Thursday
Oct112007
They’ve Taken Away My Internet… Those Bastards!!
It’s true. Just this week the unthinkable happened. The old-fashioned, clueless, heartless, SOB that runs my company had his IT department put the mother of all firewall, filter, padlock, security alarm protected, deadbolts on our network. We were prepared for it during a company meeting. One of the many recent converts to the idea that the Internet is nothing more than a toy that will squelch productivity and lure people into the darkest and seediest corners of the World Wide Web. At first we were told that HR (the watchdog, judge, and jury for our web browsing) would be making sure not too much time was spent online, and that employees were not going to naughty sites. They were also going to be looking for “trends”, i.e.; Sally was on jobacle.com for four minutes one morning… perhaps it could slide, but if Sally felt the urge to spend those four minutes of company time every morning at jobacle.com reading the latest blog during her morning joe, well, Sally was gonna have some splainin’ to do.This amount of control was not good enough. Drunk on their own power and descending ever deeper into the world of network communism, they decided to do away with any file sharing in iTunes, turned off IMing, and made it impossible to download any podcasts.
Maybe now would be a good time to tell you that I work for a production company. We produce promos, commercials, television shows, print ads, and just about any other creative task one could think of in the media realm. Sites like MySpace (this I could care less about) and YouTube have been blocked completely. This has drastically change our productivity and has obviously put a major damper on moral; especially since there was no abuse of the Internet privilege. Furthermore, it has slowed workflow, caused more headaches, and wasted more time and effort than it seems worth. We work primarily with outside clients that are all using these tools- yes tools- to get their job done. Just this afternoon I had to shrug my shoulders while an irate producer watched me NOT retrieve the voice over reads (as I sat on the phone with the voice talent in Toronto try to come up with a work around) all because I couldn’t hop onto his FTP site and download the audio files I needed to continue my job. Needless to say we all had to jump through several hoops to complete the task.
The Internet in the workplace is still a relatively new way to do business. The problem is sometimes it takes far too long for someone from a bygone generation to keep up with the ever-changing times. They often wind up going to great lengths to fight off an inevitable change, like say… using the Internet as a work tool! The problem is this guy, like so many before him, and so many to come, just can’t stand the thought of people enjoying themselves on the job and worse; wasting valuable time loafing around the Web. The problem is that the very technology that they are trying to take away is the same technology that gave us so much free time to begin with. It used to be that an eight to 10 hour day was chewed up by all the menial day-to-day tasks like writing and rewriting letters and memos. Not to mention copying, envelope stuffing, stamp licking, and actually mailing them out. Billing, payroll, research, and every other task has been affected by the Internet. The new technology too, is constantly evolving. For instance, a recent poll showed that e-mail is now viewed by many as an outdated form of communication. Chatting and texting now garner much faster results; not to mention the bonus perk of not paying a long distance phone charge every time you have to ask a co-worker in a another region a question.
The fact is that this is something I could write 10 more blogs about. This one has already gone on for far too long. Clearly many points on this topic have yet to be made not to mention the fact that I still haven’t looked at the other side. Having said that now would be a great time for you to weigh in. What do you think about this growing trend? Has it happened to you at your job? Do you work for a company that still sees no need to even have the Internet in your office? We in the trenches need to start having these discussions now or before long we’ll be working on computers that only allow us access to Web sites determined to be work related by God knows who.
in 
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Reader Comments (8)
I think your website should add one of the badges from my colleague Shel Holtz's Stop Blocking website. Shel's on a crusade to prevent companies from blocking employee access to the Internet.
Here's where you can grab a badge: http://www.stopblocking.org/?page_id=3
Seriously, there are several options
One, if you don't like it leave and don't care what the bastards do they will either fail or succeed without you.
Two, work there with the restrictions as best as you can and document the time you spend working around the problem so when your productivity is in question you have documentation why. MAYBE they will change
Three, work there till the company folds or changes
The people I work for allow me TOTAL UNFETTERED access... Because I work for myself. And you know I often spend TOO much time on sites not directly work related (it's an internet business). Having some restrictions and a watchdog is a good thing in many cases.
I worked for a company prior to the internet boon in the early 90's that did NOT allow long distance calls on most of the phones in the building. When I was asked why the Engineering Dept. modem couldn't dial a number I simply referred them to the people who made the decision. Did they get LD? Nope...
Granted the people in HR may not realize the damage they are doing but maybe they were overloaded with reviewing reports and logs of internet behavior that it seemed blanket bans were in order. Either they will change or they won't. So be part of the solution. Document the issues and bring them up.
I say you find a job that will give you the flexibility it sounds like you are yearning for.
On the very first day after the software and hardware was installed I arrived at work 20 minutes before the start of the day. I was called five minutes before 8am (my official start time) by a producer that informed me he was going to be 15 minutes late. I literally had nothing to do until he arrived with the material I needed to work on. Still a couple of minutes before 8 I hopped on ESPN.com to check the scores of the NY teams. Being a transplant from NY to SC this was something I regularly did. I stand by the fact that I NEVER abused the amount of time spent on that or any other website. I was not on ESPN's website for more than 2 minutes. I only checked the scores that morning. At times I have spent longer reading an article or two, but because this new policy was in place and I am not the type to intentionally push ones button's I got on and got off. Not 5 minutes after that I was called by the head of accounting; the one assigned to enforce HR's findings. I was told (uncomfortably) that I had been caught visiting "sports sights". I was also told that I went to a travel site, which just isn't true. The only thing I could think was that a pop-up threw the spyware for a loop.
Yes, boss, some employees are taking it to ridiculous extremes. Oh, and can I remind you that this was still before official work hours? My company, that was once looking only for abuse has now warned us against checking our bank statements even if it is on our lunch hour.
Now, if you had read my post all the way through you may have come across the part where I admitted that I was well aware of the fact that I still had not even made the obvious case for the other side of the argument. By the way, were you on company time when you were reading and responding to my blogg?
Now I'll be the first to admit that I may be more sensitive to having the internet taken away because I do work in media. What my company has done was taken away my ability to do certain time and money saving functions of my job. Not to mention the capability of keeping up with what everyone else in my industry is up to.
I would indeed agree that there are plenty of jobs out there that can be done without the internet at all. I do have a problem, however, with the arrogance of those in charge. The ones that believe that they need to step in and control the behavior that the employees that they hired clearly cannot. The thinking here being that clearly these poor adults simply don't know how to behave with such a tempting distraction at their desks. Good thing the great and powerful me is here to intervene. And with that move send the message that I just don't trust that you people know how to handle such a responsibility so now I have to treat you like my children and make sure I put on the strongest of parental controls. By the way, I still believe you're X company's greatest asset.
I also wonder if this is not a practice in futility. After all no one can stop the future from coming. Have you seen commercials for the iPhone? Maybe you've even heard of Wi-Fi? Possibilities you haven't even dreamed of are coming over the next few years. I already work with several employees that have iPhones, and are now bringing their laptops to work. This gets them around the system, and while more and more people begin to do this my company has managed to expend an awful amount of resources and money trying to keep people from checking bank accounts, the status of a UPS package, and making the occasional purchase, because believe it or not, the overwhelming majority of people are not spending 4 hours of the company's time looking at pornography.
It is interesting to live in a time when Fortune magazine named Google the best company to work for. A company that provides its staff with free gourmet food, a dry cleaners, quick-lubes, and daycare. While other companies still like to treat their employees like 15 year olds while denying themselves and their employees access to the very tools that would greatly improve their business all while making work simply a little more pleasant to be at everyday.
Believe me, I am well aware of the fact that my company has the power to go on without me there doing my part. After all, another me will always come along. On the other hand we are a client driven company. All our money comes from an outside source. For better or worse producers spend a lot of time locked away in studios like mine creating their programs, movies, commercials, or whatever. One of the most competitive things we can do is make spending so much time in that environment as pleasant as possible. It will be interesting to see how my company holds up when it's clients start to feel that they a treated so much better at other facilities. Connecting to the outside world during a 40-60 hour work week is certainly one way to make the time a little easier.