Originally Posted by ThePhanastasio

For "customer privacy" reasons, they have banned CELL PHONES (and "anything with an on switch that isn't your computer;" their words) from the floor at work. They have also banned ink pens, and any writing utensils.

This has destroyed everything I do in between calls. I either doodle/write poetry, or I'm on my phone playing games or checking Facebook/Craigslist/Amazon/musicbanter. Or texting.

They opened the floor to any questions at our board room meeting. One guy asked if there had been a privacy breach or anything, and they said, "No, but we don't want there to be, so..." Yeah. Good logic, I guess?

People kept throwing out things to ask if they were banned. I sarcastically mumbled my question about whether or not writing with ones' own blood was banned.

It is.

People weren't happy. General grumbles of disapproval and thinly veiled rage were apparent in our interactions with our bosses. They gave us papers to sign, and in unison, three people sarcastically asked, "How do you expect us to sign them if writing utensils are banned, effective immediately," To which all of my fellow oppressed masses chimed in with an emphatic, "Yeah!"

I know people who work in government jobs or with fairly sensitive information who are allowed to have writing utensils and doodle or whatever. They asked us to think of other ways to break up the tedium. I said that I'd take up origami. Others agreed that would be ****ing awesome.

I see a lot of paper cranes on desks in my company's future. One girl said she was bringing in Play-Doh. Another, legos.

They suggested books. Knowing from personal experience that reading books in between calls is difficult at best, infuriating at most times, I said so. Others chimed in with their experiences.

But, seriously. It's not like we did anything stupid on company time. I've never seen a single person messing with their phone on a call...we put them down when the headset beeps. No one in the company has ever taken sensitive information. No one really cares to. A few people mentioned that, "Dudes, we deal with people who can't pay their bills...seriously...what would we have to gain from their financial information? They don't have any money."

I'm kind of pissed off. Especially now that the queue has died down, and we sometimes have five or more minutes between calls at certain times in the day, especially when three shifts or more are overlapping.

I mean, I like having a job more than using my cell phone on the floor, but that doesn't stop their strict regulations of late from being stupid and irritating. When we're not on a call, and we're staying quiet, doodling, writing, coloring, doing crossword/sudoku puzzles (I mean, I can understand the cell phone thing more than the pens; that's just ****ing torture) we're not wasting their time, and we're not costing them any money.