Really, though, salesmen of every corporate business are encouraged to engage in much worse sales tactics on a daily basis. Yeah, we hold people we respect and trust to a higher level, but this isn't some damning, horrible evil we need to shoot him in the face for.

I get pissed off every time I have to talk to one of those shill "just following orders" shitheads at a corporate call center (speaking as someone who worked at one... for a day). I think we care, as a community, about this incident so much because we're more worried about a trend toward full-blown sociopathy, not over caring about this single incident in itself. I think we'd all prefer the status quo Garr we have faith in, than face a trend of evidence proving humanity as a stinking pile of filth, where everyone we trust has just managed to cover their tracks better.

That said, I've done worse with a Hell of a lot more and never caught even a small fraction of the flak Garr's caught over the last day. Maybe it's because Garr's held to a higher standard. - Or because I rapidly fluctuate between total indifference and full-blown outrage to a point where communicating with me is always futile.