Reply to post:

User lubed PC with butter, because pressing a button didn't work

Elf

If it were but simply rue,

All the users were just like you,

IT folk generally tend to be hardwired to be helpful (even if only by accident because we playing with something). Give the front line an excuse (ballistic chocolate is a good one) and they'll move mountains for just a wee Ack of their effort.

The Other Side ™:

This brother did not have things properly in hand. There is a Zero Percent chance that I'd allow another department raid *my* budget because Their User poured *butter* in a damn machine. She would have been Frog Marched to the company parking lot ("car park" for my UK friends) with her box of personals in tow. I'd have looked at what my Bullet Stopper (Help Desk) minion showed me (butter in nice boxen) and I'd have personally stripped her company credentials, asked (told) Facilities to drop her access card, and had a meeting with her Department Head (marketing was it? So, it would have been ugly-ER on this intervention) and HR WHEREBY IT WOULD BE EXPLAINED that the user in question isn't qualified to be employed, period, no debate, and no she cannot have access to company resources of a digital nature because look at what she did to hardware: Explination to include business continuity while someone is playing with matches and a few hundred feet of RDX.

From IT I've had to restructure other departments, against their will, because of twots like this user.

1. User goes, not a debate or discussion as my deportment simply won't let her log in to anything, ever, period.

2. Who in your department interviewed this ass and hired them? We having words as well starting with "How the hell did you think this person was qualified... nay, company in any form? It's that person's fault were all getting both barreks today.

3. Department Head... and you hired This fool? You also think I'm paying for this? (Any department head would know who I am, Director Of IT if I'm corporate, and be aware of my Zero Tolerance For Blatant Stupidity policy)

4. And to Hr, you signed off on this crap, you get to fix it... next task is the Exit Interview!

Go Team! Rah-Rah! Get the hell to work fixing this.

5. Return to IT, take my team for pizza and beer to soothe their PTSD over a user putting $diety-forsaken BUTTER in a machine Of Any Sort, and their inevitable bummed-ness over a nice PC being separated from its preferred warranty status.

6. Return to IT to enshrine box to mock the user and serve as a warning to others.

That is Precisely how I'd play it. Distilled down to this simple fact:

If you microwave butter in a cup and pour that into a computer, you Are Not Qualified to work with computers (the Excel thing is just sprinkles on that cup cake).

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