Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
Cyberslacking epidemic
BY MARK GIMEIN
(11/24/99)
Cyberslacking has become the latest bogeyman of corporate Internet anxiety. We expect people to juggle all their responsibilities and multitask their way through the workda.y Why should that not include a little online personal business as well? We are rapidly moving toward a work force that will meld business and personal life into one. The workday will be all day and personal time will be where we can make it. Management needs to throw out the book on keeping employees under the corporate thumb, and find some common ground in defining individual and company goals. Successful businesses are, and will continue to be, those that give their employees a reason to succeed.
-- S. Sloan
If management doesn't trust employees to act responsibly on the job, then why did they hire those employees? I submit that any manager who keeps an employee that can't be trusted is an idiot and deserves whatever she gets. As for Internet use for personal reasons while at work, I plead guilty. Last year, rather than take two hours off work to go to the secretary of state's office, I renewed my drivers license in about 10 minutes via the Internet. Was I wrong to use the Internet at work to save taking two hours off? I don't think so. Clear communication and trust from managers has a far greater effect on productivity than Internet use for personal reasons.
-- Jack Farrow
The persistant annoyance of recurrent hangnails -- cured!
BY TOM TOMORROW
(11/29/99)
While I can appreciate the underlying humor in this cartoon, I find the resulting "punch line" appalling and offensive. First, it promotes the idea that Tourette Syndrome is nothing more than "potty mouth" -- when in fact only a small percentage of people with TS actually have coprolalia. Second, it promotes the idea that coprolalia itself is nothing more than "potty mouth" when nothing could be further from the truth.
Cartoonists purporting to be social commentators should perhaps do some research, and use some intelligent thought before succumbing to the idiocy of the masses.
-- Barb Mientus
TOM TOMORROW RESPONDS ...
This cartoon was meant to satirize the pharamaceutical industry advertisements promoting medications with potential side effects worse than the affliction they remedy. In my list of satirically intended side effects for the cartoon's fictional hangnail medication, I included Tourette's Syndrome, which has led a few TS sufferers to take me to task. No disparagement was intended toward TS victims. The disease was chosen at random because it is, with all due respect, a condition most people would find undesirable.
The vice president's stiff comedy
BY DANIEL KURTZMAN
(11/29/99)
Daniel Kurtzman pondered why America hasn't been alerted to the fact that Al Gore has a sense of humor. My theory: The Gore campaign must have hired the same consultant who told Bob Dole he should stifle his sense of humor. And we all know how things turned out for Bob. I hate to say it, but our nation's capitol is pretty much devoid of any sense of humor or personality.
-- Jayme Deerwester
Silver Spring, Md.
If the intention of the writer was to show a man with a sense of humor, all I could see was man making a jerk of himself, and doing it at the expense of others. I think the American people need a man of honor, who should be willing to tell the president what he really thinks, instead of making fun of him behind his back. Somehow I am not laughing.
-- Patricia Ancona
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