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The original was posted on /r/talesfromtechsupport by /u/Automatic_Mulberry on 2025-01-21 18:10:00+00:00.

In the giant corporation I work for, a change request contains work units, and each work unit is assigned to a team and then a member of that team. The way it’s supposed to work, of course, is that the change request is reviewed and approved by all the teams assigned to do work.

In the (all too common) event that a change requires work that was not part of the original request, an additional ticket can be created and attached to the change, so that everything is documented. The catch here is that this requires further review after the change is complete; the people who wrote the change request are made to explain what happened, and to rework their processes to avoid adding work to changes midstream like this. It’s intentionally kind of a pain in the ass to go through this additional review, to keep people from bypassing the whole review and approval process.

/background

So the other day, I am working along, and I catch a ticket: “In support of ongoing change number 8675309, please confirm that this machine is online” I look up the change request by the number, and I see that my team does not have a work unit assigned to us. However, the work is so trivial and so low in risk (never zero, but a gnat’s whisker away in this case) that I decide not to attach the ticket to the change. I check the machine, see that it’s up and happy, report that fact, and close the ticket. Done and dusted, or so I thought.

However, the ticketing system has been abused like this before, so there is apparently a filter that looks for change numbers in the ticket text, and automatically attaches them to the referenced changes.

On my next work day, I had an angry email from the change requestor. They wanted me to detach the ticket from the change request. It was apparently deeply, deeply inconvenient that they had to explain themselves to upper management about all this. Of course, they copied my boss and his boss and his boss, which runs me right out of political space to do as they ask. They’ve just told my senior boss that the policy was followed, so I can’t possibly now break policy.

I replied: “Sorry, I didn’t attach the ticket to the change request. An automated process did, because you wrote ‘In support of ongoing change number 8675309…’ in the ticket. And anyway, that’s how the policy works - if this is work related to your change, then it has to be documented as such. I think the attachment is correct by policy. Please feel free to check with my managers, whom you have already copied on this email thread, if you have additional discussion on the matter.”

I thought that would kill the issue stone dead, but they doubled down: “Don’t you know I have to explain this to the change review council now?” I was warming up my keyboard to reply when my boss did for me: “I’ve reviewed this, and I agree that Otto is correct here. Any work related to a change should be included in the change request.”

I didn’t hear back after that.