Sometimes it pays to be nice...
Being the only guy in a company of (at the time) 1000+ employees who actually went to people's desks to provide support, I could contribute quite a few stories.

One of my favorites came from the simple fact of my being very nice to the idiot. Extra nice. Trust me. Falling-all-over-myself nice. Why so nice, you wonder? As the one of very few clueful people in my department, I was occasionally appropriated by the executive staff for non-work-related stuff. In other words, the friggen president of the company called my boss and told him to send my ass to their house and fix their 13 year old daughter's computer.

So, I go out. And it's a typical one-sound-card-too-many-dumbass incident. I get it all fixed up, optimize the O/S a bit, showed her and her mother how to do a few things to keep it running smoothly.

The mother says to me, "Boy, you're a lot nicer than the last guy who came out here. He made us feel like everything was our fault and we didn't know what the hell we were doing." I didn't realize that one of my other department members had been out there. Sure enough, I find out it's Mr. M. God's gift to the world of computing and networking. An ego so large it dripped out of his ass. And utterly unable to communicate with other humans accept by belittling them incessantly.

The end result? I get a personal, handwritten letter of thanks from the president himself with an offer of a promotion. What did Mr. M get? Laid off. On his birthday no less.

Sometimes there is justice my friends. Sweet, sweet, justice. The look on his face the first time he looked at me after he was informed his position was being eliminated was utterly and completely priceless. Him, the God of all things computing, shown up by a 21 year old kid. I even got the employee-of-the-month award thingy before his termination date finally came around. And people thought I was just grinning like an idiot because I was happy I got the award. ;)
(OrdinaryHans, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 18:44, Reply)