D.F.

Krause

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June 2, 2008

I Respect Your Privacy, But It Doesn’t Exist Here

Regular readers of this column know that I’m not big on privacy. I can’t even guarantee that I’m not spying on you right now. I’m probably not. But you never know.

Bosses have the right to do a lot of spying, and it never ceases to amaze me how poorly employees understand this. Just a few examples for you to ponder:

You know that instant message account of yours? Actually that’s an instant message account of mine. My computer. My internet connection. Mine mine mine. You know the forum for Silver Spoons fans, where you have an account through which you post an average of 45 messages a day about Ricky Schroeder? What would the other six Silver Spoons fans do all day without you to talk to?

Yeah, well, actually that’s my account. I think you’ve made your point by now that Freddy Lippencottleman was the coolest character ever on the show, but I don’t think you’re ever going to convince BatemanBabe or Ricky=HotBod to agree with you. So in the meantime, maybe you could finish those reports I’ve been waiting for!

This may surprise you, but I don’t actually care if my employees do stuff like this during the day. What I do care about is that they get their work done. Everyone has different work styles, and some people need to complete a task and then indulge in a few minutes of mindlessness before returning to another task.

If you engage in the never-ending Ricky vs. Rick debate throughout the day, but still do everything I expect you to do, fine by me.

But let’s be clear about this: I am going to know about it. And you had better believe I am going to know how you’re using the e-mail account that belongs to me and is provided to you for the purposes of your doing your job.

How will I know? By going into your office when you’re not there and reading your e-mail, of course. That’s not complicated.

Oh the questions that are going through your mind right now! How could you be so disrespectful of your employees’ privacy? Don’t you trust them? Are you some sort of pervert?

Let’s take them one by one.

I do respect their privacy. It’s just that their privacy doesn’t happen to exist here at the office. I don’t go to their homes unless I’m invited. I don’t look through their cars. I don’t look through their coats. Those are theirs.

But I look at what’s on their computers and what’s in their desks. Those are mine.

I do trust them, but trust has nothing to do with it. There is no pretext of anything being secret here. I want to know what’s going on within my company, so I look. Your big night out with your friend Lenora sounded awfully boring to me. And from the sounds of that guy, I wouldn’t go out with him if I were you, no matter what your friend Samantha tells you to do.

But I’m glad to see you came up with a good idea for the bank client, so we’re good here. Now, your co-worker who’s been using the e-mail account I provided to schedule job interviews? I don’t even object to that, to be honest, but I do object to her telling a friend who works for a competitor about a problem we had with an account last week.

So she’s fired.

What was the other question? Am I some sort of pervert? I’m sorry. That question is too vague.

Right now, many of you privacy fetishists are surely appalled at what you’re reading, so let me tell you the difference between me and all the gloriously wonderful employers who don’t read their employees’ e-mails after the employees leave the office.

I exist.

Compute wisely!

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