Below is a replica of the page that appeared in the editorial section of PCW.
It's a bit waffly, but then he does have a whole page to fill every month.
Eventually he gets to the main point of the article and mentions The Polos of Death.

 


EDITORIAL

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All work and no play
A bit of surfing doesn't do any harm and could even raise morale, says Riyad Emeran
M any companies think the Internet is a major distraction for office
workers and limit employee Internet use during work time. For example my wife's company only allows employees to use the Internet for personal reasons outside work hours, and anyone who doesn't need access for their job doesn't get it.

However, most companies tend to enforce Internet policies that combat misuse, such as downloading pornography, or excessive use of file sharing utilities like Napster. These kinds of policies are understandable both for legal and practical reasons, after all, even a T1 connection is going to get pretty slow with hundreds of workers downloading the latest Stereophonics album.

Employers generally consider time to be money - every hour not spent working is an hour that an employer is paying employees money for nothing.

There's no denying that the Internet can be a huge waste of time. I can sometimes spend hours on end surfing from one website to the next without really accomplishing anything, although this tends to be at home rather than in the office - honestly. Bu3 occasionally random surfing will turn up something that is of particular relevance even though I wasn't specifically looking for it at the time.

Now, the odd random find aside, most of us will find little that's relevant to our work when we're idly wandering around the web during office hours, but contentious as it may be, I'm not entirely convinced that it's such a bad thing.

A full day sifting in front of a computer in an office can be a mind-numbing experience, quite literally. Most people will tell you that the longer they spend working at a set task, the less focused they become and ultimately productivity

will suffer as a result. That's not to suggest that spending hours surfing the Internet is good for productivity, because it quite obviously isn't But, taking a few minutes break from the grind to cast your eye over your favourite website may stop you getting bogged down and make you more productive when you fire up that spreadsheet or word processor again.

Online shopping could also be more of a blessing than a curse for companies. Whether it's ordering the latest DVD on your list or booking your holiday, you may waste less time doing it from your computer than trying to squeeze in a visit to the shops during your lunch hour and coming back to work late as a result.

But there's one thing that a bit of personal web surfing can do better than anything else, and that's raise team morale. Believe it or not, we're pretty busy here at PCW and getting the magazine out every month can be a difficult and stressful experience.

With a heavy workload and tight deadlines it's easy to get snowed under and

We're not
robots
and even
the most
dedicated
worker
can get
bored

sometimes a bit of a break and some light relief is exactly what we need to get back on track. This kind of distraction usually comes in the form of an amusing website one of the team has stumbled across.

It's common to see most of the PCW team huddled around a single computer watching the latest bit of humorous web wizardry. We'll watch, laugh about it, chat for a few minutes and then go back to our respective desks feeling a bit better and throw ourselves back into our work.

The office favourite at the moment seems to be www.eugenemirman.com. This is a truly bizarre site where you'll find a very strange-looking child singing (and I use the word very broadly) various well-known songs. It doesn't seem to matter how stressed or down anyone on the team is, after a few verses from Eugene the laughter starts to flow.

Another one that brings a smile to the team is www.thepolosofdeath.com, a downloadable movie starring Boba Fett and some rather dangerous Polos.

Of course, I'm willing to accept that Internet access is open to abuse, but then so is almost anything else in an office. Telephones, stationery and even time keeping can all be abused by employees and result in relative loss of revenue to the company. But I think being too strict with Internet access could do more harm than good. After all, being able to fire off a quick email to a friend in work time is preferable to phoning him for half an hour.

We're not robots and even the most dedicated worker can get bored and become less productive, and the Internet can inject a bit of relief and some team bonding into an average day in the office.

So, strange as it may sound, a few wasted hours a week could in fact equate to a more rather than less productive workforce.