Fight end users

Posted by Ngeo10@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 556 comments

Have any of you guys ever been challenged to a fight by an end user? This particular user is upset because the troubleshooting steps we give them require a reboot and this user would rather cut off their limbs than reboot their laptop. We told them that this is the best recommendation we have and it resulted in them wanting to fight...literally...they said "we can go talk about this outside since you want to sound so tough." I am honestly very tempted to go through with it. This person is a POS and nothing would gratify me more than to knock some sense into him. I am leaving the company next week anyway so it would be a great departing gift.

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556 Comments

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Dunno606@reddit

That's an id10t error.

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SapphireSire@reddit

Change his username to bugpussy and make his password expire every 3 hours.

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akira410@reddit

I assume this is a typo and It gave me the gigs lol

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SapphireSire@reddit

It was but I read it and thought it's better and more fitting and personal with the client for a nice touche of new and direct insults they deserve... imagine getting fired over it and being the new guy, one of your first jobs is to fix someone named bugpussy by the previous admin.

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akira410@reddit

I'm glad you left it, it's perfect.

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sryan2k1@reddit

That would be an immediate Email to HR and your manager because the guy threatened you. Doesn't matter you're leaving, you need to report this so there is a record of this behavior. Maybe the next guy gets punched.

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aaron416@reddit

I’m sure HR would be VERY interested to hear about this person.

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thoggins@reddit

Probably works in sales, moving right along.

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ddeese@reddit

Sales people are the strangest group to support in a company. I work at the service desk and I had a ticket come in for a standard laptop. This user didn’t want a standard laptop. She’s on the client sales team and because she is “client facing” she needs a laptop to reflect that. She received a ThinkPad brand new from the company when she started less than 18 months ago. She’s in sales. No scripts, data engineering, software development. No 100 column spreadsheets. Sales. She wanted an executive Surface Pro Laptop that costs twice what her device costs because her laptop was too bulky. It’s not a P series chunkster. It’s relatively slim. But it’s all about looks because I guess our clients inspect each other’s laptops during sales meetings. And don’t get me started on users who refuse to restart their computer. I had to migrate a user manually from AD to Entra ID which isn’t too bad in terms of time. But this user’s machine was up over 110 days. And he was frustrated because the first half hour was spent just restarting the machine and letting windows run all of the updates that got stuck. I’m like just reboot it Monday morning when you start your day. What’s three minutes?

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Viharabiliben@reddit

Time for a remote restart.

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scaredandconfussled@reddit

"Someone else is still using this PC. If you shut down now, you could lose unsaved work" Oh well, hope they believe in Jesus then.

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corsair027@reddit

'cause "Jesus Saves"?

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scaredandconfussled@reddit

yeah

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quietweaponsilentwar@reddit

Schedule task for daily reboot?

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qejfjfiemd@reddit

As long as she can get her manager to approve it and it comes out of their budget who cares? Also, how is your security guy letting laptops go that long without windows updates?

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ddeese@reddit

I don’t care. It’s been in my queue waiting for approval for two weeks. I just want it to be acted on so it will stop aging. It’s not that I care all that much. It’s just a stupid reason when the current pc is less than 18 months old. It’s not about this user per se, it’s wasteful. Business waste impacts everyone who is attached to the business.

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ddeese@reddit

We push down the updates through policy. But sometimes the PCs won’t restart if they’ve been up for a while. PCs start doing strange things after they’ve been up for a while.

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oloruin@reddit

There's an OU for that. I call mine "Daily Restarts @ 3:00am". There's also an OU for an immediate uninstall of the prior endpoint AV with forced restart, for similar reasons.

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ddeese@reddit

We have considered that. But the amount of outcry was hysterical

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mitharas@reddit

> But it’s all about looks because I guess our clients inspect each other’s laptops during sales meetings. These sales people do. And they suspect everyone else does as well. And from what I have seen from C-suites... this might be correct.

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westerschelle@reddit

The suit wearer version of sniffing each others buttholes.

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DesktopDaddy@reddit

Seriously… sales attracts a special kind. I once had a sales rep ask me to put child pornography on his coworkers computer as a prank… I bluntly told him that was the worst thing I’d ever heard at work and to please stop talking to me.

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Sunsparc@reddit

> sales attracts a special kind I used to work with a guy that was an absolute bottom feeding shark. He would prey on and manipulate every single customer that encountered him. He was hired on as an assistant manager which equaled in "rank" to me as tech manager. He would throw an absolute shit fit if he talked to a customer for 30 seconds, didn't get anywhere close to making a sale, and then they came back to close the sale on his day off. In his mind, he had "dibs" because they talked to him first, without actually putting in any of the work. He was racist, homophobic, and a misogynist. Some justice has been done though, he participated in January 6th attack on the Capitol and has the FBI and Justice Deparment up his ass right now.

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Sad_Recommendation92@reddit

Did OP say the person was in sales or did we all just assume that as a pavlovian response?

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DesktopDaddy@reddit

I don’t think so… my comment was off topic.

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Productivity10@reddit

Love the inclusion of psychology out of nowhere. Hm now I'm trying to think if this is actually pavlovian in action, or perhaps it's priming and anchoring

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Lykos1124@reddit

I think my immediate response would have been... I'm going to have to report this conversation to HR. It's your word vs mine, but I have no choice. Good luck defending yourself.

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USS_Frontier@reddit

I would taken that right to law enforcement. Or at least mentioned taking it to law enforcement.

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hubbyofhoarder@reddit

Or a developer. Developers cry the fucking blues when you force a reboot on them

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lord_teaspoon@reddit

I am a developer and I shut down at the end of most days. I have to be in the middle of some serious deep-dive shit to decide it's worth keeping all my stuff open for tomorrow. Now that I think of it, I'm probably an outlier due to having done a decade or so of support/sysadmin before I moved into dev. Most of my colleagues across dev, QA, BA, and PM just put them to sleep every night and only reboot when Windows Update forces the issue.

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oloruin@reddit

The problem with shutdown is that none of the cleanup ops that happen when windows is running without user sessions ever happen. *I've had to remove the shutdown command* ***and*** *schedule nightly BIOS power-ons for some particularly un-teachable users.*

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alpha417@reddit

That's because he has people skills

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USS_Frontier@reddit

What the hell is wrong with you people?!

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Dryhte@reddit

People kills, maybe...

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ThatITguy2015@reddit

Points!!!!!!

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MaliciousAmbitious@reddit

Sounds like a Federal employee. They're such entitled pricks.

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Fuze2186@reddit

Accurate

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Azious@reddit

I know it sounds like everyone here loathes working in IT, but I think it would be so much worse to be an HR and deal with this shit all day lol.

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angrydeuce@reddit

Oh I see some of the mickey mouse bullshit they deal with every day, I wouldn't want to be in HR, it's really just like IT but deals with people's fucking feelings and shit lol. I'd rather eat broken glass than have to mediate a conflict between two middle aged women over the goddamn thermostat (a literal case I had to spectate while I was working on a tech issue).

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Thoth74@reddit

I'll never understand battles over thermostat settings. They should always, by default, set to the hottest person. The cold person can add layers. The hot person can only take so much off before they are escorted out of the building.

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robmobz@reddit

You say that until you see somebody working in a coat and gloves complain how hard it is to use a keyboard like that. Doing that is how you get under desk space heaters.

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Thoth74@reddit

I was generalizing, sure. But if it is cold enough that gloves are required there's a bigger problem to be addressed.

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angrydeuce@reddit

And if gloves are required when the thermostat is set to 72 degrees you need to see a doctor because that's not normal. I cannot even begin to describe the shit show that ensued when we decreed "no more space heaters under desks" because people kept blowing up UPSs plugging into them and, in a couple cases, nearly burned the fuckin office down. The thermostat in this place is never below 72. At that point it's time to get your fuckin thyroid checked or something if you're sitting in an office with a space heater on you in the middle of summer complaining its too fuckin cold when the temp is in the 70s lol.

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wizardglick412@reddit

But you have power to have people fired. We have to supply a ream of supporting documentation and go through 3;levels of management just to say NO.

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aaron416@reddit

If this happens daily, the company has more issues than a magazine! But I see what you mean.

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Sulanis1@reddit

Depending! HR is there to protect the company and if the primitive douche bag makes them money. They will protect him over IT.

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OldHandAtThis@reddit

My guess this wouldn’t be the first time, he tried it in the workplace.

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rollingc@reddit

This scenario went down at a former workplace and that's exactly how it played out. Guy was threatened, he called HR and the asshole wanting to fight was out of a job in less than 30 minutes.

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wrosecrans@reddit

Yup. People say "HR isn't your friend," but this is a good example of when HR is very much your friend. An employee is trying to fight other employees. The liability issues there are massive if somebody gets hurt. HR does not want you to get hurt, if it would cost the company money. Just immediate forward and be done with the matter and move on. He's their problem now. Or else you've got a labor board complaint and a potential lawsuit for unsafe working conditions if they don't manage the situation.

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Adskii@reddit

HR still isn't your friend. They are just on your side this time.

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UnusualStatement3557@reddit

Enemy of my enemy for a brief time

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Adskii@reddit

Maxim 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less. -The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries

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blandead41@reddit

It's so odd... HR has been amazing to me my last two jobs. Fun people to party with lol

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BlueKnight87125@reddit

"Can we agree on a truce?"

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Charlie_Mouse@reddit

Perhaps more along the lines that your interests happen to align temporarily.

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GolemancerVekk@reddit

> People say "HR isn't your friend," I keep hearing this, is it a US thing? HR is pretty OK in Europe. I only have American movies and tv series to go by, not sure how realistic those are. 😆 It looks like HR in the US does a lot of things that HR in Europe doesn't? Over here HR doesn't deal with legal disputes, contracts, salaries, headhunting, team-building... They mostly shuffle papers around, track vacation and sick days, organize meetings, and deal with conflicts (when the manager has thrown in the towel).

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wrosecrans@reddit

You are a lot less likely to get fired in Europe. In the US you can usually be fired for no reason, with no notice, and get no severance. In that environment, HR is a lot more of a wild card.

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tripodal@reddit

HR is somewhat likely to fire both people as the offender after doing their 'investigation' Its not as if the threat was made in cold blood after all. If there's any history they can use to justify firing them both; better to be rid of them both.

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rx8saxman@reddit

HR is your friend when your interests align with the interests of the company. This is a perfect example of such a situation.

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Iggyhopper@reddit

HR protects the company, its your job to navigate the winning side.

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Admirable-Elk2405@reddit

Can confirm. Worked at a call center long ago (just customer service fortunately) and the ONLY case of someone getting fired on the spot I know of was two women getting into a physical fight. for comparison, the guy who was caught smoking weed on the fire ladder outside the CEO's office just didn't have his contract renewed at the end of the year.

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almathden@reddit

So now HR is trying to stop me from beating up users, too? Man.

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Shazam1269@reddit

HR sucks all of the fun out of life!

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Outarel@reddit

As long as it isn't a big shot in the company , or some important manager. You can report to hr only those who are equal/below to you in the company.

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zaphod777@reddit

Sometimes the company's best interest also align with yours.

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GlowGreen1835@reddit

A broken clock is indeed right twice a day.

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Frisnfruitig@reddit

It's not broken at all, some people just don't understand who HR works for.

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Extreme-Acid@reddit

HR is still not your friend but as an audit trail shows they were informed they will protect the company from litigation.

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Instinctskill7@reddit

Sounds like a KO to me.

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activekitsune@reddit

TKO hahaaha

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Maelefique@reddit

ITKO 😊

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anomalous_cowherd@reddit

Absolutely. Each of us fights with the best weapons we have. In a professional context I choose HR.

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PandaBoyWonder@reddit

this is why it annoys me that people are still intimidated by someone's physical prowess. Its worthless in 2024 lol

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allnamesgonewtf@reddit

Yeah, HR isn’t too keen on hand to hand combat in the parking lot. Sounds like end user still thinks like a middle schooler, and you have all you need to be done with him for good.

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USS_Frontier@reddit

Mmmmmm.....justice.

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FulaniLovinCriminal@reddit

I had this - the guy actually sent me an email with the threat in it. I was working overseas, so living and working alongside the same people. He *really* didn't like me, I think because the girl he fancied wanted me. I was already spoken for, but in his head I was banging this girl and taunting him over it. Also, I was 19 at the time, he was 26. And I guess I knew more about IT than he did...he was an office worker. So anyway, one Friday I send out my weekly report on common issues, where I'll be (we had 3 locations in the city) in the week ahead and wishing everyone a happy weekend. He replied, asking if I thought people liked me? I didn't respond. Half an hour later, he sent another email saying for me to watch out as he'll be at the bar later and he'd "hate for me to have an accident with a pool cue to the face". This got him suspended and sent home on the flight that evening. He came back three months later on the condition that he not talk to me at any point. Within a month he was gone permanently as he tried to force himself on a girl who rejected him (a different one) and then later that night was caught trying to drown her cat in the swimming pool.

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bunk_bro@reddit

Jesus. That was a wild ride.

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Donald-Pump@reddit

No no no, the real play is to schedule the fight for in an hour, THEN call HR and have them show up to the fight on your behalf.

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HoustonBOFH@reddit

r/UnethicalLifeProTips

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showyerbewbs@reddit

Turns that HR is really just the senior VP of human resources, Henry Rollins. He shows up in a black flag shirt after spending two hours at the gym, sweatier than a whore in church.

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Jedi3975@reddit

![gif](giphy|l2YWoKTYhYyuJgA5G)

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TommyV8008@reddit

Plus, you don’t want to be open to potential lawsuits. Also, once you leave the company, probably the company’s lawyers wouldn’t protect you.

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NeverDocument@reddit

then in 3 weeks you meet him at his favorite lunch spot with a lunch tray to the face (don't actually do this)

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WayneH_nz@reddit

He's sales, so he probably slept with your girlfriend, so a keyboard to the face... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7mmuQteX1qA&pp=ygUbd2FudGVkIGtleWJvYXJkIHRvIHRoZSBmYWNl

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NeverDocument@reddit

It's a terrible movie, but I still watch it.

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Fitz_2112@reddit

This, all the way. In what universe is it okay to threaten somebody like that?

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Appoxo@reddit

In his obviously /s

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Iggyhopper@reddit

In fact, this is the best time to do this. The guy can try to stalk you but guess what, youre *gone*.

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bfodder@reddit

Fuck I'd let him punch me just so I can get him fired and charged with assault.

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Jmkott@reddit

HR punching them with a termination with cause might hit harder than anything OP could throw.

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way__north@reddit

.. and with no unneccesary risk for OP

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SuitableTank0@reddit

¿Porque no los dos?

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stonyovk@reddit

Added bonus of the jerk potentially losing their job

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ITDad@reddit

Yes, and maybe he’ll be leaving the company too.

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NoReallyLetsBeFriend@reddit

Send to HR, THEN punch him... Self defense you thought he was attacking you LMAO

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LyghtnyngStryke@reddit

Yep definitely don't engage with him report him to HR and if you were to then be fired on the spot for fighting him word would get to your new company. And they may not look too favorably on that. Especially if it's before you are actual start date. Don't do it

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TechMonkey13@reddit

Get that bitch fired before you leave 😂

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sircruxr@reddit

That’s no fun.

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HeligKo@reddit

There isn't another right answer. Guys like this exist in the workplace, because people don't want to make waves. At every place I have worked, this would be as close to an immediate firing as you can get. Since it would be your word against his, it probably won't be, but he would be put on notice. You should also be able to refuse to work with him officially and someone else will have to field it. In the end if no one can work with him, because of this type of thing, he will have to solve his own problems, or be fired as he should be.

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xtreampb@reddit

If it’s IT, it might have a paper trail like a slack message, or e-mail. Shoot, even phone calls can be recorded automatically. When working in the military, I had to go through the recorded radio calls for an investigation. That cop was surprised when I played back the recording.

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skat_in_the_hat@reddit

People who behave this way tend to behave this way often. I would venture to guess there are other people this end user challenged to a fight over something dumb. I'd go let HR know, so if you have to whoop his ass in the parking lot, when the cops show up you have some ground to stand on. You already went to HR, and nothing was done, so now its your jobs problem.

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clink51@reddit

If you’re leaving and got something lined up anyway - I say shoot the fair one. Pro tip: less likely to suffer brain injury if you fight on the grass. It’s softer and tends to have less edges

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Live_Combination1142@reddit

This.

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dasWibbenator@reddit

Yes. But more importantly you report threats of violence to the police. You are legally allowed to make a police report while on the clock.

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BasementMillennial@reddit

I'd get the police involved too in case your HR tryst to sweep it under the table

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sryan2k1@reddit

In most areas simply alluding to a threat isn't illegal. The police wouldn't get involved in this.

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Redemptions@reddit

"I'm going to fight you" vs "Do you want to fight?"

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breenisgreen@reddit

Yeah as much as I like to make jokes about stuff this isn’t one of those situations. This is hostile and if it isn’t you, someone else might end up in this situation and badly hurt. He also may have already done this to other people and your email could be the final thing that gets this person under control (be it by words or action from HR) and you may in fact be helping a lot of people

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procheeseburger@reddit

Right? Esp if they said this in an email or chat… it’s going right to HR.

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smoike@reddit

Add phone calls for me too. Aside from a couple of phones allocated for personal calls, ALL phone calls are recorded in my workplace because of the industry I work in. I was a bit apprehensive about it at first, but I think of a tool that can both hold you accountable and defend you if needed. I would use it precisely as the latter in this circumstance.

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jaydenc@reddit

I would personally walk up to this user and ask them directly to clarify their email, as keyboard warriors piss me right off. I'm not recommending you do this though, smarter option will be an email to HR as others have said.

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StanQuizzy@reddit

"Kick his a$$, Seabass!" :D

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sorry_for_the_reply@reddit

A better response. wine em dine em 69 em doesn't quite work here. Cam Neely rules.

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phoenix823@reddit

No, O'Doyle rules.

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corsair027@reddit

I had a guy come into the IT office and threaten one of my guys. I got up from my chair, calmly walked over and stood in between them. I looked the asshole straight in the eye and in a very low calm slow voice told him exactly what was going to happen to him. My coworkers could not hear what I was saying, but he could. I was careful not to directly threaten him in any way, but he understood the consequences were going to be dire for him. Dude burst into tears and was shaking, he started apologizing like crazy. Within an hour or so, the company rumor mill went crazy and somehow, I was a legend. Best day ever.

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programmrz@reddit

and then you woke up

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

yeah... a client said he would come to my house and "get me"... for not answering a text on a Saturday asking me about what laptop he should buy his kid... It's among the many reasons why I don't give my personal cell, or the company cell number out to anyone... Glad you're getting out of that situation

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magistratemagic@reddit

Client got ahold of my cell phone and texted me their issue. Fixed it once and told them not to ever contact me again like this and go through the proper channels. Woke up on my vacation late to see a 7 am text from them saying their server is down. They never went through the proper channels. Blocked their number and went on with my life.

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Jezbod@reddit

We have a Gmail account for people to send "test" emails to when they cannot send to our internal emails. The first thing we say is it is a test email, it is not monitored and any emails sent to it will NOT be forwarded. Only a couple of people have thought these instructions and warnings did not apply to them. The emails were not forwarded.

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Dal90@reddit

For a while I had a roll-your-own honeypot to catch ransomware and disable the offending account, log them out of computers and VDI, alert world+dog in IT, etc. Put it at top of a shared directory with a name like !!!!!!DONOTUSETHIS After we got Varonis which worked like a charm and stopped the attacks in their tracks, I deleted my honeypot. I had to restore the folder because it was at the top and one of the secretaries created a directory (while my scripts looked for new or modified files, I hadn't anticipated someone creating a directory) and put the executive presentations in it so they could reach them quickly.

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PandaBoyWonder@reddit

Thats cool! how did it work? How would that shared directory "catch" ransomware?

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Dal90@reddit

When I first wrote it, the ransomware was starting with the first directory in a share and going alphabetically. Windows puts ! before A. We were getting hit ~2 months and I was the guy who had to figure out the complex restore jobs not to clobber any files folks were working on so the ransomware couldn't encrypt the open file. As the malware writers got better we added zzzzzzDONOTUSETHIS when they started going in reverse. Eventually they just started randomly doing directories. Scripts just looked for either new files or changes in the files and when it detected those looked at which account had changed it and started locking the account and logging them out with extreme prejudice. After about a year we finally got the right combination of endpoint and file protection in place. Varonis could basically detect real time any where what my scripts only looked every few seconds in a few directories for -- as I understood it, if it saw anomalous activity it could fire off alerts and stop further file changes until Information Security team evaluated what was going on.

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

>Blocked their number and went on with my life. I wish I could do that, but there's something stupid inside of me that would make me check on it... I would block their number though

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fattes@reddit

What the fuck is wrong with people.

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

Not sure... but if I'm a reflection of that question/comment... a lot... A LOT... i just keep it down to a dull roar lol

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ThenCard7498@reddit

hit em back with "Its impolite to speak to colleagues like that."

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

I responded through my lawyer...

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IdiosyncraticBond@reddit

The best response.

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HerfDog58@reddit

Disable his door access badge/fob. Say "Sure, after you." Let him exit the building. Pull the door closed. Call HR and the police.

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HerfDog58@reddit

That happened to me all the time in a previous job. Well, second job. As a bouncer in a bar. But my supervisor DID ask me to sit in on a termination once because there was concern the person being fired might get "upset." He said "Well you're a bouncer on the weekend, you can handle him if he goes after the supervisor or HR person." Yeah, because the retired trooper who was the building security office probably couldn't...

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MattBlax@reddit

Every sysadmin worth their salt has a punching bag hanging in the office warehouse for times of weakness

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CallEither683@reddit

Not to a fight but I did have an end user yell at me and curse me out because she refused to reboot her laptop. She was the same way, nasty as can be and refused to take any advice we gave. So I did the next best thing. In the middle of her presentation in front of all 500 staff members I pushed windows updates and rebooted her machine.

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radraze2kx@reddit

I know there's a sub for malicious compliance, is there a sub for forced compliance?

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PandaBoyWonder@reddit

do you have any more stories with endings like that

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llamakins2014@reddit

Oh damn that muat have felt so satisfying! The best part is being able to plead ignorance. "Oh those pesky updates come through whenever they feel like it"

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anomalous_cowherd@reddit

There's still room for a dig: "Oh, if you refuse to reboot at a convenient time for you like we asked several times then eventually it just happens anyway!".

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CallEither683@reddit

It was a great feeling and I always do lol. Those damn updates just have a mind of their own!

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ChatHurlant@reddit

Oh now that is delicious...

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USS_Frontier@reddit

Fire-grilled and glazed with honey BBQ sauce.

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spacecadetdani@reddit

Just let your manager let their manager know.

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Valdaraak@reddit

I haven't been challenged, but a co-worker at my old MSP got threatened with the whole "I know where you work and I might pay a visit later". Co-worker went to our boss (company owner) and told him what happened. Boss called the person who made the threat and basically fired them as a customer and told them if they came by in a threatening way they would be introduced to the company gun. Ah, working in the south. And yes, there was a company gun. It was in a biometric locked safe in the owner's office and it was a [Judge](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/RagingJudgeMagnum.jpg/640px-RagingJudgeMagnum.jpg).

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pdp10@reddit

> And yes, there was a company gun. Just one? Who has just one gun?

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HoustonBOFH@reddit

>Just one? Who has just one gun? Companies. Personal guns, however...

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fogleaf@reddit

Well the company only owns one. The rest are owned by individuals.

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FreakParrot@reddit

I’d imagine people with one hand. Everyone knows you need at least two. They need a friend.

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ElectroSpore@reddit

> Ah, working in the south. And yes, there was a company gun. It was in a biometric locked safe in the owner's office and it was a Judge. Man, AT work AT school you all are really leaving in fear 24/7

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mnITd00d@reddit

I don't live in fear at all. My company has a very clearly-posted "NO GUNS ALLOWED" sign posted out front. No sweat. Schools are also gun-free zones so no fear there either!

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rockstarsball@reddit

wait until you find out we have fire extinguishers too!

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ElectroSpore@reddit

Odds of my office catching fire are so many times higher than someone showing up with a gun it is reasonable.. US is a strange place that fears people showing up with guns so much that everyone has them, so they further fear people showing up with guns.

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rockstarsball@reddit

you keep thinking that. America is dangerous and scary, no need to visit. you stay right where you are

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ElectroSpore@reddit

I live in Canada, and have worked and visited the US many times over many years. Defence is the reason everyone gives for NEEDING a gun in the US.. but what if.. hear me out you were not not afraid of someone else attacking you with a gun? What if your students didn't need fucking active shooter drills? [School Shootings by Country 2024](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-shootings-by-country) Like 288 vs Mexico in second place with 8... Raised in fear, living in fear. Fear on the news 24/7.

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rockstarsball@reddit

man itd be so cool if we got accurate data and not just self reported statistics that get extra funding when they say there was a school shooting.... [but when you offer a prize for saying something happend; Gasp, people will lie and say it happened](https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent) some people have a gun for defense, other people have a gun because its a symbol that we will never turn into a country like yours. and that makes them feel happy, the same way being stuck up makes the people of your country happy. but i guess if you ignore all school violence and all violence in general and focus just on guns, you can make those stats say anything you want.

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Kulandros@reddit

>we will never turn into a country like yours. American here, but what does that mean?

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rockstarsball@reddit

that America has its own identity, laws, culture, and yes, problems. but despite our faults, we have no desire to emulate other countries.

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Kulandros@reddit

Oh. OK.

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Seiak@reddit

Yep, I will stay right here and be happy, lol.

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iApolloDusk@reddit

When I worked computer repair, my co-worker was always conceal carrying (as he does everywhere he went.) I always felt safe and secure knowing that no matter what fuckshit might walk through that door, we were gonna be okay.

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dispatch00@reddit

Sadly you were probably more likely to be shot by or because of your co-worker.

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R_Wilco_201576@reddit

Because people who don't have guns can't shoot anyone? Are you anti gun?

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dispatch00@reddit

I'm pro science, which says that: > "We found no evidence that homicides are reduced where there are more concealed carry licenses," said Semenza. "On the contrary, we found that more concealed carry permits issued in a given county are linked to a greater number of homicides in that county the following year." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230810110425.htm Are you anti-science?

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biterankle@reddit

So, you link to an article where we can't examine the methodology used. On top of that, you don't seem to draw any distinction between "homicides" - which can be justifiable - and murders. Maybe the study author didn't either. If would-be robbers and killers are getting shot for their trouble, and that's what is contributing to "more homicides", oh well? Concealed carry permit holders commit less crime than cops do. They aren't the ones you need to worry about.

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ee-5e-ae-fb-f6-3c@reddit

I assume you've taken the time to dig through it, and vet their methods. Where does it definitively show that concealed carry is responsible for the increased homicide rate, and not that the increased permit issuance occurs during periods of increased homicide? When areas are more dangerous, people tend to carry more frequently. People who want to abide by the law get permits in states that require them. People who don't care about the law don't bother being permits. I assume you're also aware that people with certain criminal history *can't* get permits. I also assume that you're aware that homicide has a specific definition.

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FreakParrot@reddit

How dare you question the anti-gun crowd

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R_Wilco_201576@reddit

I get it. You're anti gun and now I'm either anti science, heartless, gutless or all three because I think self defense is a God given right. I'm not going to debate you in the sys admin forum on this topic. I suspected that was your view based upon your reply/comment. Good day sir.

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dispatch00@reddit

My brother in christ, I just posted a link to a well-respected study that supported my original supposition. Sorry if I offended my internet tough-guy sysadmin brethren.

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Shawtyslikeamelodyfr@reddit

Uh huh. Im sure the paywalled article source is super damning.

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dispatch00@reddit

Oh my b, I thought we were in /r/sysadmin It's a Rutgers University study, paper published in 2023.

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Shawtyslikeamelodyfr@reddit

My bad, its almost like i dont give a fuck where it comes from. The fact its behind a paywall means you cant debate it. I fucking DOUBT you have paid for it and read through it yourself.

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Superb_Raccoon@reddit

it's a classic example of Corelation is not Causation.

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ee-5e-ae-fb-f6-3c@reddit

I love how people say stuff like this as if it applies to everyone everywhere who has a gun, no matter what they're like, no matter what their precautions are. Holsters with retention are a thing. Concealed guns don't just randomly drop out of your clothes unless you're a total moron. You leave them holstered and concealed the entire day. Guns don't just fire on their own (not you, Sig), they require some kind of action to fire.

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fresh-dork@reddit

> Concealed guns don't just randomly drop out of your clothes unless you're a total moron. yeah, it's a coworker, not a cop

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Valdaraak@reddit

It's also such a pointless claim. No shit being around a gun increases your chances of getting shot.

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Hackwork89@reddit

The fuck is wrong with Americans?

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crysisnotaverted@reddit

Ah yes, the great equalizer lol. Do you know if it was loaded with .410 filled with 00 buckshot or .45 colt? 😂

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Valdaraak@reddit

I don't. Never got that much into detail asking about it. Just looked at it and held it a few times when he first bought it.

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IdioticEarnestness@reddit

Worked at a car dealership and a an older technician kept turning his wi-fi off then complaining that a website wasn't working. Most of these older techs could barely operate a computer. So after I figured out what was happening I showed him what he was doing that was causing the problem. He took a step back from the laptop and screamed at me, "Are you calling me stupid?" I was taken so off guard I didn't know what to say, so I kept if factual, "no, I'm just trying to show you what caused the problem and how to stop it from happening." He screamed, "You're calling me an idiot! I'm gonna kick your ass!" So I put my hands in my jacket pockets and said, "OK." He does some silly pre-fight dancing around and says, "Let's go outside!" I didn't move, "No, you can kick my ass right here." That's when his boss showed up and told him to go outside and asked me if I was OK. Dude didn't get fired, which to me is crazy. I'm former military, a relatively strong and fit guy, but I wasn't going to fight this guy. I knew my best bet was to call his bluff with everyone is the shop as witnesses, and if he took a swing to try to evade. If he hit me, I'd maybe get a black eye, I'd press charges, he'd go to jail, and then I'd sue my shitty employer for hostile workplace environment. I reckon that's how you really win a fight as an adult.

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thortgot@reddit

This is exactly how an adult wins a fight.

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Ayesuku@reddit

Damn straight

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Gakamor@reddit

I've got a good crazy coworker story too. This guy had just put in his two week notice first thing that morning. He also turned in his company cell phone to the phone guy saying that he didn't need it anymore. I was talking to the phone guy a few hours later and my coworker's cell phone starts ringing. We ignore it and continue with our conversation. Coworker comes around the corner wanting to know why we didn't alert him that it was ringing and starts chewing out the phone guy. I told him to back off and talk to our boss if he's got a problem. I guess that made me a threat to his dominance so he starts posturing like he is going to take me on. At that point I was done with his nonsense, I just left the building and started calling my boss on his cell phone. He didn't answer so I called the second in command. He answered and I explained what was going down. I met up with him outside a minute or two later. We start walking back to the office and my crazy coworker comes around the corner looking pissed. I told the second in command that I'm noping out of this situation and he was like "Cool, I'll handle it". Crazy coworker starts yelling at me even more as I turn to go the other way. Second in command promptly escorted him to HR. He somehow didn't get fired, was forced to apologize to me and the phone guy, and I spent the next two weeks avoiding him like the plague. If I had it to do over again now that I'm older and wiser, I would have demanded a two week paid vacation for him or me if they weren't going to can him.

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redditusertk421@reddit

That should get him fired for cause and no two week vacation.

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Gakamor@reddit

Oh I agree. I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to keep him around those two weeks. That incident aside, he was an average employee at best and very replaceable.

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kinos141@reddit

Unless he shoots you. Very big risk with unstable people.

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IdioticEarnestness@reddit

I followed up with his boss and asked if that was a possibility. He was non-committal.

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BoltActionRifleman@reddit

> Are you calling me stupid? No, there’s no need for me to remind you of what you are.

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IdioticEarnestness@reddit

The thing is, one of my strengths as a thirdish-career IT guy is that my previous background was as a teacher and a clergy person. I'm really good at instructing processes and I approach most user interactions with the mindset of pastoral care. I know people often feel dumb about computers and it can make them act defensively at times. But I was completely unprepared for the invitation to engage in fisticuffs.

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OkTechnician42@reddit

Tell me somehtin, Bobby. Do ya FEEL stupid?

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PandaBoyWonder@reddit

> kept turning his wi-fi off then complaining that a website wasn't working. im more interested in this. Did you ever get to the bottom of why he was doing that? 😂

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IdioticEarnestness@reddit

Honestly, it was so long ago I don't remember. End users be weird sometimes.

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EchoPhi@reddit

Uhm... Go ahead and sue for hostile work environment? Doesn't take physical contact, and hostile work environment does not just cover physical harm, it covers anything that can be defined as hostile.

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dd027503@reddit

"I'm sorry Larry you can't fist fight your way out of your wifi problems."

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MoonOverBTC@reddit

I’d just restart it remotely. Then wait for their response.

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bunk_bro@reddit

`shutdown /r /m \\dipshit-lt`

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ALT_F4_for_ITsupport@reddit

Use your remote management tool to lock out remote input, wait 30 seconds, force reboot, wait for the irritated call that their computer "froze up and restarted", shrug and blame it on Microsoft.

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PokeT3ch@reddit

I honestly am not sure what I would enjoy more. Hitting the reboot button in our cPanel and just waiting knowing its going to reboot or remoting in, taking mouse and keyboard control, lock their input and proceed to manually reboot.

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agent-squirrel@reddit

I saw cPanel and was like "How are they rebooting endpoints from a web hosting panel?"

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PokeT3ch@reddit

I tend to use cPanel as any control panel/admin interface. Not entirely sure why but I've thankfully only had a limited time being the admin for a bluehost instance (FUUUU!!!) so cPanel isn't quite engrained as just solely that.

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squeamish@reddit

Why don't you just use "CP?" "If anybody needs me I will be in my office deep into CP."

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Cybercapybaras@reddit

Place the cables under the door or in a hinge so the next person in the server room downs the backup and server supporting the device(z)

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TheGreatNico@reddit

I see you've been to our server room before

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Cybercapybaras@reddit

I'll do it again

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PutrifiedCuntJuice@reddit

This must be you: https://youtu.be/iXhIFNjVthk

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llamakins2014@reddit

I don't force a reboot (though it's tempting) but I'll frequently say something along the lines of "we've run a script in the background that requires a reboot, please reboot your system and test access/check again/whatever" and that fairly frequently gets them to reboot. Someone outright refusing though? It'd be tempting to say we can't provide support if troubleshooting steps are ignored/not followed. You don't wanna reboot? Troubleshoot yourself then.

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rmpbklyn@reddit

force reboot but tell them they got ten mins to close apps

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kmoran1@reddit

I just set it up so they get toast notifications every few hours until they reboot their machine after a specified amount of days. They’ll get the point or get annoyed. It’s cut down on a ton of tickets

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abubin@reddit

This is the way.

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DL72-Alpha@reddit

Lock his ass out and report him to infosec as being non-compliant. That'd be a fun conversation with IS.

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zSprawl@reddit

“Can you please shutdown the laptop and remove the battery? We need to check the serial number for warranty info.” “Oh that fixed it. So you won’t be shipping it in? Okay I’ll close the ticket. Thanks!”

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procheeseburger@reddit

This was my thought… for a reboot…

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CantPassReCAPTCHA@reddit

Sometimes when I fix something that requires a log out and log back in on one of our websites I just expire all of their sessions and tokens to force them to do it so they can’t lie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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WMSysAdmin@reddit

Stealing this. Thanks!

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lovelesschristine@reddit

Nah, close their chrome. Then wait a minute and close it again. Then start closing other apps they have open randomly.

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peacefinder@reddit

After the HR call, the end user’s issue won’t need a reboot any more.

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Evisra@reddit

Yep - why make it difficult? If they have shit open, save it, reboot, all fixed

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MoreTHCplz@reddit

Oh no you must have had a power event, it can happen when computers have been on for a good amount of time.

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olydan75@reddit

This is the way…I would of restarted their machine and turned my chair around to the door waiting a response lol

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Fyzzle@reddit

Would've = would have

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olydan75@reddit

Ha! Good catch.

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fieldyfield@reddit

OP, we are begging you to do this and then update us

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GrowCanadian@reddit

This is exactly what I do when people keep ignoring critical updates

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zvii@reddit

For your situation, yes. For the OP, who cares? They don't want to fix their shit, so be it. Let their manager handle it after you document/CYA.

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whatsforsupa@reddit

Time to "sneeze" with a powershell prompt up with restart-computer -force

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LarryInRaleigh@reddit

Don't forget -computername or you will be in for a surprise.

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redditusertk421@reddit

let them hit you first and get them fired!

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ALT_F4_for_ITsupport@reddit

Definitely a matter for HR and law enforcement. For more subtle aggression, I find the best way to beat down dirty players at work is to play the game better than anyone else. People like that don't usually limit their aggression to one person or situation and they're not usually great adherents to policies and procedures. It doesn't take much effort to uncover their BS and send a memo to HR about what you observed (clutch the pearls!) while investigating something totally unrelated. I do so love being helpful.

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rattis@reddit

While it may feel gratifying to let the stress out, the potential assault on either of you chargers wouldn't be worth it.

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BarnabasDK-1@reddit

I assume a windows machine and you a domain admin. Just login to his laptop remotely and reboot the thing.

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mangonacre@reddit

Why hop on the machine? shutdown -r -m \\\\<computername> -f -t 00 (Not that I would do it without them knowing I was. I'm not a dick like the user in the OP. Just sayin' if you're domain admin, do it from a server.)

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PokeT3ch@reddit

Power move. You take control and lock their input and just do it for them. They are powerless and feel it.

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fatbottomwyfe@reddit

If you really wanted to be petty lock control open notepad type some petty message about who has the power now? Then reboot it.

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Thoth74@reddit

If using the shutdown command just set it to like 60 seconds and include /c with whetevtyoh want them to see. They will likely have no idea how to abort the restart and will be forced to sit there watching the countdown.

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fatbottomwyfe@reddit

Just shutdown -I work in W11? Or just use shell?

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thecomputerguy7@reddit

Make sure to move relatively slowly, and make it look like you’re considering it, before actually doing it. Click and wait, click again, wait a little more

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EchoPhi@reddit

Your -t needs some seconds on it so they get a warning that the machine is going down.

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magistratemagic@reddit

I've found -t 00 can sometimes not fire for some reason. -t 01 is definite though.

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shwaaboy@reddit

I use -t 0 and it works fine.

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BarnabasDK-1@reddit

Not a windows user. But the above will also log onto his PC, just via a different protocol. I am pretty sure the event log will show that admin requested a reboot of his laptop anyway.

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mangonacre@reddit

My point was not to provide a way of doing it surreptitiously. Consider the scenario: An overreacting and overly aggressive user is threatening you with bodily harm. If your intent is to reboot his computer regardless of their objections, how would you get past them to the computer to do it without them taking a swing at you? Again, forcefully rebooting the computer without their knowledge or cooperation is not something I would do anyway. I would absolutely report this user to management and let them figure out how to handle the situation from there.

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BarnabasDK-1@reddit

The best thing that could happen is, that he takes a swing at you - he will be escorted to the door.

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mangonacre@reddit

You and I have very different ideas on how to deal with violent people in the workplace!

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BarnabasDK-1@reddit

I do not accept it at all - if you start fights at your workplace - you need to go. So yes, I guess we do.

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mangonacre@reddit

Yes, I do agree with that, but we seem to differ on how to go about dealing with them. I would not passive-aggressively screw them with a garbage laptop and sit on his repair out of some sense of revenge, or provoke them further to where they take a swing. I'd report the incident and be done with it. Maybe you were just posturing and you really wouldn't do those things?

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BarnabasDK-1@reddit

My ego can handle a black eye. It has in the past. Especially if the other guy gets fired

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thortgot@reddit

A threat of violence is assault. You already have the fellow committing a crime, you don't need to add battery.

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PokeT3ch@reddit

You are level headed reasonable and I agree but I don't like it.

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mangonacre@reddit

Thanks, but really just try to be as professional as possible at my job. Outside work? I'm someone else entirely!

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BarnabasDK-1@reddit

.. and if he actually threatened with violence - I would have no trouble in teaching the idiot who exactly has the long end of the rope, when it comes to what goes on on the network. I would inform my boss about this and say I got it covered, just so he knows what is going on when the idiot eventually starts screaming at the entire department. I would then find the oldest piece of shit laptop in the entire building and issue it to him, and send his current one of to "repairs" - aka into the desk drawer for a good long month or two.

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wanderinggoat@reddit

just reboot the user!

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BarnabasDK-1@reddit

agree..

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King-of-the-Elves@reddit

Boring

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Bedlemkrd@reddit

Sysadmin generalizations: Salespeople fight Marketing takes infinite storage Developers see virtual and translate to infinite processors and memory are available Managers are more concerned with quarterly progress than 3 year advancement and cost savings Hr ladies are the sexual harassment "That guy that knows IT" is going to be horrifically destructive or frequently helpful, there is no inbetween.

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Mister_Brevity@reddit

Kill their key card first, let them walk out then go back to your desk

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JupiterB4Dawn@reddit

This is the way.

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madtice@reddit

Notify their manager. If it is a manager, notify HR. Rebooting a pc is something anyone should be able to do. Or be able to plan for itz

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19610taw3@reddit

I've never been challenged for a fight but I have been so berated by an enduser that I had to go sit in the car and just decompress for an hour or so. After an hour, I was composed enough that I started to head home with no intention of returning. I made it half was and turned around and went back. I did start seriously searching after that.

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wooly678@reddit

Had a teacher threaten to hit me with a hammer after I confiscated their home router and gave it to his principal

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tripodal@reddit

Don't do it OP. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. or Plans, no matter how perfect, do not survive contact with the enemy.

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DerangedPuP@reddit

"Sure, you can meet me at this gym at x time. Once you sign the waiver we can have at it"

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gnostic357@reddit

If a potential new employer asks them if they’d re-hire you, you don’t want a bad response because you fought a maniac before leaving.

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thortgot@reddit

In my opinion it's your ethical responsibility to report the threat not react to it. This person is clearly unstable.

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Computeruser1488@reddit

u/Ngeo10 In my (better) opinion it's your ethical responsibility to knock that fool on his ass.

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DelusionalSysAdmin@reddit

And, if word gets to his new employer, then he'll not have a job at either place.

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Sparcrypt@reddit

Spotted the guy who hasn't fought anyone outside of a video game 🙄. Real life fighting is bad. People get hurt. Report it and move on.

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toanyonebutyou@reddit

He may be leaving the company but he is prolly not leaving the country. An assault charge is what I would be worried about.

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GaryofRiviera@reddit

don't listen them to OP, it is in my humble opinion you commit felony assault

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agoia@reddit

Maybe you could plea it down to manslaughter, but stabbing them in the throat with the racheting screwdriver from the toolbox that doesn't quite select the direction as well anymore is gonna be hard to defend.

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intelminer@reddit

He doesn't have to start the fight. He just has to win

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toanyonebutyou@reddit

What the hell does that even mean? The loser can still press charges. Not worth throwing your life away for fighting, let alone if you knock him out and he hits his head on concrete and dies...this is lose lose in all scenarios

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intelminer@reddit

Well you see. /u/Computeruser1488 responded with what (on my planet at least) is known as "a joke" by countering that it's an "ethical responsibility" for OP to kick the persons ass I continued this "joke" by suggesting in turn that OP could still kick the users ass *and* press charges for assault Hope this helps!

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toanyonebutyou@reddit

Maybe I got whooshed

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Mhind1@reddit

Fuckin’ Restart-Computer -ComputerName <UsersBox> -force Let’s GO MOTHAFUCKA!

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IdiosyncraticBond@reddit

Why not force the latest 20 patches to be installed, 1 at a time, with random 5-20 minutes between forced reboots

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RegistryRat@reddit

Calm down satan

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quazywabbit@reddit

What year is this that you have 20 updates to do?

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ConciergeOfKek@reddit

salesdudes are put in a special OU in preparation for their inevitable bad behavior that necessitates moving their workstation into the punishment OU.

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showyerbewbs@reddit

Is this a fucking NT 4.0 install?

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jbaker88@reddit

Jesus, OP said he just wanted to fight him not kill him.

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Windows_XP2@reddit

Also add a group policy for the user that forces the screen timeout to be 1 minute and changes the timezone to be some completely random one.

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engageant@reddit

Forgetting -computername is just punching yourself in the face

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I_turned_it_off@reddit

reminds me of the time when i cloned a fresh hard drive over an empty one to speed up installation ... oh, i cloned the empty hard drive over the fresh install... ... at least it was my own work machine i was re-building i guess

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thecomputerguy7@reddit

Been there, done that. “Why did my computer- oh. Oops.”

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EchoPhi@reddit

Shutdown -r -f -t 30 This way they get a nice little message that impending doom is coming.

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StungTwice@reddit

Picking fights with IT is the dumbest idea.

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whythehellnote@reddit

Twas ever the case, see BOFH number one from the days quotas were measured in megabytes: Another user rings. "I need more space" he says "Well, why not move to Texas?" I ask "No, on my account, stupid." Stupid? Uh-Oh.. "I'm terribly sorry" I say, in a polite manner equal to that of Jimmy Stewart in a Weekend Family Matine Feature "I didn't quite catch that. What was it that you said?" I smell the fear coming down the line at me, but it's too late, he's a goner and he knows it. "Um, I said what I wanted was more space on my account, *please*" "Sure, hang on" I hear him gasp his relief even though he'd covered the mouthpeice. "There, you've got *plenty* of space now!" "How much have I got?" he simps Now this *REALLY* *PISSES* *ME* *OFF*! Not only do they want me to give them extra space, they want to check it, then correct me if I don't give them enough! They should be happy with what I give them *and that's it*! Back into Jimmy Stewart mode. "Well, let's see, you have 4 Meg available" "Wow! Eight Meg in total, thanks!" he says, pleased with his bargaining power "No" I interrupt, savouring this like a fine red at room temperature, with steak, extra rare, to follow; "4 Meg in total.." "Huh? I'd used 4 Meg already, How could I have 4 Meg Available?" I say nothing. It'll come to him. "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggghhhhhH!"

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upnorth77@reddit

Seriously. I feel like most people understand this, but once in a while you get one of the special ones...

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ShutUpAndDoTheLift@reddit

While ($true){restart-computer -computername <users machine> ; start-sleep -minutes 7}

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TheTipsyTurkeys@reddit

Where the fuck do y'all work 😂

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ninjababe23@reddit

Doesnt matter anymore customers have been getting worst and worst for years now.

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USS_Frontier@reddit

It's gotten real bad post-COVID. I think the "lockdowns" broke a lot of people.

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ninjababe23@reddit

People just literally don't give a fuck anymore unfortunately

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BatemansChainsaw@reddit

The fabric of society is a thin veneer of civility over centuries worth of violence. It’s in our DNA and something has been tugging at the loose threads.

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ninjababe23@reddit

Centuries? Try millenia.

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yogurtgrapes@reddit

Once it’s the worst, it doesn’t get any worse.

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dadbodcx@reddit

Fucking dump that system remotely…shutdown -m -r and move on.

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mm309d@reddit

You want to sound tough. Go outside. Lol

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eduardo_ve@reddit

This happened to me at my first job last year actually. They were dropped as a client the next day. It was funny too cause their network was down and I was trying to fix it and he threatened to beat me to the point he’d be in jail.

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djgizmo@reddit

At that point, I’d refuse to speak with the. Any further. Combative end users for the same company you work for are shitty. They can find help else where. Like their own boss. Forward the threat to your boss and let him deal with it.

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BadSausageFactory@reddit

Agree to meet outside. Do not go. Force reboot and disable access badge. Leave for weekend.

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EchoPhi@reddit

I see you too play dumb games! The best, if you have door locks that use a bluetooth app. You can adjust the time to re-lock. .5 seconds is the best. "Beep, click"

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ratmanmtb@reddit

Happened to me when I worked at the Genius Bar. People wanted to fight me all the time for warranty issues. Said all kinds of crazy threats. Once in a while someone would wait outside and you'd have to get a security escort. But never in sysadmin. If this happened to you report to HR and any relevant authority if you feel you are genuinely threatened. Whatever you do do not escalate with the end user. If you win the fight you maybe get arrested or get sued. You lose your new job. You lose the fight best case you're bruised up. Otherwise injured or worse. Take a deep breath and know you are a better person than that person will ever be. Don't stoop to their level.

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kerosene31@reddit

I cut off all communication long before it gets to that point. Someone is rude or unprofessional? It goes to management/HR and I stop communicating. As adults, there's only two outcomes for fighting. Either you win, and then the police show up and you're charged with assault, or you lose and get beat up (and even then, sometimes the police show up). "Likes to fight guy" will go to the cops and tell them you were the aggressor.

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OldManSysAdmin@reddit

This happened to me just once, while working in oil and gas. An operator in the field said he'd come down and break my geeky pencil neck. I said he's welcome to try, I won't make a complaint to anyone. He'd never seen me. I'm in IT. Of course, I've seen him. All 5'5" and 160 pounds of him showed up, blowing steam and smoke. I met him at the door. He asked me where that (\^&%\*&%\*ER% geek is. "That's me." (Ex military, powerlifter, worked as a bouncer for years) (Not that that's anything to brag about, it's just part of my resume and paints a bit of the picture.) He could have won the Tour de France peddling backwards.

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Man-e-questions@reddit

As the great Weird Al once said “If I ever meet you, I’ll CTRL + ALT + Delete you!”

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MFKDGAF@reddit

Word of advice, it’s not worth it.

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bofh@reddit

> I am honestly very tempted to go through with it. Then you, like them, need to grow TF up. You *should* speak to HR.

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basedadd@reddit

i wish I could have this happen to me just so I could go to hr with that shit. Fuck outta here with threatening to fight people at work over doing their job. YIKES.

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DonJuanDoja@reddit

I get it. However violence only begets more violence. No one ever gets their ass kicked and says "Oh damn I was wrong". Not often anyways. It just makes them worse. The reason they are like that is likely because someone used violence against them to get what they wanted. I try to remember people like this are doing so much damage to their own lives that I don't need to hurt them at all. I just let them keep digging their whole I stay away so I don't fall in. Hate hurts the Hater, more than it hurts the Hated.

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JamesArget@reddit

Man, I wish a user would.

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4SysAdmin@reddit

I always use RMM or my own script if needed to send messages saying the computer needs to reboot. I give them 24 hours. If they can’t find a time during that 24 hour window, it gets rebooted automatically. I’ve never ran into management or supervisor issues doing it this way. If someone threatens me like that, immediate trip to HR. We’re professionals, not underaged frat bros at a bar.

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Tareen81@reddit

Remote reboot with a nice little middle finger

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anomalous_cowherd@reddit

Put a popup on his laptop saying "I'm going outside now, I may be some time." Then wait 30 seconds and reboot it. He can meet it outside if he likes.

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grygrx@reddit

shutdown /r /t 0 /f /m \\thisguysshit

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rmpbklyn@reddit

cut off any personal pc all should be natted and firewall, login to wifii and only specific dns names. if company pc. they dont have choice walk away tell them they have 10mins to reboot if not remote login and reboot yourself. they should be saving company wirk on company fileserver anyway

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dtb1987@reddit

Report them to HR, a threat of physical harm is serious and your HR should do something about it

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korbanik@reddit

Had user get in my face after we migrated to win10. He was so pissed that he lost his bookmarks which in reality were just pinned tabs. I explained we cannot restore pinned tabs. He was shorter than me and I just nervously started giggling at how ridiculous this situation was.

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Bagel-luigi@reddit

Not so much challenged to a fight, but had a guy over the phone threaten to come to my office a few floors above him and demand I look into his issue. I have no office, most of IT work remotely from home, and this guy lives in a city at least 3 hours drive from me. Go ahead buddy, come to 'my office', I'm afraid I won't be there

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pryan67@reddit

As others have said, the biggest issue is reporting it to HR. Doesn't matter if you're leaving in a week, or if it's your last hour there. Report the bastard. As for the reboot, send them an email notifying them that a reboot is required in order to troubleshoot the issue he's reporting. Ask him to update the ticket after he has rebooted, and that the ticket will be suspended pending their verification that it's been restarted.

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Reinitialization@reddit

Mate, that's the dream! If I could just throw fists at my users when they do dumb shit my life would be so much better.

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duranfan@reddit

Don't be dumb. Escalate that up the management chain immediately.

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FluidBreath4819@reddit

Hell yes, play dumb. Say you're fear for your life. Company will try to bury it either by firing him or giving you a departing gift

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Boolog@reddit

It happened in my previous workplace. Someone threatened one of the helpdesk guys with physical violence. An hour later, he was escorted out by security after his exit interview. What's wrong with people?

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nirach@reddit

That sounds like an 'attach log to email send to HR/boss/whoever and walk away' situation.

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catwiesel@reddit

never argue with stupid. they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. ticket open: error description support reply: please reboot user reply: no (in any shape or form) support: unless you follow our steps, we can not proceed any further. ticket in suspension until user follows simple instructions why argue. why fight. why... anything. if someone is not following the simple first step of troubleshooting, you wait for them until they do. no argument, no discussion, just repeat the simple instruction. they escalate, have it rejected, and repeat the simple instruction they go to management, management comes looking for answers, produce the ticket history and let that speak for itself. and if you ever get threatened with physical force, immediately turn around, do not go over go, do not collect money, head directly to hr and report the incident. (and if someone would be let go for insisting the user follows simple trouble shooting steps, or one would report the threat of physical violence, then they are better off not working there)

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lee-keybum@reddit

"Since you won't reboot the computer, I guess I must reboot you."

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gnocchicotti@reddit

"How about I turn *you* off and turn *you* on again?"

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DreadPirateLink@reddit

Go on....

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Mister_Lizard@reddit

Maybe don't threaten to turn him on....

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thecomputerguy7@reddit

That’ll turn into a whole other HR issue 😂

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fosf0r@reddit

"I'll defrag you so hard you will C:"

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dontusethisforwork@reddit

"I think my hard drive is dying" "if it dies, it dies"

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lee-keybum@reddit

A whole 'nother legal issue!

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cirquefan@reddit

UwU

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Kawasakison@reddit

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb2jGy76v0Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb2jGy76v0Y)

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autogyrophilia@reddit

Instructions unclear, made the user take a screenshot

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Valkeyere@reddit

r/loggingoff

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localcokedrinker@reddit

lmao I love how no less than 6 people in the comments (I ctrl-F'd) decided to share with a group of sysadmins that they're 6'4 and "wish this would happen to them" lmao yall are the goofiest mfs on the planet earth.

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EEU884@reddit

Go smack them in the mouth.

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cheech712@reddit

I would have just laughed in his face. However, that does often result in an escalation.

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BobKoss@reddit

An assault charge isn’t going to help your career.

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qejfjfiemd@reddit

What the fuck

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Rilot@reddit

I had this once when I refused to sign off a technical design that a salesman had proposed. In response I said “You want to fight me? Are you 12?” He didn’t last long in that company.

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Brilliant_Sound_5565@reddit

No, never. HR issue, that's not an acceptable way to speak to anyone at work. It's intimidating behaviour and instantly makes me wonder what or who else they are saying things like this to. Needs calling out and raising internaly. Don't actually go for a fight because all you've done is lower yourself to their levels and ultimately you run the risk of being caught fighting at work too.

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mumuwu@reddit

HR

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DonCBurr@reddit

report him.... since you are leaving it may actually carry more weight since you really dont have anything to gain. You may save someone else from this.... its the right thing to do

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Narrow-Dog-7218@reddit

Remote reboot 12 times in the next hour

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Vohdre@reddit

When I was very new in the industry I worked as a consultant at the corporate headquarters of a VERY large fast food chain which had chefs on site I guess working on the next thing to kill the American public. My partner and I went to do something to the PC of one of these gentlemen. We had heard he was kind of weird. While everyone else had all kinds of certificates and mementos in their cubicles this guy had exactly one item - a personalized autographed and framed picture of Frank Gorshin (The Riddler from the 1960s Batman). So we were trying to do whatever it our ticket said and the guy comes back to his desk and sees us and FLIPS OUT on my partner. Just screaming at him and accusing him of breaking into his PC and stealing things. I tried to explain but the dude was just going off and was throwing some pretty harsh insults and threats of physical harm. At this point I had to physically restrain my coworker from murdering this guy and basically dragged him out of the area. We reassigned the ticket to one of the company employees and fortunately never had to see that weirdo again.

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Horrigan49@reddit

Thats new... I encountered rather rough guys in production, but thats a different from a laptop user... Or it should be different...

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Alzzary@reddit

Dude you want to fight end users, I'm fighting not to end users.

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Feeling_Object_4940@reddit

beat the shit out of him, stay ITIL compliant

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McAUTS@reddit

For this particular case I wrote a script which annoys the user every xx minutes from a particular time on day (morning and evening ) on to remind them of a restart if they didn't do it themselves. I did this for EVERYONE! No exclusions besides on shared devices, which are especially used for presentation. Hell, they hated me, got called by my boss and oh boy he didn't like it. But my argument was simple: "If you don't allow me to do that you take the full responsibility for any device problems and I want that in written note. And this gets spread out to the whole company: I don't service the devices anymore." Got it approved and after some weeks I have 0 device problems and everybody knows why now. Quite effective. Maybe later this year I will remove the script and see if my users have learned the lesson.

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gruftwerk@reddit

Sounds like someone wants a reboot script to launch on login after a force restart.

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Michichael@reddit

Most I've had is calling the bluff of a moron that didn't want windows to reboot for updates. "Just delete the update. I'm a PARTNER, and I know to do that!" "I'm literally the most technically qualified person at this company. The update installed at midnight. This is the reboot to finalize it, after a 16 hour warning that the logs showed you acknowledging and clicking 'Snooze' on. I would like nothing better than to take your advice and irreparably damage your system by deleting the OS from it, but neither of us would be happy with that solution because you'd be down and I'd have to hear about it. It's an update, it's done, reboot your damn computer." Queue the angry user noises that they have SO MUCH WORK to do. "If you'd rebooted, you'd be working by now. Instead you've spent an hour and a half escalating through helpdesk to get the the infrastructure architect. If you don't like what I'm saying, too bad - you're not getting a different answer just because it's not the one you wanted to hear." More bitching and moaning. "Well, you're welcome to complain to <CIO> - but at this point, there's nothing we can do for you. Reboot your computer or it'll reboot for you in... 8 minutes now." More angry partner noises, do you know who I am, etc etc. "Yes, Peter, I know exactly who you are. You're the guy who's computer is going to reboot in 4 minutes so save your work. Have a good one." A certain magic happens when you stop caring about getting fired. I'm not gonna let some pompous jackass shit on my helpdesk colleagues and go ahead and fire me, the projects I'm doing have an ROI in the millions that's a hefty % of this year's revenue, I'd love to see this company eat shit. Do it.

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irn@reddit

No need to catch an assault charge. Maybe just force reboot remotely while they have 1000 excel files and PowerPoint open.

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VulturE@reddit

File your HR note. Request approval from their manager to reboot their PC as needed within reason.

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Yoyocord666@reddit

I wouldn’t, but i am skinny AF and can’t fight lol Go for it, but maybe wait until you’ve left the company.

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Sparcrypt@reddit

I had someone try it once which was pretty stupid as I was twice his size. Either way it went straight to my manager, HR, and the department head who was in that guys office 30 minutes later letting him know that this was his one and only warning and he'd be immediately terminated if he ever said something like that to any employee ever again.

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Doane@reddit

well, not quite this, but had a user (sales, fuck sales) say: I am coming over and have you fired. Me: I'll be waiting for you! He came but brought a co-worker, obviously scared of getting hurt. We were put in a room with my teamlead and it ended with my contract not renewed. Fuck sales, fuck my big mouth.

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brokenmcnugget@reddit

director of the department called me a retard once. once.

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2clipchris@reddit

I have been called that before as their consequences I act as dense as possible to frustrate them even more. Than laugh at them as they get angrier

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Sandman0@reddit

I'm picturing you wearing a pinstripe suit while saying this for some reason...

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2clipchris@reddit

Lmfaoo I talk over these fucking clowns. Disrespect them to their face. They won’t do shit and what they are going to tell their supervisor “hey boss, I threatened the IT guy instead of being scared he told over me” gtfo shut that clown up

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admin_penguin@reddit

Don't fight the troll.

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DevilsCabbage69@reddit

I just think of Disturbed "Down with the sickness" playing as you duke it out. If you fight him please record so I can mash this up for you.

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101001101zero@reddit

Enter-pssession hostname Shutdown -r -t 0 They won’t even know what hit them Unless they know someone that actually knows how to use eventviewer.msc Karens and Kevins can fuck off, document the uptime and nuke it from space Always provide the business case for doing that in the ticket for cya, screenshots in the ticket from dms should prove reasonable for any upper echelon folks

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ethanjscott@reddit

yeah. fight em, and assert your dominance. Have you considered being the man you want to be.

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battleBrew@reddit

# Define the computer name or IP address of the remote laptop $remoteComputer = "RemotePCName" # Define the message to alert the user $alertMessage = "cash me out outside" # Using Invoke-Command to run commands on the remote computer Invoke-Command -ComputerName $remoteComputer -ScriptBlock { # Display a message box to the user Add-Type -AssemblyName PresentationFramework \[System.Windows.MessageBox\]::Show($args\[0\]) # Restart the computer with a delay of 2 seconds Restart-Computer -Delay 2 -Force } -ArgumentList $alertMessage

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BitGamerX@reddit

Seems like something to bring to HR.

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barkingcat@reddit

First rule of fight club...

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fuknthrowaway1@reddit

If any end user threatened me with violence I would make sure it would be the end of their employment. I have before, and I will again. (User had a crappy off-brand scanner they bought out of their own budget, complete with crappy off-brand software that liked to forget the scanner existed. The fix was pretty easy; Close the software, power cycle the scanner, and start the software again. User didn't want to do that and demanded my cubicle number so he could come 'kick my teeth in'.)

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DoorDashCrash@reddit

We have mutual combat where I am. I’d knock him the fuck out and take the rest of the day off for my troubles.

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hosalabad@reddit

Lol, look him right in the eye as you send a reboot to his laptop with a shutdown /t 5 /s /c "fill in the blank as needed here"

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gayonweekends@reddit

Yeah back when I worked help desk. Told him I'm at the address on our website and hung up. Never heard back and he never complained.

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zipcad@reddit

Beat his fucking ass in the street. Your honor depends on it. You might get fired, you might go to jail, but no one will fuck with IT for a while and you’ll be our Kiki.

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dropofred@reddit

Never been physically challenged before but somebody I used to work with was slapped with a hard binder by a very dissatisfied client when he did the monthly on-site visit. There is a guy I would love to physically fight though at my current job. Every time we implement any kind of change, the first thing that he does when we let the users know about the change is stop by our desks and challenge us. He works in our logistics department and feels entitled to try to have us justify our decisions. He has a nasty attitude and is rude to us whenever he needs help, which is at least four times a week for dumb shit. He has already been talked to about his attitude towards us, but he has only brought it down to just below the level of nastiness that would get him in trouble again.

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willynolegs@reddit

5:31 buddy,

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stesha83@reddit

Just reboot his laptop remotely, you’ve got all the power here.

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Darthvaderisnotme@reddit

Schedule a reboot every hour and a half or random. or "Ticket closed, instructions given"

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brad24_53@reddit

Script it to reboot when the letter J is pressed or after # mouse clicks lol

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thoggins@reddit

> after # mouse clicks On boot, generate a number, when the mouse has been clicked that many times # Generate a random number from 1 to 100 $randomNumber = Get-Random -Minimum 1 -Maximum 101 # Display the randomly generated number Write-Host "Random number generated: $randomNumber" # Counter for mouse clicks $clickCount = 0 # Function to handle mouse click event function MouseClickEvent { Write-Host "Mouse clicked!" $global:clickCount++ Write-Host "Current click count: $clickCount" # Check if the click count matches the randomly generated number if ($clickCount -eq $randomNumber) { Write-Host "Click count matches random number. Rebooting the machine..." Restart-Computer -Force } } # Register an event for mouse clicks Register-ObjectEvent -InputObject (New-Object Windows.Forms.Form) -EventName MouseClick -Action { MouseClickEvent } | Out-Null # Keep the script running indefinitely while ($true) { Start-Sleep -Seconds 1 } (this is chatgpt output, did not check to see if it's actually functional)

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JapaneseZlatan@reddit

> (this is chatgpt output, did not check to see if it's actually functional) Can we please not ? What's the point of copy pasting code if you have no idea if it works ?

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thoggins@reddit

Point? I don't know that there's a point to almost any of the discussion in this sub. Generating it, typing the joke and pasting the code all probably took less than a minute. I didn't stop to think about what the point was. If I did that with any frequency during my redditing time I'd not enjoy it nearly as much.

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SpiceIslander2001@reddit

Ooh, that is evil.... I'd probably do it a bit simpler - scheduled task. Well two. Scheduled task #1's only task is to (re) create scheduled task #2 and set it to run at random date and time. Scheduled task #2 runs the reboot command at a random time. Should take them some time to figure out what's going on.

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autogyrophilia@reddit

I very much doubt that PowerShell has a global keylogger function. Maybe over the active window?

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pleasedothenerdful@reddit

Powershell can call .net functions and events, and you can bet your butt there's a .net event for mouse clicks. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42145440/powershell-capture-mouse-click-event-inside-a-powershell-console You're absolutely correct that the code above won't do it, though.

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thoggins@reddit

Yeah I was kind of skeptical about that too. Like I said, didn't check. I would never actually do this so it doesn't really matter for the joke if it works.

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fatbottomwyfe@reddit

Now that would be funny.

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z_agent@reddit

Reboot EVERYONE else's....with a netsend message stating that user refuses to reboot their machine so you are testing to see if everybody else getting a reboot fixes it.

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Tymanthius@reddit

Why would you want to risk an assault charge? b/c even if HE didn't call the cops, someone who actually has sense at that company would. I love when people get mad at me b/c I call the cops 'Why can't you just handle this like an adult?!' I am dear. I tried talking to you and you were crazy. So this is the adult thing to do.

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Co1dNight@reddit

Just report them to HR and let them handle it. Even entertaining the idea of getting into a physical confrontation over something like this is highly unprofessional and immature. Don't be that guy.

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illsk1lls@reddit

if beating him up was the correct answer, this would have already been fight club sub a long time ago 👀

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vCentered@reddit

If the roles were reversed and you were challenging people to go fight you would be fired immediately. You've got nothing to lose. Report them to HR. If the company is decent they'll fire him and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that your last act out the door was to stick it to that piece of shit and he probably knows it, too. If they aren't decent they'll keep him around, and, well, you're on your way out anyway.

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Ser_Alluf_DiChikans@reddit

Beat their fucking ass on behalf of everybody thats ever bad to work in support. Jobs are a dime a dozen right now, you don't need that one.

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SoundAnxious3362@reddit

I always follow them to the grocery store after work. Never do that at work.

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zSprawl@reddit

No, I have never been challenged to an IT fight. What the heck am I missing?! LOL

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x534n@reddit

Why wouldn't he reboot unless he already had. And what does he mean about you sounding tough?

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Busy-Character-3099@reddit

If you're leaving the comapny anyway you could remote into his laptop and lock him out of stuff. Or just remove his privileges. Or heck, if you have proof, like an email just skip the HR step and go to the cops and tell them he's threatening you

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Lykos1124@reddit

Do a remote dos/powershell console of his computer and /shutdown /f /r and close ticket. Why ask when you can remote, am I right? *Okay okay,* morally wrong IT wise, but you can't say you don't want to.

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EnvironmentalRead372@reddit

Story time: I worked at a quick lube place. It was a terrible place and being the new guy I got the most hazing and disrespect from the other guys. I can deal with little things but it got to the point where it was a bit much and problematic. I was ready to quit but was more or less trying to find a solid justification. Welp, one guy gave me it. I was inflating a tire for a customer and my coworker was walking behind me and bumped me and knocked me over (I was knelt down on one knee checking the pressure). Everyone laughed and I wasn't in a great mood. Plus the customer saw it and was smirking too. Enoughs enough bud, it's personal. So I get up in his face and tell him to please not do that again. He told me meet him in the parking lot after work. I just stared at him and went back to checking the pressures. End of the day comes by and he's walking back to his car. I walk straight up to him and he starts walking faster. I catch up and go "hey you wanted see me right? Boss isn't around today. If you're gonna do something, I'm right here". He got in his car and left. He's staring at me through the rear view and I'm just shaking my head while smiling. I never came back to work after that day. I'm all for a fight. If you're gonna be a hardass and say you're gonna do something, I'm right here. Do it. I don't advise fighting anyone, if you don't want to, don't. But hey, out back (maybe off company property), in the parking lot or even at my place, come on by. I'm down for a brawl after work. Let off some good stress.

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Plus-Suspect-3488@reddit

As a former Army Infantryman, former police officer, and 6'4"IT professional with 6 years of BJJ I certainly would have to give the user their request. After all, customer service is the most crucial element to IT. Just fulfilling his request - much obliged.

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lilrebel17@reddit

Tough customers are hard to deal with by nature. I humor whatever they want at first. I attempt to circumvent the step they dont want to take. They are much more likely to reboot after 45 minutes of me clicking around and them losing time working on whatever they were working on.

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Dewdus_Maximus@reddit

Dude. HR, CC their manager and your manager, wash your hands and walk away. That guy sounds like a royal piece of shit.

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comminayyahhaaaa@reddit

Is this a real post? This can’t seriously be a real post. I would think anyone within a reasonable intelligence level would know that this is not appropriate for the workplace. The idea that OP would be willing to go through with a fight is odd in its own right. Why waste anyone’s time with questioning the right move on this part. Even a simple google search would say these actions are not appropriate and I hardly believe that Reddit is the first go to for questioning. Overall, this just seems like an insult to visitors to this site and sub. If this is an algorithmic AI post I am personally insulted. What’s that scene in Billy Madison… adapted for this the quote may look like, “We are all now dumber for reading this post”

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NinjaGeoff@reddit

Tell them yeah, you'll meet them outside. Then shut their access card off.

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DoctorAKrieger@reddit

https://youtu.be/8H-FiCIMh20?si=pKiIiHpnKqCbF600

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lovelesschristine@reddit

No but I sit next to the ITSD, and I have heard somethings. My favorite was a new user who ended the call with "this is not over" guess she didn't like the answer they gave her. Anyways they did her offboarding paperwork like a month later. They still laugh about it say I guess it's over now. Although we do plan on starting the data center fight club

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SM_DEV@reddit

“… this is NOT over!” Yes. It is.

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realmozzarella22@reddit

“Come on, dude. You want a physical fight because I recommended a reboot. Sheila from accounting had no problems with the same situation. Her computer is running smoothly too.”

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P00PJU1C3@reddit

I would have said sure

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NorthernVenomFang@reddit

Never go down to the level of the end users... You always need to be better than them. No matter what you will always be in the wrong when it comes to getting in a fight at work.

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SM_DEV@reddit

They will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.

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xMcRaemanx@reddit

Correct response is "I don't hit the mentally challenged" since you arent conflict adverse. Maybe it'll push him over the edge in office with witnesses so you can kick his ass in self defence. That or push a reboot via your rmm silently and claim it was because he hadn't rebooted in so long your patch management forced it or you guess it really was a system issue and it crashed.

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MegaOddly@reddit

Here's a better idea. Make a script which letterally forces the computer to be restarted call it "Fix problem" push it to the user's PC tell them to run it. It won't even need admin privileges

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sanitaryworkaccount@reddit

I did IT for a large(ish) metra city for a few years, 3k+ employees, went to help a Police Detective with an issue (can't get too specific here) but it was more of a "we can't do this because of policy" type conversation. This fucker pulled his gun out of his holster, laid it on the desk and literally said "This is how this is going to go." I immediately laughed in his face and walked out of the room, called HR, filed a grievance. Nothing happened.

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rockstarsball@reddit

i hope you laughed and asked if his glock was a sweet sixteen gift for his daughter

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Sulanis1@reddit

Just take it to management. If someone is so primitive that they need to try to intimidate you with violence, then they shouldn't be there. Plain and simple.

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sovereign666@reddit

I had an altercation with a customers employee almost come to fists over a printer. I also had a customer that was frustrated with his issue ask me "i wonder what the suicide rate of people in your field is?" I knew where this fella worked and wanted to turn him into a statistic but instead I went out and had 3 cigs.

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JapaneseZlatan@reddit

> "I wonder what the suicide rate of people in your field is?" "Why does it matter ? I'm not a weakling crybaby like you are mate"

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StolliV@reddit

Weekly Scheduled reboot for that user. That’s how you flex the muscles. IT people don’t like outside.

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ShutUpAndDoTheLift@reddit

We do every machine, every morning at 0300

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advocate112@reddit

Management. This is a case for manag- **You know what, fuck it. Meet them outside, I'll see you there and bring some water for you.**

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fresh-dork@reddit

offer to meet them outside, but disable their badge at the same time.

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thecomputerguy7@reddit

And just stand on the other side of the door and wave 👋

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mdj1359@reddit

Shall I bring the popcorn then? Everybody can come!

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SpotlessCheetah@reddit

We all know management is completely inept.

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toblies@reddit

I don't understand reboot-adverse users. Like why tf don't you want to reboot? It usually helps out your user experience, why would you not?

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jerrodbug@reddit

From my experience they usually have a hundred tabs open because they don’t know how to use bookmarks or history, and/or 27 excel spreadsheets they have not saved and don’t have autosaved turned on for either.

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JapaneseZlatan@reddit

If you have tabs opened you don't even need bookmarks or history.... ctrl + shift + T will reopen the tabs even AFTER a reboot......

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toblies@reddit

Yeah.. I know, it's just soooo dumb.

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Zahrad70@reddit

Absolutely not. I’ll take “things that mean you have to leave the city, and maybe the state for $250, Alex.”

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pemungkah@reddit

You don’t want to be getting into a fight of any kind with someone who’s going to be there if you’re not, because he will be there to tell his version and you will not. A lie travels round the world before the truth has its boots on. And given what you’ve told us, he absolutely will lie and say _you_ wanted to fight _him_. Especially if he loses. So. “User physically threatened me when a reboot was required to finish correcting the problem” goes in the ticket, so the next person along knows this guy is bonkers, even if HR takes no action, and then you go to HR and lay it out. Emphasize that you do not feel safe. If HR seems reluctant to take it seriously, ask them if they’d prefer a police report — which you may need to make anyway, because if you get his ass fired, he may lay for you in the parking lot.

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Fear_The_Creeper@reddit

Don't mess with crazy. It would be just your luck if he pulled a knife or a gun out.

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hypnopixel@reddit

sounds like a great idea for a Chuck Palahniuk novel.

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immortalsteve@reddit

tbh OP, I would have also contacted HR but only to let them know I was gonna kick his ass lol

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dansedemorte@reddit

just remote reboot it.

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Left_of_Center2011@reddit

That’s when I use RMM to reboot the laptop before his very eyes 😊

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itspie@reddit

CC HR, your manager, and their manager. Close ticket due to user not following instructions.

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iceyone444@reddit

Email to cc, your manager and their manager - unacceptable

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Otherwise-Safety-579@reddit

I'd just go ahead and let them punch me and get them fired. If they loaded well then, there's that too. And if I was omw out I'd be tempted to really f with them

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Timely_Old_Man45@reddit

Email to my manager, their manager, and HR. I’ve seen it before where it’s not their first time making such a threat. If it’s happened now, it’s happened before, and will happen again.

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BlackAlert187@reddit

I was threatened by a warehouse manager at my previous job. He was mad because his personal(we didn't touch personal equipment ) Nextel phone was broken. Said if I didn't fix it he would punch "the living daylight" out of me. I had already put in my two weeks notice about a week prior. It took everything in my 6'9 275 pound frame to not beat the dog shit out of him. But the office ladies calmed me down and I just left the office instead. HR did nothing at all, they called me asked what happened and said "well that's unfortunate"...end of story lol

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snakebite75@reddit

On your last day push a new GPO that force reboots all computers at 4:45 every day.

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netsysllc@reddit

Tell him if he is feeling frogy to jump

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cluberti@reddit

If it's windows, remote into it, copy notmyfault to the device, and crash it. Rebooted.

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Kiowascout@reddit

Maybe this guy could leave the company faster than you are already planning.

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kevvie13@reddit

The great departing gift will be thay guy teceiving earning letter or disciplinary actions. Go to HR since nothing holding you back now.

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NetworkCanuck@reddit

THUNDERDOME!

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theoriginalzads@reddit

Between jobs in IT during one of the mining downturns in Western Australia, I took on some work as a security guard to pay the bills. Was working at a freight yard. Had some prick colleague shirtfront me threatening violence. Knowing full well he was on a performance plan after getting drunk at a work event and taking a swing at the depot manager, I invited him to take a swing at me in front of the 3 cameras, so it gave me a reason to “defend myself”. Still disappointed he didn’t. Did get to wave to him as colleagues escorted him from the property after I reported the incident, complete with CCTV and audio.

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xtreampb@reddit

Remote powershell restart his laptop for him.

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bleuflamenc0@reddit

I don't believe I ever had, although there was an instructor who would yell and throw stuff because he was logged out of a shared classroom computer. I would ask the guy why it is such a big deal to reboot. Sincerely. I mean he's probably a psycho but he's also probably an idiot and if you actually took some time to try to understand his (idiotic) point of view, you would probably learn something, and he would probably learn something too. In the case of the guy I mention, he was way out of line, but because he was clearly too stupid to successfully enter his username and password correctly, it probably would have been less trouble for all of us to adopt smart card or fingerprint authentication. There was also a legitimate gripe about how the classroom computers were joined to a different domain than his office one, which caused confusion and many other people would have trouble logging in. Of course the other people would then remember they needed to preface their username with the domain, and he wasn't smart enough to do that. In the end, it wasn't long before this guy retired. I think he should have been fired, but, well, the college had endless bigger problems.

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DeadFyre@reddit

Not personally, because I did not come up through the helpdesk channel. My route to Systems administration was: Network Callcenter, Network Operations, Network Engineering, DevOps/Sysadmin. On the other hand, I have seen a few altercations between staff/contractors and peers/managers, and the answer is always the same: a telephone call to Human Resources, followed by prompt dismissal, police escort out of the building optional. >I am honestly very tempted to go through with it. Yes, you are tempted. I'm going to jump out and assume you are male, and no, you do not appreciate having your dominance and masculinity challenged by some fucking ignorant chode. \*\*DO NOT DO IT\*\*. This is a fail play, which cannot redound to your benefit. Use your head, play to win. Report this cracker to H.R., and if he challenges you physically, make a reasonable, good faith attempt to disengage. If he attempts to restrain you, \*\*THEN\*\* feed him the pavement cookie he so richly deserves. Here's why you play it this way: 1) You protect yourself from legal and maybe medical trouble. 2) The next guy this asshole tries to bully may not be so fortunate as to be able to take care of himself. The company, and your fellow coworkers deserve to work in a place with rules. 3) Professionalism and poiseare important. Be the bigger guy, recognize that this limp-dick is getting by on lack of both looks and brains, and if he's picking fights with you, it's because he has nothing else in his bag.

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axilidade@reddit

this ain't /r/shittysysadmin

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AbleAmazing@reddit

At my company, this would be an instant termination.

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TravellingBeard@reddit

Let me guess; they're in sales.

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Kidpunk04@reddit

PS invoke-command -computername toughguyscomputer -scriptblock { shutdown /r } Smile

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GhostNode@reddit

You have my sword.

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DivineDart@reddit

Headbutt, no one expects it.

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Shupershuff@reddit

Report to HR and both of you will be leaving the company next week.

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jv159@reddit

Plot twist it’s the CEO. Treat it like any other person.

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jv159@reddit

Unless you were rude and/or snarky it sounds like they’re the problem. If he’s not much bigger than you I’d say go for it.

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Daphoid@reddit

Not me directly; but I've definitely had people grumpy at me or who didn't like me I'm sure. I did hear third party that a customer challenged one of our managers to a fight back in the day in the parking lot of the DC. Never happened though (the fight that is)

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Pelatov@reddit

Agree, bring management and a printed out guide to resolution and say “so you wanted to talk outside, I wanted management to know that I brought you the guide in your preferred delivery space. Oh, also. I heard there’s issues with badges and you might not be able to get back in. If yours doesn’t work, can’t have someone tailgating for security reasons

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figbiscotti@reddit

A year from now this will be nonsense, unless you beat the crap out of him, or something happens to you in this important establishing of supremacy. The kicker is you are moving on. It's not as though you are forced to work with the guy who gave your prior girlfriend herpes or something. Leave your work at work and let assholes be asshole. *Never add drama.*

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Advanced-Abrocoma-30@reddit

Report it to your boss in an email and they'll escalate it to HR.

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marklein@reddit

I emailed a coworker once something along the lines of "maybe we should meet after work to discuss this further". I was thinking beers because we weren't getting along via email, and he thought I was proposing we duke it out in the parking lot. lol Anyway, that person needs to be fired and you need to make it happen. That's not acceptable and if you ignore it then you're just enabling him to do it to somebody else later.

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lvlint67@reddit

> we can go talk about this outside since you want to sound so tough. "Ill be right there." -2 hours later- "yeah sorry. I had work to do. Could spend all day chit chatting. You get that reboot done".

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Clueguy@reddit

Tell him to meet you across the street from the office and make sure neither of you is wearing anything company branded.

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PedanticDilettante@reddit

Do you have credentials on the rfid badge reader system? Revoke his badge and tell him you'll meet him outside shortly.

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Redemptions@reddit

"Sir, this is NOT a Wendy's, we do not throw down in the parking lot."

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smilNwave@reddit

Beat the brakes off him

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fonetik@reddit

Remote restart on the hour until he sends a written apology.

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spazmo_warrior@reddit

^^^This guy BOFH’s

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kysersoze1981@reddit

I worked on a returns bay many moons ago. Several times idiots tried to fight me because they wanted to return things they shouldn't. Laughter works very well. The best ones are guys that tell you they can box and Start randomly shadow boxing with really poor form

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RCTID1975@reddit

The better option here is to go to your boss and insist HR gets involved. I know that I would be pressing to get this person fired for creating a (literally) hostile work environment.

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Jawb0nz@reddit

Boss, not end user. We were at a community out of town at a regional power utility racking a new server. I forget why, but he decided he needed to reboot a Unix server (SCO, I think) in the same rack and the people lost access to their billing systems and some other critical resources for a few hours. He didn't know what happened and had zero clue how to fix it. Repeatedly, I asked him to let me on the console to figure it out, so he turned to me and asked if I wanted to take it outside. "Sure!" He mumbled something and went back to trying to hunt and peck his way to a miracle. I got tired of his BS, walked into the executive conference room and SSH'd into the server and fixed it in a shade under two minutes. Somehow, way before we did anything for them, someone left the network setup in the running config and didn't write the files to save changes, for what I can only assume was years. Added the gateway again, saved the config changes and magic things happened. You bet your ass I went right to him and told him I fixed it. Jaw hit the floor and wanted to know what I did. I told him where I went, why I went there, how I got in and what was done to fix the problem. For the rest of the day, he acted like I was the Messiah and praised me to anyone that was in earshot at any point. This is also the same guy that called his wife a bitch and hung up on her during a normal conversation earlier in the day when she disagreed with something he said. I didn't work for him much longer after that and his business went down in flames just a few years after.

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bjmgeek@reddit

When I was in college I was a (student worker) sysadmin for the university, and one of the users was violating university policies. I asked him nicely to stop, and he said he'd kill me. I talked to the department head and he called campus security.

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Ok-Intention-5009@reddit

Or maybe better to get him fired right before leaving lol

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plasticbuddha@reddit

Insta-fired for threatening another employee, is how my company would handle this.

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Smoothstiltskin@reddit

That's something you report to HR and let someone else deal with it. Won't reboot? Wtf?

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Boonaki@reddit

Sort of, I had a death threat from someone because of a printer.

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EchoChamberReddit13@reddit

Nah, get their ass fired.

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TheGeneralgr@reddit

Report it to HR. IMMEDIATELY. You shouldn’t even be asking Reddit about this.

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Maxplode@reddit

I mean, it is a sackable offence and it would probably go in your favour but I think we need more duels in life. Not necessarily to the death but it should be a fair fight with your choice of combat. Definitely think it's part of our evolution so why not embrace it?? Anyway, I haven't had a fight with customer but often thought about it. The closest I ever had was a job close to Christmas.. we weren't getting any bonuses and my arse hole manager thought it would be best to install this customer's server on a Friday, in the middle of London. So.. had to turn off the server I was replacing and the internet went down, I had the go ahead from the owner.. I then had some little twerp shouting at me, F'ing and blinding. I stood up to him, I got real close and he coward like a little bitch. And very calmly told him that I would have it all back on in just a minute. Well he didn't dare look at me after I checked round to make sure everyone was okay.

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BanGreedNightmare@reddit

A couple decades ago while working as a Technical Services Supervisor at a computer retailer, one of my employees got an elderly customer purposefully worked up before turning him over to me. The old guy was trying to prove some point about how much he hated it when employees asked him if he needed help and proceeded to grab me by the collar of my polo and tried to yank me across the counter. The guy was old and obviously not completely competent. I almost fought back instinctively but fortunately I kept my cool until he stopped yanking on my shirt. We fired that employee shortly thereafter.

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ryanb2633@reddit

Sounds like you may need to tailor your "speaking to users" skills.

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IsaacJB1995@reddit

They're trying to trap you into gross misconduct so you get in the most trouble. Don't do it. Report it to your manager and HR and let them handle it

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lebean@reddit

In any company of any size, that user should be immediately terminated from their position regardless of job function, and escorted off the premises.

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theadj123@reddit

Going to jail for some shitbag employee you won't see again after next week seems like a poor life choice. Just remotely restart the machine next time and send something to your manager. On topic, I never had an end user do this but I did have a *co-worker* do it. He was having some personal life issues and decided that taking it out on his team was a good idea. He actually shoved me because he didn't like something I said, we had some words, and he promptly went on PTO for a week to sort himself out. He was an OK guy, just having a rough time so I didn't push the issue and he wasn't a significant physical threat to me.

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lantech19446@reddit

I'm 6'4" 350lbs and I worked security professionally for years I wish a motherfucker would

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ResponsibilityLast38@reddit

6'7" 300 lbs and I used to do landscaping at day, line cooking at night and moonlight as a bouncer. When I moved into IT, I had to adjust my perspective to realize that people were not actually trying to fight me, lol. People in offices seem to like to run their mouths and throw shade in ways that manual laborers tend to square up over, but at the same time wont put up with the playful kind of shit talk that everyone in a kitchen, work crew, or security shift lives for.

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lantech19446@reddit

I work in a public library, no one has been dumb enough to actually try to hit me been threatened several times once even by a neo-nazi but i have had to manhandle some people who were fighting.

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ResponsibilityLast38@reddit

Shiiiiiit, son, public library aint no joke. Ive seen crazier shit go down there than half past last call. Thank you for your service.

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lantech19446@reddit

thank you and honestly thank you for saying that because I was beginning to wonder if mine was just off the chain

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davidbrit2@reddit

If that ever happens, you absolutely have to remember to say "Hey Shooter, haven't you forgotten your 9-iron?" when they immediately back down and quickly walk away.

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localgoon-@reddit

Yea go ahead and take the fade since he gave you the invitation

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AnythingButTheTip@reddit

Pepper spray the brown starfish if you do go the physical route. Nothing more embarrassing than going to the ER for a spicy butthole that you didn't quite cause.

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fresh-dork@reddit

> they said "we can go talk about this outside since you want to sound so tough." "I'm leaving and not coming back without a security escort"

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ExhaustedTech74@reddit

Ask him to make sure he brings the laptop with him so you can walk him how to reboot. In all seriousness though, it really should be an HR issue but I also know how that goes. They'll probably just make him apologize and tell him to take a mental health day since he seems stressed.

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Burning_Eddie@reddit

Yes. By a customer.

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Future_Ice3335@reddit

As a 6’4” powerlifter who has had boxing and Muay Thai matches and trained in mma I would laugh loudly in their face, then tell them instead we can have that conversation with the head of HR if they’re tough enough to offer an outside conversation. I would then preemptively lock their accounts, notify security of a possible problem and head straight over to HR.

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Xibby@reddit

1. Promise to meet him out back at <insert time here.> 2. Inform HR. 3. Enjoy drama of HR meeting him out back?

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SpotlessCheetah@reddit

Myself and others were threatened once. HR put him out for a few weeks and brought him back (biggest mistake they ever made of far too many). I would take this up to HR regardless, especially since you're leaving.

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Illustrious-Count481@reddit

Never. In 25 years. Never. And I have pissed off many an end user(and lately a director). HR. Then goodbye lawsuit.

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michaelpaoli@reddit

Isn't that where you go, "Sure, outside", and as they're approaching the door, you open it for the and say "After you", open the door for them, let them through, close and lock the door behind them, then call security and HR.

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ThirstyOne@reddit

Since the user escalated and besmirched your honor you have no recourse but to escalate further! Challenge him to meet you on the field of honor at dawn for a duel!

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WestDrop3537@reddit

Beat the snot out of him…..

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Polyolygon@reddit

Close the ticket. User will not perform troubleshooting steps necessary to correct the issue. Then provide the recommended actions that still need to be taken and advise to open a new ticket if the issue persists. And while you’re at it, make sure you report this incident to your HR team to protect yourself and others in the company.

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ArcaneGlyph@reddit

Sir unless you are taking your laptop outsode to reboot it we have less to talk about out there than we do in here right now. Now, have you started the reboot yet?

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ScorpIan55@reddit

You can just say "him", referring to the boomer or Gen X weirdo that you're dealing with.

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bukkithedd@reddit

The second I'd get that from one of my user, they'd learn damn hard just how I react to threats in the workplace. Immediate email to HR with both my and their immediate superior on CC, and then let them handle it. I do not tolerate being threatened at work like that. It doesn't matter if it's a user, my boss, an exec, the CEO or a customer. The second threats are being leveled, you end up on the "fuck-off"-list. If nothing comes of it because the leadership is too damn cowardly to do anything about it, I'm brushing up on my resume and start putting out feelers in my contact-network.

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ResinNation3D@reddit

WWPD? What would Palpatine do?

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hotmaxer@reddit

Well, Fight them. they deserve this battle. They need to reboot

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grandmasterpmd@reddit

It ain't worth catching a case. It's just not. I've fantasized about challenging an end user to throw down but I'd never actually do it. Not worth it. I'm not a good fighter anyway.

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realhawker77@reddit

about 15-20 years ago, worked with large teams of outside consultants, with experience ranging from 20 years to 20 minutes lots of funny stories - mostly refreshing laptops and desktops. Not exactly fist fights but.... a) An end user called one of our field techs "clown shoes". He wasn't out brightest and had a strange mannerism to him, but wasn't mean or disrespectful. User then proceeded to tell the tech he should go outside and put his clown shoes on. Both did not have the appearance of "fighters". Thought it might come to blows. The user's manager didn't care enough to get him in trouble. b) We sent a very junior tech around to pickup old laptops that had been refreshed/replaced but were still copying data over (yes this is awhile ago). The tech misinterpreted "get the laptops" with "get the laptops - at all costs". English was not her first language, and she was a bit protective about handing he laptop over to someone she didn't recognize. He told her it was his duty to get all the laptops - regardless what anyone said. He proceeded to rip the laptop out of some older ladies grip, might have threatened her, etc, security called etc. There were more altercations, but usually was between techs because it was a real cast of characters we hired as temp workers.

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budlight2k@reddit

Had a site admin growl at me like a dog. Figured that was exceptionally childish. Yeah I would have sent that to the HR director.

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Refusalz@reddit

I just saw this same thread in another /r so ill copy my response. LMAO. This is a good read. Generally speaking, I would never accept the request to "go outside" unless they put their hands on me first in which I can claim self-defense. Here in Texas we are a trial by combat state. I would probably call the cops out and initiate trial by combat if I really thought it was worth it. I have been training Muay Thai and BJJ for a few years, but Ive never actually had to use my training. Only when I spar. I've always been able to deescalate a situation. The Adult answer would be to just walk away. However sometimes people do need violence to be put in their place.

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magistratemagic@reddit

> trial by combat state mutual combat, but TIL https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/mutual-combat-states/#texas

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garaks_tailor@reddit

no. I'm built like a sasquatch.

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Humble-Plankton2217@reddit

No, never and threatening violence should be reported to HR and the person's manager.

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A8Bit@reddit

Remote on, reboot for them. Oops! Sorry!

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Mystery_Hat@reddit

Yes. But he’s my friend. Lol. He likes to constantly complain about how annoying our device management is. But he’s allowed to.

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LeaveItToBeevers@reddit

Pstools Psshutdown \\PcName -r Save them the embarrassment and then forward their message to HR

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dbh2@reddit

I would use the cat fact scripts and hammer him with it all day all day until I left. Let him destroy property. Name it something inconspicuous so it's quick to delete and hide.

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lost_in_life_34@reddit

I've read back in England hundreds of years ago when they hung people the slang was the person hung was turned off

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pAceMakerTM@reddit

Oh boy I would love that! 30 years of pent-up anger! Here we go!

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_DeathByMisadventure@reddit

Once he's outside go to his cubicle and reboot his computer.

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radiantxero@reddit

make him into an example for all the other users we will crowdsource your bond

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Juls_Santana@reddit

Do it. Please do it, and keep us posted. You will be immortalized as a hero.

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Freshmint22@reddit

Shank them in the restroom.

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Venkas@reddit

I was ready to walk outside vs a doctor but my manager pulled me away. I had time that day, dude was talking CRAZY, like I was his pet or something.

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Few-Dance-855@reddit

Haha is this even real? Sounds like a troll but then I remembered when I told an end user I have to ask for permission before I can help because the end user belonged to a different entity than the one that pays me and he proceeded to call me an “internet gangster” for sounding tough. He told me this to my face and it took all my gangster to not beat his ass. Luckily I let him deal with all his IT issues on his own.

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Nandulal@reddit

lol

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mailboy79@reddit

I'm amazed at the number of users who vehemently refuse reboots in 2024. This is one of the many reasons why I'm glad that I am out of that line of work at the moment. Users need to understand that the PC does not belong to them. It belongs to their employer and as such, they can do as they please. That's an immediate managerial and HR escalation, OP. People with room-temperature IQs and bad attitudes need to go work elsewhere.

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Gotrek5@reddit

Outside of work hours sure. I want to get overtime for it.

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matt95110@reddit

I once punched a coworker in my department in the parking lot. He started it and nothing ever happened as a result. Does that count?

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nAlien1@reddit

I had a consultant threated to fight me when I called them out on some bullshit in a meeting with like 14 people on the call - I hope you're reading this Sumit any place any time it's on brother.

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Severe-Wrangler-66@reddit

Nope that's an HR case and maybe if they won't do anything about it file a report to the local police since it is an active threat of violence which should end up in immediate resignation of his employment. Never pick the fight you are only going to lose no matter what happens

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KindLion100@reddit

That is a crazy story. I have had customers cry and external customers want to be aggressive but this takes the cake.

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lordjedi@reddit

Nope. That's an immediate contact HR and have them escorted off the premises. That employee just became a danger to everyone and possibly even a security risk.

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ThatBCHGuy@reddit

Fuck sakes, I'm glad I don't work with either of you.

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Temetka@reddit

Just force reboot the damned thing remotely.

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robzoo2@reddit

Back in my MSP days every month there would be an incident with a threat of physical violence. Small business owners that demand to be treated as kings what fun that was. In enterprise IT users won’t get away with stuff like that.

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Guideon72@reddit

100% make it an HR issue; that's their job, not yours. While it may feel intensely satisfying to think about dropping him like he's hot, that's the type of shit that will follow you to other job opportunities and can get you silently blacklisted.

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I-Like-IT-Stuff@reddit

Lol grow up.

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Rhythm_Killer@reddit

Unfortunately you accept the challenge you have lost

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Kawasakison@reddit

Kick his ass, sea bass!

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PappaFrost@reddit

Immediately cut off communication with this person. It's a management issue and an HR issue. While it may be fun to have a schoolyard fight for five minutes, they would LOVE a long legal fight that isn't over for you for YEARS!

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wwbubba0069@reddit

Force the reboot remotely, call HR about the threat.

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jmatsumoto@reddit

I'd never follow through with it, and I know it is not professional, but this is a fantasy situation for myself and some colleagues. LOL

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robvas@reddit

3-0

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bananaphonepajamas@reddit

Can you remotely reboot their machine? I'd do that while sending HR an email.

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RGB-128128128@reddit

Say yes, just go home. When it's brought up again sound super tough and angry, agree to fight again. Go home. See how many times you can get him. I love putting someone in their place who desperately deserves it too, but not at work. Don't shit where you eat. I guess you could be an adult about it and report him, but life is too joyless and this guy sounds easy to prod.

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Redacted_Reason@reddit

No, only by other IT members

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caa_admin@reddit

Never, take this to your manager and chive on.

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Makere-b@reddit

Book a fighting ring and make it more supervised fight. It's not worth risking an injury in a streetfight because user didn't want to reboot their laptop.

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Proper-Cause-4153@reddit

Another "not me but a co-worker", Some terrible angry user in the power plant, "You tell that tech to come down here. I got something to say to him face to face." Then he was mad at my co-worker for YEARS. Thing is, it was a case of mistaken identity. My co-worker wasn't even the person who made this guy mad in the first place.

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Valdaraak@reddit

With people like that, it's best to just go on like nothing happened. Him: "We can take this outside." You: "So I'm going to put this ticket in a holding status. Let me know once you've rebooted and we'll see what other steps might be needed." Also, we just force our computers to reboot every so often. They don't get a choice and they can only delay the big countdown timer for so long (48 hours) before it'll say "fuck you and your shit" and reboot regardless of what's open.

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StungTwice@reddit

Sometimes I wish.

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