I’ve been at my current employer for more than ten years. For the first five years, I was the supervisor of our production area. After that, I switched to IT. Since then, I have new bosses (who are located in a different branch), but as my old boss is the manager for the branch where I am located, I still have to deal with her regularly.

Our company is a scanning service, so we have a lot of high-value documents on location: banking documents, deeds, employment documents, and all manner of correspondence. You name it, we got it. Obviously, security is a major concern as we would be liable for any damage or losses incurred. But both my former boss and the guy who now holds my former position care more about things being convenient, even if they go against regulations.

One repeat discussion I’ve had with them is about how they like to prop open doors to our production area for hours on end, often without anyone supervising the open doors. Obviously, this is a breach of data security, as anyone could just walk in, grab some documents, and walk out again. In addition, as these are fire doors, it is against German law to keep them propped open, as this endangers people in case of a fire.

The last time I noticed that door blocked, I decided to send a reminder email to people in our branch, pointing out the danger as well as the relevant part of criminal law. I honestly expected to be ignored as usual, but then [Former Boss] replied. The following is a chain of emails going back and forth.

Former Boss: “Do your own work! It’s not your job to play security. If the door is open, it is open for a reason. Also, these are not fire doors; inform yourself.”

Me: “If I note a violation of criminal law, let alone one endangering everyone in the building, it is absolutely my job to point that out. Also, it’s interesting that you would accuse me of not informing myself, as you don’t seem to have done that, either. Our doors are [full serial number of door brand]. You can find the technical specification under DIN 4102 (German standard for fire doors) under this link.”

Former Boss: *Sarcastically* “Props for having the time to busy yourself with that. We carried boxes into the production area; it wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Let this be my problem and keep out of it. Nothing was blocked.”

Me: “The door to the production area was held with a wedge. The door to the office area was held open using a fire extinguisher (which is somewhat ironic). So, saying nothing was blocked is provably false. However, it’s moot to keep discussing this; I did my duty and pointed out the problem. At least no one can claim they didn’t know if anything happens now.”

I had started to CC my bosses starting with the second email, as I wanted to raise awareness of the tone of these replies. Unbeknownst to me, one of them forwarded the whole exchange to the safety officer in our main branch. (My branch doesn’t have one.) I only knew when we got the following answer to my last email.

Safety Officer: “WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?! EVERY EMPLOYEE HAS A DUTY TO POINT OUT DEFICIENCIES IN THE WORKPLACE!”

He then proceeded to point out the sections of employment law that obligate any employee to look out for their own health and security, as well as those that empower employees to make suggestions to their employer where health and security are concerned. He also pointed out all the problems with propping up a fire door; words like “gross negligence” and “life insurance” were used.

I later heard through the grapevine that [Former Boss] called [Safety Officer] and whined about how inconvenient it was not to be able to keep these doors open, but she didn’t get far.

Related:
Safety Schmafety

I’m a middle-aged woman, and I volunteer at my kids’ school library once a week. One time, the regular librarian was gone and there was a substitute librarian. I’m not sure where she was from, but her accent suggested a region of the world known for being homogenously Christian (as in, a different one other than Alabama). We were alone in the library and started chatting.

Substitute Librarian: “And you do this every week? You’re such an angel! I can surely tell that God sent you to this school to witness through your good works…”

She went on in that vein for a while, and I mostly just nodded and smiled; I was raised Christian, but I’m no longer exactly practicing. I don’t remember what her exact question was that led to this, but then we had the following exchange.

Me: “Then, my wife and I moved here—”

Substitute Librarian: “Your wife?”

Me: “Yep.”

Substitute Librarian: “You’re married to a woman?”

Me: “Yes.”

Substitute Librarian: “But you said you have kids! Were they…” *makes a weird hand gesture* “You know, needle babies?”

Me: “Oh! No, actually, my wife was my husband for fifteen years first, before she transitioned, so they’re our biological kids. She’s just a woman now.”

Substitute Librarian: “But… how?”

She seemed genuinely curious and more baffled than judgmental (and the library was still empty other than the two of us), so I ended up basically explaining Queer 101: how transitioning works, how you can be bisexual even when monogamous, how transitioning doesn’t actually change your genitalia unless you opt for additional surgery (which many trans people don’t, my wife included).

Normally, I don’t answer intrusive questions like that, but I think she legitimately had no idea that this whole world existed! In the end, her conclusion came down to:

Substitute Librarian: “Well, I still think you are a wonderful person doing God’s work. It’s good that you’re staying with your husband even though he’s… going through some things… because divorce is a sin and too many people just give up.”

Sigh… So close!

My dad passed about ten years ago, and my mom just passed this year. When I was collecting my inheritance from my mom’s passing, I wanted to transfer her accounts from her advisor in her home state of New Mexico to my advisor closer to home.

As I went through the process of transferring the accounts, I got a call from the advisor. He begged me to leave the account in his hands because after my dad passed, he had a whirlwind romance with my mom and wanted to keep managing that account to remember her.

I admit, my response wasn’t very professional. I said, “Ew,” hung up, and finalized the transaction.

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.

I recently dropped my longtime ISP for multiple reasons. The most recent was a large price hike they tried to mask behind a deal that if you had automatic withdrawals with a debit card, you would save $5 a month, but if you had automatic withdrawals linked to your checking account you would save $10 a month on your monthly bill.

I thought I was going to save some money on my bill, but I came to find out that my bill actually went up $18, and they deducted $10 for having auto-pay linked to my checking account. In the end, I was still paying an extra $8 a month, plus the extra $12 in price increases over the past two years. To top it all off, this ISP still had a data cap of 1.2TB that any family of four-plus people could easily exceed.

This ISP company is large, all over the United States. They not only offer Internet but cable service, cell phone service, and even landline service. Their job is connectivity with devices on a massive scale.

Now that I’m done with that ISP, I have to return their X-Box. (It’s not an actual Xbox gaming system; it’s just what the company called it because of its name.) I never used nor even asked for it; I don’t even know what the stupid thing was for. It got shoved into a closet and forgotten there for the last few years. I have to ship it back to them on my dime, or I can drop it at a local store of theirs. I opt to drop it at a local store. If I don’t return it within thirty days, I have to pay them money for it.

A couple of days after I cancel my old ISP service, I have time to head to one of their local stores to return the X-Box. I arrive at the store, and a nice handwritten sign is taped to the entrance of the store as I enter. I don’t remember the exact wording on the sign, but it pretty much says that the store’s Internet is down and they cannot provide any services that require access to the network or systems.

I enter the store and am greeted by an employee there. He tells me that their network is down and he can’t assist me with anything that requires network access.

Me: “I’m just here to return this X-Box since I canceled my account with you guys the other day.”

Employee: “Oh. Okay. Once our system is back up, I’ll scan it in that you’ve returned it.”

Me: “Okay, thanks. You know, it’s kind of ironic that a company like this that is driven on connectivity has network issues right now, isn’t it?”

Employee: “Uh.” *Staring blankly at me* “What do you mean?”

Me: “Never mind. Have a good day.”

A company with a net worth of over $150 billion, and its store locations are having network outages. I guess the employee just didn’t understand the irony of it all.