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Why Not To Contact Barry

Don’t pick up the phone and call Barry1 if any of the following conditions are true:

  1. You have not examined the error messages that have been returned.
  2. You have not researched what the error messages you received mean
  3. You haven’t opened a ticket normally yet
  4. You haven’t seen Barry’s normal processes through yet
  5. You expect to get special help because of your “previous relationship” with Barry

All of these are recipes for disaster. You can pretty well expect Barry to ask you about the first four.

All of the Barrys I know are firm believers that your failure to do your own research and examination is not a cause for alarm to them. So, circumventing the normal routes to resolution is not in the cards.

In addition, most of the time, Barry’s effectiveness as an employee is not measured in how many phone calls and emails they answer from people like you. Instead, it is typically measured by how many trouble tickets are resolved. If you try to circumvent that process and don’t even bother to open a ticket, you are setting yourself up to fail. Barrys like their jobs and want their bonuses just like you do. But if mail isn’t getting delivered and your bonus is in jeopardy, understand that this is not sufficient reason for Barry to jeopardize their own bonus (and hopes for retention when layoffs happen… again2) by depressing the standard of their own worth to the company in favor of your phone call or instant message.

So, do yourself a favor: work the system and do your own research first.

Footnotes

  1. Al Iverson, Too Much Contact (Oct. 7, 2009), http://www.spamresource.com/2009/10/too-much-contact.html. ↩︎
  2. David Wilkerson and Dan Gallagher, AOL Says May Lay Off One-Third of Employees, MarketWatch (Nov. 19, 2009), https://www.marketwatch.com/story/aol-says-may-lay-off-one-third-of-employees-2009-11-19. ↩︎
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About the Author

Mickey Chandler
Mickey Chandler Consultant & Attorney

Mickey Chandler is a Consultant & Attorney with over 28 years of experience in Email Deliverability & Privacy Law. He has a strong background in email authentication infrastructure (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), ISP and mailbox provider relations, anti-spam policy and compliance, CAN-SPAM and state anti-spam law gained through overseeing the Abuse & Compliance team at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, originating the ISP relations role at Informz (now part of Higher Logic), and working in the fight against spam since 1997. He holds a B.A. in Government, a B.S. in Computer Information Systems, and a J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center. He is a certified CIPP/US professional and a certified CIPM professional.