Today in failures of agency/playing a role as opposed to being a role: I have a friend who is somewhat paranoid with respect to their possessions and physical safety. Said friend recently got their laptop stolen from their lab, which has understandably heightened their paranoia about their lab’s level of security, particularly since their work often involves being there alone at odd hours. It turns out that their lab is even more insecure than was first apparent, and there’s a relatively simple procedure for getting in without any credentials. Friend posted the details of this procedure on Facebook in order to complain about it and garner social support from their close friends. Friend has also complained to their immediate supervisor and been ignored.
It strikes me that at this point Friend seems to be more interested in playing the role of victim than in actually putting effort towards solving their problem. I can think of several strategies I would consider if I was in their situation (eg. keep moving up the chain of authority with my complaints, try to drum up support amongst my coworkers, post the details in as public a venue(s) as possible in order to create public outrage and/or make the issue too well-known to be ignored, etc). The strategy that they actually chose (post the details in a pseudo-but-not-actually-private venue) seems to be one of the worst in terms of actually addressing their problem—not only have they not increased the probability that the security hole will be fixed (since none of us work in the same lab system as they do), but there are now N more people aware of the hole who may or may not accidentally leak the info to others.
Today in failures of agency/playing a role as opposed to being a role: I have a friend who is somewhat paranoid with respect to their possessions and physical safety. Said friend recently got their laptop stolen from their lab, which has understandably heightened their paranoia about their lab’s level of security, particularly since their work often involves being there alone at odd hours. It turns out that their lab is even more insecure than was first apparent, and there’s a relatively simple procedure for getting in without any credentials. Friend posted the details of this procedure on Facebook in order to complain about it and garner social support from their close friends. Friend has also complained to their immediate supervisor and been ignored.
It strikes me that at this point Friend seems to be more interested in playing the role of victim than in actually putting effort towards solving their problem. I can think of several strategies I would consider if I was in their situation (eg. keep moving up the chain of authority with my complaints, try to drum up support amongst my coworkers, post the details in as public a venue(s) as possible in order to create public outrage and/or make the issue too well-known to be ignored, etc). The strategy that they actually chose (post the details in a pseudo-but-not-actually-private venue) seems to be one of the worst in terms of actually addressing their problem—not only have they not increased the probability that the security hole will be fixed (since none of us work in the same lab system as they do), but there are now N more people aware of the hole who may or may not accidentally leak the info to others.