Announced last week at my workplace:
In an effort to standardize some of the settings on desktop and laptop PCs… and to create an environment that is more secure, the following changes will take effect during the week of November 5:
- Screen savers on all PCs will be updated to a [corporate logo] standard screen saver. Users will no longer have the option of changing their screen savers….
- All desktop backgrounds will be updated to a [corporate logo] standard background. Users will no longer have the option of creating desktop backgrounds.
I am happy to report, however, that the spirit of protest is alive and well: almost immediately someone taped signs around the building that read “Just Say No to Uniform Screen Savers.”
This is a developing story. It remains to be seen whether management will relent from the extraordinary pressure put upon it by the signs, whether management will find some way to punish the sign makers for their insolence, or whether Scott Adams will find the story just annoying enough that he writes it into a Dilbert strip.
God. Corporatespeak is probably the most cant-saturated language ever devised. Why does security have to be thrown in?
Last week I saw a sign on the bus that took 4 sentences to announce that they’d be reducing the amount of buses on that line. I wish I could remember the exact wording, it was a beaut. Somehow it was spun in such a way that they were doing this to make us, the customers, happier.
by JH—Oct 30, 08:58 AM
I left out the middle bullet. It speaks more to the point of security than those two. Essentially, new screen saver will have the password-protect automatically turned on. What’s incredible is how that was stuck between two points that are more about enforcing homogeneity than anything.
by greg—Oct 30, 09:14 AM
FRAUD
by JH—Oct 30, 10:45 AM
If only you knew how much.
by greg—Oct 30, 10:49 AM
I once worked as a grunt at Greg’s place of work for about two weeks, which was how long it took to earn enough money to pay for the trip to NYC I’d just taken. I was going to stay on and earn more money, but I couldn’t stomach it.
by Laura—Oct 31, 06:22 PM