(W)ork

The one thing I wish I could blog about is my work.

But I'm afraid to.

I have one friend at work (really, it's true) that knows about this blog.  He and I are someday going to start a blog together if he ever gets a new laptop.  Anyway, some of my other co-workers have overheard us talking about it and have expressed an interest in it, but I don't want them here!  How can I talk about them if they are going to read it?

I keep hearing how you are supposed to be really careful about what you put out on the web because someday it may bite you in the ass; you know, keep you from getting a job or something.  I have no professional aspirations, factory-related, so I'm not really concerned with that.  But I did sign a confidentiality agreement 15 years ago.  That was before blogs, so that wasn't exactly what they had in mind.  It's more like not discussing the inner machinations with reporters (they actually try to enforce that one every time we have a union drive) and taking pictures because we evidently have some top-secret stuff in there.

Now that everybody has a cell phone that's hard to enforce.  I actually took a picture of a mural they painted on a bathroom wall once because it was just so bizarre I wanted to show my husband.  I felt like a spy trying to covertly snap some secret documents for the government.  I probably wouldn't get fired for that.  But there is a piece of equipment that blew up about a month ago and I have to walk by it every day.  It just flew apart mid-cycle one day and now it is cordoned off with caution tape and there is a note taped up to it explaining that the weld just blew in the middle of the cycle--not opening or closing.  It looks like it has been bombed and it is kind of scary to walk by because crap went flying everywhere when it happened and somebody could have been killed.  They might fire me for taking a picture of that.

I work with some real assholes and I would love to tell you about them but it would be really awkward to have to stand next to them for 12 hours while they are glaring at me thinking You call me Melonhead and now everybody calls me that behind my back and you told the whole internet that I have a great big head and like to look at child porn? 

That could be uncomfortable.