happy labor day

Aside from being slap full of lunatics, my office is a fairly easy place to work.  The dress code is office casual which means suits are not required and I hardly ever wear heels.  As long as your clothes don’t have holes or advertise beer, you’re okay.  We are free to mill about and talk to each other and frequently you will see a group of three or four employees gathered in the break room (drinking free coffee) or around the copy machine (stealing free paper) having a chat.  We have some procedures that are important to follow, but really if you just get your work done in a timely manner no one minds much.  Also, our emails are not monitored and the entirety of the internet is at our disposal whenever we please.    

Until last week, that is.    

Management decided to bring the hammer down and put an end to our little Utopia.  They have the power and they wield it with fury.  Being but lowly employees, all we can do is subjugate ourselves and goose-step in time to our superior’s unrelenting drum beat.  

Yes, my friends.  They did the unthinkable.  They blocked Facebook.   

I suspect that next we will be forced to show identification papers before we can enter or exit the building.  

Ya think the Nazi references are a bit dramatic?  Tell that to the people who tried to stage a full-blown riot at work.  You would think that management had installed a coin-operated coffee machine or turned off the air conditioning.  Before lunch, there was an email sent around to select, trusted employees (how did I get on that list? they obviously don’t know about my blog) with the subject line of “3:00 today – outside.”  The message read:    

All Facebook Friends!  Come one, come all!  Join us for a Facebook jamboree!! BYOP!! 

I soon figured out that “BYOP” stood for “Bring Your Own Phone.”  Yes, people were going to rebel by going outside and logging on to Facebook with their smart phones during work hours.  Grown, adult people.  At work!  I do not know if this farcical demonstration actually took place because, thank the gods, I was scheduled to leave the asylum work at 1:00 that day.    

I actually knew about the block the day before.  I was at work late and before I left I tried to check my Facebook to see if a friend had replied to a message I sent that morning.  I was surprised to see the blocked notification.  The next day, I didn’t say anything about it because, silly me, I would actually have been embarrassed to admit that I was looking at Facebook while at work.  Apparently, other employees have no qualms about wasting time on the company dime.    

Now, I don’t want you to think that I’m a company clone or anything.  I goof-off and play around on the internet (when do you think I write half of these posts?).  But, I know that it is wrong and I also know that if I worked in the “real” corporate world, my every move would be monitored.  Blocking Facebook is the absolute minimum that my office could do.  There are programs out there that record each employee’s every keystroke, so employers not only know where you have gone on the internet but exactly what you have said.  There are also companies that make you clock out when you use the restroom or dock your pay if you are five minutes late.  Talk about Nazis! 

I, for one, am very glad that I don’t work in the “real” corporate world.  I appreciate the level of freedom that I do have and won’t do something stupid like whine and complain when one very small freedom is justifiably taken away. 

That being said, heaven help their mortal souls if they block WordPress.