Wet Clean Up, Aisle Three

A few years ago I worked for a company that had a special summer program where the high school aged children of employees could work for a two week period in the summer to ‘experience’ office life.  As a manager, you put in your request, students were assigned to you, and you welcomed them to the world of work with a list of tasks nobody in your office wanted to do all year long.  Filing, blowing the crud out of keyboards, cleaning storage rooms, stuff like that.  Real money for real work.

For years I had taken part in the program, with mixed success…I had some real superstar students, and others who were, shall we say, less than superstars.  I remember one year having to follow one around and wake him up.  Wherever he sat down, he slept.  He might actually have suffered from narcolepsy, but it’s more likely that he suffered from being 14.

I transferred from Saskatoon to Toronto, and in the larger offices, you were assigned kids who belonged to parents other than your own direct employees, so one summer, I got a kid whose mother worked for the company, but I didn’t know her at all.  No problem.  We received a directive from Planet HR that this year the summer work was to be ‘meaningful’.  Like blowing a year’s worth of crumbs and dead skin out of keyboards isn’t meaningful.  So instead of the usual list of grunt tasks, I gave my student an office and a bunch of data sheets that needed to be entered into a spreadsheet or something.  Much more meaningful.

The office was set up such that you could see the computer screen from the door, and beside the door, there was a window, so even with the door closed, you could see into the office and what was on the screen. 

So he was at it for a day or two, and I was heading to see someone, and noticed that the office door was closed.  I thought that was odd, as there was no reason for the door to be closed, so I approached the office.  From outside, through the side window, I could see his screen.  You guessed it.   Porn.  His back was to the door, but it was very clear that he was enjoying  some of the very best XXX content that  the internet has to offer.  As I was about to bust in, it became obvious that this was not simply passive viewing.  He was doing what most teen-aged boys do when they’re alone with a computer and porn.  Viewed from the back, and from outside the office, his arm was going so furiously it looked like he was sawing a log.

Now this is what the experts refer to as a dilemma.  Do I bust in and shut down the party, scarring both of us for life, or do I wait for it to be over then fire his ass?  Keep in mind he’s a summer student, and Mom works for the company (which only suggests that there needs to be some thought in how he gets the boot, but doesn't question the need to do it).  I frankly had no interest in playing a leading role in this kid’s nightmares for the rest of his life, so I retreated to my office to ponder, figuring that at the rate he was sawing, that things would be over fairly soon.  

I called my HR business partner, who earlier had commented that I don’t really call until I’ve got big issues, and when she heard my story, she very nearly fell off her chair.  We quickly discussed the situation, and she decided we needed reinforcements, and this required the special expertise of the VP of HR.  So we raced to his office in some kind of freakish competition to see who could get the story out first.   The conversation was an interesting mix of shock, horror, belly wrenching laughter, and head scratching.  This was a new one for each of us.  We all returned to our offices to think about the next step.

By the time I returned downstairs, we were ready for a wet clean up on aisle three.  I went to see my little friend, who by that time had returned his little friend to his pants.  Not exactly knowing what to say, and still, not wanting to scar the kid for life, I told him that corporate security had called me because they could “SEE EVERYTHING YOU’RE LOOKING AT ON YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN”, and I introduced him to the window, and explained that its purpose was to allow people to see in.  Somehow I thought all this subtlety would get through to skater boy, but all I got in return were five fateful words, ones that ultimately ended skater boy's short stint in the summer program, ‘Um, ya, K, whatever dude.’

I called the VP and my HR Business partner and asked them to get him out of my department, and to have his mother never bring him back.  We decided to spare mom the humiliation of knowing that her baby boy was doing the ‘five knuckle shuffle’ at work, and told her that he had been caught viewing inappropriate content on the internet while he was supposed to be working.   Any mother would be horrified right?  Wrong.  This superstar employee, instead of hanging her head and apologizing for the actions of her stupid kid said, ‘Well, did you get him to sign off on the Acceptable Computer Use Policy?”

She left the office muttering something about killing that little bastard.  We never saw him again, but I can only assume the ride home from work wasn’t much fun for skater boy.