Entertainment For Lively Minds
When has the internet got you into trouble?
Posted by Dave Amitri on 1 March 2010 - 11:14pm.
Reading through todays username amnesty thread it appears that some of us desire internet anonymity. Indeed my name change is partly paranoia that someone, somewhere might put me and my inane witterings together but mainly it is work related. By coincidence my name came up today on the monthly internet usage report at work, bearing in mind it can only be used for social purposes before 9, between 12 and 1 and after 5.30 it's quite an achievemnet, no doubt I'll be called into my managers office to explain. Anyway that's very mild and I'm sure some of you can do better. So let's open the confession box again for your internet misdemeanours.
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Friendsreunited
I'm now divorced.
it's not quite 'the internet' but....
Meself and Chris sat side by side near the door as one entered into our office which was kinda open plan; people would often hang about the door area, gassing away and after a while, this could get on ones wick. Of course, Chris couldn't say anything to me about this, nor could I say anything to him, for the simple reason that the persons who were the subject of our derision would be within earshot.
What we'd occasionally do - cos we were SOOO funny, was type messages to each other on AOL Messenger. "Jesus, would that tosser ever bog off..."
That kind of stuff. Pretty tame.
Until the Friday afternoon, suitably refreshed by a cheeky half or two over lunch, that I composed a message of such biting invective, and culminating in the word c***. It was about my boss. The *only* problem, dear reader, is that I didn't send it to Chris.
Oh no, straight up onto the bosses computer screen. There he was. Standing by the door. Gassing away. Oblivious. And i knew what was ON HIS SCREEN, even if he didn't. Off he toddled to a meeting.
An hour. An hour, I spent, with the IT manager, who was a smoking buddy, trying to figure out if there was a way to dig my way out of this. "No mate, not without him finding out that his computer's been rebooted..."
Long story short, he didn't say much about it. His attitude to me changed significantly and it was as well* that our company was taken over a few months later and he was surplus to requirement; I don't think he deserved *all* that I said about him, but Mike, if you're reading this, i'm sorry!
(* by 'as well' I don't mean that in a mean spirited sense, but it was 'as well' for me)
You need an IT mate...
...who knows how to kill processes remotely. I'd have "accidentally" knocked a power cord out, I think.
Still, these things happen. At my last job, the person schooling a new employee in cc:mail inexplicably did four things, all whilst logged on with the new starter's account
1) Chose to illustrate his lesson by typing a subject of "Wanker" and a body of "...you are one..."
2) Added all users from A-K.
3) Quoth "Whatever you do, don't hit 'send', though."
4) Hit "send".
15 minutes later, the new, highly bemused, somewhat flustered, guy was in the Chief Executives office (initial 'B') explaining himself. It had been sent, under his name, to about 400 people, all of whom looked up and said "Who the hell is P*** C******??!?"* . Nice first day, and a great way to introduce oneself.
The "mentor" who actually composed and sent the mail should have cc'ed it to himself as he was a complete arse grape.
*N.B Not "Phil Collins"
brilliant!
speaking of 'cc', I once fell victim to the curse of the Bcc; I sent a mail to somebody or other with a slight condescending air (hey, I was younger and more idiotic than I am now) and chose to Bcc a few mates in on it to show how clever I was.
all fine until Ian decided to do a reply all, which gave the game away completely; the intended recipient didn't appreciate it.
that was 2000. I've not Bcc'd since; it truly is the atomic bomb of Office warfare...
Welcome to the Public Sector
Facebook, Twitter, all Webmail, MSN Messenger, Ebay, Youtube, Myspace, anything remotely frivolous or Social-networky all totally banned and blocked. Work e-mail for business use only and scanned for key words. All streaming video blocked and no downloads other than pdf files or similar. No games installed on PCs. Rest assured Tax payers you're not paying for people to p*ss about on the net all day.
Quite nice actually, no 21st Century distractions and I look forward to getting home to see what's going on with the Massive. Of course it means I can rarely join in the discussion in 'real time' with all you skivers!
skiving off at work reading word blogs?
I resemble that remark
In a (rather simple and boring) temp admin job
for a state government department, I once logged the second highest internet traffic level for all staff in the month, beaten only by the IT security guy.
Bollocking followed, accompanied by the comment, "how could he do that and not access porn sites..?"
Result.
T'internet
Could have got quite a few folks in trouble in my job in Manchester had the internet not been in it's infancy. Besides, I did not know how to upload CCTV images onto the web. The things we captured on video at closing time and couples fancied a smooch on the benches in our dark, secluded garden area. Oh how we laughed until we recognised one of the company's secretaries eating a "sausage roll".
Mid 90's
I had a Russian Girlfriend and we used to keep in touch by e-mail. Her e-mail was a Russian domain name.
I once made the mistake of opening a link i thought she'd sent. Bear in mind this is in an Internet cafe and i'd only just discovered where the @ symbol was. My god some of the stuff that popped up was "Leader of the gang" stuff. everytime i tried to delete it,more and more of this stuff came on the screen. Now ,most people in these places glance at other peoples screens. One American girl ran to the counter to complain. The guy who worked there asked me if i'd tried to access porn, 'No' i replied 'just a link from Russia'."Don't worry, mate. this happens all the time".
I'm not a person who is easily embarrassed but on this occassion i was mortified. There's an american somewhere who tells the story of the perv she once saw in an internet cafe.
Again, not exactly the internet...
...but my advice before making a booty call to your boyfriend's voicemail is to ensure that he hasn't moved desks.
The external forward
I've seen this a couple of times. Person A receives an email and forwards it internally with an added comment along the lines of: "Can you sort this mad bitch out for me?" Person B, acting on instructions, then forwards it to the original sender. Wrongity!
I lost a friend/colleague
through negligence with the 'fwd to all' button, married man 47, 3 kids, high maintenance wife.
He's clawed his way back up thru call centres etc. but his 20 years of Local Gov pension has evaporated.
an hard lesson