The Return of the Brick

Stress relief, we all need it, and most go out of their way to find it. I’m a pretty laid back person, so a beer, a lipper or a glass of J.D. usually will suffice. But for the most part, partaking in those things is frowned on at work, well other than the lipper, which I can get away with as long as I don’t pack my lip so full I look like an African tribesman with a lip implant.

For me writing this blog is a form of stress relief that I can get away with at work. Most of the BS I post takes me all of an hour to write, and I’m not much for editing, so it goes right up.

Now as those of you who visit this site may have noticed, there hasn’t been much posted here in quite awhile. Some of that has to do with the NFL being in its dead season. But more so it had to do with me finding another outlet.

I’ve been playing this stupid web-based football sim called Goallineblitz. So while I waited on hold for contractors while they came up with a new set of excuses, I could jump on, check my players and see how my team was doing.

For the most part, I was on the site for about a half hour a day. Check a couple things, and get on with my work. And honestly, no real thought was involved so it was a minimal distraction to keep me from pulling out my rapidly receding hair.

Unfortunately, the geniuses at IT have decided that Goallineblitz is a threat to the company and have blocked the site here at work. Look, I understand the desire to have all of us toil away like robots for 60 hours a week, but this site was hardly worthy of their concern.

I understand that the companies policy is to block non-work related sites, and there is no way to justify Goallineblitz as being work related. But there are far more egregious wastes of company time going on than clicking on a web site.

I have multiple co-workers here who spend hours a day discussing their exceedingly boring lives with each other. I really don’t care about your weekend, your kids, the Red Sox or your new home hunt. I don’t care that you just got around to seeing National Treasure, that your softball team got spanked yesterday, or that your fat ass was wiped out after a 10 minute bike ride.

Then there are the smokers who take a 15 minute break every other hour to stink the place up, the group that needs a twice a day half hour coffee run and the group that disappears every day for lunch at 11:30 and shows back up at 1:30.

There are far more egregious examples of wasting the companies time than checking a web-site for a couple minutes at a time. And then there is the seemingly random way that web-sites are chosen for blockage. I can go to sporting news, or yahoo sports, but not ESPN (not that anyone should go to ESPN). I can go to 20 different fantasy football sites, but not Yahoo’s.
I bust my ass at work, my regular workweek is 60+ hours, and that doesn’t count when I work Saturday’s or bring work home. I have moved from Connecticut to Pittsburgh for the betterment of the company (although Pittsburgh is a huge improvement over New Haven). My work is done on time, usually is right the 1st time, and I have been commended many times for going the extra mile. I enjoy my job most days, and I’m pretty good at it.

So if I’m getting my shit done, and am making good money for the company, why the fuck can’t I waste my free time as I see fit. You know whom I blame, not IT, or the higher ups that still can’t figure out how to answer an email. I blame the fucks that waste the Companies time every other imaginable way. Because, you know that after they finish regaling 3 different coworkers 3 different times with tails of little Billy’s tee ball game, they then go and log on to their favorite time wasting website.

Thanks to you boring dickwads, I have lost yet another small bit of freedom in my life. You fucks affect me more than terrorists, your lucky that George Bush is probably one of you, or he would send the CIA to your door. Actually, no, you are helping him deplete our freedoms so you’re cool with him.

So who is the winner here? The waste of space 80%, no they lost the site also, the company, no everyone, including me, will just find another outlet. No there is only 1 real winner here. YOU, the Brickinthebox reader, because footballs almost here, and I have time to waste. That’s right:

I’M BACK.