Extremely inappropriate behavior is a pretty strong accusation. Seems like a harmless nerdy prank that occurred 40 years ago. It's not like he changed the monitor to say "Poop Fare."
Harmless is a matter of perspective here. The sales guy might have been in serious trouble after it and who knows, could not close some deals he was about to make and maybe was maybe never allowed to be at a trade show again. We do not know.
And well, probably many do not care as sales guys are not much respected here.
(and I have my bias too, but I do not like generalisations too much, in the sense if this idiot sales guy could not fix his machine, bad for him, no harm done to real people)
"The sales guy might have been in serious trouble after it and who knows, could not close some deals he was about to make and maybe was maybe never allowed to be at a trade show again."
Yes, and that's a much scarier prospect for the sales guy today than it was 40 years ago.
A dick move would be to break it. Showing off the device's capabilities in novel an interesting ways should lead to a conversation, not a judgment.
Seriously, I've been on tons of trade shows, both in the booth and as a visitor, I'd have definitely struck up a conversation with the guy to see where and how he learned so much about the device. That also would have all but guaranteed getting my device back in pristine working order and a pointer to some information about it that I apparently had missed.
The story ends with "As I walked to the next exhibit, I saw him cycle the AC power to the instrument in frustration."
So no, this was not about showing device capabilities. Nor about striking conversation. This was about feeling good and superior for making someone frustrated.
(And no, which is not even same as not caring about other peoples feelings, this is about being happy about their feelings being negative.)
Well, if the sales guy had been more knowledgeable or more interested in someone who clearly knew his stuff better than he did then this could have ended differently.
Could the prankster have done better? Sure, no doubt, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. Could the salesperson have done better? Yes, also no doubt, having been there this was simply a missed opportunity.
Are we really trying to claim that sales people should have the same level of knowledge as power-users / developers / engineers who build such things?
Perhaps I'm too young, but I've literally never know any such a salesperson. They're there to be charismatic and friendly, and show the features for which they've been handed a script.
Their job is to drive interest, and address very, VERY high level concerns. They're not experts, else they'd (by and large) be doing something other than sales, yes?
(To be fair, it's possible that we've just eliminated reasonable expectations of salespeople, but that's not clear to me yet)
A booth like that would usually be staffed by suits and engineers, and if you are extremely lucky, engineers in suits.
But plenty of companies sent minders and order takers, technically incompetent, they might be able to do a scripted demo but likely would not know the first thing about the actual uses of such a device.
> Perhaps I'm too young, but I've literally never know any such a salesperson.
This was about 30-40 years ago, so it's far more in the time frame where you'd have technically competent sales folk, as you'd be pitching this gear to other engineers at this trade show.
When you're at a trade show for the very field that equipment is designed for and someone is trying to pitch you a piece of equipment that's nearly double the annual salary of an entry level engineer, I think you'd be far more likely to see a salesperson knowledgeable about their gear.
This is pretty nice example of "blaming the victim" mentality. No, there was no missed opportunity for salesman, no the salesman done nothing wrong. Did not went out of way to make the situation sux for others either.
Yes, let's bring out the pitchforks for a spur-of-the-moment thing that someone did 40 years ago. Really. I'm sure the victim is still seeing his shrink on account of this.