back to article BOFH: Tech helps HR investigate the Boss's devices

The Boss is – not to put too fine a spin on it – crapping himself. Apparently, there's a rumour about some legal action in the wind and that the substance of his email conversations is now being asked about. At the moment it's just some questions from HR, but who knows how far this could go? "… and so we will need to see the …

  1. DailyLlama
    Big Brother

    Inspirational!

    The BofH is a lesson for us all. Record every interaction with HR. And everyone else...

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Re: Inspirational!

      Yeah, it's scary how many people think HR are there to protect them and not protect the organisation from its employees

      1. UCAP Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: Inspirational!

        I always thought that HR was there for the sole reason to protect themselves.

        1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

          Re: Inspirational!

          I think that asking what HR is for is committing a category error. They're not for anything. Or at least I have never met one who could find their arse with both hands.

          1. Martipar

            Re: Inspirational!

            I totally agree, I was contracted somewhere and one my way home I got lost and ended up in HR, I asked them if they had any permanent jobs available and they said "I don't know, check the website" I made a point of making sure it was definitely HR then made my way to the exit making a mental note to never apply for a job there if HR were so useless they weren't aware of any vacancies.

          2. the spectacularly refined chap

            Re: Inspirational!

            Or at least I have never met one who could find their arse with both hands.

            I broke my collar bone perhaps ten years ago. I suggest trying to wipe your arse with the "wrong" hand. It is ... a voyage of discovery.

        2. Azamino

          Re: Inspirational!

          That sounds about right, and often in properly devious ways. One firm I worked for was circling the plughole in 2001 and hired a very enthusiastic Aussie HR chap for an already over-staffed department composed of old friends and old flames of the exec board.

          Cue the cuts with said Aussie in the lead sharing the bad news*, while also measuring up his new office as he was clearly expecting to head up HR once the superannuated HR team was shown the door. Barely a year later the fellah was out the door himself, with the old crew still in situ and blaming him for being over-zealous.

          * I was in the first batch to go, but cannot complain because at least the firm still had cash for enhanced redundancy packages.

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: Inspirational!

            There are quite a few MBA types who make a good living on being brought in to do all the firing before being let-go themselves with a nice golden-handshake.

            Even if you don't want to do it yourself, like the guy who felt bad firing everyone over zoom, why not just hire some big scary guy the gym for the day to do it ?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Inspirational!

              That's sort of the approach big companies take: they hire a high end CEO who gets paid a fortune to "optimise' the company which is none too subtle code for "sacking a lot of people and taking the blame for it". These people are set up with a massive salary and a hefty exit bonus based on how much money they "saved" the company, with zero reference to the disaster they plunge the company into because they're now too short on resources to actually properly operate because they invariably never just cut the fat (aka a lot of directors), they tend to go for the meat (people that do actual jobs).

              Once the cutting is done the guy is handed his massive paycheck and waved farewell at which point the original miscreants return and shove any performance issue blame his way. Some of these people don't do anything else.

              The good news is that sometimes they DO run into a wall. The moron let loose on the large company company I worked for (and left because I could see this one coming a mile of) subsequently was booted out of his next job with a lot less loot because it because apparent that his cutting actually had pretty little correlation with any effort to identify who was superfluous - he just told departments to reduce their numbers and sat back while they did all the bloodletting, and in the next company they were not quite as meekly accepting that idea. It turned into quite the deserved scandal.

              1. Terry 6 Silver badge

                Re: Inspirational!

                he just told departments to reduce their numbers

                In local authorities there is a twist to this. It seems to depend on how popular the department is with the higher ups how much they are told to cut. Though the outcome, that the people who do the jobs that actually need to be done are the first to go, seems to be the same.

                1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

                  Re: Inspirational!

                  "the people who do the jobs that actually need to be done are the first to go"

                  Because manglement two or more levels up have no idea what they do so they can't be doing anything important.

              2. Potty Professor
                Holmes

                Re: Inspirational!

                I was the victim of just such a "Downsizing". The Manglement decreed that every department had to make a ten percent headcount cut, and as I was last in, I was therefor first out. Luckily, my wife worked for a different, associated, company on the same site, and they were recruiting "internally". She copied the notice from the company notice board and brought it to my attention, so I applied. I was given a most enthusiastic welcome and remained at that company for 18 years, rising to Principle Engineer, Technical Manuals, before my whole department was made redundant. Six years later, I was head hunted back to sort out the mess caused by not being able to produce manuals for large contracts.

                1. Stoneshop
                  Holmes

                  Re: Inspirational!

                  So, what principles did you engineer during that time?

              3. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Inspirational!

                "...they invariably never just cut the fat (aka a lot of directors)..."

                FTFY.

        3. BobChip
          Holmes

          Re: Inspirational!

          Why the Joke Alert? THere's nothing funny about the truth! that is their SOLE purpose!

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Inspirational!

          I thought HR was there because they couldn't get a real job.

        5. Marshalltown

          Re: Inspirational!

          I don't think I ever worked at a company big enough to have an HR. Mostly you dealt with a "boss" who tried to wear as many hats as he could and fumble through things that his staff could easily have done for him. I'll never forget the mid-'90s virus battle we fought. It ended when we discovered he had been "checking security" using a program on a bootable floppy he brought back from Israel. Some one there told him it was a critical aspect of computer security to check the computers in the office weekly, and handed him the "tool" to do it. I personally used a large tin snips to convert it into trash.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Inspirational!

        I'm lucky, in that every interaction with my firm's HR team has genuinely beneficial been to me, and no, I'm not a boss.

        AC, cos I don't want you buggers trying to nick my spot :o)

        1. cdrcat
          Alien

          And in other news . . .

          Once upon a time in a far away land

    2. ShadowSystems

      Re: Inspirational!

      Got a cellphone? You've then got everything you need to make said recordings. Buy a phone case with a belt clip, clip the case to your shirt near your ear "so I can hear it ring when it's noisy around" (so the camera records where you're facing), and set it to save the recording to a large SD card or your cloudy file space. Granted, the battery will quickly go dead, but that's not as important as having 999 on speed dial for when someone realizes you've recorded them without warning them of that fact first & then beats you senseless before depriving you of said recording device.

      I keep a small (business) card taped to the case with "Warning: You are being recorded for legal purposes." in 6 point type positioned so it can be seen (but not read) by anyone in front of me. It's amuzing when they get nose-to-card trying to read it, finally figure out what it says, & then leap back trying to escape the camera...

      Which was never on because my phone is a FeaturePhone with only a single camera *on the back* (covered by the case), and of such low resolution that it probably couldn't make a decent recording if it tried.

      I can't help but laugh when I tell them they've been pranked. They get mad, then relieved, then call me dirty names... which all gets caught on camera because I'm a lying SOB - the camera has been recording the entire time, the case has a hole in it for JUST this purpose, and I'm a terrible little shit. =-D

      *Runs away before you kick my arse*

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Inspirational!

        In the former colonies some places are single consent (you can give yourself permission to record) some require you telling the other person.

        In the UK it comes down to the judge. But the odds are that while an employer secretly recording their staff in violation of GDPR is likely to be frowned upon - a poor oppressed minion recording a scary interview with HR just so they can remember what was said, is likely to be forgiven.

        1. Adrian Harvey

          Re: Inspirational!

          In single consent jurisdictions that I know of you still have to be a party to the conversation to record it - so an employer secretly recording would be very clearly illegal as they were not part of the discussion in question.

    3. bpfh

      Re: Inspirational!

      HR: Human Remains

      Although not much remains left once wrapped in a cheap carpet and buried with 50 kg of quicklime in a Scottish forest... not that anyone could prove it...

    4. Sampler

      Re: Inspirational!

      I recorded a meeting with HR when I was at a couple of companies back, where they outright offered, with no initiation, to lie to the immigration department about my termination date to give me more time to find another visa sponsor.

      When I queried if that was illegal, never mind unethical, their response was well, yes, but it'd only affect you.. and they were just being nice to give me more time to find another job...

      (I'd already found another job a week before this meeting, took me about three hours from being given the notice I was on the chopping block to shaking my new employers hand, there are benefits to being good at what you do, and having a network that knows it)

      I did get a good severance package though..

    5. Potemkine! Silver badge

      Re: Inspirational!

      Richard Nixon likes it.

      1. Richard Pennington 1

        Re: Inspirational!

        For when the recording has suspicious gaps in it.

  2. Berny Stapleton

    HR was always going to be the one getting played here..

    I thought it was going to be that HR started getting shifty when they realised that the BOFH had all this.... on them... and that HR was going to start asking questions about retention times of such data... and how that corresponded to how long ago it was that HR suggested implementing a workforce right sizing for anyone over 40...

  3. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
    Pint

    Qualitay.

    And with the lawyery type gone walkabouts too... 107% success rate.

    Time for an early Friday and something refreshing...

  4. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Coffee/keyboard

    Absolutely superb episode

    "Not our OWN photocopiers obviously. No, I use the one up in Human Resources."

    is a lovely detail

    1. F. Frederick Skitty Silver badge

      Re: Absolutely superb episode

      Make sure the CCTV cameras in the HR department temporarily go on the fritz while you do your, er, scan though.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Absolutely superb episode

        There's probably badge tracking going on "for safety reasons in case of fire" so the system always knows exactly who is where. Obviously the BOFH will have hijacked the system such that as he moves around the building, the systems wipe the data of his passing and automatically turn off the CCTV for his current location unless he instructs it otherwise, eg those occasions when he wants a record to use against others or with altered time-stamps proving he was somewhere else when the "accident" happened.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Absolutely superb episode

          Obviously the BOFH will have hijacked created the system

          FTFY

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Absolutely superb episode

          I'd think the BOFH would have a couple of "spare" badges, from when he had to work on the badge printer. Looks like a harmless "Windows Test Page" on the front of the cards, but the magstripes contain the numbers for the Boss, IT Director, and probably the PFY. Not to mention, FOBs can be had on Fleabay for practically nothing, and who ever really goes on a deep-dive in the "Credentials" tab of the access-control software anyway? It's just a bunch of long, boring numbers.

    2. Rich 11

      Re: Absolutely superb episode

      And for the last three months everyone in HR had just thought that the watermark function had been enabled on the copier.

      Turns out it's not as much a watermark as a skidmark.

  5. Coastal cutie

    So beautifully played by the BOFH - and now the HR bod will be petrified about what else there may be recorded about them.

  6. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    A thing of beauty

    Skewered HR - BBQ ready!

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: A thing of beauty

      Nah, they'd be too bitter...

      1. David Robinson 1

        Re: A thing of beauty

        Depends how long you let them stew in their own juices.

        1. JR

          Re: A thing of beauty

          "Their own juices" is going to be a combination of sweat, cheap cologne/perfume, & urine...not an appetizing marinade.

    2. Mark 85

      Re: A thing of beauty

      Skewered HR - BBQ ready!

      It was two for one deal... he got the Boss and HR at same time.

  7. chivo243 Silver badge
    Pint

    Switch back triple cross!

    Gotta love catching HR at their own game, brilliant! Turning the tables so to speak!

    Have a nice weekend Simon! And some of these --->

  8. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    The recording will be quite valuable the boss.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If there is no trail, it never happened....

  11. Ozan

    I wish I came earlier to read but the baby didn't sleep.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It knows you're listing in via the babyphone, obviously.

      :)

  12. Hot Diggity

    Yay

    "Oh, I was just doing that for the voice recording," I reply. "Now let's talk about my future meal expenses …"

    Good news... Simon is taking us all out to lunch. Mauritius anyone?

  13. earl grey
    Pint

    the only thing golden

    will be the showers they send down upon you. been there

  14. FuzzyTheBear
    Happy

    moles ? o.0 ? LOL

    "Yeah sure, and they shouldn't be using the company photocopiers to check on the progress of suspicious moles on their arses either – but we all do it."

    "What?"

    "Not our OWN photocopiers obviously. No, I use the one up in Human Resources."

    "!"

    this is pure gold. Thanks Simon for the laughs :D :D :D

  15. Il Midga di Macaroni
    Coffee/keyboard

    Keeping it fresh

    SimonT has hit an inspired streak. BOFH has been around for nearly 30 years and all the old fans are expecting the boss to be the fall guy yet again - but this time the boss is just a pawn in the game to take down the bigger bait (and net the Dynamic Duo some dosh too). It's a very elaborate form of meta humour.

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