The Wannabe

What is it about an attractive girl that can turn an otherwise perfectly rational guy into a hapless fool that’ll do anything she asks? Married or single, guys seems to have a twisted instinct to put aside all logical thought and answer the siren’s call before he even has time to think. I’ve been a victim of it myself. For those who don’t know, I fix computers at a small financial institution. When we deploy new computers we remove the built-in Windows games such as solitaire so that people don’t play those games when they should be working. Yet on occasion, I’ve been known to put those games back on a computer when asked, against my better judgment. I’ve also had a co-worker who had given out a couple of flat panel monitors in response to the siren’s call. He no longer works here… However, in my opinion my current co-worker (let’s call him P) tops even that.

We don’t have an internet proxy where I work. A proxy is a device that filters web addresses and blocks those that are inappropriate. So if we had a proxy installed, people who tried to visit sites like MySpace would instead receive a message telling them to GET BACK TO WORK! In my opinion, a proxy is a good thing to have. Non-work-related browsing takes up precious bandwidth and slows the whole network down for everyone. The problem is that proxies are expensive and require a bit of management. So instead of spending the time and money to implement a proxy, we came up with an alternative. Actually, P came up with the idea. There’s a file on every Windows computer that is capable of redirecting people to different sites. It’s just like a proxy but it only works for the individual computer. Well we added a number of sites, including MySpace, to this file on every computer so that any time someone went to MySpace they would receive the aforementioned message.

Naturally this didn’t go over well with quite a few of the company employees who depended on MySpace to break up the monotony of work and get them through the day. I felt bad about it, because many of these people I consider to be friends. But I accepted it as part of the job, like a cop who feels bad about having to arrest a friend. Sure, I did my share of looking the other way. When I discovered that some people had found a small work-around that granted them partial access to MySpace I didn’t say anything. Sadly, P wasn’t so lucky…

A few days ago he approached me and said that the manager of one of our branches thought that one of her employees was getting on MySpace frequently and unrestricted. I did a quick look-up and found that the employee was in fact getting on MySpace, many times a day! I opened a new email message and started to type a note to the manager to let her know that she was right, when I suddenly thought that maybe it wasn’t my place to address this issue directly with a manager. So I walked into my supervisor’s office and let him know. Sure enough, he said that he wanted to handle that kind of thing and asked how the employee was able to get on MySpace. I looked at P to see if he had any ideas, but he just hung his head and quietly whispered something. I barely made out the word “drunk” and I knew what had happened. P then confessed to us that he had recently been out at a bar with this employee, who admittedly is one of the more attractive girls working here, and after a few drink had succumbed to the siren’s song. Apparently he told her in detail how to get around the block. In addition, he had come to me with the issue in the hopes that I wouldn’t ask questions and he wouldn’t get caught.

For shame! As computer people we have a responsibility to our employer to uphold the computer policies. In my opinion, this responsibility transcends friendship. Of course, a little favor here and there never hurt anyone, but the key word is “little.” Now that this secret’s out this is no longer a viable solution. We have to think of something else to block internet sites! Still, I sympathize somewhat with P. After all, I’m certain the temptation was great and I’m equally certain the alcohol didn’t help.