I Was Not Expecting This...

I don't do as much in depth support in our department as the other guys do, simply because I do not have the experience and I most likely would cause more problems than needed. So tend to do a lot of junior sysadmin stuff as well as ticket dispatching and report generation. I also am the SME (Subject Matter Expert) on our processes, though I am not as much of an expert as I would like to be.

With that in mind, I periodically need to ask for help or guidance on certain tickets we get. One such case came in yesterday for one of my customers on the east coast. He was having a problem with a server in Canada. We do not administer the servers in Canada so we normally leave those cases alone so the team in Montreal can work them. This case was a little different since the customer was mine. That being the case, I e-mailed 2 of the admins who appeared to have the lease on their plates, the info regarding this customer/ticket. The e-mail was short, polite, and to the point. One of the admins, a female, e-mailed me back a longish note. The note dripped with ire and sarcasm, with a line near the end of it saying something along the lines of, "I am sorry if I appear curt..."

I responded and apologized for the intrusion and began to explain why I sent her the note. My customer was having trouble with a Citrix server and I needed someone in Canada to look into it. In the US, all of our Citrix servers are Unix and naturally since we work for the same company, I assumed the Canadian servers were the same. I was mistaken. The servers in Canada were owned my the Windows team.

To which she responded to me again in a similar manner as the first time. She did not seem to have my read my last e-mail, so I decided to elaborate a bit more, in very polite tones. She responded a final time (did she *have* to have the final word?) with a half-hearted apology saying something akin to not being so rude to me in the future and I she hoped I would continue to ask questions in the future.

While I am not vindictive, I do not plan on asking her anything unless no one else is available. If I had truly done something bad/wrong, I would expect behavior like hers. However, I humbled myself and asked her for information and she was far from polite.

"El Gee, we are supposed to turn the other check, aren't we?" Yes we are and I am turning it...away from her and more abuse.