When the CEO’s wife decided she wanted a Blackberry wireless email device about a year ago, our entire IT department (four of us – a group of contractors hired to replace a poor previous IT group) deliberated for days over how to handle the situation.
The old IT folks had allowed her to keep corporate equipment at home and had supported her. We were worried about the implications of this – she is not a corporate employee and the setup would be out of our control – BUT, she is the CEO’s wife. In the end she got a brand-new computer and a Blackberry.
At first things went well, but the environment in which she worked became unstable after awhile. She was using a product for the Blackberry that was initially intended for demo purposes: the Desktop Redirector. We needed to make a change to the Blackberry setup.
Later, she wanted MS Office. Our helpdesk agent installed it at the corporate office from a network share. This caused problems down the road and an onsite visit hadto be scheduled to reinstall using the CDs so that the installation could be modified later.
Through all of these relatively minor issues she has steadily voiced what we all perceive to be unreasonable expectations regarding the performance of her equipment. She has repeatedly jabbed the support staff who try to assist her. She reports how “incompetent” we are because we cannot prevent a 5MB attachment from violating her ISP-imposed mail quota.
Consider some of her most common statements:
“I don’t care.”
“I do not want to call and talk to any technical person. I should not have to.”
“You are being paid to make these computers work.”
This situation is critical. We are in danger of losing our jobs and my boss who has been working in the IT industry for 19 years has never been placed in a situation like this before. We are at a loss. Can anyone please provide guidance?