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In the
last few months, economists have been going nuts with recent studies
that show the typical American worker, particularly those in the
technical and office sectors, keeps getting more and more productive.
After years of decline, suddenly the typical office grunt or programmer
is reaching levels of efficiency previously only seen in Japanese
car manufacturers, and nobody has an explanation for it. Increased
layoffs and consolidation of core businesses don't seem to do
much good, and the unemployment rate is still obscene for all
of the noise made about how employers need fresh bodies, so it's
not the fear of finding a new job in the middle of a depression.
Everyone keeps pointing to the computer installed on every desk,
without knowing why.
We can thank
Microsoft for this. By claiming its Web browser is an integral part
of the Windows operating system, Bill Gates and crew have managed
to develop the first new model of morale motivator and efficiency
developer since the invention of the cattle prod and the rectal
pear. No matter the company, and no matter the environment, everyone
who uses a computer made after 1995 generally has a Web browser
on the desktop, and this little beauty is responsible for the increase
of office productivity.
Surely, you say,
the boost in productivity is due to all of the great Web-based work
solutions making the rounds? Maybe the addition of browser-run databases
and corporate intranets has something to do with it? Nope and nope.
Contrary to popular image, the typical American worker is a lazy
and selfish brute, often too lazy to pull his or her pants down
to take a crap, and the Web browser milks efficiency from that.
Considering a
typical office environment, maybe only 15 percent of the workforce
actually does anything approximating gainful work in a typical 40-hour
week. It takes energy to wake up after a typical previous evening
of watching TV and snarfing Doritos, so the first two hours of the
day are pretty much shot. After the first break in the morning,
the day is dedicated to personal phone calls and hour-long potty
breaks until lunch, which always needs time to digest. After a semi-siesta,
it's time to do something to perpetuate the illusion of being a
contributing member of the workforce, so a little bit of paper shuffling
appears before the afternoon break, and of course it's futile to
expect anybody to do anything that close to quitting time.
In the old days,
these slackers would get bored around 10 ayem, and go out and pester
their co-workers; now, they sit in their cubicles and Web surf all
day, leaving the actual conduction of business to the two or three
persons in every corporation who feel guilty about not putting in
a full day for their paychecks. Better yet, the real indolent slobs
spend so much time farting around on the Web they inevitably lose
their jobs, so the workaholics chuckle smugly and redouble their
efforts. This also helps in the cases of those addicted to porn
or gambling, where they're removed from the worker pool long before
they taint the company's reputation with their dirty little secrets.
An even more
important factor in the increase of productivity lies with the disappearance
of management. Before Web-enabled offices became the norm, the explosion
of MBAs across the country meant at least one smarmy manager was
micromanaging everyone in sight. Without fail, when left to their
own forms of entertainment, these geniuses always presented some
new form of "improvement process" that came to them while slipping
Rohypnol to their dates in college. This "improvement" invariably
slowed productivity to a crawl before the employees privately decided
to go back to the old methods, letting the manager or department
head take credit (and subsequent bonus) for the plan. Were the US
business community an army, the troops would simply frag their idiot
commanders and go home, but since this behavior is the same everywhere,
the troops simply wait for the MBAs to expire from alcohol poisoning.
Nowadays, just give a manager golf scores on ESPN, stock reports
on E*Trade, and the obvious benefits of HotSluts.Com and Pharmacy.Com
(for their Propecia prescriptions), and the little bastards are
all in their offices, masturbating like caged apes and leaving everyone
else alone for more constructive venues.
Unlimited Web
access also improves the lot for the perpetually disgruntled, leaving
them free to jobhunt on company time instead of destroying what
little morale remains after the boss finishes with "improvements."
Until the Web browser came along, the only outlets for the dissatisfied
was incessant kvetching and spraying the office with tracers from
an M-16'; now that they're quietly trying to escape via Monster.Com,
the collateral damage from their leave-taking generally doesn't
take out their co-workers. (This attitude also improves the situation
with contract workers: Give them the opiate of the wage slave when
they have nothing to do, and they're much less likely to boobytrap
important documents with macro viruses and install Back Orifice
on the main company server.)
Access even acts
as a relief valve for the burned-out. Why take a lunch break to
go bookhunting, with the attendant dangers to the company of that
person leaving and not bothering to come back, when it's just as
easy to buy books through Amazon.Com during lunch?
E-mail is not
only one of the great inventions of the modern era, it's also one
of the major factors in the current productivity boom. Both e-mail
and faxes offer equal opportunities to send every friend and relative
on the planet each crackheaded "happy thought" and vaguely ribald
joke that comes down the Interstate, minus the expense of fax paper,
toner, and the separate phone connection. By sending these as e-mail,
not only are huge tracts of the Pacific Northwest saved from paper
logging, but the practice saves the eyes of those who would otherwise
squint and strain at every thirtieth-generation fax, trying to decide
if the image therein was of Julia Roberts, the Loch Ness Monster,
or both. Best of all, those tired of receiving the same sappy "Friendship
Bear" message can both delete the message and set up mail filters
to keep the sender from polluting their mailboxes ever again.
With this in
mind, newspapers should stop the incessant articles about "the dangers
of Internet abuse" and embrace the concept of unlimited, unfiltered
Web access for every American employee. Without the Web acting as
a giant filter for the incompetent and malingering among us, the
United States would have been taken over by Canada long ago, and
only a fraction of us know how to speak Canadian.
Copyright
© 2000 Paul Riddell All Rights Reserved
Paul T.
Riddell is a Michigan-born, Texas-raised disgruntled malingerer
who uses his free time to maintain "The Healing Power of Obnoxiousness"
at http://www.hpoo.com.
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