Sometimes, all it takes is one small click to create a big tech problem.

So, what would you do if you warned someone not to open a suspicious email attachment, but they did anyway? Would you try to fix it remotely and hope for the best? Or would you just tell them to turn their computer off and call it a day?

In the following story, one tech support worker deals with this exact scenario and chooses the latter. Here’s how it all played out.

Turn off the computer, unplug internet cable and you are free for the rest of the day.

Today, everyone on our network received an email in a foreign language with a suspicious attachment (A word document with a macro, with an encryption virus). It is called Locky.

I received a request to look into the suspicious email from a user.

Me: Have you opened the e-mail? Everyone has received a suspicious e-mail with an encryption virus, so you should not open any e-mails from unknown senders.

At this point, she hadn’t opened the email.

User: No, I haven’t opened it yet.

Me: Good. Let’s delete the e-mail using Shift and Delete, so it is not stored even in the Deleted Items folder.

User: Wait a second.

Me: Alright! Just delete it and be careful with such emails in the future.

Before deleting it, she clicked the attachment.

User: It had a document attached, but it is just gibberish. Could you look at it?

Me: You opened the attachment?

User: Yes.

Me: Well, turn off the computer, unplug the internet cable, and you are free for the rest of the day. Tomorrow we will take your computer, and it will have all its files encrypted and unusable.

Now, she’s filing a complaint against him.

User: Why did you do that?

Me: I told you it is a virus and not to open it.

User: I’m writing a complaint.

She then hung up.

Wow! This woman should probably just be let go.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit would do in this situation.

This person has worked in companies where IT had that same power.

In all fairness, you never know when the power will be restored.

Here’s an interesting analogy.

This guy thinks he works for the same company.

Some people make the dumbest decisions.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.