I get a call today from a clearly distressed employee.
User: I’ve been asked to build out a sharepoint site for my team and I hear you’re the guy that creates all the sites.
Me: I build the basic site or sub-site and set permissions, it’s up to the site owner and designers to customize it.
User: I need your help.
Me: What’s up?
User: I’m a new employee and I padded my resume to get this job. I said was was great with Microsoft products and an expert in SharePoint. I’d never heard of SharePoint so I assumed it wasn’t something a lot of companies use… I was wrong.
Me: So how can I help you?
User: Can you help me build a SharePoint site for my team?
Me: No.
User: Please.
Me: No, I don’t have the time. I can point you to some resources from Microsoft and YouTube.
(Mind you in the time it takes me to search for tutorial, I could have spun up a site)
User: I don’t have time to learn it, I’m begging you, please.
Me: I understand you’re frustrated, but you lied to get a job, you’re assigned a task management thought you were capable of doing and now you’re asking someone else to do the work for you.
User: I don’t want you to do the work for me.
Me: I offered you resources to teach you how to build out your site and you rejected them…
User: Because I don’t have time to learn it, I need this site done by Monday.
Me: That’s over 60 hours from now. You have plenty of time to get a rudimentary understanding of Sharepoint design, enough to make a decent, functional, site.
User: But I have so much going on this weekend, I don’t have time.
Me: Well, from the sound of things, you’re about to have a whole lot more free time to learn sharepoint. Best of luck.
User: But…
Me: I’ll email you some links for the tutorials.