It worked!

This retail company is seeing dismal profits because of the economic downturn, reports a pilot fish there.

"A big meeting was held to figure out how we can survive the downturn," fish says. "One of our fresh-faced managers suggested that part of the problem was worker productivity.

"He had observed one person playing cards on her PC, and he was sure the problem was rampant throughout the company."

That's when the IT director chimes in, suggesting that this would be a perfect time to work on network security -- and that can include starting to push policies to the users that will block game playing and other undesirable behavior.

After a few hours of buzzword-laden discussion, it's decided that the company will be saved by letting IT work its magic and push policies.

Flash forward two months: Policies are now in place. And the result?

"The policies have indeed worked," says fish. "Workers can no longer play games on their PCs. We can also barely do e-mail, and we have problems launching needed applications such as word processing and spreadsheets.

"The new antivirus being shoved down our throats has a nasty habit of locking up PCs to the point that a reboot is needed. Start-up time from the log-on screen can take 15 minutes. A few people have had their systems hosed so badly that a complete rebuild was needed.

"But at least no one is playing games...."

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