[mikester]

So, yeah - I'm a guy and I can take abuse I feel pretty well. But I don't particularly like to tolerate things that are over the top.

I've got a server admin who is having trouble with his new storage arrays. For some reason the network isn't working right for him. We have been going around and around with him for the past 48 hours. The connections he is trying to make are through a firewall in our network, I have permitted what he asked me to permit. None of those permits are being used by his application though (which means the info he gave me was wrong) but I can see what is being denied and work around it. Permit what he seems to need, it still doesn't work but nothing is being denied.

He puts his PC in the same network, bypassing the firewall - it works. It absolutely is a network issue at this point. Never mind that during this entire exercise - the storage device's web interface is able to be reached from anywhere on our network. Because the application he's trying to use - isn't working through the firewall he wants me to do a blanket permit for everything possible so that nothing is being blocked. He doesn't want to listen to my explanation as to why that won't work or do anything to help (there isn't any traffic to permit - if there were I would see the denies in the firewall). He'll have none of it! He goes completely off on me - "I don't need to listen to your explanation of YOUR network problem!" then he goes on to elaborate about how I'm the network engineer and he's not, so he doesn't care about the technical stuff I'm talking about - all he cares about is that his stuff isn't working and he's tired of me trying to point the finger away from the network. If 'Frank' (one of our engineers who recently left the company) were here - he'd have it fixed by now.

So now, I'm ready to hang up but my coworker gets me to maintain - I believe this was a mistake - I should have hung up but I didn't. We continue, I do something short of a blanket permit - see nothing (as I expected), I do a couple of other things to verify that the traffic from his application is getting through the firewalls and finally tell him at this point there is nothing I can do. We'll have to setup our sniffer and look at it tomorrow. He's giving me grief for loosing two days which I come back with - 'you're not the only one who has lost two days'.

I wish I had hung up. Tomorrow I feel like I should ask his manager for someone else to work on this problem with because I would prefer not to work with the person again.

I wish I had hung up. I didn't, what can I do not besides just let it go. I'm fine with letting it go if that is the right thing to do, my understanding is that his guy is like this and that's just the way it is. If it happens again - click. period.

"Frank" - the former engineer was better than me overall - but I know these firewalls better than some of the developers who write code for them and "Frank" will be the first to admit that. "Frank" doesn't work here anymore - get over it.