15th
Facebook In The Workplace?
Me and my brothers were having a conversation with my father about facebook last night, as he was having a corporate meeting about it the next day. I am no facebook expert and rarely use it, but I’m not sure either of my brothers even know how to sign out. Every time I do go on facebook however, I am inundated with pointless status updates by people I rarely talk to. The surprising thing is who the main culprits are for abusing their status update button; it is not generally the unemployed graduates on my account with 24hours a day free time - it’s the ones lucky enough to have a job in an office. They are constantly moaning about Monday mornings, public transport, having to actually file reports, the fact they had to stay late, etc, etc. What’s even more shocking is that there are often comments on the updates from their work colleagues agreeing (or ‘liking’) the status, and even more shocking, the same from their bosses. If the people in charge are on facebook just as much, who is clamping down on the use of it? Surely as a manager or boss, time wasting is something you should be discouraging, not commending? I’m sure if everyone in office jobs stopped using facebook they could all have a three day week as I suspect nearly half their time is spent wasted on the internet - mainly on facebook.
Anyway, the conclusion was that my father has decided to block facebook in his office, a decision most likely to go down like an announcement that the coffee machine is broken. Everyone in his office has iPhones and Blackberrys however, so facebook will still be just as accessible to them, just not on their desk computers, the end result I’m sure will be just a string of status updates along the line of, ‘thank god for my iPhone, I can still get on facebook at work!!!’, followed by numerous pointless comments from colleagues like ‘woohoo!’ and ‘me too!’.
In general I think facebook brings out the darker side in people, all the stalking I hear about is frightening, and borderline perverse, not to mention the recent spouts of teenage suicide due to bullying over facebook. Facebook was good while it lasted, and by that I mean, when you just added people you knew, tagged photos of them and left them a comment, maybe arranged a night out. Now however, and I hate to let everyone down, but I’m not interested in adopting your sheep on FarmVille, or helping you reach the 1000 people you need to join your group so someone I don’t know will completely wax their entire body. I’d much rather sit in front of the TV, or play my Playstation. Oh wait….
