A Lesson for Human Relations and Internet Business

Before I became a hyperactive netizen, I was hired as a public Internet shop operator four years ago. Bad experience. The owner who was a ‘friend’ turned out to be a dictator and human user. I was his third employee and while working discovered that he was at odds with the first two. Reasons: I shouldn’t mention about his first employee for privacy and ethical reasons. On the second, the owner was planning to ditch him because he was playing online during idle times — like the first and me — even though he was paying for that (you get busy as an operator according to how many the customers are. Hence the idle times when customers are few). Second operator was fired after owner literally fought with the first.

The owner’s beef with me was that I was networking during idle times. Almost similar to the second’s isn’t it? When he hired a fourth who meekly followed all his rules, the message was so clear I resigned. I was a stay-in employee so I was able to observe and study all that was happening. Months after, I learned that the fourth also resigned.

So what’s the lesson of the story for the owner? In retrospect, the main point was that he didn’t understand that playing or networking makes employed techies more productive. Imagine yourself an operator waiting hours for customers who woudn’t come. Either you get sleepy and lazy or awake and productive with your choice of online activity. Whatever they do don’t add to power expenses anyway because the home network server should always be running.