Sometimes, the enemy is within the organization.

I get a call from $customer about issues with setting up DKIM with our mail filtering product, specifically with an alternate email domain. I wrote all of our internal documentation on DKIM, so I know exactly what they're talking about. I even take the extra step of duplicating the ever loving hell out of it with my own account.

Package notes and detailed description, attachments, screenshots, logs, etc. up for escalation, and put in a detailed note.

Hey, Tier 3 Engineering, I'm noting this issue with DKIM configuration on $Product. I've attached screenshots, examples, logs, from the customer's server and my own showing the same thing. Is this a feature or a bug?

Three weeks pass, and I get a response.

Hey, $Gringo, we need more information. Can we get more current info?

Uhhhh, ok. I replicate everything, again, for a second time, zip up all the files and send it up.

Here you go. All the info is from my environment since I'm not going to bother $Customer with this since I can duplicate it.

Another three weeks goes by, and I check on the request.

Nothing.

I walk over to the Engineer.

"Hey, $Engineer, what's going on with this ticket?"

"I'm not sure what they're asking, what you're asking."

So, right now I'm getting a little annoyed.

"When they send out through our product, the DKIM signature isn't being applied to $Alternate_domain."

"I still don't understand."

So, about this point I'm getting red in the face.

"You know, domain keys identified mail?"

"Yesss......"

"You know what it does, riiiiiight?"

"Yes."

"So you know it adds a cryptographic signature to the message header that can be verified against the public key, riiiiiight."

"Yeah..."

"It's not doing that."

"Ok, I'll get back to you."

I'm convinced at this point he has no idea what I'm talking about, and the customer is getting hot. Not at me, but at Engineering. Who has now been thrown under da bus. The customer and I are cool and work on many issues together, so we have a history. He knows I don't throw another department under the bus unless it's a complete shitstorm.

A week later, an email:

"I still don't know what's going on here."

At this time, I'm done. I go into the manager's office and have a nice chat session with him. After showing him the work I've done, and the BS I've gotten back, he storms off to look into it himself.

He comes back an hour later.

"The engineer that was working on this is not familiar with DKIM, so I finally got him to move it on to Development."

I turn red. He could tell I want to go over there and start flipping desks on people. And I'm not normally an anger kind of guy.

"And no, you can't beat him senseless."

Damn.

It finally, FINALLY gets over to dev who takes 10 minutes of looking at it and $Product, to swivel around in their chairs and go

"Yeah, not a bug, kind of like a feature that's missing. Looks like it never had that capability, for some reason. Probably something left by the dev that is no longer here."

Afterwords, I worked out a plan with Management, if engineering pulls that shit again, I can step over them.

I laughed during this discussion

"You know, it's really annoying when you have to explain things in depressing level of details to people with higher pay grades than you that should have a better understanding of this than you do."

Management could only nod, knowing there was nothing they could do: a different department, outside of their direct influence.

I hate it when the people I depend on to get things done that should know more than me act like total and complete $Users.