Re:Contracts you should never sign
by Turing_Machine on Friday January 27, 2023 @12:48PM
(#34549231)
Another wrinkle on "company property" you have to watch out for:
When I was in grad school, a professor in my department left to take a job at another university.
The beancounters demanded the return of the department-issued computer he'd had...in 1985.
Of course, that was many, many computers ago, and what almost certainly happened was that he'd transferred the machine to a grad student or whatever when he got a new one, and they'd just lost the record of the transfer (or never entered it in the first place). Still, he had to go through a week or so of back and forth before they were convinced that a) it was unreasonable to expect him to account for a computer from decades ago and b) even if he did still have the 1985 computer, it wouldn't be worth anything like their book value any more. They actually wanted to charge him the original 1985 price for the "missing" computer!
I guess the moral there is to keep your own careful log of what happens to any company property that's been issued to you.
Re:Contracts you should never sign
by buildbot on Friday January 27, 2023 @01:09PM
(#34549536)
When I worked in tech support at my University, we 100% knew we were never getting it back but had to ask like once a year anyway because government. Public money means excessive tracing for any asset!!
When I was in grad school, a professor in my department left to take a job at another university.
The beancounters demanded the return of the department-issued computer he'd had...in 1985.
Of course, that was many, many computers ago, and what almost certainly happened was that he'd transferred the machine to a grad student or whatever when he got a new one, and they'd just lost the record of the transfer (or never entered it in the first place). Still, he had to go through a week or so of back and forth before they were convinced that a) it was unreasonable to expect him to account for a computer from decades ago and b) even if he did still have the 1985 computer, it wouldn't be worth anything like their book value any more. They actually wanted to charge him the original 1985 price for the "missing" computer!
I guess the moral there is to keep your own careful log of what happens to any company property that's been issued to you.