In an unrelated anecdote of our nation's current self-destructive security addiction, I'm going to talk about my job:
I currently work for the University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research Survey Research Department. Now since we conduct mainly telephone surveys, we keep telemarketer hours, meaning that most of our work is in the evenings and we work until 9 or until 11pm. We employ several dozen students and temp workers and a handful of permenant staff to supervise them.
In the interest of "security" the front door to the building is locked nightly at 5pm. Employees must call the supervisor's phone number at the side entrance in the stariwell to gain entry to the building. On paper this looks fine, but the thing is that the supervisors are always busy and can't always answer the door promptly, so in practice anybody on the late shift knocks and hopes another employee is in the stairwell to open the door. Even that's alright, at least it's keeping strangers out after dark, because you know temporary and student employees won't ever steal or damage anything and strangers never commit crimes during daylight hours.- Well, except, that's not the way it works, being a university job, staff turnover is so high that not everyone knows everyone else, and we do sometimes conduct interviews for prospective employees (who don't always know the phone number) after 5 pm. So in practice, any employee lets anyone who knocks into the building. Upper management is strangely completely fine with that. Yet management freaks out if you wedge the door open when you leave for your break, as that's leaving the building insecure. There have been multiple memos, warnings, meetings and reprimands for various people who propped the side door open in their attempts to save themselves aggravation and the supervisors time over the last few months.
This "don't prop the side door" directive was illogical, paranoid, and caused more damage in lost productivity than the marginally increased risk of theft would have, but at least it was consistant for the 8 months I've been working there.
That is, until tonight, when there was apparrently a class or seminar on one of the upper floors at 7:30 pm, and so the directive came down from upper management to
prop the side door open until everyone had arrived.
It's like they're just burning productivity to prove they have the authority to do it.
