Long story short work has sent me some new equipment that required me moving my setup from my laptop that is squeaky clean to a desktop. I fired up my old desktop that I haven’t used in 5 years and set it up. I’m presenting and go to share and somehow share the wrong screen. Don’t ask me how or why I didn’t notice but my file explorer is up and under recently opened files are a list of porn files that have names that clearly suggest they are porn.
It’s been 1 full business day since and my boss who was in the meeting has not said anything to met yet. There is a chance no one saw, there is a chance I moved it fast enough that people question if they saw it correctly… That’s my wishful thinking, but my boss did just stop sharing so I could share and I’d find it hard believe that boss didn’t see. Either way I’m mortified and ready to quit so I don’t have to address this with anyone.
What should I do? Can I be fired? I feel super concerned, but the actuary in me says they are just non-curse words on a screen. Makes me think of a Warren Buffet quote, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it.
I’m not quite understanding why your office is requiring you to use your personal desktop for work in the first place? Seems like bad practice on the part of your employer.
“Hey, my apologies for a lapse in judgment yesterday. I accidentally had some personal information on the browser when I started sharing the screen. Needless to say, I’m embarrassed, I’ve learned my lesson, and won’t do it again.”
Yeah, other people have done worse.
I’ve a friend who relayed this story to me (back at the dawn of the internet). A programmer in their office stayed late at work and printed a ton of porn on the shared office printer. Programmer then proceeds to fall asleep at his desk.
Admin person comes into the office in the morning, finds programmer sound asleep with a stack of porn on the printer.
He was let go.
Assuming you do a good job, it seems unlikely that you’d be let go. If you do a bad job, this is the excuse they are looking for to fire you and it doesn’t matter what you do. I second Tiffany with I don’t understand why you are required to use your personal computer for work. If you are in health insurance, it is in the grey area of a HIPPA violation due to unsecured data.
If I was in your spot, I’d just say nothing. Even though now everybody knows you are a furry, they’ll forget soon enough and they have their own kinks they don’t really want to share too. If it is any sort of deal, your boss will let you know and you can address it then.
Two stories, I know a guy that got fired for viewing porn during the work day on his work PC. Not certain how he got around the net nanny we had but he did. Everybody that worked around him knew and eventually someone who it bothered must have reported him. That was dumb and intentional. You’re not that guy.
I got a text one day from a direct report referencing the above guy. The report had seen someone else do the same thing. The report is a very good friend and I had to parse out if I needed to report the person. Turns out, the report wasn’t willing to go on the record or even share the name of the guy because it didn’t bother the report so I didn’t follow through. I did the wrong thing from a company perspective but sometimes we need to let sleeping dogs lie. My report dropped a note off on the guy’s desk telling him not to be an idiot. As far as I know, the guy stopped being an idiot.
My friend didn’t mention any concern about paper. He did mention concern about the admin person who discovered the paper.
And I gathered, (like a bunch of other folks are mentioning here) that the decision to let them go wasn’t based on just this incident. The guy was on the edge for other things anyway.
I don’t think there is anything to be embarrassed about, even though most people would be embarrassed.
It’s no different than accidentally leaving out a sex toy in your bedroom and people saw it.
You wish they hadn’t seen it. They wish they hadn’t seen it. But it’s really not surprising to anyone.
Especially just a list of previously opened files. It’s not like you were looking at porn on a second screen during a work meeting or something. Instead, covid forced an element of your private life to accidentally collide with your work life. This is happening to everybody to one degree or another.
Oh, well gay people are pretty much born with a phone loaded with dick pics. We collect them like pokemon cards. If your girlfriend/SO has a gay best friend, I guarantee you he has seen a picture of your dick.
