This just happened to a coworker of mine who is active-duty military. She’s been in a leadership class all day, so she left her military-issued laptop in my office for safekeeping while she’s in class. 

For those not familiar with US military IT regulations, there are a great many things that cannot ever be plugged into a government computer’s USB ports — chiefly anything with internal memory such as flash drives, cameras, and cell phones. Doing so causes the government computer to report the unauthorized plug-in to the network, and the network security people take steps to secure the device from possible attack.

As mentioned, [Coworker]’s laptop has been sitting in its computer bag in my office since she left for her class, and nobody has touched it. A little bit after her class broke for lunch, [Coworker] got a phone call from her Chief Petty Officer. It seems the network security people had been frantically trying to reach [Coworker] about an unauthorized plug-in to her computer. Since she was in class and her phone was therefore turned off (Navy tradition says anyone whose phone rings during training has to buy donuts for the whole class the next day), they couldn’t reach her and therefore decided to shut off not merely her computer but her entire network access.

Once she’d turned her phone back on and started seeing all the calls from network security and her Chief, [Coworker] called the Chief to find out what was going on. After she was told about the “problem”, [Coworker] talked to me and found out that no one had been anywhere near her laptop at all. Confused, [Coworker] called the Chief again to find out how to fix the problem.

She was told it would be no problem. The Chief would annotate that he had counseled [Coworker] about network security, and she would have to retake the online network security annual training. Once these were accomplished, [Coworker] would be able to get back into the network to do her military job as Leading Petty Officer for the shop.

Most of the readers familiar with various IT disasters are doubtless nodding sagely as they can see where this is going. In order to regain access to the network, [Coworker] had to take a network security training course on the network, and all of her network access had been shut off. She couldn’t even get into the network from another computer because network security had killed all of her access rights.

After laughing until I was blue in the face, I strongly suggested she take the laptop to the network security office and kindly ask them how she could retake the security training if they’d shut off her access. She was too tired to get into a fight after a day in the classroom, so she called the Chief and told him someone else was going to have to handle the morning muster reports and other administrative tasks she normally handled until someone at network security realized the Catch-22 situation they had created.

Network security is actually a pretty important job for government workers — especially military — but some of the network security administrators are full-on caricatures who absolutely belong here on Not Always Right.

In the mid-1990s, I started working for a large computer company in the Midwest. Holiday season 1996 sales went nuts because they were first to market with an internal 28.8k modem, to the point that we poor schmucks on phone tech support were working 80-, 90-, and 100-hour weeks to try to keep the hold time down to two hours or less. We used to send out a VHS tape but had to discontinue that earlier in the year when someone at the video production company decided to splice adult content into the setup video, so no more setup VHS tapes were being sent out.

A lot of the calls had to do with setup, how to connect the monitor, the keyboard, or the mouse, even though the back of the computer was color-coded. But computers as household items were still relatively new, and there was a lot of hand-holding, old people trying to figure out that complicated AOL, maybe someone actually had a problem, etc. — all in all, pretty easy money.

Enter this dad on the line.

Me: “Hello, thanks for calling [Company] Computers. My name is [My Name]. Could I—”

Caller: “What in the f*** are you doing? How the h*** can you send out that computer with that on there?!”

He continued to scream for the next several minutes. (It felt way longer.) Then, he finally calmed down.

Me: “Well, I’m sorry to hear you’re having issues with your computer. Let’s see what we can do.”

I got his information.

Me: “Okay, so what software was on the computer?”

Caller: “It’s not the software. I went to try out AOL, and all of a sudden, when I typed in the browser, it was showing [adult content] sites. Is that some kind of weird joke you guys do there? I remember you guys were sending out [adult content] tapes to people.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. The tapes were from a third-party company, and we fired them and destroyed any tapes.”

Then, I heard a voice in the background.

Male Voice: “Dad, I’m headed out for a bit.”

Caller: “Okay, brat, just wait a minute…”

Me: “Ummm, mind if I ask a question? How old is your son?”

Caller: “Oh, he’s fourteen.”

I decided this was the time to lead him down the path.

Me: “So, like I said, I’m sorry that showed up on your computer, but when we build your system, it’s never attached to a live phone line to test the modem, I’ll talk you through what we do.”

I talked him through opening a DOS shell and issuing a debug command to run a self-test on the modem, and he heard that lovely sound we all knew so well in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The line went silent, but I could hear his wheels turning.

Me: “So, you said your son is fourteen. Was he on the computer last night?”

Caller: “Why, yes. He said he had homew—”

The penny finally dropped.

Caller: “Oh, my God. I’m so, so sorry for yelling at you like that. You didn’t deserve it.”

I was grinning evilly. By that point, I was forty-five or so minutes into the call. My manager swung by to ask if it was all okay, and I waved him away.

At that point, I was hearing in the background of the call:

Caller: “GET OVER HERE, BRAT! I JUST SPENT TIME YELLING AT THIS GUY WHEN YOU WERE LOOKING AT [ADULT CONTENT] UNDER MY ROOF? YOU’RE GOING TO GET ON THAT PHONE AND APOLOGIZE TO HIM!”

This kid knew he was busted and busted bad. He meekly apologized for looking at the adult content. I was just trying to keep from laughing out loud. Then, there was a bit more yelling that I couldn’t make out, but it did sound like Mom joined in on the berating.

Dad got back on the phone.

Caller: “Once again, I’m so so sorry that I acted that way to you. I shouldn’t have sworn or yelled at you.”

Cue Mom in the background:

Caller’s Wife: “YOU DID WHAT?!”

At that point, the phone hung up. I had my manager pull the call because there were a lot of people who had to listen to it just for the humor aspect of the call.

As a design engineer in charge of systems engineering and applicable international standards for implantable radio transceivers, I obviously needed access to various standards and websites — which also gave details of meetings I needed to attend all over Europe.

All went well for several months. Then, a new woman in charge of IT took over, and the next thing I knew, I was being hauled up in front of IT and Human Resources, accused of accessing pornographic sites on a company computer on company time!

At that time, the European Conference of Posts and Telecommunications (CEPT) had a European Radiocommunications Office in Copenhagen, known as the “ERO”. Their website, “ero dot dk”, was obviously one I went to regularly, as I was a member of two of their radio committees.

The “new broom” at IT was well aware that a lot of porn sites were “ero dot [country identifier], so she put two and two together and came up with an answer in the hundreds! Fortunately, suspecting what it was all about, I stated that, in accordance with company policy, I would be accompanied at the meeting by my manager.

The new IT boss started off.

IT Boss: “You have been looking at pornographic sites on company time on a company computer.”

I replied, allowing them to dig deeper:

Me: “What porn site and on what address?”

IT Boss: “‘Ero dot dk’.”

Me: “Access to that site is necessary to enable me to do my work. Have you looked at the site?”

IT Boss: “No, it’s not necessary. All sites starting with ‘ero’ are porn.”

Me: “That is a downright lie. ‘Ero dot dk’ certainly isn’t.”

My manager cut in then and asked very mildly:

Manager: “Perhaps you could point out where ‘ero dot dk’ has pornographic material on it?”

I stirred the pot here a bit and commented:

Me: “I suppose you believe that discussions on acceptable limits for receiver intermodulation and transmitter unwanted emissions involve pornography?”

At this point, it became obvious to the Human Resources person that maybe there was something wrong here… and having looked at the website, even the IT woman decided they had it wrong.

So, just to rub it in, my boss sent a memo to HR — copied to the HR manager and his manager — requesting a charge code for the time wasted in attending the meeting. I don’t think he ever got a reply!

A woman in her late forties or so has purchased a tablet from us, excited about being able to watch her “YouTubes” on the go. Less than a week later, she comes back in, distraught.

Customer: “There is so much bad stuff on here! You need to make it all go away!”

Manager: “Excuse me, ma’am, but what bad stuff? Can you be more specific?”

Customer: “I just wanted to watch my YouTubes, but my son put Facebook on there, too. But I’m seeing such horrible things on there! You need to make it go away!”

Manager: “Did you want us to uninstall the Facebook app, ma’am?”

Customer: “No, I want to keep my Facebook, but make all the horrible people stop posting horrible things!”

My manager — bless his heart — tries to see if the customer can show him an example of what “horrible people” she’s talking about. They scroll her feed, and within just a few seconds, she screams.

Customer: “There! There’s one! Oh, it’s so horrible!”

Manager: “That’s an ad for a charity that looks after abandoned pets.”

Customer: “Yes, and it’s horrible! I don’t want to think about all those poor animals!”

He scrolls once more, and she is upset again.

Manager: “That’s someone who has posted a reaction video to a video about a trans person being misgendered.”

Customer: “Yes! All those poor people! This is very triggering! I don’t want to see this stuff!”

Manager: “You can select this option — ‘Show me less like this’ if this stuff upsets you. Also, it helps if you don’t click on these so that—”

Customer: “I don’t click on them! I go past them as quickly as I can! I don’t want to see it!”

Manager: “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but if even the risk of the mention of any of those topics is this triggering for you, then perhaps the Internet — especially social media — isn’t the best place for you.”

My manager soldiered on and helped show her how to improve filtering her feed, but she still left seemingly still upset and looking concerned.

Related:
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 11
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 10
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 9
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 8
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 7

I work as an IT-support team lead. We have a typical office building of a few floors. Each floor has its own printer. On one hectic day, I’m trying to do inventory on the IT department’s floor. I’m in the middle of scrounging for all sorts of technical assets that my barcode reader can get its filthy red line onto when, suddenly, I hear the audible sound of high heels clacking on the floor, and by the sounds of them, lost.

The person opens a random door — which happens to belong to the brand-new director of the infrastructure bureau — and exclaims that their floor printer is not working.  The director confused, sends the person down the hall, saying, “Maybe you’ll have more luck there.”

They turn the corner and look at me, still lost.

Me: “What’s wrong with the printer? Did it show any error codes or anything along those lines?”

Employee: “I don’t know. It hasn’t worked for the past four years!”

Now, I’m confused. There aren’t any broken printers on that person’s floor — not even in the whole building.

Me: “Can you show me your process for printing a file?”

We go to their office, they log in, and we are immediately faced with an overcrowded desktop. Alas, that is not the issue at hand. They open up MS Word, write in “test”, save it, and then close the document. They start getting up from their chair and try to take me to the printer.

Me: “All right, now we just need to print it.”

They look at me, even more confused.

Employee: “I just did? The file should be printing right now if the printer worked!”

In short, I sat them down, introduced to them the printing function, and left, wondering how it was possible that they hadn’t needed to print before for four years, only to conclude that the printer that was whirring daily with documents must be broken.