“Storytime.
Sometime around 2003, I was on a business trip and at the hotel the night before preparing for the client presentation.
Seven of us including, myself, and a new sales director named Paul. We’re projecting the slide deck onto the wall using Paul’s laptop. Paul has to take another call so he leaves and we continue. Someone wants to add a slide with some of our company’s background so we open up a browser window to go to our company’s site and, of course, some adult videos opens up. The lady driving the laptop frantically tries to close the window but that just spawns two or three new windows with new lewd material. She tried to stay ahead of it for like 10 seconds before just unplugging the laptop from the projector.
Dead silence for a few seconds. After the shock wears off, one of the women (60ish-year-old lady) stammers our ‘I’ve never seen anything like that my entire life.’
I’m the only guy in the room at the time and I’m getting strong ‘men are pigs’ vibes from everyone else so I don’t say anything and try to look at small as possible.
Later, Paul rejoins is not knowing what had transpired. The most senior person in the room (a VP) asks everyone to step out and give her a min to speak with Paul. We come back like 30 mins later, Paul is understandably paler than he was earlier. No one mentions the adult stuff and we continue with prep and presentation the following day (using someone else’s laptop for the actual client meeting).
The following week, each of us is asked by HR to provide our summary. Paul sends out an apology email saying his 14-year-old son must have gotten on his computer.
Anyway, Paul ‘resigned’ before the end of the week and that was less than a month after he started.
Sorry, Paul. The videos really weren’t that bad but you can’t do that kind of stuff on a work laptop, bro.”
