Yet, apparently, it's incumbent upon employers to deal with what their workers prefer to do ON company equipment, ON company TIME. This absolutely floors me.
I am a born and true underachiever. I really am. If I had my druthers, I would nap every single day, and not have to work for a living. If I had my d*mned druthers, frankly I would be a waste of skin. In many ways, it's lucky I was born at such a time as to get vomited onto my first serious job market in a major recession - because I had to learn how to be a decent employee.
It's like this, you halfwits: People WANT TO WORK. If you are lucky enough to be DOING that, consider seriously the option of doing so ethically - of, you know. DOING SO.
It amazes me how incessantly, now, I am hearing stories about people who seem perfectly happy to abuse their *living*. And did I mention? I am lazy, people. I do not like that I have to work for a living. That is why they *pay* people to come in and do it. But, dang. The older I get, the more I feel like some sort of meritorious service award winner, because I just can't get over how happy people are to act like jobs aren't particularly worthwhile endeavors.
Promise you: those 200 people, working on their resumes outside the door? They think it's worthwhile. You insult THEM, perhaps more than you insult your very own employers, by wasting work hours.
***
The thing that really bugs out my eyes about the level of "entitlement" to play on social networks comes around page 6, where the CORPORATE side of the equation is discussed. The bit about how easy users make it for the marketing professionals happily gobbling up their data to get their personal information.
The other big advantage, says Rosetta Stone senior vice president Jay Topper, is how much data companies can glean from sites like Facebook -- for absolutely free.
"Companies spend so much money trying to get information from their customers, while places like Facebook are essentially a free 24/7 focus group where every day thousands of people are providing you with a constant flow of information," he says. "It's mind-boggling how much you could mine from this."
In what universe is this a desirable state, no MATTER the supposed return on the venture ... ? And what actually is the return? Seriously.
I have belonged to FB. Even apart from the incredibly creepy and horrifying reality of this aspect, I quit it because ... seriously, there is no discernible content. I don't GET it, and that's not because I'm a frowzy weirdo fuddy duddy. It's because the people I want to have relationships with, I want to have RELATIONSHIPS with. It's just not possible to do that on an electronic wall. All I ever got out of FB was advertising, exhortations to join groups I was not interested in, to sign things, to give to things, to do things, which - as an old weirdo - resemble friendship about as much as an advertisement resembles entertainment.
Never mind the fact that some of the people I've lost touch with in this life, it took me literally years to do that with. Why would I wish to invite them all back to be "friends" (who can then ping me with pointless links, animated livestock I don't understand the point of, or expect me to bask in their importance)? Why should I expect that of the people around ME, for that matter?
***
But I have gotten off my point.
That happens, when I am as thoroughly creeped out by human behavior as I am by both sides of the satanic bargain people seem to love to make with their personal lives. Yeep.
My point was that doing all this stuff at WORK - apart from the sheer, exuberant selfishness and stupidity of it - is dangerous indulgence. And not strictly becuase of the way it compromises one personally. Because it compromises your bread and butter. The security of computer equipment YOU DON'T OWN. The security of the entity which PAYS YOUR BILLS by employing you. The security of information - personal and professional. You name it, it's poor thinking to go assuming hitting a mirror site is harmless just this once. It's poor thinking, frankly, to put this sort of playing above your d*mned job.
When you accept a job, you accept a certain contract. Are we all so inured to maintaining an attention span, that we can't concentrate even on our own livelihoods for eight lousy hours in a day? Seriously? Is it THAT bad, is it THAT HARD - to discipline ourselves into such simple behavior? Is the next comment on your own last comment actually even that interesting ...
Good grief, if nothing else, leaving that stuff alone for a sec gives it time for all the other slackers to manage to accumulate something for you to actually read, if you aren't constantly checking for new updates.
I was only unemployed for three months, and I THANK MY LUCKY STARS I don't have all day, every day to waste on emptying my piffling brains online. I am so bleeding happy not to have time for that stuff. Even on my lunch hour, the reward for me is this funny hardbound thing made out of paper, called a *book*. I pull it out, I read it.
It doesn't put my company at risk.
Nor my job.
I signed up for this employment, assuming what it means is, I'm not going to be the transparent ween calling in sick every third Monday, or suddenly having family drama and car troubles conveniently timed to allow me to sleep in (or go out late the night before - *ahem*). I'm not going to take home all the paper I want to print my book (I don't have a printer in any case - that works - but one has a point to make, har-de-har). I'm not going to spend my time at the office texting, or talking on the phone, or shopping on eBay, or social networking. Good grief. I wouldn't have time, even if I wanted to do these things. Because MOST of us who still have the good fortune to be working are so stinkin' slammed, because there's still as much to do as when millions of our bretheren and sisteren were ALSO working, who aren't now.
I don't know - maybe that's the point. Maybe people who feel overworked, when so many are not employed at all, come to feel a sneaking entitlement - it's okay, just this once. They get so much out of me, they can give me my Facebook too. I've finished my spreadsheet, now I'm going to look at my wall. Or maybe the habit, the addiction, really IS as pathetically entrenched and automatic as I'm sitting here assuming, and people are just idiots.
Experience lends, a bit, to that last possibility. Yeah, it's probably a mix.
But people really are kind of idiots. Just look at the emails they're still forwarding, even after all these years.
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