Probably not quite the same level but I do the IT for big, posh schools.
Between jobs once, I joined an agency who placed me in a very posh school in London. This particular one (with a famous real/parody Mum's twitter) hired me for a day to evaluate me for a job at their main site (which occupies the ENTIRE road, split among dozens of buildings and little sites). It was one of those "we'll have you for a day, if you work out, we'll just keep asking you back the next day" kind of deals.
Turn up, meet the team (about 15 people in total I think), big plush offices, people in glass-offices having IT strategy meetings, four layers of management, several IT service desks across the various sites etc. etc. I was asked to shadow one of their techs, and over the course of the day we managed to cover quite a chunk of their site - from little back rooms, thousands-of-pupils helpdesk, back-end comms rooms, brand new buildings, etc.
While I quite understand that I was shadowing / etc., allow me to describe *every* IT query, problem or task I personally witnessed that day - of anyone I met - while shadowing a first level tech throughout an 8 hour period in a very, very busy school, including going to / sitting in every site they had, spending hours in all their main support rooms, etc.
- Taken to an in-school support desk room. Three/four technicians, first and second level. Senior manager/teacher walks in with a broken laptop. Literally dead. Doesn't turn on. Was issued to him only yesterday. He walks out with it, while yelling at the support team, about 20 minutes later. They literally did nothing. I asked questions when he was gone: They didn't ticket it. It was a school laptop. It was definitely broken. They didn't care. He was "just a moaner". "You know what they are like". "We have a pile of imaged laptops here, but nah." With a support team leader saying the same. Like... wow... that would have got me sacked in a state school let alone anything higher. They liked to keep their ticket system clean, so there was virtually nothing on their helpdesk lists, I got to read every ticket (I was that bored of waiting that I asked). They were all first-level stuff. I literally offered to take on one that I spotted at the top of the list which was just to change a VGA cable. They wouldn't let me / the tech do it, and nobody else did anything about it either.
- Sat in the "main" support room (the big fancy office where the IT strategists / directors looked out of their glass offices over the fancy technical desks that had... quite literally... 5 techs, 5 dual-screen fancy-shite setups for them, not a tool in sight and precisely one computer under repair. There was nothing else going on at all). Must have been there an hour or more. Nothing. Fobbing off of people who came in. One "I'll just go do that thing" and wandering off of one tech. That was it. Not a machine repaired, not a software installed, not a configuration changed, not a documentation edited even.
- Lunchtime. No, I kid you not. The rest of the time was walking around, not even looking at a helpdesk, or machines, or anything. Just wandering and talking to teams who weren't doing anything. Lunchtime was made a fuss of as "they provide lunch". I know mate, most posh schools do. I'm not amazed by a school dinner, though, thanks so I sat with him for about an hour as he ate his lunch.
- Taken to "the new site", a refurb of probably an antique million pound piece of real estate of theirs that was becoming offices. We walk there. It takes half an hour.
- We tour the building but we're there because there's one new office in there, with new desks, fresh carpets, etc. PC's sitting on the desk, already imaged. Apparently the tech "gets them like that" and isn't ever allowed to image anything. Everything comes fresh-prepared for them. Fair enough, maybe it saves them a bunch of time, but I suspect what's happening the the first-levels are coasting doing nothing to make the second-levels have big teams, and someone on third-level actually digs out SCCM (P.S. note that I haven't mentioned any software, process, etc. that they use... because I never witnessed even an AD Users & Computers screen, let alone anything that wasn't an empty helpdesk web page - these computers were never even turned on after cabling).
- We "arrange" the computers. This means literally shuffle them along the desk so they are near the plugs.
- One of the computers has an absolute disaster! Oh no! The Cat5e cable to go to the wall is too short by about 40cm! What we will do?!
- Ensue a FORTY MINUTE conversation about what to do about it between a bunch of techs of both first and second level. I'm incredulous at this point.
- I get bored and say "Get a longer cable? Doesn't that huge comms room you showed me (with a huge floor-to-ceiling rack with just two switches in it, in a room that's at least four times bigger than necessary, but had a stash of spare machines, cables, tools, spare parts, etc. in it) just down the hall not have a spare, brand-new patch lead that isn't 50cm in it? No, we can't do that, they cry, without any explanation.
- Ensue a TWENTY MINUTE dither while I literally sit on a table waiting for them to come up with something.
- They phone the main support base. They talk for TEN MINUTES.
- Seemingly no resolution, they disappear telling me to stay there. The temptation to just walk 50 yards and CHANGE THE FECKING CABLE FOR A LONGER ONE from one of the fresh patch cables in sealed packets that I can SEE is so strong but I resist. (If I hadn't asked directly, I would have claimed ignorance and done it, but I didn't want to be seen as taking things I'd been told not to).
- Half an hour later, the guy has ran back to the main support, picked up a cable, and come back. It's 70cm instead of 50. It's not long enough, but they stretch it and make it work.
- They dither doing literally NOTHING else, just "arranging" machines. I'm seething.
- We go back to the main site. We hang around in the first helpdesk area for a little bit. They relay their success story to their peers, who haven't moved and still have the same tickets on-screen.
- I go home, they pay me a full day's wage. On the way out, I seriously consider popping into the bursar's office (generally responsible for the site facilities like IT), and hesitate around his door - I really wanted to just have a quiet word telling them about my day and what they are paying people - including me - to do. But I realised that they were ALL in on it. Even the directors, strategists, team leaders, etc. They're all doing feck-all all day long. If the bursar doesn't know, he's not doing his job either.
- When I get back, they've told my agency that they don't need me again, because I wasn't the right fit for their team. No mention that we literally did feck all, annoyed senior management for fun, didn't complete a single ticket (the tech with me literally did NOT fulfil a single ticket to his name all day - the cabling thing wasn't on there, and if it had we didn't do *anything* with them anyway).
I honestly considered whether it was a test of some kind, so I wrote a review of the place with my agency, complaining about their process and how they operate and, basically, wasted my day. Nothing happened. The feedback from the agency (run by a good friend) was "Yeah, they're really weird, we can never place anyone with them for long, everyone says the same". Apparently, it's been like that for years. And they happily pay through the nose for agency rates to get techs in for a day and do nothing with them. I suppose it looks good on paper and they have the money to burn and it makes what I'd call the *actual* IT team (somewhere around the third-level was where they did things like deploy software, god knows what level of management actually authorised purchases and staffing) have a huge team under them.
It was literally the kind of place that if I could work there (e.g. job offer, etc.) even today, then I wouldn't, not even for twice my current salary. No way I could deal with people who work like that without having to speak up and/or just blast through all the tickets, get them done in a day, and show everyone up / piss them off.
I was thoroughly disgusted. I bet the fee-paying parents would go absolute ape if they realised and could understand what was happening and where their money was going. Instead, I already had a job pending at another prestigious posh school (but it couldn't start until the April, hence my fill-in agency work)... been there five years... and do more in ten minutes every single day than I did all day at that school.