It’s the late 1980s and pilot fish is working on business application development for an aerospace and defense contractor where physical security is surprisingly lax. There’s a guard on duty at the front desk during business hours, but that’s about the extent of it. That changes with the announcement that all personal gear will be subject to inspection on leaving the building.

Now there are guards 24/7, and everyone leaving the building is politely requested by those guards to open their briefcases and backpacks. The guards then take a look inside before waving the owners through.

Rumor has it that this security push came about because some Apple Mac computers have gone missing. And it continues for about six months, and then suddenly ceases.

What happened? Employees have to rely on rumor again, which holds that the cleaning crew had taken the Macs, which makes sense given that large, wheeled trashcans would make the job easy.

The exit checks never turned up anything, but even law-abiding pilot fish can’t help but notice that it would be pretty easy to cover any contraband in a bag with a few clothes or newspapers and never be discovered, given the cursory nature of the searches.

Sharky doesn’t want contraband, just your true tales of IT life. Send them to me at sharky@computerworld.com . You can also subscribe to the Daily Shark Newsletter and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.