I just entered into one of those awkward moments that are politely circumvented with guests. We have some lovely people staying with us right now. Truly the best guests ever to have set foot across our threshold, which at the moment isn’t a lot, admittedly, but after a week, I don’t have that niggling little voice looping inside my head asking, “When are they leaving? When are they leaving? When are they leaving?” so many times I’m not sure if I’ve actually asked them or not, and hope that I’ve been hospitable enough that it’s the latter. As a fellow expat once said, “The best parts of the stay are the journey home from airport just after picking them up and the journey back to the airport at the end.” But not with these guests.

I handled it well to start off with. “Don’t worry,” I said smiling, “It’s fine.” Then after adamant protestations of total bewilderment as to how it could have happened, I said I’d take a look. It’s a dangerous game lending or being a lendee of someone’s computer. Even if it’s only for a few minutes. Especially when it involves anything other than checking email or general “safe” surfing, i.e. no chance of dodgey sites being opened.

So, I took a look.

“Somehow” (”it wasn’t me” we all thought), a .jpg image had consumed some other jpgs making itself a folder without showing up as a folder and was also made into a shortcut that had disappeared. There’s probably a simple explanation, certainly no malintent, but it wasn’t known to any of us. So, we did the It Wasn’t Me dance to the tune of The Last Time I Looked at the Image it was Fine, before we remembered that we had a backup on another computer. Pheweeee. Definitely the best way to avoid an awkward standoff!

It reminded me of my last job. Tasked to look after the computers (nothing serious there, I’m not so gifted at fixing things, but can call someone else to do it), I would make some periodical checks on the computers to make sure things were running as they should be. This would take all of fifteen minutes at the most usually because in our multinational office we had three staff: my manager, me and the manager’s assistant/glorified driver. So, checking one computer (not my manager’s or mine) I found a shortcut to suckmyt*ts.com (something like that anyway) on the desktop. I opened the link and it was what it said it was. The interenet history had sites like teenagepu**y.com and f**kme.com (or sites to that effect).

Nice.

When confronted, employee denied any knowledge of how it occurred. After explaining that it shouldn’t. Ever. Under any circumstances. We later found more. Employee’s explanation: “It’s strange, I’m not doing anything like that now,” (hmm. so you lied before??), “It just sometimes opens. I go to Yahoo! and then sometimes these pages just open by themselves and I don’t know what to do.”

“Hmm,” said I. “That’s possible, although unlikely if you’ve never been to those sites since the computer was cleaned. I guess it’s coincidental then that these pages are all accessed at times when nobody else is in the office?”

“Hmmmm,” cue knitting of eyebrows, then a protracted pause, which I was prepared to wait out, “I don’t know how that could have happened.”

“Well, obviously someone accessed the sites on your computer at those times. That’s all,” was my short reply. I’d have liked to add a few f’ing pervs in there, or at least, “I don’t care if you jerk off, just don’t do it in the office” but I was maintaining the moral high ground as well as following company rules (no bullying…).

It did make me feel a bit awkward sometimes. I was consciously conservative in what I wore to work after that. I sometimes wondered what he was thinking when he looked at me and in fairness, I never felt him looking at me any differently, and never sleazily, but I certainly viewed him differently after that.

But even that was less awkward than when he told me, while driving me somewhere during work, that his wife didn’t want sex very much because she was circumcised and he didn’t know what he should do.

Luckily we arrived at my destination in time for me to hot foot it away from having to answer.