Negotiations and love songs
Here’s my favorite trick at work. If you also work in tech/media/computer world, feel free to use, assuming you don’t already.
If someone comes up to me and tells me that their computer/web site isn’t working, and they claim it to be a random and unrepeatable act, I laugh at them because there’s no divine interventions when it comes to computers.
However, when I am dealing with one of those same sort of people, and I don’t feel like helping them, I usually pull the divine intervention card myself. “I don’t know man, I guess it was a just a random problem.”
There, I said it. I’m an asshole.
I like to tell them to unplug the mouse and blow into the serial port, or turn the base unit 45 degrees because the magnet polarity is out.