So, I've worked in IT practically all of my life. I've spent that time trying my best to be honest because that's just the type of person I am. I started off working as a systems administrator for a small company and moved on to an MSP organization. It was a big step for me. I thought I was in for a bunch of new experiences and getting to provide service to more people. Getting to collaborate on issues and solutions with colleagues with varying levels of knowledge and experience!
I was elated at the prospects.
I did not expect that management would tell me to lie to our customers 70 – 80% of the time for every issue.
Worry not, I am with a new MSP that pays a decent wage.
The MSP had an unsustainable business model. MSP clients were guaranteed to always be able to call and speak to a real living person 8:30-5. Owner would frequently field either Vendor phone calls or meetings for hours out of the day and be totally unavailable. We had a team of 4 technicians, one HR rep/365 manager, the owner, and our front desk associate when I joined the team. Fast forward 8 months. One of our techs lost his personal transportation and after 3 days of not coming to work the owner lost his cool and fired him for abandonment. With the knowledge that Tech's car was in the shop and having been notified that he would receive it back in 5 days time.
The “Team” after this consisted of 3 Techs and I took on the work of the guy who left. Dynamics of the team at this point was the following:
- Owner + HR in a relationship, but not married for decades. Not sharing the same apartment/house either to avoid falling into common-law-marriage.
- Tech 1: long-time friend of owner, network manager, dated Owner's sister in the past.
- Tech 2: husband of Owner's sister.
- Front desk associate: HR's neice.
- One of the most time-consuming clients is a business the owner's brother manages, is owned by their Father, and is assisted in Management by the Owner.
I didn't find out these dynamics until 10 months had passed when Tech 2 suffered a heart attack and was unable to assist with work for 6 months. He was mostly on mechanical hardware devices and installations though. Running cables, fixing printers and scanners, etc.
To give you an idea of the owner: he would start CMD, run ping 127.0.0.1 -t, tell the person on the phone that they could continue working on other things while his scan was running until me or another tech could take over. For the uninitiated: all that does is send a little packet of information back to the computer every couple of seconds until you stop it.
Frequently used company licenses on personal devices for the client management, but he didn't tell them that. It was added to the monthly m365 license or to the RMM and Antivirus bill.
When he did this one time, he assigned the ticket to me with the contact information of the client management and no special instructions. The ticket was assigned to apply their corporate m365 business standard license to the computer belonging to client management's spouse. I looked at the ticket and fixed the contact info to the spouse as we had it on file. No answer. Realized that Client management was down in Florida on vacation. The spouse had no mobile number listed in our CRM contacts list.
What to do?
Owner is on the phone with vendor. His door is shut.
I call Client Manager. Assumed Owner had told Client Managemer where the license was coming from. The conversation went like this. (cm= client manager, cms= “” spouse)
-Me: So can I get access to CMS' computer to install Office?
-CM: Have I paid for it already? Where's the license coming from?
-Me: Owner said to use the spare on your M365 tenent.
-CM: I don't want to mix CMS or my personal accounts with our company. I want to talk with Owner.
-Me: Okay, hold on let me see if I can get Owner on the phone for you. I thought Owner discussed this with you already.
-CM: Owner did not.
-Me: pages owner…
-Owner: No reply
-Me: I would really like to apologize, Owner will need to call you back. I totally understand your position on this though. It makes sense to me.
-CM: Oh, no. Don't worry about it. I'm not upset with you. I told Owner I was willing to pay for this.
Fast forward 20 minutes. Owner storms over to my desk.
-Owner: Why did you call CM?? The ticket was for CMS! Now I have CM breathing down my neck! Why didn't you talk to me, first?!
-Me: The CRM didn't have CMS's Mobile number. They are in Florida right now. I contacted the nearest person who could put CMS on the phone with me to complete the ticket. There were no notes on the ticket.
-Owner: You shouldn't have told him about the license! It wasn't going to cost him A DIME! That's what I told him! It was in the ticket notes!
-Me: pulls up the ticket with my notes and the summary. There's no mention of not telling CM or CMS where the license came from No, it doesn't.
-Owner: Front Desk should have added it! You had no right to say what you did! Now, I have this mess to clean up.
-Me: Total disbelief and bewilderment.
-Owner: storms off to Front Desk
I had already started looking for another job, but this cemented that I didn't want to work there any longer than I had to.