The thing with Office Internetz

Let us suppose that you are a sane and sophisticated kind of gentleman (or gentle lady or at least gentle). Now suppose that you’re in an office which is very Indian type in nature where the Internet access is managed by an IT Admin team. You want to check a certain website which will help you to learn more about the work you are dealing with. You want to type Oracle but end up typing Racle*. Now this happens, all of a sudden:

A new blue/black/Eye-Blinding-White page pops up with a text which shouts:

Message:

CONTENT BLOCKED.

HOW COULD YOU OPEN THIS, YOU FOOL? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT CATEGORY THIS SITE BELONGS TO? YOU’RE AN IDIOT OF FIRST DEGREE AND WE HAVE NOTED DOWN YOUR EMPLOYEE ID AND NAME. HAHA. OPEN THIS SITE ONE MORE TIME AND THEN YOU SEE, HOW WE WOULD DRAG YOUR CARCASS OUT OF THE OFFICE, PULLING YOU FROM TIE-END AND INSULT YOUR GENERATIONS AS BONUS. HOW DARE YOU…

Reason:

THIS WEBSITE IS BLOCKED YOU DOUCHE! YOU KNOW WHAT BLOCKED MEANS? IT MEANS YOU CANNOT OPEN THIS HERE. LOLZ VIA QWUT! GO TO YOUR HOME AND TRY THIS YOU PERVERT.

URL:

http://www.racle.com

This is like the guy in the ad where he enacts an Air Conditioner and gets southpaw-ed when electricity turns back on all of a sudden. Or you are sitting on a peaceful protest near India Gate and suddenly you feel a rib-tickling sensation thanks to Police Lathi which suddenly hits you again at the same spot with the intensity of a Gayle six. You poor fellow didn’t even know that you had just made a typo in the address bar. These blocked-stuff messages are written in such polite language which is as smooth as Sandpaper is. While they could have simply said that Sir, may be you are trying to open a site which is deemed inappropriate in office environment. Kindly recheck the spelling and proceed. Or aww, what are you trying to open mister 😉 Please, please understand that you are in office. Opening such stuff will only attract eyeballs so just work and avoid such scenes no?

Telling from personal experience of (not mine but) many of my very gentlemanly friends, utmost care should be taken to type anything using your office keyboard. Office, nowadays follow strict policies which prohibit you to even think any URL which is not safe at work. Still, if you deliberately want to view some pictures to feel refreshed, only a disconnected LAN Cable can save you. While I am not telling you my personal views about what should you type and watch, but this watching business is a very serious business. While it is still OK to go through such recreational stuff in places of lesser importance such as legislative assembly, it is strictly banned to ever utter those keywords in offices. Surfing such websites, watching videos or pictures or even reading ‘NSFW’ text might land you into trouble and it could even lead to termination, with insult and embarrassment guaranteed. Even if you are reading stuff related to Yoga, even that might be ‘ZOMG, LOOK AT HIM, WHAT IS HE WATCHING! ARREST HIM!’ level offensive for some people in office. Policies related to harassment at workplace are cool like that. When even movie channels which show subtitles change ‘Damn’ to ‘Darn’ and ‘Shit’ to ‘Stuff’ and blur Katrina Kaif flashing a chilam, office IT admins should take matter into their own hands, isn’t it?

Now when corporates have taken the ‘sustainable’ initiative, why should the government lag behind? Recently one flying news snippet of government trying to check and control the growing number of inappropriate content websites came online, Internet users took it very seriously. While government was just worried that websites showcasing child abuse and obscene stuff should be brought under the radar, people on Twitter interpreted as if the government is planning to ban such stuff from view, storing, sharing and of course, making. Some people were so afraid to hear this that they hid their Hard disks and CD/DVDs under the ground while others were so offended that they decided to watch whatever they could before it would become illegal.

So kindly behave and avoid such scenes in the office at least. Cleaning history and all won’t help.

P.S.: In engineering colleges, your ‘net’ worth is often measured by the amount of ‘stuff’ you have in your ‘kitty’ but you cannot remain popular following the same strategy anymore. You are not Sachin Tendulkar, please.

* Don’t bother, I have checked that now Racle has been brought down but it was a blocked site in 2010 April surely.