Verizon Sued After Tech Punches Customer In Face 493
suraj.sun writes "A Verizon customer filed a lawsuit after the tech the company sent out got a little punchy. Instead of fixing the customer's problem, the tech allegedly hit him in the face. The New York Post says the tech attacked the customer after he asked to see some ID before allowing access to the apartment. From the article, '"You want to know my name? Here's my name," Benjamin snarled, slapping his ID card into Isakson's face, according to Isakson's account of the December 2008 confrontation. "The guy essentially snapped. He cold-cocked me, hit me two or three solid shots to the head while my hands were down," said Isakson, a limo driver. He said the pounding bloodied his face and broke his glasses. But things got uglier, Isakson said, when Benjamin squeezed him around the neck and pressed him up against the wall. "He's prepared to kill me," Isakson said. "That's all I could think of." The customer broke free and ran away. The Verizon tech then chased the customer until he was subdued by a neighbor who was an off-duty cop.'"
Re:More to the Story? (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry to disillusion you, but people DO just attack random strangers. It's not a frequent occurrence, but it's not uncommon, either. Ask your local misdemeanor prosecutors.
Re:More to the Story? (Score:3, Informative)
How much could the victim possibly have egged him on considering the tech hadn't even made it in the front door yet?
Well considering that back when I worked tech support I had plenty of calls that started with what could best be described as "a shitstorm of racial slurs (against white people like myself!), accusations of me and all my coworkers being homosexual and other general nastiness" I can definitely imagine that he managed to get out a whole bunch of undeserved crap. Hell, most of those calls I got weren't people who had been without DSL for weeks or anything like that, it would be people who's DSL had gone out minutes earlier due to the massive thunderstorm in their area and they felt that the best way to deal with the issue was to yell at some random stranger who would otherwise have done his best to help them.
Hell, I've even had incidents in which I was extremely friendly (and so was the customer) and later on my employer would get a complaint about how I had supposedly blurted out racial slurs and other insults at the customer.
I have no trouble imagining that this incident was a lot different from how the alleged victim describes it.
/Mikael
Re:More to the Story? (Score:0, Informative)
Oh Jesus. You are a fucking idiot. Did you just read the last sentence of the article OUT OF CONTEXT? IDIOT, they fixed the problem TWO DAYS LATER, and didn't need to send someone to do it. MOD PARENT -9000, FUCKING IDIOT WHO CAN'T READ.
Re:So.... (Score:3, Informative)
So, in other words, Verizon thinks that the technician's behavior was ethical.
Wow.
Here's the thing. (Score:2, Informative)
In this same situation, assaulting me in my house, assuming the story is true, the guy would be dead.
Re:More to the Story? (Score:3, Informative)
I see, so you can judge a book by its cover.
Yes. Several million years of evolution have wired our brains to avoid people who look violently insane.
Some of the nicest and funniest people I have met looked just as bad or worse than this guy.
They're otherwise nice but go out of their way to look antisocial? Why would they do that?