[relix]

You make so many assumptions about the sales person it's as if they're an NPC for you.

I can imagine all kinds of scenarios where what you say is just not true or irrelevant and out of the control of the sales person, yet the harm of the prank still falls upon the sales person.

Maybe the sales person replaced someone who got sick at the last minute. Maybe the sales person's incompetent manager put them there without giving them time to prepare. Maybe the person whose job it was to prepare the sales person was bad at _their_ job, or didn't have sufficient time, etc. Maybe their incompetent manager isn't as forgiving as you are and will fire them because of this incident. Maybe power-cycling the device caused the presenters settings they needed for the presentation to be wiped as well. Maybe this is a junior sales person who hoped for a promotion after this presentation.

> But one conclusion I have from this thread is that Hacker News has lost its way

My conclusion is that a lot of people lack empathy or the imagination to think beyond their own experience. But I guess that's not really surprising in this sector which apparently still lacks a lot of self-reflection around the common social problems associated with it. I'm just happy there's enough people here that do have empathy.

[jacquesm]

> You make so many assumptions about the sales person it's as if they're an NPC for you.

I just use the bits from the OPs story as a way to place the person on my scale of technical competence.

> Maybe the sales person replaced someone who got sick at the last minute. Maybe the sales person's incompetent manager put them there without giving them time to prepare. Maybe the person whose job it was to prepare the sales person was bad at _their_ job, or didn't have sufficient time, etc. Maybe their incompetent manager isn't as forgiving as you are and will fire them because of this incident. Maybe power-cycling the device caused the presenters settings they needed for the presentation to be wiped as well. Maybe this is a junior sales person who hoped for a promotion after this presentation.

I think these are assumptions. Maybe they did. Or maybe they just powercycled the device and it all came back.

Tradeshows are 'hostile territory', you know this going in. If you've never staffed a booth at a tradeshow then I will forgive you but really, if this is the worst that happened there then they got extremely lucky.

I've had people 'test' our systems to see if they could break them. And the fact that they could not was proof that we had done a proper job designing them, which in turn led to interesting conversations and some sales. This is what a tradeshow is for. It's not for people to stand around static displays or recipe style demos without the ability to improvise.

Tradeshows are 'hands on' which is why the gear is exposed in the first place. And some of those hands will be more capable than yours, which is the moment where you make your living as a salesperson.

> My conclusion is that a lot of people lack empathy or the imagination to think beyond their own experience.

No, it's just that the experience factor is a two way street. If you don't have relevant experience then maybe you should not be so quick to judge.

I've seen the OP derided now as a sociopath, as a bad human being overall and whatever else people are slinging at him. You can take it from me as someone who has staffed the booths at tradeshows that on a scale of 1 to 10 this was a 'meh'.

> But I guess that's not really surprising in this sector which apparently still lacks a lot of self-reflection around the common social problems associated with it.

Ah ok, that is what this is about. Well, guess what, it is possible to have a conversation about a tradeshow prank without drawing in the problems of the entire industry.

> I'm just happy there's enough people here that do have empathy.

OP pulled a prank 20 years ago, which temporarily destabilized a piece of gear.

We're now discussing their promotion chances, their ostensibly important presentation on a piece of gear that they have no problem allowing other people to mess with, their chances of getting fired by their incompetent (why would their manager be incompetent) manager, their lack of time to prepare and so on.

It's an over-reaction.

[relix]

> I think these are assumptions. Maybe they did. Or maybe they just powercycled the device and it all came back.

They're possible reasons that could explain the part in the Op's story which you might have missed where the sales person was panicking and yelling in distress. Your argument basically goes "well, they should have been competent enough to be able to deal with it" basically saying it's their own fault and they deserved it.

My point is that this is not a good argument to disregard the feelings of the sales person. One reason is because it's not clear that the incompetence of the sales person is his own fault, and what I'm listing are possible reasons why that might be the case.

But even if it were within the control of the sales person, I'm also of the opinion that his mistake of not being competent enough shouldn't mean his feelings on the situation aren't valid, and that it wasn't somehow a dick move.

All we know is that the sales person was stressed about what the OP did, and that OP did nothing to help him out, and whatever the reason for this stress may be, or whatever consequences that might or might not have happened, by not helping him out, OP was being a jerk.

> OP pulled a prank 20 years ago, which temporarily destabilized a piece of gear. We're now discussing ...

This I agree with, I think we're trying to extract too much context from a very casual retelling, and going in circles anyway.