Group Efforts 21

Group Efforts
The Diary of a Workgroup Manager

Episode 5 (1994)

The Stasi swoop, George defends his honour, Rose and June forgive and Bernard ends up in big trouble.

Mon 9th
The perfect start to the week - a special management meeting, at which I have to give a report on the peer-to-peer pilot so far. Since our progress to date consists of a virtually unused LaserJet 4 plus two shareable directories to which I don't have the passwords, I'm slightly short of things to report, but I manage to waffle on about installation, compatibility and sharing options for the required fifteen minutes. Andy Miller from Contracts provocatively asks whether we can now throw out all the Novell servers and sack the I.T. network support team, to which I thankfully answer that only I.T. is qualified to judge. Being a pawn in a political game is an uncomfortable experience.

Tues 17th
The place is buzzing with the news of the Stasi's first Software Audit raid, an 8am swoop on Purchasing. When George Barker arrived and complained about them operating his PCs unsupervised they threatened to lock him out of his office, at which point George, who still plays second row for his Old Boys Senior XV, suggested they effing well try it and see what happened. Unfortunately they didn't take him up on it. The results, apparently, were bad - loads of unauthorised stuff (mainly games and shareware), and a couple of genuine-article unlicensed commercials too. George has been summoned to see Brison this afternoon. I give Amrat and Danny another compliancy pep-talk.

Thurs 19th
I think Rose and June have forgiven me over the 386SX upgrades, as they are now speaking to me again and June actually got me drink from the machine this morning. Also I'm sure Rose is getting to like Word for Windows, although she won't admit it. I put off asking them for their shared directory passwords though, as I don't want to push things too far. On the darker side, I see Amrat in conversation with the chap from the Stasi again, and note that he looks guiltily away as I pass. To my amazement, Danny is still at his desk as I leave for home, the third time in as many weeks. It has to be either a burst of ambition or something dubious, and the former seems an unlikely bet.

Tues 24th
I arrive to find it already happening - the Stasi are all over our PCs, supervised by Colin Smiles who, I'm pleased to see, is getting an ear-bashing from Rose about how this had better not affect her overtime money. I avoid provoking any attempt to lock me outside, and just watch. The audit lasts for two hours, during which we aren't allowed near our machines - Amrat reads a C++ manual and, to general disapproval, chats sociably to his Stasi acquaintance, while Danny goes off to visit the girls in Credit Control. Cruelly, Smiles tells me that I'll have to wait until tomorrow for the results of the audit, adding that Brison wants to see all reports first.

Wed 25th
From Smiles' sneer I know the audit report is bad. In fact it's worse. Apparently we've broken every hygiene rule in the book - public domain utilities, unregistered shareware, bulletin board downloads (amazing, as we haven't even got a modem), the lot. But the serious stuff is the unlicensed commercials. Rose and June have copies of WordPerfect bootlegged from the server, Amrat has an unauthorised Turbo C compiler (although he claims it's his personal property), and Sheila has something called Bindery Commander which belongs solely on the network support team's Bernoulli cartridge. My own PC, I discover, illegally harbours Norton Wipefile. The only completely clean machine, with not so much as a badly-structured BAT file, is Danny's. Brison will be wanting to see me, and Llewellyn would like to talk to Amrat about his C skills, subject to my approval of course. I leave a broken man, and bump into George Barker in the pub on the way home.