Hating on Gary Loudmouth

I walk into work, ten minutes early. Coffee's in hand, space heater's cranked to high. I sit down in my chair, login to the network and tell my friend/enemy the computer that I'm ready to start the day; ready to compute things; ready to go.

Everyone knows that in this media-rich, headline-crazed culture, "Ready to Go" actually means "Ready to get updated on the latest news and entertainment stories of the morning, maybe catch up on a blog or two and check three or four email accounts for anything important (MySpace comments, American Eagle coupons, eCards...)." And remember, I did come in ten minutes early to do all of this stuff. Okay, so maybe it takes me 15 or 20 minutes or two and a half hours to do all of this stuff. It's MY time. I alloted for it. If I have something to get done, I'll get it done. If I don't, let me waste my time reading about Britney's bald head, articles about the latest CD releases or who dropped out of Dancing with the Stars and why.

So, I navigate to one of my favorite blogs, Pop Candy, and quickly read some of the humorous anecdotes. From time to time one catches my eye and a link is included. I excitedly click the link to see what additional information I can learn about The Class's season finale, when to my horrifying shock, the site has been blocked. Slightly depressed, I check my MySpace page to see if anyone has left me a humorous comment and BAM!, blocked. Billboard.com, blocked; IMDB, blocked!!; People.com, BLOCKED?!?!

Some will inevitably make the argument that companies don't have the money to pay employees for checking the Internet for their favorite sites. I say BOLOGNA and here's why:

1) If companies truly had enough work coming in to keep their employees busy for nine hours straight, those employees need five-ten minute breaks to brainlessly browse the Internet.

2) Companies that block almost every entertainment or streaming media site are making their employees unhappy. Unhappy because they can't listen to Internet radio to get them through a hellish day; unhappy because a friend sends a link that everyone's been talking about all day and you can't watch it because it's blocked; and unhappy because it's just another case where "The Man" has control over everything and the Plebes are just slaving away at monotonous crap. An unhappy employee won't be loyal to the company, so the company is blowing it's money paying the salary for an employee who hates the company.

3) Who cares what sites your employees are looking at (except the obvious illegal and pornographic/offensive ones) during the day? If the employee is still getting his/her work done it shouldn't be an issue. If Internet browsing is causing an employee to not do their job, then fire them, but still give access to the employees who browse wisely, yet still manage to get their work done.

I guess that's the heart of the issue. Remember in school when the class was going to have a great Friday party for being good but on Thursday afternoon Gary Loudmouth had to keep harassing Stacey Shortandfat and ended up getting the party canceled for everyone? I hate Gary! One ignorant person who couldn't control himself had to ruin it for all of the responsible, well-intentioned people who could. If I could turn back time I would stand up in that class, tell Gary to shut his goddamn mouth, and send a MySpace comment to my mom that the Friday party is still on and we need to make 32 cupcakes, five of which would go directly to Stacey Shortandfat, pronto!