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Leaving Your Job? Don't Forget the Laptop
Shift, March 2003
Photo: Christopher Stevenson
When Justin Hendon * cleaned out his desk for the last time at his job at a dot com company, he took home more than just his final paycheque. He headed out the door with his company laptop. Hendon had outlasted all his middle managers at the company and there was no one left who even remembered he had been issued the computer.
“When I was leaving, I gave three months notice,” says Hendon. “I waited and waited for them to say something. It got down to the last week, the last day. Nobody ever mentioned it.”
Hendon believes this sort of thing happens all the time. “If I were to walk out with a desktop PC, that would be very noticeable. But if I walk out with a laptop packed into a laptop case, it looks like the most normal thing in the world.”
Laptop theft has become rampant in the workplace, as disgruntled workers fired for their jobs and suddenly forgetful middle managers going to greener pastures somehow forget to return their portable computers. The US research company Gartner Group reports that organizations without a specific anti-theft policy lose around 5% of their notebook computers in a year. The losses often go unreported, as managers are reluctant to call the cops on their former staff.
“Around 30 percent of laptop thefts are ‘smash and grab’ type crimes,” says John Livingston, CEO of Vancouver based Absolute Software, which makes Computrace, a program which locates stolen laptops. “But the vast majority of laptop thefts—around 70%—are inside jobs committed by employees or contractors who have access to the building. There is also a lot of ‘machine drift’—unplanned movement of computers within the company. Over time, these assets tend to drift outside of the organization.”
Laptops have gone missing from the offices of many federal government departments: Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Industry Canada, National Defence, Natural Resources, the Status of Women Office and Canadian Space Agency all reported losing at least one laptop since 2000.
Most laptop bandits are never caught. Two years after his crime, Justin Hendon has no moral qualms about what he has done. In fact, he considers his laptop an unofficial part of his paycheque. His only regret: he spilled wine on the machine and it’s now no longer functional.
*not his real name