Clean Desk Policy

 

"A Clean Desk Is A Secure Desk"

Canon G7x Mark II

Lightroom

I was in the library of the Addison Gallery the other day when I noticed this immaculately barren work station. The sight transported me back to my days as a wage slave at JBAC.  When I worked at JBAC, the exec-u-teefs were around the fucking bend about not letting their precious "Intellectual Property" out in the wild. They were convinced that there were actually people out the real world who wanted their shitty, bloated, bug-ridden code..  As if..... Their collective delusions about the desirability of their code provoked them to institute a "Clean Desk Policy" where employees would have to clear their desks of confidential documents (in our case that meant mainly program listings..) at the end of the day. To enforce this stupidity, managers would walk around after hours to inspect cubicle  and write people up if listings were found on desktops..   I used to leave post-its on my mouse pad that said "Confidential Information Under Mousepad." Underneath the mouse pad I used to put another post-it that said "Made you look!!"  The most absurd facet of the Clean Desk Policy was the "30 minute printout rule." The 30 minute rule demanded that printouts needed to be retrieved from the printers in 30 minutes or less from the team printer room. They even had a JBAC exec-u-teef send out scold emails to teams who underperformed in this important area of corporate security..  I used to actually feel bad that a grown man had to spend time bad-dogging over-worked, under-staffed development teams over what amounted to printouts of software nobody in their right mind would ever (ever) want..  But that was JBAC - paranoid and delusional.  ~