Hold On Too Tight And You’ll Surely Lose It

A number of years ago, I worked for a small, fairly local outsourcing company. I was assigned to work with a particularly high-profile client of theirs. The client’s office was just around the corner from my employer, but my employer insisted that I remain within their own offices to work, so the client provided me with a laptop to use that connected to their network remotely. It’s important to note that whilst the client was decent, my employer had a totally fear-based management culture. The managers wanted eyes on the employees at all times because they assumed people would slack off given half the chance.

After almost a year of working there, I got a call from the client notifying me that my client-given laptop needed some critical updates, and I would have to bring it in so IT could apply the updates locally. All sounded very reasonable to me.

I brought this to the attention of my manager and advised that I would be out of the office for a while so I could take my laptop to the client site around the corner for critical updates. No bueno. My manager ignored everything about the “critical updates” part and focused instead on the “out of our office for two hours” part. They insisted that they knew I had a remote connection to the client’s office, so any updates could be applied without me needing to leave and take my laptop anywhere. I got the impression they thought I was lying to get some free time off.

I decided that this had the potential to teach my employer and the managers a great lesson about not trusting their own employees, so like the model employee I was, I shrugged and said, “You know best, boss,” and complied with their request, continuing working as usual… until the following morning, when I switched on my laptop and nothing would work.

The machine refused to connect to the client’s remote network. The various software applications I used for my job also wouldn’t run due to the lack of connection. Error messages flashed up on every file I tried to access, warning me that my credentials had been blocked. I was left holding a very expensive brick.

My manager was livid when I explained I couldn’t do any work. They clicked around on my laptop trying to fix it themselves, but there was no other solution to be had. They sent me around the corner to the client’s office so I could hand in my laptop to IT. I took my time enjoying a coffee and breakfast in the client’s onsite cafe whilst IT worked on my laptop, but when I went to check on it after an hour, I believe the client IT manager’s words were, “It’s f***ed.”

The critical update mentioned before was intended to repair something wrong with the way the remote connections worked. When my machine didn’t get the update, it lost connection with the client’s network and immediately locked me out of everything, effectively blacklisting my credentials. IT manager explained that they would have to build me an entirely new machine and set up new accounts, a process that would take about a week to ensure everything filtered through correctly and could be tested.

The client was fine and understanding about it, but when I returned empty-handed to my employer’s office, my manager got extremely snotty with me and insisted I still had to work somehow. I pointed out that I had no client laptop to work on, so instead of sending me home, they forced another employee to share her computer with me. For the next week, I and my colleague shared her computer, one hour each at a time. As I had no access to any of my files, client data, etc., all I could do was the barest minimum of work, sending a few emails from my colleague’s account.

After a week, I got my new client laptop and things went back to normal, but the week of sharing meant my employer had lost around forty hours of productivity from two employees. The shared pain of the experience with my colleague brought us closer together, and when my employer lost their contract with my client a few years later, she helped me get a new job with my employer’s competitor.