Security Issues

I lost my building access card last week. The issue was assigned to Team Lead D. to resolve but I guess he was too busy looking at pr0n to do anything about. Once it was reassigned this week to someone else, it was taken care of in two days.

It says that it is due to expire in 2010. Damn, I hope I'm not still here for that.

On another security related note, we have a new procedure.

There is an occasional issue in the branches wherein something will go wrong and the user's Windows profiles will become corrupted. The solution is reasonably simple; someone remote accesses their machine, deletes the folder and then the user signs on.

But we got a message saying that we were no longer to do this simple procedure. We were to open a ticket. This means that this goes to a support group and, instead of the user's problem being resolved in a few minutes, it now takes several hours. When the IM went out informing us of this new procedure, I couldn't resist asking:

Geis: Is there a reason the support groups want to do all this extra work rather than allowing us to do it for them?

Team Lead R.: No.

So, here we are again with Management treating us like children and not sharing the reason's why. I've gone to them before with this when they wonder why morale is so low. It's a stupid policy or procedure. If you tell us why it is that way, we are smart enough to understand it and are more likely to accept it's stupidity as professionals. I suspect the reason for this latest nonsense is the same reason we have always had access issues. Some support group feels that they need to keep access limited for security reasons. Perhaps they want to secure the network from contractors. Perhaps they want to secure their jobs from outsourcing. In either case, it becomes a political struggle to get the access we need to do our jobs.

Later, Team Lead R. came to my desk and let me in on the big secret. Well, it wasn't a secret because it was exactly as I said. And so, to pressure support into granting access to all of us, we are sending all of the tickets to them so that eventually they'll get tired of being paged to do a simple folder deletion and allow us to do it.

Why keep it a secret? It's because Knowledge is Power and to keep us weak and subservient, the Official Management Handbook directs that we lowly employees be kept as powerless as possible. I'm sure it doesn't say that in those terms, but I've studied realpolitik too long to be deceived. Hell, even the Managers probably don't realize that is the reason they are being asked not to treat us like part of the team. The last conversation I had with the Site Manager included him using the phrase "That's the way it is." He doesn't even realize what a pawn he is in all this and probably never even wonders what secrets Corporate is keeping from him.

Such as the new online Employee Comment Form that Corporate has put up. I found out about that a week ago (ironically on the same day that the e-mail scandal went down) on one of the financial discussion groups and we here in the boonies have yet to be included in that. Clearly our opinion isn't even to be considered. Or how about the news that our company's 1st quarter profits are just about equal to the decrease in base pay for our overly-compensated CEO. Interesting way to cook the books. And what about the recent news that the CFO just got a big-ass raise. I wonder if he's going to kick that back to the CEO to cook the books further.

Ignorance is Bliss.