We had a weird ultra-fan at a storage startup where I worked in the 2000s. He used to call in and berate techs for hours. It was a small support team so everybo

We had a weird ultra-fan at a storage startup where I worked in the 2000s. He used to call in and berate techs for hours. It was a small support team so everybody knew him. Once I had to jump on a line with a new hire he was absolutely tearing up, inform the customer he was being unprofessionally abusive, and end the call—the only time I’ve ever had to do that in my career. And yet when we corrupted his data (terrible terrible C code), he actually went to bat for us with his management and ended up buying even more. Finally one of our field techs met him in person. Turns out the guy was 700+ pounds (300+ kg) and just absolutely miserable. He was as hated at his own job as he was at our office. Somehow he saw us as his surrogate family and I guess decided to treat us the way he’d been treated. Really a sad case overall. I often wonder what ended up happening to him after our company folded. There are some strange, strange people out there. Coddle them at your peril.