Enough with 'boss buttons,' let them watch basketball in the office

Friday morning, I walked past a colleague's desk and--I swear--saw a basketball game on her computer screen. When I got closer, however, all I could see were a bunch of very official-looking bars and charts.

(Credit: NCAA)

She was working hard. Real hard. Then she laughed, hit a key, and flipped back to the basketball game in a clear indication that I'm either a boss people can be honest with or a boss who doesn't exactly strike fear into the rank and file. Or both.

The "boss button" and silly office decorum strike again. For those of you who for some reason don't know what a boss button is, it's pretty simple: It helps you look at stuff on your PC at work that you're not supposed to be looking at. Hit a key, and the screen instantly flips to something that vaguely looks like something you should be looking at in the office.

News.com Poll

Are you secretly watching the NCAA basketball tournament at your desk?

Of course, that's what the "boss button" is for.
No, don't care.
Would love to, but the IT guys are blocking it.

View results

Boss buttons (or keys) have been around for years, of course. Some Macintosh games back in the 1980s included them (though for most of us using Macs in those days, it was more like a "parent button" because we were supposed to be doing our homework). CNET's Download.com has a list of boss buttons, and there are even entire sites dedicated to them.

Come every March, thanks to office pools on the NCAA college basketball tournament, boss buttons are as common on desktop computers as personal e-mails and photos of your friends: They're probably not supposed to be there, but we all have them. NCAA.com has even provided a helpful boss button on its Web site.

Here's a thought: Let's stop all the silly shenanigans and make boss buttons a thing of the past. Get it out in the open and let people keep track of the office pools without worrying about getting into trouble. The average American is spending more time in the office than ever. And the average tech worker spends even more time than that. There's a reason all those Silicon Valley companies offer free food, subsidized child care, laundry, auto-detailing, and swanky gyms: So you never have an excuse to go home.

So cut those hardworking people a break. We're not talking porn here, folks. Let's put a TV somewhere in the office and stop all the sneaking around.

I know what the killjoys are thinking right now: This is a slippery slope! What's next: Christmas shopping at the desk? Sharing funny YouTube videos with coworkers? Where does the madness stop?

The ultimate office killjoys at Challenger, Gray & Christmas have even put a dollar figure on the money lost to people checking out the NCAA tournament while at work: It could be as much as $1.7 billion in wasted work time over the 16 business days of the tournament. The Challenger estimate is based on "the number of people expected to participate in office pools, the amount of money they earn and the amount of work time wasted on March Madness related activities, whether it is trash talking at the watercooler or watching live videos of the games during business hours."

While I have no idea how much money Challenger wasted doing this research, it does have a few more tidbits: A 2006 Harris poll found that 13 percent of Americans aged 18 and older plan to participate in an office March Madness pool. The press release announcing the Challenger survey goes on for six pages. In fairness, it offers some workplace tips for dealing with the tournament. OK, some of them are pretty corny, but I appreciate the spirit:

•  Pick 64 MVPs. This is high on the cornball meter. Bestow MVP honors on employees chosen ahead of time...for some reason. No, I really don't get it either.

•  Team sweatshirt day. Relax the dress code for the first Friday of the tournament so everyone can wear the sweatshirt of their favorite team. At CNET, we'd call this "formal attire day," but I imagine that would be letting down the hair at a lot of offices.

•  Offer anti-tourney prizes. Basically, start something for the people who don't care about basketball. Sure. Gotta be fair and all that.

•  Offer flexible schedules. Umm, OK, I don't know about this one. The manager in me says, "Are you insane? It's just freaking basketball."

•  Organize a company pool. Done. I mean, CNET in no way encourages gambling on collegiate or professional sports.

•  Keep a bracket posted. Good idea. But I should reiterate, CNET in no way encourages gambling on a collegiate or professional sports.

•  Keep television in break room tuned to coverage. Duh! It's what I'm saying. Let's take it out of the closet. Do away with the boss button, and accept the facts: For 16 days, nearly all of us are college basketball fans. We pretend to know the starting lineup of Western Kentucky, and feign shock when Stanford fails yet again to make the Final Four.

And please, stop with the boss button. I know exactly what you're doing.

[LaVaism]

Happy workers = More productivity

I love this idea. I know where I work at we keep the TV tuned to the games all the time. We listen to it while we work and it gives us some conversation topics. Being happy at work means you want to come to work and will actual do more work. Who wants to go back to the Team 80 from the Apple days (Jobs was making his people work 80 hours a week) probably why they started the boss button.

[zethos]

In other news...

Four US soldiers were killed in Iraq today. But don't let that bother
you, this basketball stuff really matters.

[fj34r]

*sigh*

Okay, we all care about the US soldiers in Iraq, and the fact that they were killed is indeed a shame. But it's just silly to go commenting on completely unrelated subjects about it. Blame Bush, not everyone else.

[pagesix1536]

huh?

You mean, your office doesn't have TVs all around to watch daily news, sports, or other TV? You just have to find the right company. Mine has em all over the place. Get with the times corporate America. This isn't the 1950s anymore.

[jrm125]

idiot

You're such an idiot I don't even know where to begin...

if you don't realize what a stupid statement you just made...we can't help you.

[SwissJay]

Exactly

Where I work, we used to have music in the warehouse. The new warehouse doesn't have that and I swear, even though we pretty much have the same crew working, there is a lot more dissatisfaction and griping going on than there used to.

Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure that the music, even though it was mostly cheesy dental office stuff, took everybody's mind off the boring job. Now, the rumor mill gets the brain time the music used to get...

[marvin250]

March Madness

It seems that CBS doesn't have the bandwidth to put it on. Who ever is supplying the bandwidth is not give enough as I have gone 10k which is slower than dial up. All I can say is CBS is showing the people how not to watch anything on the Internet as I haven't found anytime that close to 100K in the transmission that I watch. If it is Akamai then they don't have the capacity they say they have. I download some podcast during the period and I was getting full bandwidth that I paid and there was no problem with the Internet being overloaded. The bottom line is CBS is to cheap to get enough bandwidth for this function have give speed that is slower then dial connection. I hope they learn in the future to supply the right amount of bandwidth or don't do it again.