I worked tech support for Gateway for about 6 years, and the last couple years, sales were a requirement of our job. It started like, oh if you want to do this, please do it, but it is ok if you don't, to you will try to sell them stuff, it is no longer an option. It got so bad just before the E-Machines merger that there was techs who would go through tickets and find open orders that were missing something like a po, or a wrong address and then take over that sale and finish it to steal credit for the sale. When I started there, it was all about providing the best tech support. By the end (before the whole tech department was outsourced) it was mainly about could you sell them something. As bad as they were, the sales people were worse. At least the techs would sell them stuff that worked. Sales would sell them whatever, and tell them we would support it. It was kind of sad, it was really a lot of fun working there until they went all crazy (things started going downhilll when they got into a price war with Dell).
