CEOh-Snap! Ballmer Publicly Ridicules Microsoft Employee for Using iPhone
As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was taking the stage for a private company meeting at Seattle’s Safeco Field, he saw an employee about to snap his picture with… an iPhone. So, Ballmer decided to snap instead. TechFlash (via Engadget) reports he grabbed the iPhone from the hapless employee, began making “funny comments”, put the iPhone on the floor and pretended to stamp on it, and then continued on, only to remind the employee he hadn’t forgotten about him later.
Maybe Ballmer should just forbid iPhones at Microsoft the way Bill Gates forbids them at home? Or, you know, get Windows Mobile back in order and make a phone so good no one at Microsoft would want to use anything else?
Of course, if it had been an Apple event, and Steve Jobs had caught one of his employees rocking an Windows Mobile device, no doubt Jobs eyes would have glowed and Omega Beams would have shot out and fried the poor soul on the spot.
(Yeah, we know Apple Store employees all use Windows CE devices to process credit card transactions, shhhh!).
September 11th, 2009 at 7:03 am
Haha does Microsoft have a phone too tho?
September 11th, 2009 at 7:04 am
Sounds like the guy really needs to get a life! What a fu%kin’ *******!
September 11th, 2009 at 7:08 am
Turns out Balmer is a real a$$h–e huh? What a **** wad!
September 11th, 2009 at 7:12 am
Good. Keep balmer around so microsofty will keep turning out C r a p.
September 11th, 2009 at 7:32 am
This was a pretty stupid move on the employee’s part. The same thing (if not worse) would have happened if a Pepsi employee brought a Coke to Pepsi’s corporate gig.
September 11th, 2009 at 7:36 am
steveBallmer {
ideas: 0; class: none; }
September 11th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Pure jealousy!!
September 11th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Thanks for pointing out that last piece.
September 11th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Someone should tell him MS still develops and sells Office for Mac.
September 11th, 2009 at 8:13 am
This is great publicity for Apple. Did Apple’s covert marketing team plant the employee’s phone like a hand grenade and then stand back to watch such magnificent effects? The fact that SB’s radar was highly sensitive to the presence of an iPhone speaks volumes. Nice Job Steve, consider ramping it up by offering MS employees a trade-in discount of 5% (max!) on their Windows Mobile 6.5 phones when upgrading to iPhone?
September 11th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Verizon Wireless has an instant termination policy for employees that have the iPhone and bring it on VzW property.
September 11th, 2009 at 8:38 am
I was in an AT&T store in Redmond Town Center, standing in line behind someone with a Microsoft badge. He was returning his Windows Mobile phone in exchange for an iPhone. When he left, I laughed about it with the Sales Rep, who told me that this happens about five times a week just with her. She didn’t even notice anymore.
September 11th, 2009 at 9:15 am
If MS has so many employees that they have to meet at SafeCo Field how can he possibly expect not one employee to have a rival smartphone. What a douchebag. Fix WinMo before you rag on your own employees.
September 11th, 2009 at 9:51 am
@Lolipopjones- Really?? jesus…
@druce that’s a great story…. =)
Steve Ballmer is a douchebag… and i fear we won’t see anything cool come out of microsoft until he’s gone… =(
September 11th, 2009 at 10:24 am
It was kind of a mean move on Ballmer’s part, but it was stupid for the employee to wave a rival companies phone in his face.
As someone already noted, you don’t bring a Coke to a Pepsi meeting. You don’t wear a Visa shirt to an Amex meeting and you sure as hell keep your iPhone in your pocket at a MS meeting.
Having said that, I am of course posting this using my 3Gs.
September 11th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Are you serious? That’s not even Ballmer, haha.
September 11th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
What Ballmer COULD have done: Walk up to the employee, ask to borrow his iPhone, then state to everyone, “Our objective is to make products so worth owning that every one of our employees would consider nothing else. We are the reason this iPhone is in this room today.”
Inspiration, not spectacle.
September 11th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
This is both funny and sad. It tells a lot about rotten corporate culture out there. Competitors should be respected and studied closely – not the opposite.
While Nokia was also taken by surprise by the iPhone success (though they will rarely admit it), the company is smart and democratic enough to not ban employees from carrying and using iPhones as personal devices at Nokia offices. Heck, I bet Nokia CEO has one too (though well hidden inside his pocket). LOL.
September 11th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
@Spicerak2:
Exactly.
September 11th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
are we sure he wasn’t just being tongue in cheek?
September 11th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Ha i think ballmer overreacted. If the employee wants to own an iPhone, let him own an iPhone. Done
September 11th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Ron says that guy has a Ron Jeremy size ***** up his arse. What a wad.
September 11th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
The employee definitely has the right to own what ever type of personal phone he wants. But as others have said he was kind of asking for attention when he pulled out the IPhone at a MS event. Still what a tool.
September 12th, 2009 at 1:16 am
This is freaking America. Some buissnesses really need to chill the fu€k out. There should be a law against discrimination like this.
September 12th, 2009 at 4:39 am
Apple and RIM have overtaken MS. MS and Verizon are acting like Nazis.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Stevie boy is a really really sick *****, for this and other behavior he has exhibited throughout the years, and he is probably the single most culpable person for the Vista debacle.
When Vista came out I purchased what I thought was a really nice Sony Vaio with Vista Home Premium and was really horrified what a slow piece of **** Vista made this nice premium system. Now I hear that Windows 7 is coming out that is supposed to fix all the Vista problems but Microsoft is charging a huge amount of money to fix their screw up.
Are you kidding me; I have to pay over $100 to fix MicroSHAFTs mess. You people are an absolute disgrace, doesn’t Gates and Ballmer have enough money. Have they no decency, at long last have they no decency???????
Why can’t they take responsible for their mess and fix it for free or for a nominal amount of money. No wonder people are fleeing to Mac and Linux. I have already made the switch to Linux myself but can’t get the wife to but I may force her because of this absolutely outrageous greedy behavior by these very sick people