IT departments tend to exist in two states: pre-a-hole, and a-hole. The state transition is triggered by some screw up that may or may not be their fault but they take the blame for.
So they are assholes if they don't want to spend company resources allowing you to check your personal email while at work? Yeah, you've worked for a "different sort", the kind that waste money it seems.
Many places I've worked don't allow use of personal cell phones while at work, much less allowing access to personal accounts on enterprise equipment. Security is hard, adding complexity is a bad idea.
Yeah we've definitely worked at different sorts of companies. At the kind I've worked at, employee happiness and retention is valued way higher than whatever it is you think is lost by employees handling personal tasks at work (bandwidth? computer depreciation? time, when none of us work strict 9-5 jobs?)
