I had a co-worker who used to stop what she was doing, and blurt some variation of "here, let me help you clean that fingerprint off my monitor" and then proceed to engage in her ritual of cleaning the CRT (this predated LCD monitors). Several other coworkers intentionally would poke the monitor with their fingers (the grease from the side of your nose is great for this), just to get a rise out of her.
The day she pulled her little routine on one of the vice presidents was her last day at the office. She was out of the building before lunch.
The company shouldn't fire someone for not knowing their place in front of a vice president and making a snide remark? I think that's absolutely acceptable. If the vice president wants to touch your screen, you're not really in a place to chew him out about it. I would venture to guess that doing so was most likely indicative of broader issues with the employee in this case, i.e., if she doesn't know her place in front of upper-level executives, how is she interacting with important customers, contractors, vendors, government officials, etc.?
I stand by what I said. Just because I'm a hacker I don't have to have a misplaced sense of my own self-importance in front of someone like a vice president.
I wouldn't do what this person did in front of a VP either but being fired for it is not something I approve of. Although, as another commenter mentioned, if it was delivered in a significantly snotty way being fired becomes quite predictable. Authority believes it has earned the right not be spoken down to but real winners won't care, much.
She failed to show sufficient deference to the VP (who in other posts I've frequently called "crazy french lady"), who had on occasion gone to the board of directors and gotten other VPs fired.
As developers, we like to pretend that we're above office politics, or that our tools are our own, and other things like that. Nope. To managers, we're all as interchangable as furniture. And it wouldn't surprise me that much of the offshoring is due to the combination of 2 facts: that they have the power and we don't; and that the jocks are pissed off at the nerds because we don't kiss their asses enough. Just look at the title of one of the latest fad articles and books to come out of the Harvard Business Journal: does I.T. matter?. Remember what PG says about mental fads? "What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good."
It was the IT dept of a consulting company. The IT managers jested that watching Office Space was an occupation requirement, as the whole company was a bunch of the Bob & Bobs. This place tried to pitch themselves as a smaller and older (mis)management consulting company, in the lines of McKinsey, E&Y or KPMG.
The day she pulled her little routine on one of the vice presidents was her last day at the office. She was out of the building before lunch.