Missing Things

a small price to pay for peace of mind

"I wouldn't worry too much about that email from the security team," Sam said after he had handed the box of adaptors to Carl and Alison. "All you have to do is show that you have a lockable desk drawer you can leave your laptop in when you aren't around and they'll leave you alone."

Alison took the box. She didn't look happy. "So now I have to buy a lockable drawer so I won't be treated like a criminal for going to the bathroom without my laptop? Am I going to be compensated for this?"

"No, but how much can one cost?" Sam turned towards his monitor. "Ah shit! I forgot that the Staples website is blocked." He took out his phone.

"Why is it blocked?" Carl asked, taking the box from Alison. "What's so terrible about it?"

"All online shopping sites have been blocked," Alison said.

"They were?" Carl said, surprised. "I don't remember seeing an email about that."

"It wasn't," Alison said. "It was added to the online 'responsible internet usage policy' a few weeks ago. I only found out because I was trying to buy a new headset and couldn't. Anyways, online shopping is now in there, wedged between porn sites and social media."

Carl was trying to find an adaptor that didn't have a sticker on it. It was getting harder and harder each week. "I didn't notice that the social media sites were blocked."

"They aren't," Sam said. "Marketing needs to be able to use social media so they can't block those sites. They just don't want you using it during the day."

"There's also a new clause in there about how the company 'reserved the right' to intercept communication over its wifi network," Alison said.

"'Intercept communication'?" Carl said, taking an unstickered adaptor out of the box. "What does that mean?"

"It means that the company can read our personal emails," Alison said. "So say that your phone is connected to the office wifi, they can intercept any messages you send over the wifi network."

"Are you serious?" Carl looked at Sam. "Is your phone connected to the wifi?"

"No," Sam said. "Well not now. I disconnected it to check the Staples website. The website would have been blocked otherwise."

Carl took out his phone, turned off its wifi, and wrote himself a note to upgrade his data plan.

"OK, they're not too expensive," Sam said. "Only around seventy or eighty dollars."

"Seventy or eighty dollars?" Alison exclaimed. "They want us to spend seventy to eighty dollars on a drawer? They won't even leave cables and adaptors on the desks for us to use and they want us to spend seventy to eighty dollars on a special drawer? Screw them! I'm not doing that!"

"They won't leave adaptors and cables on the desks because of the possibility of theft," Sam said. "HDMI cables are expensive."

"They could tie them down," Carl said, handing the adaptor box back to Sam. "They could literally attach them to the desks. Or they could make us sign them out for the day. We're essentially doing that with adaptors anyways. Neither of us have brought in our own adaptors in ages! We just keep taking random ones from this box in the morning and bringing them back at night. The company might as well make adaptors available for to sign out."

"That would require an investment the company isn't willing to make," Sam said.

"So it seems," Carl said.