they would have allocated the funds. That would have taken too long to get approved so I just ditched everything and installed the new system over a weekend. The point being, you do what you have to do.
I spend 25 years as a High School & semi-pro football official. On any close play, 50% of the players and fans are going to think you are nuts. You just learn to live with it, aka "Grow a set". You cannot please everyone, so please yourself. If you are going to worry and cry over whether or not Joe Smoe in accounting is mad at you, then perhaps it is you who should find a new line of work. I am not here to placate the company's employees.
-- Jerry ✌ Dovecot.user@seibercom.net
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The Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.