Tales from the office side

PsychoFish

PsychoFish

New member
We've all been (hopefully) gainfully employed and have seen things...sometimes things that cannot be unseen in the office.

I'm starting this thread (fred?) for us to share our Officenisms

I'll start with a little tale of testing Video Conferencing systems

So I worked at a large multinational company and we were deploying a new HD video conferencing system to all our major offices. These screens and cameras were installed in all the primary boardrooms for staff to have video conferences in lieu of flying halfway across the globe to have a proper meeting. So there I was with one of the network engineers and we're in a boardroom initiating meetings with other boardrooms which basically just meant the remote camera and speakers would come one, as would the remote screen and we would be staring at an empty boardroom.

When suddenly we flipped to a boardroom and we heard some noise, then the video came on. What we saw was...

...a senior director getting jiggy with someone who was definitely not his wife on top of the new boardroom table in full view of the camera. I don't know who was more surprised, us or them, but I have never managed to switch off a VC session that quickly.
 
Worked at a place one of the network engineers suddenly out of the blue buys a car, the same day they found out that he was the one that stole 23 laptops. Wel he was fired the same day and was put in jail.
 
Not something big, but I issued a lady with a new laptop, but keep in mind, she was using a laptop before. Next morning she phones me, how do you unlock the laptop? I tell her CTRL + ALT + DEL...she sounds confused, says before that....she is one floor beneath me, so to avoid a long frustrating conversation, I go down to her desk.

She has the laptop closed, back side with the hinges towards her, trying to open it...
 
A guy I work with stayed late one day and then realised he needed the toilet. But this was in an office block where the toilets where outside. But just inside is a big pot plant, in the corner. So he stops to take a piss there and as he looks up there is a security camera staring at him.
 
Got lots of wild ones but most will identify me...so couple of tamer ones.

...colleague of mine put in a BIG expense claim written on the back of a napkin as "invoice". Other place the restaurant "bill" was written on the tablecloth/paper thing (damn French being weird)...which we obviously couldn't take along back to england as proof...so we just photographed the table and submitted that as the receipt. Also there was an incident about a bowl of cereal that got expensed for R600. (None of those claims btw were fraudulent...just odd circumstances)

...colleague gets put in charge of buying booze to entertain client...rocks up at a company braai with an entire box of rothschild wines (the 1k+ a pop kind), like a dozen liters of brandy & whiskey and a couple cases of beers & ciders etc. Think we were 12 people (he knew it would be 12).

Oh and almost got killed by a cherrypicker and 3 dozen charging bulls. (Separate incidents).

Fun times...

czc said:
But just inside is a big pot plant, in the corner. So he stops to take a piss there and as he looks up there is a security camera staring at him.
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uh managed that too. Was outside and bush set against the fence though...look up and there are these red IR light things the cameras have in my face. :( Was dark so didn't immediately notice plus I was somewhat intoxicated.
 
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At an office party on a Friday night one guy got super sloshed and decided to sleep it off in his car without telling anyone. We found him the next day.

What apparently happened is that he woke up, saw he was in his car somewhere and promptly decided to drive home. Except for the fact that he was still sloshed, and that the gate to the office parking lot was well closed (it's open between 6am and 6pm, after that you have to use your remote). So he drove through the gate, well he tried. The gate derailed and ended up on top of his car. So he just continued to sleep in the car.

When security woke up at 6am (because that's apparently what night guards do) they called some managers, etc. Needless to say he had some explaining to do.
 
Boss wanted to find out what one guy was doing as he works plenty overtime and got very little done.
Ended up putting Spectorsoft on his machine and already had several pinhole cameras in the office.

Basically his routine was beers till 6:30, games till 6:45, porn till 7, bathroom till 7:10, games till 7:30, porn till 7:45, bathroom till 8 and so on :eek:

Nothing ever came of it, boss was too embarrassed to confront him.
 
czc said:
A guy I work with stayed late one day and then realised he needed the toilet. But this was in an office block where the toilets where outside. But just inside is a big pot plant, in the corner. So he stops to take a piss there and as he looks up there is a security camera staring at him.
Click to expand...

"A guy I work with..."
 
Not sure it is a good idea to talk about some of my embarrassing moments, so here is a small one:

It was a new office and area. Fridays we get lunch of our choosing. The majority decided on pizza from Nonnas. The delivery bike was out of commission and I volunteered to go fetch it on my way buying some smokes. This was my first time in this small shopping center and I go in and ask for the order. They had no clue. I asked if this is not (whatever the shopping center's name was) They said yes. 'So where is my order?' They do not have such an order. Now I am demanding my pizza and they should make it snappy. Just to find that I am standing in Nando's and not Nonnas next door.

Yea-yeah, the menu, the smell, the clothes should all have given it away I know. I just didn't noticed. Fooled by notion that I am at the right place. How damn embarrassing - the office couldn't stop laughing. Oh well.
 
The time I found out something about a coworker...

I was doing desktop support and had to move a user's data to her new machine. So generally I would just take the drive out and pop it into an external drive housing, connect it up to the new machine and start copying stuff across. All went well until it hit "My Pictures" and the copy started slowing down to a "900 minutes remaining" range, so I was like. Screw it, let's have a look at what's going on there.

Big mistake, very very big mistake. So said woman (who is not unattractive by a long shot) was seemingly into saving thousands of images of herself, her kids, her dog, her car, house, with clothes on, without clothes on, tied up, etc etc...and then...

turns out the amateur porn star is into coprophilia and not lightly dabbling in it, full blown participant and recipient in the mouth and other orifices. I actually puked, it was that bad.

So I just did a checkdisk and fixed some of the issues there, then just let it copy over a weekend.

I could never look her in the eye again...EVER
 
Look - I can understand the odd fetish but coprophilia will never make the accepted or understandable list. Something wrong with your nose perhaps?

Had to redo a laptop of one of the editors of a magazine company that I had to get all the info over to a new one. Used LapLink back in the day for that. Usually just take the user profile over but I decided to check in the root of C: as well; since the previous time I didn't and they have 'lost' a valuable photo that was stored on there. (Or like the way they like to blow it up: Lost all their info)

While looking for possible valuable content to transfer from the c-drive (in particular photos) there they were: Some nudes from a ever so new and young work colleague as well as them together. The editor is married with a kid. So now I know and no-one else knows and now you need to pretend like nothing is up.

Why do people put stuff like that one their work computer??
 
Avantar said:
Look - I can understand the odd fetish but coprophilia will never make the accepted or understandable list. Something wrong with your nose perhaps?

Had to redo a laptop of one of the editors of a magazine company that I had to get all the info over to a new one. Used LapLink back in the day for that. Usually just take the user profile over but I decided to check in the root of C: as well; since the previous time I didn't and they have 'lost' a valuable photo that was stored on there. (Or like the way they like to blow it up: Lost all their info)

While looking for possible valuable content to transfer from the c-drive (in particular photos) there they were: Some nudes from a ever so new and young work colleague as well as them together. The editor is married with a kid. So now I know and no-one else knows and now you need to pretend like nothing is up.

Why do people put stuff like that one their work computer??
Click to expand...

No idea, I have seen plenty of nudes from colleagues, there are just two WTF incidents that I have in my many years of working in IT. Scatlady was the one, the other was the married guy with pics of himself and his toyboy lover.

The most likely cause is that they either don't have another PC at home, or the home PC is shared (with either a partner and/or kids) so they deem their work issued machine as "personal". However, no matter what position you hold, your work issued PC and the device(s) you bring to work to perform your duties while employed should NEVER be regarded as personal or private.

Don't get me wrong, I'm professional about it so I'm not yapping away telling other people in the office and/or their friends about this, neither am I going to take it up with them or anyone else unless they are blatantly breaking the law. However if your millions of pictures on a dying drive is causing me to be unable to help you, I'm going to have a look to see if I can zap/recover anything there. Just don't make me want to use eye bleach afterwards.
 
PsychoFish said:
No idea, I have seen plenty of nudes from colleagues, there are just two WTF incidents that I have in my many years of working in IT. Scatlady was the one, the other was the married guy with pics of himself and his toyboy lover.

The most likely cause is that they either don't have another PC at home, or the home PC is shared (with either a partner and/or kids) so they deem their work issued machine as "personal". However, no matter what position you hold, your work issued PC and the device(s) you bring to work to perform your duties while employed should NEVER be regarded as personal or private.

Don't get me wrong, I'm professional about it so I'm not yapping away telling other people in the office and/or their friends about this, neither am I going to take it up with them or anyone else unless they are blatantly breaking the law. However if your millions of pictures on a dying drive is causing me to be unable to help you, I'm going to have a look to see if I can zap/recover anything there. Just don't make me want to use eye bleach afterwards.
Click to expand...

Precisely why I think some secrets should stay secrets. :D
 
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