Major client foolishly insists tech support delete all data, tech support refuses to comply saving the client's business: 'Their entire company basically shut down for an afternoon'

When it's your job to ensure important information is protected, and someone insists that you delete it, even if it's the client themself, you'd be right to pause for a moment and reassess the situation if something doesn't sound quite right. Clients tend to woefully overestimate their abilities in the matter they're contracting you to handle, so they may be asking you to do something they don't fully understand the implications of. 

This tech support specialist worked for a small organization, the type that is small enough not to have the type of rigid process that comes with the nature of larger corporations, allowing for some creative and important decision-making to be made by staff, sometimes to the direct benefit of the organization and their clients—very important in a world where irrecoverable disaster lurks on the other side of a very thin line. 

This came in handy when their major client, a far larger organization of quite significant importance to the region, asked them to delete all data of one of their own customers, who was changing services. The client stubbornly insisted that their request be followed and that the customer's data be shut down and deleted, refusing to listen to the tech support specialist as they insisted it was a bad idea that would effectively be deleting the customer's entire website.

Instead, they merely put the service on hold to show what would happen if they had followed the request as they had been told. The ensuing panic quickly proved their point, and they could restore the services as required since they had merely been put on hold. Thus, proving their point and reinforcing their usefulness and knowledge to their client.