Payback arrives for a so-called power user

We had limited technical staff at the business where I worked, so we contracted with a third party for our day-to-day service calls. These technicians would exchange monitors, mice, and keyboards that needed to be replaced and reimage hard drives that became inoperative.

One day, a “power user” put in a service call for a PC that was freezing up and required a reboot to get working again. It could have been a hardware issue, or possibly the hard drive needed to be defragged. Sometimes our corporate image would become corrupt and a reimage would be required.

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Our third-party technicians were instructed to have the users back up their own documents before the reimage began. This was standard policy, as only the user could know which documents and information were important to be saved. It was not the technician’s responsibility to perform this action, only to make sure the user was directed to back up the documents.

This particular user was notorious for being a loudmouth. He went to great pains to make sure that everyone knew how much he knew about computers. He was a “power user” and, as with most know-it-alls, was loathe to take any direction from anyone.

The technician went to the site and asked the user to back up all his important data, as the reimage would wipe the disk and install a fresh operating system and applications. He assured her that he had done this and gave her permission to reimage the hard drive. The technician proceeded.

After the image had been installed, the user was asked to restore his data. Well, lo and behold, a spreadsheet he’d been working on for two weeks had disappeared. He began cursing and cussing out the technician for being stupid enough to erase his work.

Our technicians are told to never become confrontational with users, but to bring any issues to me. This technician arrived back in the shop, understandably worked up over the dressing-down that the power user had given her. I assured her I would take care of the situation.

I called the user, and he began verbally attacking me over the stupidity of the staff we used and demanding that his file be recovered. Since he’d saved it to his C: drive, and not the corporate network drive (like everyone is instructed to do), the file was not backed up. After listening to a couple minutes of his tirade, I politely told him I’d see what I could do.

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What I did was call his manager and tell him of how this person had treated the technician and myself. The manager was very apologetic about the incident and told me he’d take care of it. He also indicated he was aware of this person’s confrontational attitude, and it was not the first time people had complained of him.

The end of the story is that this person was given three days off without pay and had to apologize to my technician and me.

I’m sure everyone has had an experience of losing data, either inadvertently or through computer failure. This does not give the right to verbally abuse someone for doing their job, when all they are trying to do is help. Thankfully, these types of people are in the minority, and most users are grateful to have their computer working once again.

This story, “Payback arrives for a so-called power user,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more crazy-but-true stories in the anonymous Off the Record blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.