Enforcing piracy policy earned helpdesk worker death threats

On Call Welcome to another installment of On Call, The Register's weekly reader-contributed column that tells your tech support tales.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Henry" who shared a chilling story from his time delivering internal desktop support for a major internet service provider.

This is a story that doesn't deserve On Call's usual light touch. The Register shares it in the hope it perhaps starts a conversation among readers about how to cope with the worst workplace moments. As you'll see at the end of the story, we're working on a plan to help foster that conversation.

Back, now, to Henry, who told us an important part of his job was keeping unauthorized software off company computers to protect the ISP from being sued for running pirated programs.

He enforced that policy with daily software inventory scans and when he ...