"I guess they're going to be giving us back our desks!" Alison exclaimed with glee as she took an adaptor with a purple star sticker from the adaptor box. "If they want us to keep our laptops in the office, that means they'll give us back our desks with our laptops on them, right?"
"No," Sam said. "There aren't enough desks to accommodate all the laptops, especially after all the hiring that was done during the pandemic."
Alison looked at Carl and rolled her eyes. Carl laughed and took the adaptor box from her.
"Then where are they going to keep our laptops?" Alison asked. "In some cubby that we grab them from when we come in?"
"They're going to store them in a lab," Sam said. "They're going to convert the games room into a lab since no one's using it. We'll have to remote into them from our personal machines regardless of whether or not we're at the office."
"That sounds inconvenient," Carl said, taking one of the few plain adaptors from the box.
"They're converting the games room?" Alison repeated, panicked. "But what about the pool table? And the sofas? And the ping-pong table?"
Sam shrugged. "I don't know. I'm just telling you what I heard: the laptops will go into the lab, and everyone will have to remote into them from their personal machines."
"All this after they made us buy those lockable drawers!" Alison exclaimed.
"It was because there was low uptake on the drawers that this is happening," Sam said.
"They could have just bought the drawers for us," Alison said. "What is this software that we need to install? Is it just VPN with extra security or something?"
"That's what I understood," Sam said. "It'll monitor your activity and makes sure you don't download company assets, or access restricted sites and whatnot on company time. It's industry standard. We're actually behind on this. Everyone else started using it during the pandemic. You install it on your machine, and it monitors your activity in the background."
"You're kidding," Carl said. "There's no way this could be legal."
"It's only on during working hours," Sam said. "You turn it on while you're at work, and turn it off when you're done. There'll be some two factor authentication stuff for your phone, too."
"Will that also be monitoring my activities?" Alison asked. "Will I not be able to text non-employees during company time?"
"Not sure," Sam said. "I think it'll become clearer as it's rolled out."
Alison looked at Carl and sighed. Carl understood how she felt. He wasn't any happier about the situation than she was.
***
That night on his way home, Carl stopped by Best Buy and bought himself a cheap laptop and a phone.
YOU ARE READING
Missing Things
General FictionIt's Missing Things, the story of Carl, a tech worker making his way through a post-pandemic office. It's a story about loss and nostalgia. It's about never being able to go back to a time you can still remember. It's about lost connections. But it'...
