Begin bug 16839

snips

Larry Qualig

Sure - but you're failing to include the troll contingent. In an office, you're not generally inundated with a never-ending series of folks, often changing their idenbreasties more often than their socks, all attempting to discredit whatever tools you're using or product you're working with... and they're generally not resorting to outright lying when they do bring up criticisms. As a result, there's little impetus to treat office mates as dishonest scum, since they're not behaving that way.

Try the other way around. I went into an A&B sound a few years back; they were having a sale on, among other things, VCRs. I wanted one. Talked to a sales guy who was obviously brand-spanking new, as he knew nothing about their products and had to keep running into the back to find the answers to my questions. About the third trip back, he doesn't come out, the manager does.

I suspect this is a commission sales setup, and, having worked commissioned sales once or twice, I know how much it sucks having your manager poach your sales, so I wasn't too enamored of this guy to start with.

However... whilst the rep was making his third trip back, before the manager came out, I happened to locate a "spec sheet" for the particular VCR model I was interested in. When the manager came out, asking if he could help, I asked him a couple basic questions, such as "Is this programmable?"

I was informed it was, and I quote, "Infinitely programmable." What that meant was, according to him, it could handle any number of programmed events. I pointed to the card, which said it could handle 4 events. "Oh, well, you can program it for any time in the future." I pointed out where the card said it could only be set for I think it was 7 days.

About this point, he started sputtering - and I started yelling. Loudly. I demanded to know why he thought it was necessary to lie to the customers. Not once, but twice. Was it store policy to be dishonest and even fraudulent, as long as it got a sale? After yelling at him for a minute or so I said I refused to deal with a liar like him, and told him to send the other guy out - from whom I happily purchased the VCR in question.

The manager was being wilfully dishonest. It wasn't that he was simply saying "I don't know, let me find out", he was actively and intentionally lying through his teeth to get his sale - he was trolling, in short. And I called him on it. Publicly enough that I rather doubt he'd dare to "help" any of the other customers in the store, at least, since it had been established he was completely and utterly full of crap.

The only difference between that scenario and this one is that when confronted with his dishonesty, he, unlike our resident trolls, had the decency to do the right thing, namely, to slink away and hide.

Willful ignorance is annoying. Intentional dishonesty deserves nothing but active, ongoing hostility, if for no other reason than to let anyone who hasn't clued in yet know just exactly what sort of bottom-feeding pond-dweller they're being exposed to, preferrably before they buy into the crap being spewed.