Football, Revisited

We discussed all things sports the other day via e-mail, but I have decided to bring it up again through the blog.

I work as collections supervisor for a call center. We have roughly 40 odd employees working on the floor in my section. My desk sits on the floor very close to everyone. This is to say that I can hear just about everyone's conversations.

There is a group of young men, who sit a cubicle row away from me, whom I like to call frat-boy wannabees. This is because they are of college age, but while not in college act like your typical frat boy – they like to party, get drunk, and talk constantly about sex and sports. Mostly sports.

Last Monday they literally talked non stop, for their 8 hour shift, about football. This happened to be the Monday night that the Indianapolis Colts were playing a game. And I live near the heart of Colt country.

But seriously, 8 hours straight of nothing but football talk! That's outrageous. The madness has got to stop.

I can no longer consider myself a fan of any sport. I never watch a game, I'm not interested, I don't care. However, there was a time when I loved sports. In high school I spent my Sunday afternoons watching pro football, and Saturday afternoons were for college ball. Summers were spent watching baseball and trading their cards. I could talk shop, talk smack, and hold my own with any sports related conversation, excepting basketball which I've always hated.

So I'm not a hater. I dig the athleticism of sports. I can understand the rush of the contest, the competition. I even understand fandom. Work is a perfect place to talk about sports because it isn't too personal, you can be passionate about it as a guy and not feel girly, and there is a new game every week.

But, really, guys, find something else to talk about once in awhile. Surely we, as men, have other interests. Movies? Guys can watch movies. Books? Well, that's not too many, but maybe if it was a book on war or something. Geez, what do these guys do all day besides watch sports? Ok, weekends are booked out for football, and Monday night always has a big game, but what about Tuesday through Friday? What are these guys doing? And why can't they talk about it?

These guys are so obsessed they push their luck and get in trouble. Most companies have an official internet policy that forbids internet usage for personal use. Most companies don't really enforce it. As long as employees aren't doing anything illegal, or that could be seen as harassment, they can't check their personal e-mail or favorite websites. As long as it doesn't interfere with their work load everyone is happy.

Due to a number of incidents where our reps were not doing their work for long stretches, say 30 minutes, because they were surfing rather than making phone calls, we have put a pretty firm grip on our anti-internet policy.

Reps are also not allowed to have their cell phones out, due again to abusive behavior.

Yet Monday night the game started, and the boys lost all common sense. Periodically they started shouting out the score, and various bits of information they could only know by using the internet or from their cell phones.

Honestly, I'm not real hard line on internet usage. I realize the job can be dull, and don’t really care if they flip to a site real quick as long as they are still performing their job duties. But, as a supervisor if I catch them I have to follow punishment guidelines. I literally had to tell these guys that it wasn't very bright to announce information to me that they could only gain via the internet.

And then I had to threaten to write the next person who made such announcement up.

It is so bad, I've had other reps complain to me about it. Non stop sports talk is driving us non sporties crazy.

The funny thing is that I have to take the sports talk. Because when the conversation actually does take a turn, it always ends up with crude sex jokes. Something I certainly can't allow on the floor.