I received three reports today of Friendster being banned in the workplace. Of those, only one person told me which companies (Wiley and Salmon Smith Barney). In the latter case, the writer notes “in the case of ssb, it’s just a sad
story of an evil employer that makes its employees work crazy hours and then doesn’t allow them to try to make external friends. this sort of asymmetric work/life fusion shouldn’t be tolerated.”
This raises an interesting question… In theory, dating is not really permissable at work, right? You’re there to be productive and productive only. With the tech boom, life revolved around work. Thus, those lines started to really blend. Ironically, there has been a significant backlash against those blended lines, yet the number of hours at work has not declined (in the States).
On one hand, i definitely realize that Friendster is more of a distraction than Solitaire (and that’s often banned). On the other, it’s painful to watch us turn into a corporate society where life is solely about work.
Seems to me it’s more about struggling to remain a society where work is solely about work.
Yes, but the work lives of many requires them to maintain an 18-24 hour online presence. Not everyone gets to leave their employee duties at the office. If my work and private lives intermingle and I must perform work from home, then my employer must accept that I will bring some of my private life into the office.
Friendster has just been banned in our office and I can’t help but feel pretty pissed of about it. I agree with everyone who posted. I’m a writer and I do bring my work home most of the time and my employers should be understanding enough to permit us to access Friendster. It’s the whole principle of the thing. They can’t expect us to work hours on end without some form of harmless diversion. hey, as long as I we’re generating quality work, why the hell not? The way I see it, they’re just too stingy and selfish. They can’t accept that their employees are using the internet service that they’re paying for, for something that doesn’t benefit them. Creeps.
Just to play devil’s advocate, let’s imagine that the companies are responsible for the actions of their employees on their machines (i.e. banning anything that might be illegal, pornographic, offensive to colleagues, etc.) Why not exprss to your employer that you recognize that s/he needs to put a ban to personal activities on company time and that you, in return, will put a ban on company activities on personal time, so as to guarantee a division of safety for your employer and their responsibility for your actions.
The employer-employee relationship is not as equal as you think. The employer has every right to demand that we work during our personal time or implement a certain action like banning friendster because they basically have more power than the employee. The employee on the other hand is not as free to demand that their personal time be off limits or speak up on whatever complaints they have, etc. because of fear of getting fired, getting a bad reputation among their superiors , etc. Bottomline is, the employers are the ones dictating the policies of the workplace and that’s how it’s gonna be for good. I guess what they should do is have more compassion or even try putting themselves in our shoes so they’ll know that harmless diversions are important in boosting morale among employees, or simply taking out the stress of enslavement.
Janis – i was purposely playing a naive devil’s advocate. I am fully aware of how unbalanced the relationship is. But i think that it’s really interesting that you note that employees are fearful, but that employers should learn to be compassionate. Somehow, i’m guessing that employees are fearful because employers are notably not compassionate. They’re motivation is up the chain, to keep their jobs, to keep their bosses happy, to keep their investors happy. This is how it trickles out of control very fast. This is also where i believe that external regulation is necessary. Employers will always try to maximize profit while minimizing costs, even at the expense of employees (to see it at the worst, read Fast Food Nation). Thus, my guess is that compassion is not what will cut it, but regulation. Your thought?
External regulation is good. Compassion is not something that can be demanded but only hoped. If there is an objective party handling the ‘government’ of the workplace then I believe that there will be a fair approach in handling certain issues. And certainly, employees won’t be scared to speak up their minds, etc. since they have unbiased representation.