Stop keeping nudes on your company phone

Jamie was tall, confident, intelligent, and aggressive with her career. When I stepped into the hallway, she often blazed past me, her heels clacking against the floor with purpose and finality. She had a commanding presence that you always felt when she was nearby.

She had just appeared in front of my desk, her head looming above the flimsy and submissive walls of my cubicle.

Jamie smiled, “Are you the new phone guy?” It was a term I’d get used to hearing.

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“I am.”

“I need to order a new iPhone. My dog jumped on me and knocked my phone out of my hand. My screen is cracked. Here, take a look.”

I’d hear more wild excuses from employees for their broken phones in the coming months. My favorite was, “My girlfriend saw a black spider and used my phone to swat it before she realized it was just a piece of fuzz.”

I reached out to take it, and she pulled the phone back to look at the screen on more time, the control freak side of her flaring up again. She sighed as she rubbed her finger of over the crack in the screen. Then handed it back to me one jabbing motion.

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I looked it over and said, “Yes, we definitely need to replace this. A screen replacement won’t suffice.”

How things went south

A few days later, Jamie’s replacement phone arrived. She came at my desk and handed me her cracked phone.

“Is there anything private on this phone? Anything you want to delete or save to your computer, first? I’ll need to briefly look at your files to ensure the data transferred,” I said with sincerity.

She shrugged nonchalantly, “Nope! You are good.” 20 minutes later, I finished transferring the phone data. I opened the transfer folder on my computer.

Rows of Jamie’s nude photos cascaded down my computer screen. Hundreds of them, positioned right at the top of the folder. I choked on my tongue and dove to turn off my monitor. I was in a busy grid of cubicles, with people constantly coming and going.

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“How could she have forgotten?!” I thought.

I glanced around neurotically, checking if anyone had seen my screen. This was my first week on the job and I preferred not to be on HR’s radar already.

Then things got even weirder. Two minutes later, she appeared again at my desk. Her confident stern demeanor is now replaced by a sudden demureness, an air of insecurity.

“Hey,” she whispered.

I looked up and tried to compose myself and forget having seen anything.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“So, yeah, well, I had to…take a few pictures of my…boobs for the doctor, sorry.” It sounded like she was making the sentence up as she went.

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I waved it off and said, “It’s no problem at all. I saw nothing of the sort. I’m almost done.”

She walked away and I felt a wash of relief. A moment later, a system admin from the other side of my cubicle comes around my corner. He was a 5’6 bald man with dark rimmed glasses, and a devilish grin on his face, “So…can I see the booby pictures.”

“There are no boob pictures,” I said with finality.

He stayed still like a statue, his grin plastered. He held my eye contact for a few seconds, didn’t say anything, and turned around.

He knew I was lying. I’d love to sit here and tell you Jamie’s story was a one-off case. Unfortunately, I saw endless examples of otherwise smart, capable professionals, some of which having graduate degrees from esteemed universities — still going down a path of recklessness.

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Months later, I was assigned to a project with our blackberry phones, which were deployed to a fleet of thousands of truck drivers.

Our data overages had ballooned to $30,000 a month. We ran a report on what drivers were doing with their phones. A few coworkers speculated that it might just be browsing the internet during downtime or playing games. I kept my mouth shut because I knew the answer without even seeing the data.

Sure enough, it was porn. Even worse, a shocking number of drivers used their phones to buy drugs and set up rendezvous with paid companions. Some of these drivers were married with children — and were hiring male prostitutes. I suppose the road is lonely.

Part of me felt bad for intruding upon these personal matters. But only a little.

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What people did in their personal life wasn’t my business — but it became my business when it was company equipment, and when their conduct could get me fired without action on my part. Ultimately, things like prostitution are illegal. I suppose it explained why some of this behavior was happening in Nevada.

Most people, even the smart ones, aren’t as smart as they think they are, especially when it comes to covering their tracks.

In my years working there, I saw that patterns of misconduct brought an eventual and inevitable complacency that undermined a person. One little lapse in judgement, in covering their tracks and lies, eventually came back to bite them.

Each week we had a termination email that was sent out. It included the driver’s name and a brief description of why they left. Some found a better job. Some retired. Others were outright firings.

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One of them was especially bizarre, so I made a phone call to find out what happened. For context, we had a pretty straightforward process for drivers. You deliver your load to a site — then you go to the customer with your iPad — and have them sign to confirm the delivery.

Well, apparently this driver had some very bad habits. He was high on meth and arrived at the customer site completely naked. He walked to the front door and knocked while wearing only his tennis shoes and holding his iPad for a signature.

It always struck me as strange that part of his brain remembered to do its job. The other part just forgot to put on clothes. Sure enough, we found out through his company phone that he was also buying drugs while on the job. Shame on us for not spotting it sooner.

Beware of complacency in your workplace

Don’t bash employees or leaders on the company chat service. I saw two people go down in flames for that one too.

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A corporate office is not a democracy. Most people don’t want to pay for a second phone for personal matters. So often, they don’t. But the consequence is that many of them lose sight of the situation. If you want to be more loose and fun with your phone, just buy your own. Don’t put a guy like me in a position where we have to report you.

Managing company phones was my first job as an analyst and I got out of it as quickly as I could, but not quickly enough. I remind all of you that the dirty work always falls to someone down at the bottom of the ladder. So be nice to the little guy.

My only regret is that I didn’t journal more about the things I saw: so many stories have undoubtedly been lost to memory.

Heck it could have become a book, “Texts from your truck driver”.

Remember — if you don’t want to get fired, it’s very simple — don’t give your boss a reason to fire you. No nudes on your company phone.

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