Unemployment[Editor’s note: today’s post is an excerpt from Eyes of Integrity: The Porn Pandemic and How It Affects You by Craig Gross with Jason Harper]

The office was buzzing on a typical Friday afternoon, where most of John’s coworkers were wrapping up a week’s worth of emails and laying out the schedule for the following week. After twelve years at the company, John’s casual Friday was the day loose ends were tied up, off-campus lunch appointments ran long, and everyone wore jeans.

Despite the company’s success, John had remained humble in his role as a department director. He had a team of six people who reported to him directly, and he made a great salary. In fact, John had just recently told his wife of fifteen years that he could see himself retiring with the company. Granted, only forty-two years old, John was optimistic, but his thoughts of retirement were a comment on how much he enjoyed working there. He loved the people. He loved the freedom. He loved the flexibility.

But on this casual Friday, listening to the buzz outside his office, it became apparent to John something was go on. He peeked his head out and the first person he saw was Drew, the head of Information Technologies, whose job was to keep all of the company’s computers linked together on a server and to keep them connected to the internet. Drew was surrounded by a bevy of workers, barking orders at his assistants as they took a brief moment at each computer workstation. Initially John was taken back; usually scheduled maintenance was done on weekends and department heads like himself were told of the update. Not in this case.

As John watched, he realized the workstation computers were each getting scanned and loaded with an internet filter. Drew made his way over to John’s opened office door.

Johnny, can you believe this madness?” John offered a sheepish shrug and a half-hearted nod of his head. Drew continued, mincing no words. “Who in their right mind would take the chances of surfing that s–t on company time?

Slowly the pieces of “surfing that s–t” began to stick to John’s conscience, and though Drew was a formidable image only inches a way, John ignored the rest of his tirade. Instead, John’s mind began to rapidly recall all the times he, while tucked away in his office, would slip over to a porn site to sneak a peek.

Occasionally John would see a quick image of a sensuous seductress that really stirred him, so he would grab his portable jump drive and insert it into his computer’s USB port.

With the clandestine cover-up in progress and portable storage ready to receive, John would download the porn to a folder he had slyly called “Trash.” He had once seen a movie where hackers hid malicious material in trash folders, because it is the last place that an average person would look. He never saw the irony of the name he chose for his stash of porn.

He failed to realize that each of the more than two hundred images in his “Trash” folder could wind up being a nail in the coffin of his employment.

Drew’s words snapped John back to real time. 


Someone at the company has been surfing porn while at work, and they’re going to be nailed.” John’s stomach sank as if he had just experienced the downward vortex of an unexpected drop he used to feel on roller coasters at the state fair. He felt like he was going to faint.

 “I just wished people would get it,” Drew finished. “Nothing done online is anonymous.”

 

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