greyduck.net

Today’s award for “Mistake Made With the Best of Intentions” goes to whoever toggled the “load images for originating website only” option in Firefox on our sports station’s control room computer.

Have you ever seen ESPN’s site with no graphics whatsoever? I have. It’s sort of amusing, and a fair bit of useless as well. Were I more of a diehard webhead I’d go off on a usability rant, here, but luckily for you I can’t be bothered. Besides, you can’t swing a dead cat on the Web… actually, you just can’t swing a dead cat on the Web. Sure, you could make a Flash file or something that depicts the act of swinging a dead cat, but it’s just not the same thing.

Not, mind you, that I’ve ever swung a dead cat. I’m just saying.

Where was I? Oh, yes, rants about usability and accessibility are a dime a dozen, which should be making somebody a fair stack of money. Too bad that the “somebody” in question isn’t Me. Such is life.

Anyway, maybe I should install Adblock on that computer, since what I suspect the culprit intended was to stop having to look at all the damned advertisements…

There are some things I occasionally lose track of in my idealistic fervor. For instance:

• Managers get flatscreen monitors and their own color printers simply because they want them. Common sense and solid business reasons have nothing to do with it.
• Computers are allocated by snap decisions of middle managers. “Resource limitations,” “sensible priorities” and “budgetary constraints” are just so many meaningless phrases.
• Appreciation is best expressed, after an overworked and underpaid lackey has just moved heaven and earth to accomodate your poorly-conceived whims, by a simple “Thanks, I really appreciate it” and not, say, in crisp clean bills of reasonable denomination.
• The people doing the bulk of the work should under no circumstances have the gadgetry necessary to do so. Gadgetry is too valuable of a status symbol to be wasted in that fashion.
• Kiting off for the day less than five minutes after you’ve called your computer tech over to your office for support is a perfectly reasonable practice. It’s not like he’d need you to actually demonstrate the problem in question when he arrives, after all.
• And last but most assuredly not least, nothing is ever up for discussion. Being decisive means flattening all opposing viewpoints. This is, after all, a zero-sum game we’re playing.

I love my job. I even like most of the people I work with. I hate, however, the general corporate mindset. I hate it a whole lot.