Clicks and Flying Potatoes

Are you gainfully employed?  What I mean by gainfully employed is that you have a job where you can sustain yourself and perhaps a couple of dependents AND have health and retirement benefits?  If yes, congratulations.  Sure, there are plenty of jobs out there.  The caveat is that those jobs don't pay anything and they don't lead to a sustainable career.  It's really the modern version of slavery.  The tip jar on the counter is dressed up panhandling.

OK.........back on topic.  You have a job.  Contratulations.

Now, it's about keeping that job.  Yes, we all have little games that are played.  There's the office shark who is sweet to your face but is stabbing you in the back talking trash about you to everybody else so you get passed up on the promotion.  There's the demanding boss who is looking for blind loyalty much like Hitler.

Let's focus on management for a moment and the demanding, manipulating boss.  You know, the boss who sends out emails at zero dark thirty on a Sunday.  Boss is really phishing to see who is actually reading them and when.  With the advances in technology many employers send email with tracking capabilities to see who opens them and when.  If there's additional information, say a video, it tracks if you watched it.  Boss receives a report as to which employees open the email and also when.  It also tracks who opened the embedded attachments.  It's a thermometer to your do-I-give-a-shit about the company or not. 

Creepy and intrusive, right?  I miss the old days of the company newsletter that arrived via snail mail.  Nobody could track if you actually read it or not. 

Remember the golden rule:  NOTHING YOU DO ONLINE IS PRIVATE.

This is how you beat them at their own game.  Always open the emails from Boss.  Never delete them without opening.  If you're looking for brownie points, click on the embedded articles and videos.  While that's all playing, go about your business.  Get coffee.  Do laundry.  Whatever.  Mute the volume on the company propaganda media and open up something amusing like this.

Boss thinks you actually care.