Some people are addicted to coffee or painkillers. I am addicted to Gmail. My first job out of college was an admin position with a company whose policy towards personal email could be summed up in four words: “don’t ask, don’t tell.” As long as I met my deadlines and maintained a professional image, they had no problem with my Gmail habit, and I suspected my coworkers had similar Yahoo and Hotmail fixations.
Then the unthinkable happened. I got a new job at a company with a strict “no personal email” policy. I could do without the office birthday parties and the happy hours. No casual Fridays? No problem, I thought. But nine hours a day with no Gmail? That was almost unbearable. I’d dash out to the public library during lunch so I could check-in with friends and plan our post-office-hell outings. I needed those fifteen minutes of Gmail like others need their coffee or cigarette breaks. (Note to assistants in a similar predicament: you can still send messages attached to news stories: “Check out this article on terrorism. P.S. my boss is a huge moron.” I used this to send out S.O.S. signals when I really needed to vent, but unfortunately, I had no way to access responses.)
My pangs of withdrawal continued until I got a mysterious email from an AOL address I didn’t recognize. I clicked through my spam blockers, which informed me the email contained content “forbidden under company policy.” More sleuthing revealed that the email had been sent to me (apparently by mistake) at 10:13 a.m. from the AOL account of one of our VPs. The “forbidden content”? An invite to her holiday party. From then on, I figured if AOL was good enough for a VP, it was good enough for me. -Submitted by “Bored in Boston”
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