Company Workers Are Not Encouraged to Expect Any Privacy While Using Company Laptops
I am back! After another exhausting week at work. My daily posts have by now dwindled to weekly posts. Blogging in the morning before work doesn't work out for me, because I'm up by 6am, showering (I need a shower to wake myself up) and getting ready for work, before I'm out of the house by 7am. So blogging before work would require me to be up at 5plus in the morning, because I take dreadfully long to type an entry.
Work was as usual, tiring. More questionaires to churn out, except we're now doing more complicated stuff like starting computations for clients (which we obviously still don't get so a nice lady at work, who I shall call K, is coaching us along the way when she needs our erm, help). V is still being annoying. Giving me more work, and today he gave me more work to do, work that we didn't understand, so we looked so confused, he ended up finishing the work trying to demonstrate what we were supposed to do. I ended up drafting some letter to the Comptroller, which sounded strange. Not that I care, because it isn't really something I'm concerned with.
We've really been slacking around on Wednesday and Thursday, which resulted in us going around asking other people for work to do. Today was different. We couldn't finish the work. For once. Lol. So we're leaving it for Monday, and next week when I will most probably be on sick leave due to my surgery. Elaine can then handle it on her own. Hopefully V will stop bothering her.
A strange ailment is going around the office. People, including Elaine and I, have started sniffing. Probably from all the dust flying around in the office, because the files in the shelves are awfully dusty and the temp staff are all carrying dusty files all over the place. I counted 4 sniffing people at work today.
Just yesterday, while on an assignment from another permanent staff member named S, I hit against the company firewall. All I was trying to do was access Yahoo! to use the search engine to get to the Singapore Yellow Pages website when I bounced off the freaking firewall. And I ended up on a page with a message from the "beloved" IT department which basically said
The company is monitoring everything I'm doing on the damn laptop
They can tell which websites I've been to, which I was doing there, who I sent emails to and what the email messages contained
I really shouldn't expect any sense of privacy while using company laptops
I know I will only be there for 6 months, but really, is there any need to resort to this? We're human too, you really can't expect us to work non-stop for 8 hours a day (at least). When we're not working, we can't be running to the toilet all the time to ensure that we don't have to work all the time (I do that now, at least 3 times a day). I'm not asking that they allow us to install chat messengers like MSN Messenger on the laptops. I'm just asking them to allow us to be a little more liberal, in terms of the sites we're allowed to visit. To the extent that we can't access search engines is weird, and too much, sure Yahoo! has games on its site, but it is one of the most popular search engines that's available online.Plus, given my "prime location", there isn't any chance of me using the Internet for my own personal use. Not even to access my gmail inbox.
On the bright side, pay day in 7 days!
Valentine's is soon too. Haven't figured out a gift yet. Suggestions, anyone?
I'm a 3rd year student in what is probably the largest autonomous university in Singapore majoring in a Science-related subject (well it sorta IS SCIENCE). I'm known to be introverted, sarcastic (at times), funny when I rant (which isn't a good thing lol) and somewhat of a loner. I miss LA and would move there in a heartbeat :(
