The IT manager was new and had decided to stake his claim so he simply let rip, calling the development team and myself a set of idiots who were clearly incompetent and had ruined his system.

Bearing in mind that we had had nothing to do with his setup and were just trying to help, I tried to calm him down and explain that I just wanted to assist. As I tried to talk him through some things he simply became more and more irate, using bad language and questioning our company’s abilities.

Eventually I tired of him and used an approach similar to yours. I simply said “I think that we are achieving nothing, you are angry and I am unwilling to listen to your abuse any further. I am therefore ending the meeting, goodbye.” You could just see the shock register before I closed the video-link connection.

Ten minutes later I received a telephone call from the managing director of the customer’s company. I expected the worst and readied myself for a further verbal battering. However, all I got was a very nice apology and assurance that the IT Manager was very aware that his behaviour was unacceptable!