How Workplace Superstars can Ruin your Company – Pete Herzog

o you want to bring down the company where you work? Excellent! I just happened to take ten minutes to write out what I think are some truly great and sneaky ways!

As anyone knows that the success of a company depends on its employees but few know that the utter demise of a company depends on only one employee. That’s right! Thanks to the speed of the electron, you can use the Internet to hastily end your place of employment. The Internet really has changed everything! Let’s not delay and start right now with #6!

6. Use business assets for personal gain. Remember when it was just “another day, another box of pens”? Well today with company phones, company Internet access, and company computing systems, you can fast-forward through what used to be a long, slow, drawn-out process of near-embezzlement (remember, whatever isn’t expressly forbidden in the company policy can’t be punishable by company policy!). Use your corporate e-mail address and password also in your gmail and ymail accounts so you don’t forget them, Amazon, ebay, and other shopping sites, as well as any gaming or hobby sites that require a registration or login. And while you’re at it, use your office phone number or mobile number in your contact info because do you really want anyone to bug you while you’re home?! And if you’re a movie or music lover, more than likely you can download the latest torrents much faster at work than at home. The bonus is that if you have a company laptop or tablet, you can load it there straight-away for quick and easy viewing when you need to go off-site for a meeting. Finally, if there’s programs you want to try before you *buy* then it’s not worth cluttering up your home PC with such things. Especially if something goes wrong, you can always wipe out the hard-drive of your work computer and take it back to IT support and tell them it just doesn’t work. The point is that eventually, the right criminal or right competitor or right lawyer will happen across your info and fast-track you to bringing down your place of work from your online activities!

5. Be stubborn. You got enough to do at work to have to learn new things. Do you use a different e-mail client or web browser at home that you’re more familiar with and more comfortable with? Then install it and use it! Same with word processing, video viewing, spreadsheets, and so on. If they expect you to be productive then you should be efficient and there’s no better way than to use what you know best. If they try to install software like anti-malware, automatic patching, “personal” firewall, or any of that crap you don’t have at home because it slows down your system, then there’s no reason to let it stay on your work computers. If it’s locked on there, just search the web for ways to re-boot your computer to wipe out the root or administrative password so you have more control. And the best thing about having the administrator or root account is raw speed. You can do what you need to do without all those user rules eating up CPU cycles. Eventually, you’ll install the right things that are either unsupportable by the IT staff or will luckily be already malware infested and you’ve left a door open for a hostile cyber-attack!

4. Be selfish. You already know that nobody climbs up the corporate ladder without having to climb over the backs of your colleagues but did you know that the people whose backs get stepped on are the ones who share their information with others? Businesses try whatever they can to get you to save your files on the corporate LAN and while they say it’s to have a safe back-up the truth is they do this to keep track of how productive you are and to steal your work for their own gain. Yes, your managers only stay your managers by presenting your work as their own. So the best thing to do is to keep it away from those who can hurt you the most. One way to do this is to e-mail your files and any data you need to use for your work to your own personal e-mail account. Or give your stuff strange names and use off-site file-sharing sites and P2P to have out there in the cloud and available for you at home. And none of your colleagues will know what it is by the strange file names if they happen across it. Finally, one sure thing to do is to keep all your files on your USB key and store it at home on your own PC or go to the library or an Internet cafe to work on the files if you need complete privacy. Sure you need to worry that the key might get stolen but only if it’s stolen by a fellow employee who will use it to get ahead on your ideas. One final bit of advice, don’t just stop with your own files- move whatever those other idiots “save” to the corporate LAN too because well, if they don’t have them then they can’t use them to one-up you! So remember, by being selfish you’re making sure that nobody from the office has access to your files or even their files. The bright, unicorny side of the rainbow is that eventually, some enterprising criminal hacker or your company’s competitor may find the files and do the messy work of bringing down your company for you.

3. Be a workaholic! Take on as much as they let you and pull all-nighter’s at your desk. Grab responsibility like an addict grabs free needles! Screw lunch breaks! Coffee is the fifth food group! The more you do, the more decisions you get to make. Studies show that our willpower is affected by the amount of strain that gets put on it during the day and your willpower is what lets you analyze your decision responses when taking risks. And it’s that willpower that gets in your way from being efficient. With that out of the way, you can take risks that you normally wouldn’t take and who can blame you because you’re so damn busy?! Nobody, that’s who! You think sleep-deprived soldiers who kill their own platoon brothers during moments of intense combat stress get blamed? Of course not! That’s why it’s called FRIENDLY fire. You see, commanders are aware that these things happen when you’re working your hardest to be the most for your company. So nobody can possibly expect that you’re really doing this to bring down your company. It’s that sneaky!

2. Be risk-proof! By adopting a “can’t happen to me” attitude you will gain the adoration of executive management as a hard-edged player who’s not afraid of anything. (Warning though, if you’re female, depending how you approach this they’ll either take assertiveness as bitc*iness or sluttiness but either way they’ll be eating out of your hand.) And while your colleagues are home trying to figure out how to be as cool as you are, you’re breaking corporate rules and flouting policy like a kick-ass TV cop. You want to use your own iphone instead of the business one because it’s cooler to access corporate e-mail or carry corporate data, then do it! If you want to start using the newest ipad at work to show off a presentation at meetings then do it! If you want to use cool apps you found at the app store to do your work then do it! As a corporate hero I’m sure you’ve embraced the cloud by now in a way that’s so hot you left it face down on the mattress while you smoke a cigarette and adjust your cowboy hat. The fact is there’s no need to excuse “cool”! And if those whiny corporate nerds complain to upper management about your style hurting corporate security, they’ll only get their collective asses handed to them as the directives come down to change policy for executives so they can all be more like you. So while management is at the office trying to be like you, these third-party apps, cloud services, and hardware are leaking confidential info out of the company like blood out of a machete-severed artery.

1. Be curious and impulsive. You may have heard that curiosity killed the cat but really it’s only the dorky ones. The cool cats can be as curious as they want and act on it without a second thought. You get an attachment in an email from somebody you don’t know? Check it out! Is there a new song people are talking about at the water cooler then download the whole album. You want to know if you got any new likes to your status update in Facebook then check. And while you’re there, if you happen to see a cool game or app that your friends like, why should you be the only one who hasn’t had a chance to try it? You want to see secret corporate files from the bar while you’re out having drinks with a client then do it. Use your home computer or i-device or even an airport computer terminal if you have to. Don’t give it a second thought. Nobody can blame you for just being curious. If somebody sent it to you then you should see it. It’s the security team’s job to keep the corporate computers and devices safe, not yours. That’s why they install anti-virus software on your computer that you can’t remove and all that other “auditing” crap so that you can do what you’ve just gotta do. Remember, curiosity is not a crime. It keeps you in-the-know which is both productive and efficient. And while management is patting you on the back for being the shining company star for always being able to be on top of things, they don’t see how you keep leaving the corporate network door open so the rodents can get in. How’s that for sneaky?!

Hopefully this article gave you some ideas on how you can quickly put yourself out of a job using the Internet. If you’re careful and a little lucky, you won’t end up in jail either! At the very least, this article has shown some of you that even doing things that may be considered good for an office is not necessarily good for the security of your company.