The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

it must hav ebeen, quite literally, his fucking desk.

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

OzPeter:
amischiefr:
What you dildo's don't realize is that everything in the company, especially the drawers, belong to the company. There is no "personal" space, and bringing sex paraphernalia to work is definitely not professional. The place for your kinky sex acts is at home, not at your desk after hours.
Replace sex toys with medicine for a condition that you don't want to be made public, have that paraded around the company after someone breaks into your desk draw and then see what sort of lawsuits the company could face.

Are you suggesting his sex toys were medicine for his condition that gave him compulsive urges for sex at all hours of the day?

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

As bad as having nooners on the desk in his cubicle....

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

I think this is the part where we all run giggling around the playground. C'mon guys, this is a waste of time. Nothing clever or interesting here.

CAPTCHA refoveo - What you do if you liked foveo-ing the first time.

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

SomeYoungGuy:
I think this is the part where we all run giggling around the playground. C'mon guys, this is a waste of time. Nothing clever or interesting here.
CAPTCHA refoveo - What you do if you liked foveo-ing the first time.

Where have you been the past few months?

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

dildo:
Nikonoel:
Also, it makes it even harder to understand for non native english speakers. And less funny, even once I understood what it was all about.

Everyone wants to be a policeman. Go be one, for fuck sake, if you want to, and quit policing what others type (goes for all sorts of media: blogs, email - you name it).

My comment goes to site owner, and not to the author of the quote.

That's retarded. The owner wasn't policing anything. The "censorship" was done either as a joke, or, as he stated, as a courtesy to those readers could get in trouble at work or who would be unable to read it at work if it were left as is.

Jebus, pay attention and grow up.

CAPTCHA: appellatio -- "She performed

appelatio

on his

banana

while he

plucked

her

peaches

."

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Vlad Patryshev:

Whoever thinks it is unacceptable to keep private stuff at work, they probably need some consulting.

Whoever thinks there's a justifiable reason to keep sex toys in your desk drawer (unless they're somehow related to your job, such as if you design or sell them), is a moron.

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

OzPeter:
amischiefr:
What you dildo's don't realize is that everything in the company, especially the drawers, belong to the company. There is no "personal" space, and bringing sex paraphernalia to work is definitely not professional. The place for your kinky sex acts is at home, not at your desk after hours.
Replace sex toys with medicine for a condition that you don't want to be made public, have that paraded around the company after someone breaks into your desk draw and then see what sort of lawsuits the company could face.

You're seriously comparing keeping medical necessities private in a desk drawer with keeping sex toys there?

And if they're that damn important and private, don't leave them in your desk when you know the company is moving, know they're thoroughly cleaning house, and have had time to prepare for the move.

Perv-boy had no reasonable expectation of privacy. Sure, whatshisname could have called him first about the bag before opening it, but he's not a cop, and this isn't a court of law, so search warrants, exigent circumstances, and all that doesn't apply. He's going office to office, desk to desk, doing a boring, tedious job, and some retard left a bunch of stuff in a locked drawer. I can't say I'd have bothered to handle it any differently, and I wouldn't feel bad about it after the fact.

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Ok. Granted that possessing such sex toys on company property and time IS unprofessional - as well as embarassing.... It should be one of those things that goes with out having to spell it out in the rule books...

The problem is that for the company to permit or knowingly condone such to exist on the company premisis legally leaves the company open to charges of allowing a sexually opressive atmosphere for female workes... it falls into the same catagory as allowing men to have the naked playboy centerfold pix in their lockers....

Under THAT premise, he would have already been gone in many companies. Thus avoiding all the possible reprecussions of the later porn down laoding incident.

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Nagesh:
I fail to get the WTF.

In this case, the W stands for "wants."

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

trwtf:
dildo:
Nikonoel:
Also, it makes it even harder to understand for non native english speakers. And less funny, even once I understood what it was all about.

Everyone wants to be a policeman. Go be one, for fuck sake, if you want to, and quit policing what others type (goes for all sorts of media: blogs, email - you name it).

My comment goes to site owner, and not to the author of the quote.
THE "POLICING" WAS A JOKE. A JOKE. HUMOR MOTHERFUCKER, LOOK IT UP. Jesus tap-dancing Christ, this is supposed to be an intelligent profession.

+1

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Me:
"Derek, we found this bag in a drawer in your desk."
"Really? I was never able to open that drawer, never had a key. Maybe it belongs to <VP Engineering>. He had that office before me."

Yep, that was my first thought. Claim ignorance.

strictnein · 2011-02-01 Reply Admin

mike:
please don't butcher the articles in the future.
that was simply stupid.

folks can read this after work if necessary.

don't penalize the rest of us.

I thought the editing made the article better. Wordplay is fun.

SQLDave · 2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Nagesh:
I fail to get the WTF.

TRWTF is the name "Alistair"

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

zzo38:
Obviously the words in fixed pitch don't fit (they were edited). You could blank out those words and then do madlibs.

That's how it was produced in the first place.

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

amischiefr:
The place for your kinky sex acts is at home, not at your desk after hours.

You. Are. No. Fun. At. All.

Gern Blaanston · 2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Bathrooms are a whole different subject that are covered by their own set of laws, for obvious reasons. You can't compare the shitter to your desk drawer and I have to wonder what the hell you've been doing in your drawer to come up with that comparison in the first place.

[image] [image] [image]

SQLDave · 2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Philipp:
When I would find some dirty stuff in the desk of a colleague I would just quietly tell him that he should better remove it. Telling the whole company about this before telling him is kind of a dildo move.

FTFY

Silverhill · 2011-02-01 Reply Admin

frits:
Is this article using some sort of rhyming slang? Because we septics don't understand that crap.

(emphasis added)

No need to FTFY, is there?

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Alistair's IT department was in the midst of a long, hard move

Safe for work? ha!

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Is it traditional to embed editor comments or click handlers in the HTML source of WTF articles?

hoodaticus · 2011-02-01 Reply Admin

a1291762:
Is it traditional to embed editor comments or click handlers in the HTML source of WTF articles?

Here? Yes. And they know we're reading the markup, because we comment on it all the time.

After a while, you don't even see the markup. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead...

hoodaticus · 2011-02-01 Reply Admin

dildo:
Nikonoel:
Also, it makes it even harder to understand for non native english speakers. And less funny, even once I understood what it was all about.

Everyone wants to be a policeman. Go be one, for fuck sake, if you want to, and quit policing what others type (goes for all sorts of media: blogs, email - you name it).

My comment goes to site owner, and not to the author of the quote.

Watch your fucking fucked-up attitude you fucking fuck. They're not policing anything. They did it for the same mother-fucking reason that South Park is better live: it's funnier censored! It makes it seem even naughtier, because whenever something is ambiguous, it is human nature to plug in the worst possible explanation.

Although, in this case, the worst possible explanation for each censored phrase is the correct one.

hoodaticus · 2011-02-01 Reply Admin

jverd:
OzPeter:
amischiefr:
What you dildo's don't realize is that everything in the company, especially the drawers, belong to the company. There is no "personal" space, and bringing sex paraphernalia to work is definitely not professional. The place for your kinky sex acts is at home, not at your desk after hours.
Replace sex toys with medicine for a condition that you don't want to be made public, have that paraded around the company after someone breaks into your desk draw and then see what sort of lawsuits the company could face.
Perv-boy had no reasonable expectation of privacy.

The first legal question is whether it was trespass for the company to open the drawer. It wasn't, because the company owns the desk and can do whatever it wants with it. (The same goes for your emails, btw).

The second legal question is whether there was trespass when the sealed black bag was opened. The company is guilty of trespass if they did not own the bag and did not have the consent of the owner to open it (such as a company policy that subjected all bags on the property to search). There are no legally-relevant facts one way or the other in the story that could let us know either way.

Assuming arguendo the company didn't own the bag, it could still try to defend itself with the claim that it had to know the contents of the bag in order to attempt to return it to its rightful owner and was thereby privileged to break the law due to necessity. (Yes, you can often legally break the law if it's "necessary".)

Assuming the company is liable for trespass, there is still the issue of proving damages. He didn't lose his job after that, and no one can identify him to this article, so I don't think the lawsuit would be worth much if anything. Especially since he was never publicly humiliated. He'd get a minimum of $1 if he won, though.

Addendum (2011-02-01 20:02): @jverd

But you're probably right about the invasion of privacy. It depends on announced company policy in most places, I bet.

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Kensey:
At a long-ago job with an online game company (now defunct), we had a small group that handled sound effects. For one game they needed the sound of splashing liquid. They tried just recording somebody splashing a hand in a pan of water in one of the audio-equipped conference rooms with the good microphones. Nope, not quite right -- the mic didn't pick it up well. So they tried covering the mic in an unlubed prophylactic and swishing it directly in the water. Nope, still too "thin"-sounding. So they got hold of a couple quarts of motor oil and put that in the pan, then swished the covered mic in it. That was just right.
What with all the brainstorming and swishing and trips to the store, it was late, so they figured they'd just leave the stuff there and clean it up next AM. The next morning they arrived, dutifully headed to the conference room... and saw the executive team in the middle of an early-morning videoconference meeting with the handlers from the parent company, everyone studiously not looking at the pan or the rubber-covered, oil-coated microphone in the middle of the table.

The CEO had a great many questions for them after the meeting.

That's arguably a better story than the OP. Especially as it's a sound effects group for a gaming company... Someone in the chain managed to forget to explain to higher ups that decent sound effects engineers need to get highly creative to get their sounds. Extremely, bizarrely creative.

Nagesh · 2011-02-01 Reply Admin

SQLDave:
Nagesh:
I fail to get the WTF.
TRWTF is the name "Alistair"

Ali is a very common name in some parts of the world.

El_Heffe · 2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Alistair passed the information up the chain, and Derek was fingered as the culprit.

I hate when that happens.

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

mike:
please don't butcher the articles in the future.
that was simply stupid.

folks can read this after work if necessary.

don't penalize the rest of us.

in other words, "You stay clbutty, the Daily WTF"

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

The original version of this article contained some keywords not suitable for the workplace. Knowing that many of our readers visit the site from their workplaces, this article has been edited for content as a courtesy to our readers.

Well **** my ****ing ****, are people really that ****ing precious that you ****ing can't say ****, or ****, or ****? That really ****s my ****, I ****ing can't ****** the ********* who ******** this ********. ****** me ****** ****** ********** *******. ******* ******* **** **** with a gerbil!

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Philipp:
Telling the whole company about this before telling him is kind of a dick move.

Specifically, a rubber dick move.

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Curious George:
Me:
"Derek, we found this bag in a drawer in your desk."
"Really? I was never able to open that drawer, never had a key. Maybe it belongs to <VP Engineering>. He had that office before me."
Yep, that was my first thought. Claim ignorance.

Bugger that, those things are expensive.... or so I've heard...

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
trwtf:
mike:
please don't butcher the articles in the future. don't penalize the rest of us.
Jesus Christ, it was part of the joke! Why the hell do people turn into morons as soon as they touch a computer? Are you foreign or just really slow?
Fap, fap, fap, fap, fap!

Don't you mean 'squick, squick, squick, squick, squick!'?

2011-02-01 Reply Admin

WTF is up with the unicorns? (If you didn't see them, click on the words turkey baster in the story)

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

The only company policy that might apply is sexual harassment, but since in this case the objects were hidden from view and know one knew about them, they could not offend anyone.

OzPeter:
Given that Derek was still a current employee during the move, the WTF is that the IT people were breaking open his desk - they should have called him and said "The draw to your old desk is locked. Is there anything in it that you want". As they did not do that, Derek should have complained to HR about his personal belongings being touched without his permission.

Agreed. From the two guys crowbarring open a drawer, I inferred that the employee no longer worked there, in that case it would have been fine. A current employee should have first option of clearing out their own desk.

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

being a pervert certainly isnt any of employers business, but wtf was that guy doing with this "equipment" at work?

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

The real WTF is destroying company property (breaking the lock on the desk) instead of just phoning Derek and asking him to come unlock it and clear it out.

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

I cleaned up a shared work related email box after my boss left the company. I noticed it contained some personal email exchange and decided to do what he apparently forgot and delete the personal mails before anyone else set their eyes on them.

Nice thing to do, right? Using shared work email for personal stuff is quite silly and could lead to embarrasment.

I have to admit that I couldn't resist taking a peek myself though...

Anyway, I think the guy would be happy to know that I quietly deleted his mails instead of reporting them to HR or legal.

Now it's just my soul into which has been burned an image of my ex-boss engaging a sick, twisted, 300 pound straight version of that double-headed turkey baster scene from the movie Requiem for a dream.

Soviut · 2011-02-02 Reply Admin

amischiefr:
The place for your kinky sex acts is at home, not at your desk after hours.

I work at home.

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
You may have an expectation of privacy but your expectations have no basis in reality. The simple fact of the matter is that your company own the drawer in your desk (sorry, their desk) and they are perfectly within their rights to open in whenever they want. I would expect a decent employer to respect their staff's privacy but it's not "weird" and it sure as hell doesn't require justification. Do you need to give me justification to open your fridge? Of course you don't, because it's your fridge.
Bathrooms are a whole different subject that are covered by their own set of laws, for obvious reasons. You can't compare the shitter to your desk drawer and I have to wonder what the hell you've been doing in your drawer to come up with that comparison in the first place. On seconds thoughts, I really don't want to know...

You must be from the US. In the old country, we have a whole different set of rules where the "boss" is not really the boss and you cannot be fired on the spot unless caught stealing redhanded. And even then it's difficult.

On a side not, let's say this Derek would store his toys in his coat or bag and hang it on the wall. In your reasoning, the company owuld be perfectly in their right to search those at will. With that approach to dignity and privacy, I bet you would love to live in Northern Korea or the old Eastern Germany ...

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

Aince Alistair is a guy's name, and the piece kept using the feminine pronoun

Unless Alistair is a TV, or the Yanks are really getting fruity with using the names for either gender or a rename went wrong in the article

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
You may have an expectation of privacy but your expectations have no basis in reality. The simple fact of the matter is that your company own the drawer in your desk (sorry, their desk) and they are perfectly within their rights to open in whenever they want. I would expect a decent employer to respect their staff's privacy but it's not "weird" and it sure as hell doesn't require justification. Do you need to give me justification to open your fridge? Of course you don't, because it's your fridge.

All this talk about 'privacy' and 'company policy' seems to ignore that the guy who opened the bag was just that - a guy who opened a bag. He then had a choice to escalate it or deal with it quietly. Does he have an explicit duty to report the contents of the drawer? If not, why not just return it and let the matter drop? Even if 'yes', it would be possible to be discreet: "sealed bag", "bag containing personal effects, returned to owner". It seems like a huge waste of multiple peoples' time to do anything different.

I don't know, maybe Derek was a prick and they wanted him gone. But was the contents of the bag illegal (kiddie porn etc)? Could it have been a risk to safety (gun, explosives etc)? No? Grow up, return it and get over it!

And there are plenty of reasonable reasons to have the bag there (apparently it wasn't used frequently enough to notice it was missing from the new desk). Perhaps he doesn't have a place at home that's definitely kid-proof - or wife-proof. Perhaps he took it in to work planning to take to a "meeting", and forgot about it? Hell, maybe it was a joke present - or a serious one for his wife/partner? - or a prop for a stag do!

Yeah, the TRWTF is even thinking to involve the guy's manager, HR, lawyers - and that all of them thought it was appropriate to escalate!

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

OzPeter:
amischiefr:
What you dildo's don't realize is that everything in the company, especially the drawers, belong to the company. There is no "personal" space, and bringing sex paraphernalia to work is definitely not professional. The place for your kinky sex acts is at home, not at your desk after hours.
Replace sex toys with medicine for a condition that you don't want to be made public, have that paraded around the company after someone breaks into your desk draw and then see what sort of lawsuits the company could face.

Yeah, same thing occurred to me. There are any number of things you might have to bring to work one day that were strictly for your manager's or HR's eyes only.

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

Derek:
Anonymous:
You may have an expectation of privacy but your expectations have no basis in reality. The simple fact of the matter is that your company own the drawer in your desk (sorry, their desk) and they are perfectly within their rights to open in whenever they want. I would expect a decent employer to respect their staff's privacy but it's not "weird" and it sure as hell doesn't require justification. Do you need to give me justification to open your fridge? Of course you don't, because it's your fridge.
Bathrooms are a whole different subject that are covered by their own set of laws, for obvious reasons. You can't compare the shitter to your desk drawer and I have to wonder what the hell you've been doing in your drawer to come up with that comparison in the first place. On seconds thoughts, I really don't want to know...

You must be from the US. In the old country, we have a whole different set of rules where the "boss" is not really the boss and you cannot be fired on the spot unless caught stealing redhanded. And even then it's difficult.

On a side not, let's say this Derek would store his toys in his coat or bag and hang it on the wall. In your reasoning, the company owuld be perfectly in their right to search those at will. With that approach to dignity and privacy, I bet you would love to live in Northern Korea or the old Eastern Germany ...

Going through someone's coat when they're accessible requires the person to be present and compliant, since his coat is his property. Unless he left the company after being fired horrendously and walked out muttering about burning the building down...

But he did not have it in his coat did he? He had it in a desk belonging to the company, in an area that had to be sorted and cleared - which he knew about.

Flygon · 2011-02-02 Reply Admin

You're all more perverted than most of the furries I speak to.

This is greatly not helped by the fact that at least 10% of you commenters are not furries.

Silverhill · 2011-02-02 Reply Admin

Dave:
Well **** my ****ing ****, are people really that ****ing precious that you ****ing can't say ****, or ****, or ****? That really ****s my ****, I ****ing can't ****** the ********* who ******** this ********. ****** me ****** ****** ********** *******. ******* ******* **** **** with a gerbil!

Yes, (some) people really are that ****ing precious. Where I work, for example, the email filter will disallow inbound or outbound messages that contain Naughty Words. There are the usual suspects, of course, plus things such as "pussy" -- even if you are merely referring to a pussy cat....

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

Dirk:
Alistair's IT department was in the midst of a long, hard move
Safe for work? ha!

OMG, you really have spotted something here!

In addition to the regular pains of a growing company, (...) security routinely had to chase (...) At this point, everything remaining in the old office was going to get stuffed in the bin.
Stuffed in the bin after a thorough scrubbing. (...) All through the IT offices, disks churned and securely wiped (...)

Walking past one of the vacant offices, Alistair heard someone grumble, "No, you're putting it in wrong. Like that." A moment later there was a strained grunt followed by an "Ow!" (..)

"What'd the desk do to deserve this abuse?" (...)

The drawers were made of heavy gauge steel with locks to match. Alistair decided to give them a hand with the prybar. (...)

Alistair found himself on the floor with a now misshapen drawer in his lap. The drawer was filled with a large, dark, plastic bag held closed with duct tape. (...)

Alistair quickly closed the bag. After spending fifteen minutes in the restroom, washing his hands, Alistair called Derek's manager, Isabelle. (...)

A chain of meetings devoured the afternoon,(..)

"Soooo...." Alistair murmured, trying his best to not visualize the office flush with the aforementioned desk décor. (...)

When the move was behind them, and the new IT facilities were thoroughly burned-in, (...) and Derek was fingered as the culprit.(...)

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

Hm, my organisation has all kinds of statistics about its internet usage published on the web: Things like total upload and download volume, most visited sites (Wikipedia toping the list) and also most popular sites by download volume...

One month, the last one of these couldn't be published for "technical reasons"... I asked the guys from IT and they told me that was because one particular "documentaries" download site would be on the top of the list.

They also traced it back to one particular user who had a need to download several gigabytes (!) of documentaries in that month.

They refused to tell me, however, what HR did with the guy, nor if he is willing to share his collection with his colleagues.

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

Curiouser and curiouser...

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

anon:
Hm, my organisation has all kinds of statistics about its internet usage published on the web: Things like total upload and download volume, most visited sites (Wikipedia toping the list) and also most popular sites by download volume...
One month, the last one of these couldn't be published for "technical reasons"... I asked the guys from IT and they told me that was because one particular "documentaries" download site would be on the top of the list.

They also traced it back to one particular user who had a need to download several gigabytes (!) of documentaries in that month.

They refused to tell me, however, what HR did with the guy, nor if he is willing to share his collection with his colleagues.

Our story is that all internet browsing statistics (Including site URL's) in the company were published online on the company intranet. It was mainly us IT folk who browsed the log though as regular users tended to forget about the policy. One woman probably forgot about it one Friday after company sponsored drinks and spent the evening downloading nasty animal porn. I don't think any of us ever looked at her the same way afterwards. The policy of publicising your internet habits dropped away shortly afterwards.

2011-02-02 Reply Admin

OzPeter:
Given that Derek was still a current employee during the move, the WTF is that the IT people were breaking open his desk - they should have called him and said "The draw to your old desk is locked. Is there anything in it that you want". As they did not do that, Derek should have complained to HR about his personal belongings being touched without his permission.

Yeah, Alistair should have definetely been sacked after that incident - instead he stayed on his snitching-spree.

Toying Around

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