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Tech at the Portland bench next to mine said he skips BIOS passwords on refurbs, and now I'm worried
I was working on a batch of 12 refurb laptops last Thursday at the Portland shop and the tech next to me said he never bothers locking down BIOS on machines he flips because 'nobody checks anyway.' That hit different because we hand those same units to two local schools that trust us with student data. If a kid figures out how to boot from USB it's not just a warranty issue, it's our rep gone in one email. Anyone else dealing with a coworker who skips steps like this, and how do you bring it up without starting a fight?
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sullivan.quinn3h ago
That "nobody checks" line is doing more damage than the skipped password itself. Once one tech says it out loud and nothing happens, the next guy skips the BIOS lock, then the next one stops wiping drives, and pretty soon the whole bench has a different standard than the one in the paperwork. The quiet part here is that your shop's real problem is not one lazy tech, it is that nobody has made the signed build sheet mean anything. If the school contract says machines ship locked down, then every unit that leaves without it is a breach waiting on a kid with a USB stick and too much free time. Bringing it up as a safety thing instead of a snitch thing usually works better, like "hey we could lose the school account over this" hits harder than "you skipped a step." Worth asking who signs off on the batch, because if the answer is nobody, that is the thing to fix first.
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