Lock Your Computers At Work!

Hey

So we have an official corporate IT policy stating that anytime you leave your comp, you are required to lock it. Many companies have this as a standard to ensure security is intact. It's actually a good policy to have because you never know just who might want to look at your Outlook Inbox and send random emails to random people. Plus, if you have clients walking about you never want to them accidentally look at your computer screen to find confidential information. That would suck.

Having said all that, many employees at work rarely lock their computers; including yours truly. So a week or so ago I left my computer to take care of something without thinking twice of locking it. When I get back I notice a couple weird email replies from some co-workers. One was from my roommate (the guy I share my office with) and it was in response to an email that I apparently sent him:

Subject: RE: F@#! you Nick
Body: Imran, what'd I do to you?

Another came from this guy who I played (and lost to, unfortunately) one-on-one with:

"Re: Matt is a pansy"

That second email that I allegedly wrote was a little bit more lengthy and went along the lines of making fun of Matt's game and other things. His response was not so nice and largely unappropriate for this blog (mama jokes, man ... the worst!).

I wasn't overly worried, though, because these were guys I'm really cool with and I knew that one of them obviously accessed my email while I went away. I eventually found out that it was our QA (quality assurance) manager of all people! He later came by with his trademark big ol' grin and said, "Someone didn't lock their computer now did they?!" Ouch. Lesson learned. He later joked around (at least I hoped he was joking around) that he was about to send an email to our COO saying, "You're the best" or "I love you" since everyone has the impression that I'm the COO's boy (ever since the COO defended me in an email to the Chicago office saying, 'Imran is on my very short list of people I like' after the office gave me a hard time for replying all to an email joke of his where I said, 'Kevin, that was the best email ever' -- I did mean it at the time and wasn't trying to kiss up to him, honestly!).

Anyway, you could imagine that ever since then I've locked my computer, even if out of mistrust of my roommate for allowing it to happen! But I'd have my revenge on him...

On Friday my roomie left for lunch and didn't lock his computer either; something he doesn't do too often himself. So the QA Manager pops by our room and we started talking about sports as usual. Towards the end of the convo he said that he actually came up to get some from from Nick, so we tried looking around his desk for it. The astute QA mgr noticed, however, that Nick's computer was unlocked. "Are you kidding me?!" he reacted. Without hesitation, and with me laughing in the background, he begins writing an email on behalf of Nick to about six or seven of the guys in the office. The now classic email went like this:

Subject Line: I am coming out...

Body: Out of the closet that is!!! I will be competing in the Gay Games this weekend. I hope you guys can come and support me!

Nick's reaction was priceless when he got back to read the email he sent and so was the other guys' responses: "Umm...come again?!", "You just never know these days anymore...", "Good luck in the 'pole' vault competition", etc. You should note that Nick is a happily married heterosexual. But what was great about that Gay Games comment is the timing. This weekend in Chicago the gay parade is taking place, so it could've actually added some credibility to it.

Okay, so the lessons were learned. I know that on a serious note you could get royally screwed or even fired for these type of things at work. Fortunately for me, though, it was the flippin QA manager that did it of all people! ;)

Cheers