TheBanyanTree: Naked Fairies

[Margaret R. Kramer]

About 20 people were fired from a local company this week for sending and
receiving “offensive” email.  Evidently, most of the “offensive” email
involved off color jokes or pictures.  Some employees used a doctored Janet
Jackson picture from the Super Bowl exchanging Janet and Justin for Hillary
and George W. as a screensaver.  That screensaver got someone’s attention
and the hunt began.

A lot of people at my work place and I’m sure at other work places, too, use
their work email address for personal stuff.  And if the email police wanted
to get rid of people, how difficult would it be to scan through someone’s
email file and find a few off color jokes or pictures?  And then fire them?
They would have little legal recourse.  They wouldn’t be eligible for
unemployment compensation.  The company would be well rid of someone they
didn’t want around anymore or wanted to lay off without paying any
severance.

I don’t give out my work email address, so I rarely get anything from
outside sources that would be considered risqué. But my coworkers do forward
things they get and then the email in question goes round and round the
office.  Would we get fired for that?  The other company’s employees did.

Even though I don’t use my work email address for personal mail, I do check
my yahoo, my Lycos, and my earthlink email boxes while I’m at work.  I
believe our company has a program in place which monitors the computer
activity of all of us.  I think the program can monitor which internet sites
we visit, but I’m not sure how deeply it can monitor.  I think the big issue
would be is that we use the internet for non-work related activity during
work hours and based on that, the company could easily get rid of us.

In the last couple of months, my company has eliminated wearing denim on
Fridays, breaks (we only get a lunch break now – that’s to prevent the
smokers from going outside to smoke during the day), took away two holidays
(the day after Thanksgiving is one of them), and we can no longer work flex
time – we now have set hours.  It’s only a matter of time before this
technically challenged company begins to monitor in detail employee email
activity.

For years Ray would print out email jokes he received and bring them in to
share with his coworkers.  It was never a problem until a person saw one and
got offended and reported him to human resources.  His boss warned him about
it, but Ray, because he’s older and all these workplace rules have never
mattered to him, kept bringing the jokes in.  Most of the jokes were not off
color, but merely funny.  But they were jokes and it was against company
policy.  His boss suspended him for two days.  If Ray is brings in another
joke, he’ll be fired.  So companies really do watch this stuff.

I always buy a nice artsy calendar to decorate my cube.  I found a great one
featuring fairies.  But as I looked through the calendar’s pictures, a lot
of the fairies didn’t have clothes on and their breasts were exposed for all
to see.  Whoops, better not buy that one!  So I bought a unicorn calendar
instead.  Unicorns don’t have breasts.  But when I flipped my calendar to
March 2004, there was a naked fairy riding a unicorn.  Darn, I just couldn’t
get away from these naked fairies!  But I left it up in my cube hoping no
one would notice the small naked fairy.

So far no one has and I still have my job.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
Be a star!

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

Springtime is the land awakening.  The March winds are the morning yawn.
~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard in Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You