Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Time to look for a new job
It finally happened. I am living the nightmare of every fantasy-addicted player on earth. And there's nothing I can do about it.
It started out an extremely nice morning. I'd been off for a week. (I'm a teacher -- all the snow.) The weather had finally broken so my coffee no longer freezes on the 15-foot walk from my door to my car, and Yahoo just opened their Fantasy Baseball '07. So I was rested, happy, and actually had something to do at work for the first time since week 17 of the NFL season ended. (What? You expect me to do my job? This is America buddy -- land of the free, home of the lazy slackers.) Anyway, I got to work, got my class settled and working, then logged onto my computer. I open my Internet Explorer and click on my already bookmarked "Yahoo Sports" tab. What happened next will be seared into my memory for the rest of my life ...
"ACCESS DENIED"
I frantically hit the refresh button like five times! I went back and clicked on the bookmark about 10 times hoping this was all some horrible mistake. But it was no use. It had happened. It said in small print that "county policy prohibits access to this web site." To say I was furious would be an understatement. I stood there looking at my computer for what seemed like five minutes. I thought about finding a new job. I considered finding where my superintendent lives so I could kill him, and the thought crossed my mind to run down the hall screaming like a 4-year-old girl. I called my father for support to help calm me down. Big mistake. (He's a bigger fantasy crackhead then I am.) He probably would have killed the super, instead of just joking about it. So I was on my own with this.
I must have gone through all the stages: shock, anger, denial, blah, blah ... all in the matter of minutes. Until finally, acceptance. I guess it's just a matter of time before all workplaces ban fantasy sports from their servers. I saw a show about a year ago where they said the greatest level of Internet use in this country, by far, is Mondays in the fall between the hours of 8 and 10 a.m. Yes, it's everyone checking how their team did on Sunday. The show also claimed that businesses were losing BILLIONS of dollars per year on lost productivity due to time spent on fantasy sports. They said it was becoming the second-biggest productivity problem next to fake sick leave. (God, I do love myself some fake sick leave.) And I do know for a fact that many government agencies here in the D.C. area have already blocked fantasy sports for those very same reasons.
But knowing that it was coming didn't make it any easier to deal with today. And it made me feel something. It made me feel old. Because I know in 10 or 15 years when guys in their 20s are talking about their fantasy teams and players (and I'm still kicking there asses), I'm going to tell them about the good old days when work was just an excuse to work on your fantasy team. I miss them already.
Posted by John Husar
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