KPO Sys Admin:  Caught Watching Porn
By Veda in Chennai

System administrators are the ones who catch employees who tread knowingly or unknowingly into the zone of unacceptable risk: porn sites. But what happens when the policeman becomes the criminal?

A couple of years ago, at the Chennai based KPO of Frost & Sullivan, a marketing and growth strategy consulting company, the system administrator, Gopi*, called another employee, Raju*, into his cabin. This cabin was access controlled and blinds covered the glass partitions so that no one from outside could see what was happening inside. Gopi wanted to show Raju an interesting porn site which he had discovered. Both of them were engrossed in the site when the branch head (who had access to the room) walked in. These two men were caught unawares. The matter was taken up with HR and since this was classified as a “zero tolerance” issue, there seemed to be no debate on what the punishment was to be. However, since that was a critical position and the company could not afford to sack him. So, he and his co-conspirator were given severe warnings and let off.

Why have such rules if they are not meant to be used? Such habits say a lot about a person and these rules are meant to keep our workplaces free of their type. Last year, he approached Pavitra*, a research analyst in the company whom he was friendly with and asked her to marry him. She was engaged to be married to someone else, but our man was not willing to take no for an answer. He harassed her no end, followed her home, parked himself outside her house, and called her at all odd times. Her parents spoke to him and asked him to leave their daughter alone. He then sent nasty emails to Pavitra’s fiancée. He was certain the mails could never be tracked back to him as he was the Sys Admin. But in the time since the last incident, the company had hired a backup and this incident came to light when the backup acted on Pavitra’s complaint. He also found that Gopi had been accessing several porn sites from his room. Again, all Gopi got was a very severe warning. That if he didn’t stop harassing Pavitra and accessing porn sites, he would be fired. Later, Gopi took an overdose of sleeping pills while in the office itself hoping to end his life. But because it was caught soon enough, he was given medical attention immediately and also fired with immediate effect. The right punishment that took so long.

(*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the innocent parties in this article)
Techgoss note:  Frost & Sullivan have issued the following denial to techgoss.  We publish it in its entirety.

“Frost & Sullivan is an equal opportunity employer. We value our employees and do not practice discrimination against gender, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, etc. Frost & Sullivan also does not tolerate harassment or inappropriate behavior in the workplace, and takes every effort to ensure the safety of our employees. Frost & Sullivan follows strict employee policies against indiscipline at workplace. Having said that however, the company is not in a position to comment on happenings outside of the office as it is not within the company’s jurisdiction and control. The company further does not accept the occurrence of any such incidences as referred in this story"