Battle of Wits with the Unarmed

[samwize.livejournal.com]

Scene: techs preparing new laptops for sales force. One sales guy, a real dinosaur who is utterly computer clueless, is having his files and email and so forth moved.

Salesasaur: "Now, you guys make sure to bring over my screensaver, y'hear?"

Me: "I'll see what we can do. Hey [other tech], is that screensaver just a .scr file?"

OT: "Nope. It's got all kinds of settings and stuff. Maybe it's freeware?"

Me: "I'll check." *google-google-google*

Google: "WARNING! THIS IS SPYWARE! MALWARE! RUN AWAY SCREAMING! DON'T CONNECT TO ME FROM YOUR NETWORK! I'M SCARED!AAAAAAHHHH!!!"

Me: "Ooooohhhh-kaaaay.... Salesasaur, we can't put that screensaver on your new computer. It's malware."

Salesasaur: "I don't care. Just put it on there."

Me: "No. Do you know what 'spyware' is?"

Salesasaur: "No. I don't really care about that stuff. I just like the butterflies [on the screensaver]."

Me: [thumbnail sketch of the concept of spyware]

Salesasaur: "Well, I don't care! I've been using it for 5 years!! Just put it on there, already!"

Me: "No. I won't. You've been transmitting your personal information, slowing down your computer, and opening up our networks to bullshit viruses and identity thieves for five years! Because _you_ won't learn how to use the tools required for your job, _I_ have to do a shitload more work and clean our network since you so kindly brought a massively infected machine to our main office and just plugged the damn thing in. _I_ don't care if you "like the butterflies". I don't care if you like licking tires because they taste good: it's still not hygienic. Now, I'm removing your ability to install new programs onto _our_ computer, setting up some extra anti-virus and anti-spyware software scans that you can't turn off onto that shiny new laptop you'll never learn how to use, and basically keeping _you_ from shooting _us_ in the foot ever again. And if you complain, I'm revoking your rights to use our email server. Don't fuck with me today, Salesasaur. You're totally in the wrong, and I'm totally in the right, and besides, I'm leaving the company in two weeks, so I'd LOVE to go talk to our boss. Now: Walk away. I'm tired of your crap."

Salesasaur: *flabberghasted* "....I- I- I-"

Me: "You, WHAT?! You want to apologize to me for having to support your sorry ass? You want to apologize for your extremely poor judgment? You want to tell me how a man with absolutely no understanding of computers and no desire to understand them decided to sell enterprise grade software? You're sorry for treating the techs like they were your employees and not your peers? You, WHAT, exactly? WALK. AWAY. NOW."

Salesasaur walks away.


Later I went to the boss and he agreed with me 100%.
Damn that felt good.

Comments

[kukla-red.livejournal.com]

Now tell me what were their names
What were there names
Did you have a friend on the Good Rueben James?

Sorry, folkie flashback.

Good on you for telling that idiot where to stick it. Too bad you had to wait until you were leaving before you could tell it straight.

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

Thank you for striking a blow for our side!

[samwize.livejournal.com]

Heh. I've been digging on "Song of America" (www.amazon.com/Song-America-Various-Artists/dp/B000T3GK8O).

And I didn't have to wait, I woulda said pretty much the same thing any other time. This just happened to be when all the salesdroids came home to roost for their yearly hobknobbery with the home office.

[egearman.livejournal.com]

You are full of win today. Have a beer on me.

|OOOOO|_
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[egearman.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... The beer appears to have gone via Air France.... sorry.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

Try pre.

|OOOOO|_
|    ~| |
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 \___/

[egearman.livejournal.com]

It's the lack of an edit link(or me lacking the ability to find said edit link) the prevented me from fixing it.

[bassgirl.livejournal.com]

At first I was "well... some old guys just freak out and can't learn..." but if you're SELLING SOFTWARE you have no excuse. You've clearly chosen a computer-related field, so you need to be able to grasp a teensy little bit of how to actually responsibly use a computer.


Good job!

[ianhess.livejournal.com]

Bravo.

[fallconsmate.livejournal.com]

*wild applause*!!

[syberghost.livejournal.com]

You are my hero.

[persephoneflame.livejournal.com]

I am now in love with the word 'salesasaur' and will be incorporating it into my vocabulary

[jjjiii]

♥swoon♥

[snoopyh42.livejournal.com]

You are my goddamn hero today.

[fixerkitty.livejournal.com]

*standing ovation*

You rock.

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

[blkrabbitofinle.livejournal.com]

Oh, you'd think so. Really, you'd think so.

The day my consultancy company fired our very last salesperson was one of the best days of my working career. It's still amazing how many software-savvy people don't know the bare fucking basics of looking after their own machines but they're at least not as actively incompetent and annoying as the sales folk were.

[misfit4leaf.livejournal.com]

*golf clap*

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Eh, industry seems to regard 'sales' in the same way as 'management' - it doesn't matter what needs to be sold or managed, it's all people skills, right?

But just as a good IT person can learn a new system, a good salesrep will learn a new product, or at least enough to compare specs and have a rough idea of its capabilities and shortcomings. And like any employee anywhere, learn at least the bare basics of the tools they're given to use.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Me: "You, WHAT?! You want to apologize to me for having to support your sorry ass? You want to apologize for your extremely poor judgment? You want to tell me how a man with absolutely no understanding of computers and no desire to understand them decided to sell enterprise grade software? You're sorry for treating the techs like they were your employees and not your peers? You, WHAT, exactly? WALK. AWAY. NOW."

F. T. W. :D

Particularly like "no understanding of computers and no desire to understand them". Sometimes it goes as far as "outright pride in not understanding them, a veritable revelry in not having dirtied oneself with technical understanding of "those things IT takes care of". It's mildly annoying until it reaches the point of a stubborn insistence on making your job several orders of magnitude more difficult for the sheer sport of showing off one's form and skill at asshattery. I honestly hope he went off and sat down in his cube and cried. Never happen, but I like to think maybe, in a better world ..

[canray.livejournal.com]

*Sigh* It's only when you're leaving that you can do that, instead of your first day.

It would really go better if you started like that, and then showed them how nice you were after they learned that Fire Is Bad, The Pointy Stick Cuts, and other such things that were denied to them in Grade School because life is rosy and everyone is a special flower.

[zucci-zookeenee.livejournal.com]

That was beautiful and I love you♥

[superbus.livejournal.com]

For every person like you that succeeds at something like this, there's 30 that would get anally raped if they so much as thought aloud about it.

Those people applaud you.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

*Sigh* It's only when you're leaving that you can do that, instead of your first day.

Really?

I must have had a weird career - every time I tore off a co-worker's or manager's head, I got promoted. [1]

(I'd like to think it was because I was right, but it was probably my managers getting scared. That and the firing process in my line of work being stupendously convoluted.)


[1] Except the really sharp manager who figured out how to wind me up and point me in the direction of people he didn't like. To this day, I can't figure out if I should have been annoyed at being manipulated or just happy that I was finally working for someone who could find their ass without both hands and a GPS.

[jcaswell.livejournal.com]

/worship