John Butlerasks what we did all day in the office before the internet
Even before I pose the question I'm starting to feel like a rat. I apologise to the secret society I'm a member of, but what did we do all day in the office before the internet? I don't want to blow the whistle on the average drone, because I've been there before and I will be again.
The reason I finally resolved to ask the question publicly is that I know every boss is at it, too: shopping online, updating weird blogs and instant-messaging on the company dime. I know they're doing it for the same simple reason that Mallory tackled Everest: because it's there.
The boss is probably covertly web-surfing far more than you are. He's got that corner office with the door that locks. It's far trickier out by the cubicles, where you have to keep a second window open on your computer screen (usually an Excel spreadsheet) and your left thumb and middle finger poised over the alt and tab keys, ready to toggle between the windows with approaching footfall.
I can barely use Excel, but I always used it as my decoy screen. I secretly enjoyed the absurdity of looking at Excel as if I knew what I was doing. Other people prefer to kill the monitor when they hear the footsteps, but I always thought it highly suspicious to be caught staring at a black screen.
In answer to my question, I can sense a chorus of pleased voices saying, "Before the internet we worked," to which I say: "Lies!" I call bullshit on every one of you here and now, and I could prove it, too. If I put each of you in a room, and I sat you at one of the 486 PCs that you used in the dark ages, and I launched a little game called solitaire, then we'd be getting somewhere. And if I produced a revolver from one pocket and your puppy from the other and told you that if you didn't solve the puzzle the dog was going to get it . . . Don't tell me you played it in your own time. Do you know how sad that sounds?
Anyway, I'm not talking about skiving off when there is legitimate work to be done. No way. I'm talking about the vacuum that inevitably appears from time to time, when a diligent worker finds himself with the out tray empty and decides, for once, not to hustle for exciting new tasks.
I worked in an office before there were computers and to the best of my recollection, when there was no work to be done but going home was not an option - at 10am, for example - there was covert reading. The underoccupied temp brought in a small paperback or browsed through corporate brochures - or the phone book, if the pickings were lean. Cigarette breaks were good, too. You could shave off a good two hours of spirit-crushing boredom, huddled outside in the rain with Linda from accounts.
Since I quit cigarettes, the internet has provided a slightly healthier vent for my compulsive nature. Even though a downloaded application instantly notifies me when I get new mail I have grown used to refreshing my browser 15 times a minute to check, just in case. The obsessive in me recently discovered another playground, and I barely have time to check for e-mail any more. If you are fortunate enough not to be kept from the internet by a company firewall (for shame, bosses, for shame), Facebook could help bridge the gap between assignments very nicely.
In recent weeks Facebook has taken over my life. Before, I was impervious to wave after wave of invitations to join social-networking sites, even as they crashed past the bulwark of my spam filter and into my inbox. As I'm not a musician I was never inclined to sign up to MySpace, with its hideous graphic interface and dogged insistence on playing the same song, from the beginning, every time you reloaded the page of a promising local band. As for Bebo, I could only chuckle when I read in the Sunday papers about slutty Dublin teenagers hooking up there. Yeah, it's definitely Bebo's fault.
I don't know why I have now succumbed to Facebook, which is not a great improvement on those other sites. I have no idea what its actual purpose is. You put up a profile page with some of your personal details, then you search for friends with their own profile pages. When you find one you invite them to acknowledge you as their friend. If they do so you are listed on their page as their friend, and they on your page. And then . . . that's it. Yet some elemental weakness in my character has been tapped by this collecting of friends, and I have been sent spinning back into adolescence.
They used to say don't try this at home - actually, I think it's wise to stay away from this one at work. As you trudge to the office for another day at the grind, think of my disappearing sanity as I trawl the internet for people I may or may not have met 15 years ago. Think of me and thank your lucky stars that you have an office to go to and a firewall to hide behind.
John Butler blogs at http://lozenge.wordpress.com.