Well, fuckety do.
This afternoon the PTB send an email to the Seattle office which I will paraphrase below:
Dear Seattle Office,
I am not a fan of micromanaging but when severe abuse is occurring, I need to step in. This is why I am implementing a policy on personal internet usage effective immediately. Personal internet use shall be limited only to breaks. Each employee who works 8 hours is entitled to one one-hour lunch break and two ten minute breaks per day. These breaks may not be split up. (e.g. four five-minute breaks and two thirty-minute breaks). When you take a break you must let someone else in the office know. At the first sign of infraction of this policy, a verbal warning will be given. After that, the penalty will be assessed. This policy has been implemented to prevent animosity amongst employees and to prevent the dropping of morale.
-The Powers That Be
So, let's forget the fact that the true intended recipient of this email was very thinly disguised. While this “new policy” is, in theory, better than what my immediate boss had originally come up with (no personal internet at all ever), putting this policy in place means one, very debilitating thing: My computer will be watched like a goddamned hawk. Dom mentioned that IT people have a way of downloading internet traffic from computers on the network so that despite my impeccable daily deletion of history and cookies, they can still see exactly what I'm doing at all times. That is probably what has been happening. Every day, the brown-nosing spy has been reporting my comings and goings and no doubt having a blast trouble shooting ways to keep me in line. I recently caught wind of a little gossip that this guy was going to quit but then got a raise. So now he is probably kissing ass so as to keep the raises coming. No longer is he part of the underpaid proletariat. He is working his way up in the world by selling out his former equals. Now, more than ever, I want no part of this. But I talked it over with Dom and he suggested that I stick it out till the end of the month. That will put me at the end of our quarter so I can (provided they aren't COMPLETE bastards) collect my quarter-end bonus (which is contingent on whether or not I complete x, y and z throughout the quarter. And I always do. Because I'm a GOOD GODDAMNED WORKER). Then, in early July, I put in my notice. Whether or not I have anything lined up, I'm going to leave because I just can't fucking take it anymore. I have said this before but this time I REALLY REALLY mean it. I'm on the verge of becoming a really angry, joyless, bitter person (as opposed to a delightfully snarky person) as a result of working here and I that is something that I definitely don't want.
In the meantime, my work day is officially joyless. Tomorrow, I'm going to check out how hard it is to get on a computer at the library.
Effed by the Wind 