One afternoon “at work,” at about a quarter past one, I noticed an ever-so-slight delay on the
company computer’s screen as I was moving my mouse. The
cursor followed the mouse, as it should, but a fraction of a second behind, like a
visual echo on the screen. Connectivity issues, I thought, but after a couple of minutes the symptoms seemed familiar.

When my company computer has tech issues, and I’ve opened a
ticket with the I.T. department, sometimes they shared my screen, remotely, so they can follow along and maybe diagnose the problem. And while I.T. is sharing my screen, the mouse response lags, exactly as it was lagging that afternoon. Hmmm. The I.T. Department is always sending emails telling us to watch out for
phishing attempts or other security breaches, so I was suddenly suspicious that someone had hacked into my company computer.

I start writing an email to I.T. about it, but wait a minute — if
someone’s watching my screen they’ll read the email as I type it. So
I stopped Doctor Who on my own laptop, and sent an email to the I.T. Security desk from that machine instead.
They responded within minutes, and told me to wait while they scanned through the logs on my
computer to see what had happened at 1:15 or so, when the lagging started. I shrugged, pushed ‘play’ on Doctor Who again, and I.T.
poked around for half an hour.

Finally the technician sent an instant message: “This started at about 1:15?”

“Yup.”

“And you say you weren’t sharing your screen with anyone?”

“Pretty sure I was sharing my screen with someone, but not by choice.”

Then he typed, “Who’s Don Chapman?” And suddenly, I understood everything.

“Don Chapman is my boss.”

After a few moments I typed, “Is it OK for my boss to
tap into my computer without telling me?”

“Uhhhhhhh,” the I.T. whiz typed, “We have that ability, but we’re not supposed to do it without telling you.”

“And my boss can do that too?”

“Probably,” he typed, “but it’s unusual. I haven’t seen this situation before, and beyond that, no comment.”

I’ve had this job for almost ten years, and my boss has been my boss for
about a year, and we’ve never clicked. He seemed distant even when he
was right down the hall, and now he’s ten miles away, but I didn’t know
I fucking hated his guts until that moment.

“So what happens now?” I typed.

“Well, it’s a security incident, and I’m on the security team, so
I’ll file a report,” he typed back to me. “Beyond that,
probably nothing happens,” and then I went back to work on my work computer. Which was no longer lagging like the screen was being shared.

I said nothing to my boss, but two days later he sent an mail, acknowledging that he’d been “checking” on me, but not quite apologizing. I spent ten minutes
wondering whether or how to reply, and decided not to.

It’s been a couple of weeks and I’m still annoyed, which is
why I’m writing about it. Writing about things sometimes helps me figure
stuff out.

It’s easy to understand a boss wanting to check up on the staff when they’re
working at home, cuz remote work is a whole new universe of slack-off
opportunities, and I do my share of slacking.But he can see
my productivity without literally spying on me — whether I’m at the
office or at home, there are eleven-teen different reports tracking
everyone’s output. My numbers are still
the best on my team, and better at home than when I was working in the office. So
why would he even suspect?And what did he suspect?Was he hoping to see
porn on my work screen, or maybe social media or Doctor Who? Does my boss, like most bosses,
have nothing worthwhile to do with his time? Or — and I know this is quite a
stretch, but — is my boss just an ass?

12/22/2020   
Republished 4/28/2024