techrecovery | (no subject)

So one of our sales reps called from the road yesterday complaining. This is a guy who has a bit of Rodney Dangerfield channeling through him, only he's far more obnoxious and really not funny, other than as a satire of his own self. He likes to harrass us that we are lazy in tech support (mind you, he's the one enjoying cocktails and golf with "clients" on a regular basis, but I digress.) So, I really like to give it back to him whenever possible.

Sales Rep: Um, yeah, so I was on the internet thingy and I went to type in Bosch and somehow I mistyped the linky and all of a sudden WHAM! I got all these popups flying up my wazoo!

Trase: Wow, Russ, that sounds really painful.

Sales Rep: [takes a second to grasp it] Oh, um, yeah, hahaha it was. Um what do I do with this thingy cuz I can't surf now.

Trase: Well, we'll need you to bring your laptop in for spyware removal.

Sales Rep: OK, well I'll give it to ya tomorrow cuz I have a show thingy for a half a day.

Trase: All right, we'll get it fixed up for you tomorrow. And in the meantime, you might want to get some ointment for your wazoo, you don't want it to get inflamed.

Sales Rep: Yeah, yeah, I'll see ya tomorrow.

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So I have the bloke's laptop at my desk this morning, and it was, let me contain my shock, LOADED with spy/malware.

He's at a trade show until mid-afternoon. As soon as I'm done with his laptop, I'm delivering it to his department admin. We don't normally include a support ticket but I felt in this case it was a moral imperative.

(Whenever sales reps start giving us a hard time, as they often do, we tell them "go sell some ads." I couldn't be quite that crass in print, so I used a smidge of verbiage, but kept the same underlying message.)