Real story. Some 10+ years ago I worked at one of those bullshit outsourcing companies (tl;dr needed the money, wasn’t in a position to be picky) that had offices all over the world. The one I was in wasn’t in the most economically thriving part of the world, so what we had were hand-me-down laptops from other offices.
We were issued those laptops, along with a locally-purchased backpack which I generally didn’t use, I used my own backpack (I carry one around everywhere so I have really good backpacks; the company-issued one was really awful). At some point I did use the company-issued backpack though – don’t recall exactly why, probably washed mine and left it out to dry or something, hell knows. In any case, I ended up taking it home, and promptly forgot about it.
Two weeks or so after I’d had enough and quit, our office assistant calls me and says hey, did you forget to turn in your company-issued backpack by any chance? I instantly remember that there is such a thing as a company-issued backpack, I look in the closet, it’s definitely there, I’m like yep, sorry, I’ll come by to drop it tomorrow.
I go back to drop it the next day. It’s a minor struggle because at this point I’m no longer in the HR system, and null can’t return a laptop bag. So we’re both on a call with an IT guy from… I don’t recall where, somewhere in Germany, who’s also handling our inventory – and I’m telling him, hey, if it helps, I have my old laptop’s inventory number jotted down in my notebook, maybe you can use it to look back through your system’s history and grab my employee ID from there?
And without breaking a sweat my man goes nah, that’s not gonna help, floating laptops are tracked by which office they’re assigned to, and these ones weren’t even updated, they still show up as floating laptops in our office.
I could’ve taken the bloody laptop home and no one would’ve noticed. That cheap ass plastic backpack on the other hand…
Real story. Some 10+ years ago I worked at one of those bullshit outsourcing companies (tl;dr needed the money, wasn’t in a position to be picky) that had offices all over the world. The one I was in wasn’t in the most economically thriving part of the world, so what we had were hand-me-down laptops from other offices.
We were issued those laptops, along with a locally-purchased backpack which I generally didn’t use, I used my own backpack (I carry one around everywhere so I have really good backpacks; the company-issued one was really awful). At some point I did use the company-issued backpack though – don’t recall exactly why, probably washed mine and left it out to dry or something, hell knows. In any case, I ended up taking it home, and promptly forgot about it.
Two weeks or so after I’d had enough and quit, our office assistant calls me and says hey, did you forget to turn in your company-issued backpack by any chance? I instantly remember that there is such a thing as a company-issued backpack, I look in the closet, it’s definitely there, I’m like yep, sorry, I’ll come by to drop it tomorrow.
I go back to drop it the next day. It’s a minor struggle because at this point I’m no longer in the HR system, and
nullcan’t return a laptop bag. So we’re both on a call with an IT guy from… I don’t recall where, somewhere in Germany, who’s also handling our inventory – and I’m telling him, hey, if it helps, I have my old laptop’s inventory number jotted down in my notebook, maybe you can use it to look back through your system’s history and grab my employee ID from there?And without breaking a sweat my man goes nah, that’s not gonna help, floating laptops are tracked by which office they’re assigned to, and these ones weren’t even updated, they still show up as floating laptops in our office.
I could’ve taken the bloody laptop home and no one would’ve noticed. That cheap ass plastic backpack on the other hand…
score 1 · canonical