In the early 2000s, I worked for a government agency in New York as a software engineer using Visual Basic .NET and Crystal Reports — which, in retrospect, was probably one of the less brilliant ideas of my career. I was young, overconfident in my programming skills, and let my ego and emotions take the wheel. I ended up leaving the company I’d worked for nearly four years to become a consultant.
Those two and a half years as a consultant could easily be turned into a dark comedy sitcom. The situations, the characters, the absurd bureaucracy — enough material for at least a couple of seasons.
One of the truly bizarre things about working there was that all employee computers were completely blocked from accessing the Internet. Let me say that again so it sinks in: no Internet. Which meant that if I needed to research how someone else had solved a software problem or look up documentation, I was out of luck.
It turned out their “security” system wasn’t particularly clever, and I eventually figured out how to bypass it. Still, they monitored everything. My manager used to patrol the cubicle forest like a hawk, making sure no one was doing anything she didn’t like. She even walked around to check us clocking in and out, just to confirm we entered the right times. It was… not my happiest chapter, and definitely a career decision I regret.
So, how did I survive two and a half years in that place?
Well, I discovered that some applications could run without being installed on the computer — remember, installation required an IT ticket and a small miracle — and that I could run them from a thumb drive. Back then, I read a lot of blogs and followed dozens of RSS feeds. Since I couldn’t use Google Reader, I found a tool called Tiny RSS, a standalone reader that didn’t need installation and could run off external storage.
Every morning, I’d come into work, plug in my thumb drive, fire up Tiny RSS in the background, and catch up on the latest blog posts and articles. It made the day feel just a little less soul-crushing. Eventually, I added Tiny Firefox, Tiny Thunderbird, and other portable apps to my little USB survival kit. That thumb drive went everywhere with me and, honestly, probably kept me sane.
Because of all the red tape and approval processes required to do anything, I spent most of my days just waiting. Waiting for approvals, waiting for meetings, waiting for IT to respond to tickets. That thumb drive gave me something productive to do during all that downtime—reading, learning, staying connected to the outside world of technology and ideas.
Looking back, it’s almost funny how such a small piece of technology became my lifeline in what felt like a tech dark age. But it also taught me an important lesson: sometimes survival at work is about finding creative ways to maintain your sanity and keep growing, even when the environment tries its hardest to stifle you.
That thumb drive didn’t just save my sanity—it reminded me that I had options, that the world was bigger than that cubicle, and that eventually, I’d find my way out. And I did.
Photo by NMG Network on Unsplash