Today I learned that the owner of the small company I work for has been monitoring my Internet usage. And presumably everybody else's. Furthermore I learned that he knows, or could theoretically know, the address of every single web page I have accessed, and how often, and at exactly what time. No doubt, www.mudcat.org shows up there a million times. Fortunately, I don't look at porn sites. For that matter, I can't remember ever looking at a site that I would be embarrassed to have him know about. But the sheer volume of traffic has apparently raised some eyebrows, because the owner told my boss, and my boss told me.

The weird thing, the really strange thing, is that she wasn't SUPPOSED to tell me. What she was supposed to do was get me to rearrange my office so that I would sit facing the wall, and so that anybody who walks around behind me could see my screen. Now that's something I would never agree to do unless there was a good reason. The ostensible reason is to make room for a third person to share my office. There are 2 of us here already, and it's a big room. But when I began to argue that the rearrangement she had in mind wasn't strictly necessary, even WITH a third person, she told me the REAL reason.

I'm not the only person affected by this. There will be a massive rearrangement of office space, and all the programmers will be squeezed into less space to make room for another department that is expanding. Part of the plan is to get all the programmers to sit facing the wall. Evidently the owner hopes that he will thus get more work out of us without having to deal with the embarrassment of either (1) ASKING us to work harder, or (2) admitting that he monitors our Internet usage. Neither will he have to do the DIFFICULT task of actually measuring our productivity.

Have you ever noticed that in any company, anyone with any status, which means anyone who has moveable furniture and room to move it, ALWAYS arranges his office so that he sits facing the door? And that only the PEONS are forced to sit facing the wall? I have never seen ANYONE choose this arrangement for himself, when there is any choice.

I once heard of someone having a rear-view mirror, taken from a car, mounted on his computer monitor. I'm thinking of getting one. And I'm thinking of having it engraved, "OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE LESS IMPORTANT THAN THEY APPEAR."

Any other suggestions?