Fuck the modern office as security obsesses prison camp

The BBQ Pit
81

[QUOTE=fluiddruid]
For those of ya’ll who are ripping apart the OP, do you work in an office that (ab)uses badges for employees? Because, in my experience, he’s right. They’re a pain in the ass. Worth quitting over, no, but ripe for bitching about.

At my former workplace, we had 'em. Consider the following:

  • One was issued per employee. No spares were given to management.

  • Employees had to scan their badges to get in and out of the building, between different zones, and in and out of the break room.

  • Employees were required to take their break in the break room, and not at their desk.

  • If an employee didn’t have a working badge with them, their supervisor was required to come get them, but there was no plan for if their supervisor was away from their desk.

  • Supervisors were required by upper management to be ‘managing by walking around’. Those sitting at their desk too much were warned.

  • The badges broke all the time. They were flimsy, and the top bar that held them to their clothing was very close to the magnetic strip. Even a small crack would cause them not to work, which was like having no badge at all.

  • A broken or lost badge took on the order of 3-6 weeks in some cases to get replaced and had to have written authorization from a supervisor and manager. The security guys simply wouldn’t respond to calls and were at their desk for a seemingly random 15 minutes per day in a completely different area of the building from the employees, supervisors, and everything else. Oh, and if an employee was fired or quit, there was no formal process for dealing with the badge deactivation.

  • Employees late from break or lunch were docked pay and disciplined even if they were delayed by security for extended periods.

As a result of this, employees simply would borrow them from friends because it was impossible to manage a lost or broken badge. Supervisors, myself included, would horde badges from fired employees until they stopped working (I myself kept and used one for about eight months before I quit myself).

I’m sure security and badges and zone control and all that can be done in an intelligent manner. It can also be a gigantic pain-in-the-ass clusterfuck that damages employee morale and lowers productivity. YMMV.
[/QUOTE]

Everything you’ve listed equates to bad system programming/design and company management being dorks.

Speaking as someone who has done access control design and installation, nothing can overcome the stupid customer who refuses to listen to reason. A well designed system does a few things: lets people go where they are authorized, keeps them out of where they don’t belong, rapidly allows changes in permissions that a hard keyed system does not, doubles as an attendance recorder, monitors building fire compartmentation integrity, and saves the company money as opposed to a hard keyed system.

82

[QUOTE=acsenray]
I should have expected this. Every time someone has a complaint about the workplace, someone comes in with “just leave then.”
[/QUOTE]

Yes, you should have expected it, because it’s true. You’re not an indentured servant, are you? If so, call the FBI.

83

[QUOTE=Carol Stream]
Yes, you should have expected it, because it’s true. You’re not an indentured servant, are you? If so, call the FBI.
[/QUOTE]

So you’ve never been in a job that pisses you off but been unable to leave because you need the money?

A friend of mine loved his life in San Diego. He had a good job. Sadly, that job was downsized, but they did offer him a nice severance package or the option of a new job in New Jersey. He’d have taken the money and run, but for one small thing: his wife had cancer. Drop the job, drop the healthcare. Drop the healthcare, his wife could die.

He took the job in New Jersey. He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t “just leave”.

84

[QUOTE=PaulParkhead]
So you’ve never been in a job that pisses you off but been unable to leave because you need the money?

A friend of mine loved his life in San Diego. He had a good job. Sadly, that job was downsized, but they did offer him a nice severance package or the option of a new job in New Jersey. He’d have taken the money and run, but for one small thing: his wife had cancer. Drop the job, drop the healthcare. Drop the healthcare, his wife could die.

He took the job in New Jersey. He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t “just leave”.
[/QUOTE]
Walking away from a job because you require healthcare for a deathly ill spouse, and whining like a three year old because you have to take a plastic card with you when you go wank in the loo aren’t even in the same universe.

85

[QUOTE=acsenray]
Waitaminit. He “drafted in” behind someone? So the whole swiping door policy was pointless!

So this policy restricts us without doing anything to foil the badguys!
[/QUOTE]

You’re being ridiculous at this point, seriously. You’re blaming the security for the possibility that someone could sneak in behind a legitimate employee swiping in.

I realize this is The Pit and people come here to whine about things that bother them, but your insistence on dismissing good reasons out of hand is bordering on adolescent-type obstinacy.

How hard is it to remember to be a big boy and take your badge with you when you go make potties? Perhaps someone capable of using sharp objects could pin it to your shirt for you so you won’t forget it. Grow up.

86

[QUOTE=Fiveroptic]
I have to wonder how much of it might be due to legal liability.
[/QUOTE]
But that works both ways, no? If, in case of fire, hordes of panicked employees heve to get out of a building single file through two cardswiping doors and a turnstile… half the line will have been burned or will have had to jump out of windows.

87

[QUOTE=Maastricht]
But that works both ways, no? If, in case of fire, hordes of panicked employees heve to get out of a building single file through two cardswiping doors and a turnstile… half the line will have been burned or will have had to jump out of windows.
[/QUOTE]

I’m sure local legal requirements for emergency exit doors preclude this situation. For everywhere that I’ve worked that required swiping, the doors automatically unlocked whenever the fire alarm went off. Even at the airport.

88

[QUOTE=Maastricht]
But that works both ways, no? If, in case of fire, hordes of panicked employees heve to get out of a building single file through two cardswiping doors and a turnstile… half the line will have been burned or will have had to jump out of windows.
[/QUOTE]

Yes but the company will have been able to prove that they took all nessesary steps to preserve the safety of the workers.

Declan

89

I’m of two minds about this, I work for a company this is on Homeland Security’s list of potential targets. I work in Security Systems, the department that arranges installation and maintenance of ID card readers, CCTV cameras, and alarms.

In my company, employees are required to wear their ID badges at all times while on the property, all visitors are required to be escorted where ever they go. We have cameras recording much of what goes on inside and out. We also have card readers inside at some facilities. This is because there are areas where some employees are not authorized to go. I hear complaints all the time about how inconvenient it is to always wear an ID card and using an ID card to access areas within a secured area. I have no sympathy for most of these complaints.

Of course, I’ve seen card readers installed in some pretty stupid locations too. I have no idea what your work area actually looks like and what the card readers between you and the restrooms is supposed to be doing, but it seems like one of the dumb ones.

Edit:Killed excess letter in a word

90

I too don’t buy the slippery slope argument. Twenty years ago in my near entry-level programming job I had to have my photo ID checked by an armed guard.

Company management have to prove that they are taking “due care” of the safety and security of their employees, and of company assets. Depending on your industry there may even be federal regulations requiring access controls. If the access control system was only introduced nine months ago then they definitely weren’t taking due care.

Instead of asking management to remove the access control completely, see if you can get it modified in a way that is easier to use but still meets the “due care” requirements.

Doors really should have tempered glass windows, solid doors are dumb. An RFID card is alot easier to use and more robust than a swipe card. The cards we use will work from inside a wallet and won’t fry your credit cards. You should only need the card going one way. That is, you need the card to get from the hallway to cube farm, but there is a simple push button or motion detector to let you out.

Yes, I am studying for the CISSP exam right now

91

[QUOTE=acsenray]
<snip>Why do we put up with so much security bullshit in our society? <snip>
[/QUOTE]

Because there is so much liability bullshit in our society. If a fire swept thru the office due to lack of fire doors, or a crazed gunman got loose due to lack of security doors then everyone from the union, to the employees, to the employees families, to the employees families neighbours pets would be suing the company for all it’s worth.

92

I agree, kferr that proximity cards are a lot more reliable and longer lasting than swipe cards. We went to proximity cards 15 years ago and I just had to get my card replaced 4 months ago, I think that over 14 1/2 years with one card is an adequate lifespan.

As for programming issues, when someone needs access through an electronically protected access point in my company, a form can be sent through email and the person can be programmed less than 5 minutes later… it takes about 25 seconds to actually do the programming.

93

[QUOTE=danceswithcats]
Everything you’ve listed equates to bad system programming/design and company management being dorks.

Speaking as someone who has done access control design and installation, nothing can overcome the stupid customer who refuses to listen to reason. A well designed system does a few things: lets people go where they are authorized, keeps them out of where they don’t belong, rapidly allows changes in permissions that a hard keyed system does not, doubles as an attendance recorder, monitors building fire compartmentation integrity, and saves the company money as opposed to a hard keyed system.
[/QUOTE]
I guess I wasn’t trying to make the point that there isn’t a place for security, or that having security systems in place necessarily means disaster. I agree with you, it’s very likely my company was to blame.

I’m simply saying that our systems had multiple points of failure and frankly ended up costing us a great deal of money (in wasted productivity at both the entry level and management levels and through lower morale). This was a Fortune 100 company, too, by the way. I imagine we’re not alone in that any seemingly harmless improvement can cause catastrophic and widescale disasters because anyone with anything approaching a developed brain was screened out long before being promoted to upper management.

There is a point at which we can and should step up and say security is becoming ridiculous. When I have to come down to security, which was a 5 minute walk in a gigantic building, and sign someone in and out 3 times a day because security has to have my signature on their little piece of paper, it’s getting ridiculous. Sure, I guess he could have been fired since lunchtime, but couldn’t I just tell you if he was fired? No, we have to follow procedures. I just think it’s asinine. Why are employees encouraged to point out waste and lost productivity through Lean and Six Sigma, yet any questioning of the draconian security procedures in every large organization is taboo?

Some level of security is necessary in many jobs, but there is a happy medium between being completely open and being utterly locked down. Yes, there are situations where making people jump through hoops even to use the bathroom is right and necessary. In most cases, though – including my own – it was creating a false sense of security in order to impress clients by creating a system so locked up that it was impossible and was circumvented by employees out of necessity. It was a system created by people who would never have to follow it, without input of any time, all purportedly for the sake of “employee safety”. Yeah, right. Somehow I don’t think we were much of a is a terrorist target, and even if there was an angry employee with an axe to grind, don’t you think it would be relatively easy to get past an unarmed 70 year old half-dozing next to a clipboard?

If the OP’s in a similar situation, I can understand him whinging about it.

94

[QUOTE=acsenray]
No, we have to show identification to the guard to get into the building. We have to use our badges to swipe the doors to get from the toilet to our offices.
[/QUOTE]

Why does everybody equate this practice with security? It is obviously about surveillance. Nothing about this makes anybody more secure, yet the system does provide the base for a terrific employee monitoring program.

95

[QUOTE=Who_me?]
Of course, I’ve seen card readers installed in some pretty stupid locations too. I have no idea what your work area actually looks like and what the card readers between you and the restrooms is supposed to be doing, but it seems like one of the dumb ones.
[/QUOTE]
At my current client’s office, the Men’s bathroom is out by the elevator banks, while the Women’s bathroom is inside the office area. So men need to swipe while women do not. Another client had both bathrooms in the elevator bank area, but had numbered keypads on entrance to the bathroom. These measure obviously are not anti-terrorist, but at providing small measures of safety to the employees.

96

[QUOTE=D_Odds]
I can’t speak for your office, except to say that it is at least 3 stories. I can speak (based on asking security directors at two offices) to the skyscrapers I am used to.
[/QUOTE]

I miss the old days of skyscrapers. I’ve never worked in one, but my sister worked in a couple, and gave me some simple but sage advice: “Next time you’re in the city and need to go to the toilet, don’t settle for the filthy public ones. Just pick a skyscraper, walk into the lift lobby, choose a floor with more than one tenant, and use the pristine executive-style toilets there.”

Was great back in the 80s. Doesn’t work now.

97

[QUOTE=featherlou]
You know what’s going to happen next time some terrorist group makes a dedicated effort to do something awful? They’ll succeed, and all the inconvenience and power-tripping in the world won’t have stopped it. The only real effect all these extra security measures are having is to keep people scared, and I’m fairly sure that that’s how The Powers That Be like us.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve been hearing this for 6 years. Have we done something since 9/11 to make the terrorists like us? They’ve had years to plan and execute something on US soil. Our security measures are nothing but worthless fluff, and an attack would succeed if they only make an honest attempt. Even though we’ve been hunting down and killing Al Qaeda higher ups, taking down “terrorist supporting” governments, the terrorists don’t have an interest in mounting a US based operation.

I find that scenario unlikely. The reality is that, as flawed as they are, security measures work.

98

[QUOTE=Spezza]
Why does everybody equate this practice with security? It is obviously about surveillance. Nothing about this makes anybody more secure, yet the system does provide the base for a terrific employee monitoring program.
[/QUOTE]
Bullshit. I’ve been doing this for years, and no office I’ve worked at has used these cards to monitor. I’m not saying that there is no office doing it, but it is not “obviously” about monitoring. If I understand the OP correctly, you only have to swipe to re-enter, not to exit. So what are they monitoring? How often you re-enter? How do they know if you’ve taken a 2 minute or 2 hour lunch? How do they know when you leave?

99

I find the OP annoying because it makes no effort to distinguish implementation from design, no effort to determine if that particular situation is typical or not for “society”, no effort to think about other causes for the percieved trend than his own pet peeve.

Maybe I’m too used to GQ.

100

[QUOTE=atomicbadgerrace]
Not having your box cutter and tweezers and nail clippers and nail polish remover in the cabin with you is now considered “more than a pain in the ass”?
[/QUOTE]

Maybe not, but not being permitted to take more than a couple days’ worth of liquid toiletries on your carryon sure as hell is.

Not to mention the idiotic shoe thing.