I had an incident like this recently. A user (call her “Tracy”) reported a “problem opening an Excel file”. I dispatched one of my helpdesk people to investigate. My helpdesk person (call her “Beth”) found that Tracy had installed unapproved software on Tracy’s computer that is on our list of suspected spyware programs and which was quite probably causing the problem. Beth told Tracy that the program in question would have to be removed. Tracy told Beth “You can’t do that. I won’t let you.” Beth reported this incident to me (as her supervisor), which resulted in me having to speak to Tracy’s supervisor and the two of us going to remind her that the computer belongs to the company and that we in IT have the right to do anything we feel is necessary to the computer. She told me (I’m the IT manager) that if we removed her program she’d just reinstall it. Tracy got a disciplinary note in her permanent file, partially as a result of this, although she has not (to date) reinstalled the program in question.
I can’t wait till we get SMS running and I can remotely install or remove software from people’s computers. I’m a big fan of remote management.
I’m the local LAN administrator (more a form of distributed first-level support than actual administration) for my group, and while I can’t actually remote into someone’s desktop, I do have access to the machine inventories that SMS gathers. Just yesterday, I was poking around and looked at a cohort’s PC. I copied a juicy part of the listing into an email and sent it to him, advising him to be mindful of downloading and playing games on the corporate PCs.
A few monets later, I heard a panicked gasp and sputtering from his cube.
The “fucking whore” I referred to in my OP has been especially nice to me as of late. Apparently she went and complained to my boss about my going into her office to close one of her screens, and my boss all but laughed in her face.
