Emergency At Cube 8-609

Almost had a hear attack today, or at least a messy accident. When I got to my cube today, I logged into my computer like I do every day at work, put my bag down, hang up my jacket, and went to the ESPN site to check the Yankee score from last night. A white screen with my company header immediately popped up saying "NetCacheBlock: This site has been blocked and is not available on the company intranet. Please contact Tracey ______ if you believe this site is necessary to your job function." Hmmm. Well, it is pretty important, but probably not "necessary to my job function". It was still before 7:40am, and I didn't feel like thinking about it till after I had some coffee, so I ignored the warning. Plus, I'm so tired right now, maybe I typed the wrong site. I go down to the cafeteria, get my breakfast, pick up some work related things to do, then try to access Ebay. Again, the same message. "Oh Fuck!!" I thought. How the Hell am I gonna place the last bid on those Nike's that I've been watching the past 5 days?!? I then tried to get to my fantasy basketball site, Friendster, Myspace, and the BestBuy site. All the same messages. The room started to get a little warmer, and I didn’t feel like drinking my coffee anymore. I then typed my friend’s and my own Blog sites. No dice. Shit!!!!! That means these blockings are specific to me!!! Are my boss’ tracking my activities? Are they going to fire me? Are the Feds cracking down on me and secret agents going to crash through the windows and treat me like a minority by slamming my face on the floor like they do in COPS? My breathing was getting heavier. I felt like I was pregnant or something. How am I going to get through the day? I mean, am I going to have to look at work related material for the entire 8 hours? Should I ask my co-workers if they have the same problem, or is that just totally blowing my cover? Do I have legitimate reasons for being on these sites while at work? Yeah right!!! Like my job description included: Being up to date on every basketball, and Yankee score, bidding on hundreds of pairs of hard to find sneakers, observing profile pictures of my friends, my friends’ friends, and random attractive strangers, checking celebrity gossip, and monitoring cool parties/events going on in NYC. Fuck!!! I’m sooo busted!!! Damn, I better start looking at Monster.com, Hotjobs, and Rxrecruiters.com. But Shit!!! I can’t even check those sites now!! Fuck!!!!

I decide to try and get a grip by chewing some gum and not speaking to anyone. About a half hour and 4 pieces of gum later, an email pops into my Outlook from my co-worker Carole. She’s an older woman (just like every other person in my damn department). The email was addressed to all of my team members. It said “I emailed Tracey to explain the types of things I use the internet for” and she listed things like looking up address’ for doctors/hospitals that we are supposed to contact, drug/medication searches, and other responsible things that I’m SUPPOSED to be doing at work. It made me feel a tiny bit better, but I was still kind of nervous. I wanted to just cut and paste her email to Tracey, and then type on the bottom of it, “Me too. Love, John”.

As I racked my brain trying to explain why I visit my friend’s blogs several times a day, I heard a co-worker in a neighboring cube call Carole. He explained that he received the same “website blocked” message earlier when he tried to get directions to the airport, and that it was because the company was doing work on the server. He explained that all we had to do was restart our computers, and our internet accessibility would be reset. I thought to myself, “God dammit dude!!” Why didn’t you tell me that shit earlier!?!?!?” Relief had began to set into my mind, and that stress baby finally dropped out of my belly. Pretty horrible how bad I thought it would be to not have internet access at my work desk. Kind of ashamed of myself actually. Well, at least I don’t have to find another job. Guess I can tear up that letter of resignation now.