Today's post comes from the syndicated column "News Quirks," compiled by Roland Sweet from nation-wide press clippings... An asterisk (*) indicates an interjected thought, which I will state at the conclusion of this idiom of idleness.
Ex-Employee of the Month
After her employer told Emmalee Bauer, 25, to stop using company time to make entries in her personal, handwritten journal, she began recording the journal on her company computer. The Des Moines Register reported that during the next several months, Bauer composed a book-length document of 300 single-spaced pages detailing her effort to avoid work, which, besides keeping the journal, included shopping online, playing games, and reading message boards. "This typing thing seems to be doing the trick," she wrote. "It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important." She also wrote, "I am only here for the money * and, lately, for the printer access. *"
A supervisor discovered the journal and fired Bauer for misuse of company time. Bauer disputed her firing, insisting that the journal helped her deal with anxiety and frustration *. Administrative Law Judge Susan Ackerman denied her request for unemployment benefits, declaring that the journal demonstrated a refusal to work, as well as Bauer's "amusement at getting away with it."
First thought: "I'm only here for the money.." Fine. You don't like your job? Go find a better one. After all, to keep this journal going, you need to buy pens, paper, an ISP, whatever...
Next: "...Printer access"??? You couldn't be satisfied with keeping your literary laziness in a hard-drive file? Now your book-sized story of sloth is so much easier for your superiors to find!
Finally, Anxiety about what? Getting caught? Putting food on the table? Paying bills? Actually finding satisfaction in your personal accomplishments?
It's people like this that President Clinton had in mind when he developed welfare reform to eliminate abuses of the system... ...Which still continue today. (I hear the Oompa-loompa song in the background...)
Sunday, April 15, 2007
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