I support a department where a mid-level supervisor regularly reports technical problems by email instead of using the ticketing process. Her messages often include phrases like "not working again" and copy senior managers, even when the issue is resolved quickly. I'm starting to feel like she's trying to make IT look bad, although I may be taking the tone too personally.
For example, a hosted client used by her team was unavailable twice. The first time, the client had been shut down instead of logged off, so I disabled the shutdown option. The second issue was caused by a time mismatch between the server and client and required help from another team. Both problems were fixed, but she reported them with management copied.
How should I respond to this kind of communication? Should I address the tone directly, insist on tickets, improve monitoring, or simply ignore the implied criticism and focus on resolving the issues?
4 Answers
You may be overreacting to the wording, but the outages themselves are legitimate concerns. The user experienced the same result twice: the application was unavailable. From her perspective, “again” may be frustration rather than a deliberate attack.
Fixing the immediate symptom is not always the same as solving the problem. Add monitoring for the application and the hosted client, verify time synchronization, restrict unnecessary shutdown permissions through policy, and investigate any recurring failures. Your users should not be the first monitoring alert you receive.
If she keeps bypassing the process, have your manager speak with her manager rather than making it a personal confrontation. Leadership can clarify the required support channel and escalation rules.
At the same time, make sure your own management knows about recurring incidents, known causes, and anything you need to prevent them. Regular incident summaries and metrics are much stronger protection than trying to prove that someone’s emails sound rude.
Do not fight passive aggression with sarcasm or retaliation. Reply to the facts, not the subtext. A useful response would be: “Thanks for reporting this. The cause was X, it was resolved at Y time, and we changed Z to reduce the chance of recurrence. Please submit future incidents through the ticketing system so we can track them properly.”
Keep the relevant managers copied if she includes them. Clear, calm communication will usually make the contrast obvious without you having to call her out.
The best response is to stay professional and make the process do the work for you. Reply briefly that the issue needs to be submitted through the ticketing system so it can be prioritized, documented, and tracked. If it is a genuine outage, follow the defined escalation path; otherwise, copying senior management does not change the workflow.
Also document the incident, cause, resolution, and any prevention steps. That way, if management asks questions, you have a clear timeline instead of an argument about tone.
That makes sense. I need to stop treating every email as a personal accusation and make sure the issue is recorded through the normal process.
In this particular case, she had shut down the hosted client instead of logging off, and I have removed that option. The time issue was separate and has also been corrected.