Re: Claim it is a fire hazard
We have extremely tight data center access control, only the minimum personnel, aka engineers have access to the data center. Anyone else has to jump through everything from information security through change management, even to get a tour.
Needless to say, being in the information security department, I've successfully avoided a tour. I've lived inside of data centers long enough to happily skip that bit. Copious signage reminds the engineers to not leave anything that isn't a server or switch and such being authorized to be there inside of the data center. Paper and boxes are outright forbidden - devices are brought in without boxes or dunnage whenever possible.
About two months after I had arrived at the facility, having recently transferred there, one of our information security engineers wanted to retrieve a removable hard drive from a server, where some patches were installed from the device remotely.
He also wanted to sidestep change management in order to more rapidly retrieve the device. I wasn't having any of it and put it through change management, speaking personally with the manager in charge of change management in order to escalate and facilitate speedy removal of the offending device.
Said engineer then attempted, to surprising success, in having our management seek authorization for me to gain access to the data center.
A quiet conversation over lunch with the change management manager, suggesting an attempt to end run around the change management process put the kibosh on that access.
With a bootnote from myself through the entire management chain, "If you want me to have engineering access to the data center, you're going to pay me engineering wages, grant engineering access to our systems and title me an engineer, otherwise I'll have none of it, as it's above my pay grade".
Biting the hand that feeds IT
