"Idle hands are the Devil's Workshop" has never been so true as last week at work.
Working in the Information Technology department of a Fortune 500 company is kind of like being in the military - there is a lot of "hurry up and wait". Projects and tickets need to be addressed swiftly and efficiently - but if you do that too efficiently, you lose the war, and your employer will figure that they don't need three people to handle the workload of four, since you can all stay ahead of the game. When they figure that out, they'll axe one of your headcount the moment they have a budgetary excuse. Too much efficiency can easily lead to one of your team on the unemployment line while the others work like dogs to only stay slightly behind.
When I went to work for my company, everything was broken, from file-sharing to printing. Backup and recovery procedures were this theoretical desired state, and hadn't been addressed in months. Sales and Marketing were spending a fortune driving to Kinkos to produce their slick slide handouts and so forth because it was quicker - and probably cheaper - than trying to make the Tektronics printer in the corner actually do something.
Fortunately, the place was in such bad shape, that I sought and gained approval for two more people for my team, pretty much without any argument; I'd learned long ago that the best way to get what I need from Finance is to present them not with what it might cost, but what it would cost the company to not do it my way.
In any case, within 90 days we had the IT spending under control (I saved the equivalent of my staff's salary on cutting out the waste on parts alone; we were hiring two - three people a month, and I cut an average of $650 per person by establishing standard builds and getting custom quotes from the right vendors. The LAN was fixed, and regularly backed up, and printing was just as effortless as the HP commercials claimed it could be. We rotated helpdesk duties among the team, made sure that our resource queue was clean, and had a reserve of parts and systems so that we could react with maximum flexibility when the company had to move swiftly on a project or new hire.
In short, we each had about 30 hours a week of work, and had enough time to web browse, do personal technical projects, and take long lunches (so long as we kept coverage). However, we made sure to keep up the illusion of chaos and nose-to-the-grindstone work - I didn't want to lose my team because we'd made an impossible job easy!
Of course, it did give us plenty of time for surfing. Ordinarily, surfing Internet sites for naughty pictures is a stupid thing at work; proxy servers could block sites, and certainly keep track of what sites are visited, and by whom.
Not that we had to worry - we were the ones who did the audit of our proxy servers...
And so - I was bored, and doing my civic duty to vote - I was browsing through a site featuring the breasts of amateur models, and giving those lovely ladies (and the not-s0-lovely ladies - who, one must imagine, have more courage than the knockouts. The model-wannabees always get rave reviews by the HNG - Horny Net Geek - contingent; it takes no courage to stand and receive complement after complement. Now, the real women - those who won't be appearing in Playboy anytime soon - have real courage, putting themselves out there for not only the complements, but the inevitable jerk comments made by smart-ass sixteen year olds who don't yet understand that a warm smile is worth 20 firm, unreal, surgery-induced bustlines). Honestly, I was passing out "10" scores indiscriminately - why not make them feel good about themselves, and honoring the courage as well as the beauty?
In any case... I voted, and the site automagically brought up the next image. One of the nicest set of breasts I'd yet seen came to life in front of my eyes. Breasts that were nicely-sized. Breasts that had large, puckered nipples that seemed to beg for my lips and teeth. Smooth, clear alabaster skin. An adorable little mole above the left nipple - that some philistine would have undoubtedly airbrushed out of a professional photo shoot, but whose presence made the woman less of an icon and more real, more personable, and ultimately more desirable.
And then I saw the face.
I knew that face. I'd seen it speak up a hundred times in the management meetings, always with cogent, intelligent comments. She was a consummate professional in the Marketing field. She was, if not a friend, then certainly someone with who I was friendly. Her name was Giana, and she was the woman at work upon whom I'd had a secret crush.
Part of me wondered what I should do, while most of me screamed "Do nothing!". The spike of my desire was tempered with a sense of shame - that I shouldn't be looking. Of course, that was ridiculous - she hadn't put her picture up on that site to be ignored, after all. On one level or another, she had an exhibitionist streak (although - and probably smartly so - that was probably a wise choice on her part. See? She was smart!), and - like anyone - wanted positive feedback. The only thing I wasn't sure about was whether or not she wanted it from someone she knew, however superficially. Knowing that every day she'd see me, and that I'd seen her naked body.
Or at least her naked upper body - the picture was cut off at the waist.
In fact, the head was cut off, too. I began to mingle my jealously that someone else had gotten to play photographer - and what else, perhaps? - with her, and had cut her head off. He should have included the top of her head, adjusted the gamma a bit in Photoshop, and... bah. I was nitpicking. What I wanted was for him to have made it a full-body shot, with her wearing some sexy panties, showing off her legs and ass. Or maybe her pubis...
