I’m sorry to say that my example was only slightly simplified, and that I’ve encountered this problem at more than one company. If it’d only happened once I’d say, hey, this is just one person, but, while they are a minority, they do seem to be a type.
And a large part of the problem is the management that lets them get away with this sort of crap–the management that temporarily shuts down the customer service department so users “have to take responsibility for learning the new system on their own”, or the managers who turn a blind eye when one of their developers responds to criticism by going into a customer’s account and changing their passwords, effectively locking them out.
A significant part of the problem is lack of truly qualified managers. The managers who allow this sort of crap often don’t have a technical background themselves; they see coding as spooky magic, so they consider it safer to have disgruntled customers than a pissed off IT guy.
