The scene: IT company where I did phone support. Not a small company, but not large either, maybe around 200 employees. I was at my desk, logged in to the phone system, but not on a call at that moment. Nobody else from the department was there, they seemed to manage to spend a lot of time away from their desks, not taking calls. A manager we’ll call Steve, even though that’s not his name, came over to me. He wasn’t my manager at this point, though he had been in the past. He was a couple of levels above me, but not directly. He told me to log out of the phone and come with him. I said I couldn’t, I was the only one logged in, so the whole department would be uncontactable. In a business that relies on phones being answered to maintain a contracted ‘response time’, that’s Not Good. He said it didn’t matter, and I had to log out right now and go with him. That was odd. But I went along with it. As we made our way to a small meeting room, he paused, and quietly told me this was going to seem really weird and scary, but just go with it, answer things honestly, and I’d soon find it all pretty funny. When we got to the meeting room, there was someone from HR, who told me the other person sitting looking quite confused was there to act as a witness on my behalf, and Steve was there to act as a witness on the company’s behalf as she questioned me. The questions started out very confusing - “Are you working for any competing company?” No, I wasn’t. Why would anyone think that? The first questions all made it pretty obvious they were accusing me of working on the side for a competing IT company, and considered it a pretty serious accusation. Then came the question “Are you aware of a company called ‘Ali Industries’?”, at which point Steve tried to suppress a grin, and gave me a little side-eye. Well. Kind of. Yes, but also no. I had to explain that one of my colleagues, Ali (again, not real name), was learning all the IT stuff we dealt with by playing with a bunch of servers in his flat. With a fake company name of Ali Industries. He had multiple old servers, all picked up cheap from eBay, with much the same sort of setup that we would put in at customer sites, just with very old and slow gear. And the website he’d set up for all this included thanks to me for my support and consultancy. After explaining, I was told I was suspended with full pay while they conducted an investigation, and should go home and wait to hear. I had to be escorted out of the building and off the premises. Two or three days later, I got the call. All concluded, all was fine, come back to work. But, you know, don’t rush, take your time. Someone had found the pretend website, and reported it, so everyone involved got suspended for a couple of days. I thought it was all pretty silly, when anyone could have looked at it and seen what it was, and even if they were so dim-witted they thought it might be real, could have just *asked* anyone involved, but any sort of sense seems to vanish once there are directors and shareholders involved. My friend and colleague ‘Ali’ was less understanding, and while it was all sorted out in the end, I’m not sure he ever entirely forgave the company for the way it was handled. With hindsight, I should probably have taken it as more of a warning than I did, things didn’t end well there, but I mostly found the whole thing quite funny. And I got a couple of extra days off.