I knew I should have run away after my interview when I asked about how IT is perceived by internal clients, and my future manager said that "we don't see them as clients, but as partners."
It didn't take long for me to figure out that IT was THE most hated group in the whole company and that my job was the definition of a Catch 22.
On the one hand you have clients who have a laundry list of complaints about our systems. And who can blame them? The systems are an embarrassment for a company of that size. They're so bad that I would guess that they cost the average user 2 hours a day in lost productivity.
But to make matters worse, you have an IT group that is in a state of denial. Their attitude is that users are a bunch of complainers. The motto is that "the customer is always wrong," and you're not allowed to admit that there are any problems. It takes 10 mouse clicks to select "OK" in a program? That's within normal parameters. But we have a workaround where you only have to click 8 times. Problem solved. When IT does a project, we are told to help "guide" the customer about what they want, not the other way around. Listening to the customer is not in the vocabulary. It's our way or forget about getting anything done.
I left because I was tired of being the bad guy. When I took the "company" position with customers, I got yelled at by them. When I tried to advocate for customers with IT management, I got yelled at by management. No win situation.
