Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Why Just The TSA?

Once upon a time long, long ago I worked for my living. In an office. For a major corporation. We began work at 8 a.m. and finished at 5 p.m. Not 4:30 or 4:45. Five. We had a 15 minute coffee break in the morning and another in the afternoon. Staggered with other employees so the office was always manned. Lunch was one hour. Period. Personal calls were discouraged; if the privilege was abused we heard about it. Computers were unheard of except for huge mainframes doing work that had nothing to do with mine. As I said. A loooong time ago!

Today I read where the TSA is to block "controversial opinion" on the web. It's a very misleading headline. Actually they're planning on blocking access of certain types of websites on agency computers.

Shouldn't it be standard procedure in every office of every company in the nation? Of course Facebook, Twitter and blogs would suffer, but productivity might improve. What a novel idea.

Just what is meant by "controversial opinion" isn't clear, but the other categories make a lot of sense. Chat and messaging, criminal activity, extreme violence including cartoons, gruesome content and gaming. They neglected to include a real biggie. Porn.

I blurk a local newspaper's blog and am always amazed at how many of the participants making comments are people who are at work. Sometimes the conversations are quite lengthy. These people are being paid for what?

If one wants to Twitter away their time during their own hours, fine. Heaven knows I do enough of it myself regardless of the constant nagging from Hub to get a life. He's right. I'm trying to cut back. Especially on Facebook but I'm not doing too well. No one is paying me for my time that should be spent on other activity, however.

So to the TSA? Cheers! And to every other office that has similar restrictions. If it's too much to ask I'm sure there are some of the 14.6 unemployed who would be more than happy to take those jobs!

3 comments:

Betty said...

I, too, am always amazed at the number of people who seem to be at work while they are socializing, blogging, twittering, etc. When I worked in an office, we weren't allowed to be connected to the internet. Of course, with the advanced technology today, that isn't a problem for people who apparently don't have enough real work to do.

Word Tosser said...

I could not agree more with the two of you.... and to take it a step further... I blows my mind...when such employee, has a fit, if an employer sees what the employee has written...
It is the company's computer...it s the company's time, it is the company's money.... so how does the employee think their emails and computer sites visited is confidential?
I just don't get it...
Every place I worked, I did company business only.... personal was done before or after or on lunch time...(we didn't have computers) but be it fooling around or personal calls.. it was ground to be fired when I worked.

Margie's Musings said...

I never had the time to fool around. I worked in media sales and on straight commission. If I wanted to make a good living, I had to stay busy calling on accounts.

It is sheer nonsense to think people can use company time for their frittering around. No wonder the US is far behind all other nations in productivity.