A Hypothetical.

Strictly hypothetically, let’s say I worked in a place that made rules that were getting more and more ridiculous. Hypothetically, when writing about said place, I would refrain from ever naming it. That would be something akin to naming the dark one. Hypothetically.

Now, since we’re pretending here, let’s pretend that this particular place of business has rules about internet use. Most businesses do. That’s not just their prerogative, it is good business. You don’t want your staff searching for pr0n while they should be working. However, my little hypothetical place of business takes it one step farther. They physically block each and every internet site, and then go back and allow the ones that are specifically work-related. This creates a problem (in my…ahem…fictional world here), because when someone is legitimately trying to get to a web site for a business purpose, it’s generally something they need RIGHT NOW. However, poor out-of-luck worker bee just gets a proxy screen stating that the policy of this company is that the intarwebb is for business purposes only. Are you with me so far? We’re still pretending. Anyway, PretendCo takes at least 24 hours to process a request to get a site un-blocked. This creates a ton of inefficiency.

It’s also unrealistic. You see, people need mental breaks. I don’t know what they did before the internet, because thankfully I’ve never had to deal with it. I suppose there was a lot more water cooler talk and gossip. Funny phenomenon, that. You see, as soon as PretendCo went and took the internet away from employees, there was a rash, nay an outbreak, of gossip mongering. Seriously, everybody and their brother was in each others’ office, or emailing each other, or whatever…all gossiping about their coworkers, their management, etc. The atmosphere around PretendCo PLUMETTED, and morale decreased exponentially. The lack of being able to have a mental release by reading a news article or something caused people to gossip about each other. It made everyone angrier.

But that’s not the whole bit of the problem. You see, PretendCo is split into two floors. Soon it was discovered that all of the people on the top floor did not have their internet blocked; only the lower floor. This caused the people on ground level to hate (and therefore gossip about) the people on the top floor. After all, most of them weren’t management. What is it that entitles them to get some internet action, yet forces the grunts on floor one to be restricted? It didn’t make sense. Furthermore, Upper Management had tried to convince all of those restricted slave pigs that this internet blockage was company-wide, yet it soon was discovered that this is not the case at all. In fact, this blockage only exists among a relatively small number of people. This caused further frustration.

Then came stage three. People with restricted internet access started to rebel, and search for ways around the block. Believe me (and of course we’re still pretending, here…this is nothing but a work of fiction, a study on human behavior in the work place, if you will…) many such workarounds were found. They range from brute-force attacks to more subtle practices, and no detail will be divulged here, to protect the hypothetical guilty.

If I were a hypothetical employee on the first hypothetical floor, I would be angry…especially if I had been blessed with hypothetical access, only to have it taken away. Either way, gentle reader, this blog post won’t accomplish anything. I just kind of want to rant.

Hypothetically.