July 29, 2003
thats right.
Today i hit upon an ethical quandry. My direct boss wanted me to compile reports on email and internet usage for the office peons. While i have the capabilities to do this, i didnt have the right loglevel to produce the volume and period of time she was looking for. I produced the data that i did have and formatted it in a report and raw text form for review and handed it over. At this time, i also agreed to put together the proper tools needed to monitor both email and internet usage fully. I have found myself in this situation before, two years previous it was rather easy to compile usage reports and i know that this one lady got in trouble.
I like everyone that i work with, some more than others, but i do like everyone and we all seem to get along. I would never intentionally get
a coworker in trouble but i found myself unable to fake the data or otherwise explain why this lady sent and received 144 emails in a 6 business day period to one address. The other logfiles per user that were showing up large i could show a very large amount of spam (these logs are created before spam is filtered into the trash by the server) so effectively this lady hung herself with these inconsequential personal emails. I was nervous and shaky all over. The data accurately showed that this lady pisses away a goodly amount of time on non-work email, at work.
I handed it over.
I didn't warn her.
I set up a proxy server with a nice program that turns the logs from the proxy service into a legible fingerprint of usage per user.
I didn't warn her.
I did warn The New Guy.
I did warn another secretary who no doubt will spread the word, eventually.
Seven hours later i compiled the days internet usage, clearly showing this lady pissing a goodly amount of time away on the internet. Unfortunately when parsing the logs it was in no way work related. By this time i had talked to a friend which helped me alleviate the aforementioned shaky, not-quite-right feeling.
"I'm just doing my job" said the jarhead.
I do not wish for anyone to be fired due to my actions or inactions. I hope she just gets a reprimand
... like the one she got the last time she got busted heavily emailing her friends.
You'd think with this bleeding heart i would lose the weight neccesary to fit into my plain, white, stainguard, non-pleated dockers. The ones that I battle ennui-robot in.
look jerkass,
If this lady is wasting THAT much time at work, she deserves to be fired. She's making more work for others and apparently she doesn't care if she's been warned before. I recommend that you HIGHLIGHT her usage so it doesn't go unnoticed. Basicly what it boils down to is that it's NOT YOUR PROBLEM. Would you rather YOU get fired for making false reports covering up the fact that this beyotch can't keep her mind on her work? I think that's a good idea. I'm gonna call and complain to your boss tomorrow. I'm going to tell him/her/it that you waste endless hours babbling to me on ICQ when you should be working. It's not your fault if someone gets punished for abusing company resources, especialy if it's on something as pointless as forwarding clever little emails to her friends and family.
i should ebay my buckets of heart blood eh?
jeesh... nobody likes a narc, but then again nobody likes the sacrificial cow either. seems like every so often your boss is going to say "bring me the sacrifice" then it will go away. culling the herd so to speak. so just warn everybody and give the higher ups really confusing tech-jargon babble and they will move on to some other task on their to do list. if no one is dwnloading music or pron and if they are getting their job done in a timely and productive manner, id call it no harm no fowl. you have to do your job, but you don't have to help make it easier for people to get caught.
I already wrote a big long comment on this to you, but then my computer died and ate it, and I'm too lazy to type is all out again, so here is the short form.
If she did her job and didn't piss into the wind she wouldn't have gotten wet. That is not your fault. I'm sure she read her job description when they hired her, and prolly the employee hand book as well.
In the mean time, send out a memo, letting everyone know that BigBrother is out there, and checking up on things, and that it will continue to happen, so if they get pinched fuck them. I know you like them all, but its not your fault they're daft. Its your job, and they shoul know that.
hugs and puppies*
"I hope she just gets a reprimand
... like the one she got the last time she got busted heavily emailing her friends."
Heh, she got busted once and STILL hasn't figured out how to keep from being caught doing this? And she didn't think they'd have another report generated that would bust her AGAIN?
If that lady gets fired, it's her own fault for being stupid. Caught once, ok fine she didn't know she'd be monitored. Caught twice? Nobody's fault but her own.
